I Thought I Knew You

by Penny Hancock

  Jules gave the rough time Rowan and Saffie had left. Then, not wanting to implicate Rowan any more than she already had, she said she’d left about fifteen minutes after that.

  But Maria wasn’t letting anything slip. ‘I’d like to have a word with your husband as well. When might he be available to speak to?’

  ‘He’ll be back any minute, I think,’ Jules said. ‘He should be here now. He went out, but he wasn’t going to be long.’

  ‘Do you mind if we wait, then? And do you mind if I call Venesuela in? I need to update him on what you and Saffie have told me.’

  Jules felt drained. How could her family have got so embroiled with the police when they were not guilty of anything?

  ‘I’ll make you some coffee,’ she said.

  Jules saw Rowan’s tall silhouette through the glass panel of the front door, which was visible from the open-plan kitchen. She heard the door open and watched as he came in, levered off his boots, then stopped in the doorway to the sitting room. He’d spotted the car outside, and now he could see the two police officers in his house.

  She took the coffee through to the police officers and he mouthed at Jules, asking what they were doing there. They had both agreed not to report the rape to the police at Saffie’s request, so he was clearly surprised to see them, standing on his nice sheepskin rug. Drinking his coffee from his big, top-of-the-range machine.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Venesuela indicated to Jules that he wanted to talk to Rowan alone.

  Maria Shimwell accompanied Jules into the kitchen, so that the two men could talk.

  ‘What’s he going to ask him? Rowan doesn’t know any more than I do. He wasn’t here the night of the rape. He was away.’ Jules had begun to tremble, unaccountably. Perhaps it was the stress of having police in her house. Or perhaps it was a result of too much coffee. Maria told Jules not to worry, that they were just eliminating things at this stage.

  ‘Eliminating what?’ Jules asked, though she knew. Because it had crossed her own mind when Holly had rung to say Saul was missing. When Rowan had said he’d gone to Ely Market after taking Saffie to the bus stop yesterday morning. Why hadn’t he come straight home? He had taken Saffie to the bus at the very time Saul had set off for school. But Saul had never arrived. Jules hadn’t let herself think about it. She couldn’t bear to fit all the pieces together – Rowan’s fury, his shouting, ‘I’ll beat the living daylights out of him.’ His driving Saffie to the bus stop and then, that same morning, Saul going missing on his way to that very bus stop.

  It was all too much for Jules to make sense of.

  For her to want to make sense of.

  Venesuela came into the kitchen then and said he’d asked Rowan if he would help with their enquiries at the station.

  ‘You’re taking him to the police station?’ Jules was shocked.

  ‘Only to help with our enquiries. Since he’s willing,’ Maria said. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. The detective inspector wants to rule out a few things, and it’s best done down there.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘We’ll only keep him an hour or so.’

  *

  Jules went upstairs to check Saffie was OK, telling her Rowan was at the pub with his golfing mates and would be back later. Saffie said she was tired after the questioning and wanted to get a decent night’s sleep.

  ‘Mum,’ she called out, as Jules began to close her door.

  ‘What, darling?’

  ‘I’m frightened.’ She put her hand on her belly.

  Jules paused. Then she said, ‘Only a couple more days and we’ll see Dr Browne. She’ll sort everything. Try not to think about it – you’ve enough on your plate at the moment.’

  ‘Not just about that. About Saul. Where is he? What if something happens to him and it’s all because of me? Because I told you. When he warned me not to?’

  Jules sighed. ‘Sweetheart, you were right to tell us. None of this is your fault. He’s just lying low for a bit because he doesn’t want to face up to what he’s done. And you’re not to blame yourself for that.’

  ‘But . . . ’ Saffie didn’t seem convinced, and Jules had a sudden longing for the days when the biggest things she had to deal with were grazed knees and lost teddies.

  ‘Try and sleep.’ Jules hoped she sounded authoritative enough to stop Saffie worrying, at least for tonight. She crossed back over the room to kiss her goodnight, squeezed her daughter to her, kissed her again, rested her cheek against her soft hair. How had things come to this? How was it that her husband was down at the police station and her godson was missing and her daughter was pregnant? And she had no one to turn to because her best friend was no longer talking to her.

  *

  It was dark and Jules was in her bedroom, rubbing in the cream that was supposed to protect her décolletage from going crêpey, when she heard the car pull up outside, the front door slam, and knew that Rowan was back. She heard him go straight into the sitting room, the TV come on, the murmur of voices on some late-night panel show. In the mirror, she saw the tendons in her neck relax and realized how tense she had been, how terrified that the police were going to arrest Rowan. Jules crept downstairs and into the sitting room.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘Or something stronger?’

  Rowan glanced up at her. ‘I could do with a beer now you mention it.’

  Jules got him a bottle of iced Becks from the fridge and sat down next to him. He kept staring at the screen, on which a panel was discussing the migration crisis.

  ‘So what did they ask you?’ Jules said to the side of his face. His eyes were bloodshot. A network of thread veins had appeared on his cheeks that she was sure hadn’t been there before. She worried about his blood pressure.

  ‘Wanted to know where I was on Monday morning,’ he said without looking at her.

  ‘And?’

  ‘Where I went after dropping Saffie at the bus stop. Wanted to know how I felt about the rape, about Saul, all that stuff.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I told them.’

  ‘Ro, it’s quite understandable that you are so angry with Saul,’ Jules said. ‘Any dad would have felt the same. But you didn’t . . . ?’

  ‘Didn’t what?’ he snapped. ‘What are you asking, Jules? I’ve just been put through two hours of interrogation by the police. While the person they should be questioning has done a disappearing act. Don’t you start.’

  ‘I want to reassure myself,’ Jules said. ‘Or rather, I want you to reassure me, that you didn’t do anything impulsive.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. Such as try and punish Saul in some way.’ She couldn’t say what she was really afraid of, what she was increasingly convinced her husband was capable of. She couldn’t say she needed to know if Rowan had taken Saul somewhere. Done something terrible to him. Something he would be regretting.

  ‘I’ve told the police all that,’ Rowan said. ‘I’ve told them I didn’t see Saul that morning. I told them to ask the bloody pikeys on the green instead of one of their upstanding citizens.’

  Ordinarily, Jules would have taken Rowan to task for such a derogatory comment, but nothing about their current situation was ordinary. Instead, she said, ‘You know I love you. And you know we’ve always said we’d never have secrets from one another.’ The moment the words were out of her mouth, the word ‘pregnant’ in the window of the test floated into her mind’s eye.

  Rowan did glance at her briefly now. ‘Please, Jules, leave me be. I really need to switch off from all this.’

  Jules gave up and went upstairs. On the way to her room, she glanced in again on Saffie. She was asleep. Had she been asleep when they’d come in after the pub that night? Jules had looked in on Saffie when she had gone upstairs and Saffie had looked just as she did now. In a deep slumber. Why had Saffie told DC Shimwell she couldn’t sleep? Perhaps Saffie’s memory was clouded by the traumatic experience she had gone through. Or perhaps she’d fallen straight to sleep aft
er hearing Jules and Holly come through the door. Or perhaps Jules’s own memory was clouded by all the Prosecco she had drunk that night. Whatever, Jules wished Saffie had told her then and there what Saul had done to her. One morning-after pill and Jules wouldn’t be dealing with a pregnancy now. She wouldn’t be the worst hypocrite in history, telling her husband they kept no secrets. Keeping the secret of his daughter’s pregnancy from him. And yet using it against Holly to prove her daughter wasn’t a liar. Which hadn’t worked anyway. How much more devious could she get? And then she thought of the way she’d let what she knew about Archie and Philippa slip out of her mouth, and Holly’s shocked face in the rain.

  Saul’s actions have brought out the worst in everyone, she thought. Including me.

  11

  HOLLY

  In what other circumstances do we count the hours rather than the days? We do it after giving birth, in order to savour every moment of our newborn’s development. But this, this measuring an absence, means I want to hold back time for a different reason. It’s forty-eight hours since Saul walked out of the door and has been slowly disappearing from my life. I need to stop time, to stop him vanishing. Forty-eight hours sounds less like a lifetime than two days does.

  I find my phone, check Saul’s text for the millionth time.

  Is it from Saul? Or could it have been sent by some prankster – the troll? – someone who knows he’s missing and wants to torment me?

  ‘There’s no GPS so we can’t tell where it was sent from,’ Maria Shimwell tells me over the phone. ‘Our colleagues in East Finchley have searched the cemetery, but there’s no sign. There’s a community of homeless people down there, so the guys did a thorough investigation. No one’s seen him. They’ve not found anything. Is there anywhere else he might have meant? By saying he’d gone to be close to his dad?’

  Hearing the words spoken out loud convinces me more than ever. He’s not gone to any physical place. I feel sick and I can’t bring myself to say what I’m actually thinking.

  *

  Saul’s story on the local news has been edited.

  ‘The boy who went missing from his home on Monday was accused of rape by a thirteen-year-old girl a few days before his disappearance. Police are not dismissing the links between the two events. The victim claims the seventeen-year-old, a family friend, assaulted her in her home while her parents were out.’

  So. My sixteen-year-old son is now seventeen, according to the news.

  And a rapist.

  Shimwell rings again later and tells me they’ve still found nothing. The weather has worsened, relentless rain tipping down from morning till night. The rivers have swelled; the Fens up towards the Great Ouse are flooded. The search parties have given up. Because of the weather? Or because they now believe my son raped a thirteen-year-old?

  On my way upstairs, my mobile rings again. I barely dare hope anymore that Saul will get in touch. That he’s OK.

  ‘Holly.’ My heart plummets. It’s not Saul, of course.

  ‘How are things?’ It’s Luma, from work.

  ‘Pretty bloody awful. I was going to come in tomorrow. Take my mind off the endless waiting, worrying, fretting. It’s exhausting, Luma.’

  ‘Actually, Holly, we’re wondering if you should take some time off. The tweets are coming in thick and fast. Rumours are spiralling.’ Luma’s voice is soft, conciliatory.

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘Haven’t you checked your Twitter feed? What they’re saying about you is pretty vile. They’re calling you a hypocrite. They imply that you call all men potential rapists, then deny it when your son’s accused. They’re nasty. There’s the Stag, as usual, but he’s precipitated a stream of other abusers. They’re all hashtagging the university.’

  ‘How do they know?’ I cry. ‘How do they know what Saul was accused of?’

  ‘The story’s all over the internet, that he’s disappeared, and that there’s a rape claim attached.’

  ‘Who is the bloody Stag?’ I ask, pointlessly.

  ‘We may never know. The fact is, the tweets are undermining all the work you’ve put into the consent workshops. If your students get wind of the allegation against your son – and they’re bound to – they could lose confidence in you as their tutor as well. We all feel it’d be better if you took time out.’

  My students’ faces float into my mind’s eye. Eleanora. How I’ve helped her with her novel, how close she is to handing it in. Mei Lui. I wanted to help her extract herself from whatever racket she’s involved in. I need to be there. I’ve always been there for my students; it’s who I am. It’s what I do.

  ‘I’m beside myself, wondering what’s happened to Saul,’ I say. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to be. Work might help. It would be a distraction.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Holly, but it could damage the university’s reputation if we’re not seen to be taking action. Just as we’re recruiting students for next year.’

  ‘Isn’t that giving in to them, though? Isn’t that letting the Stag get what he wants? To shut us up and stop us making things better for women? I need to be there, Luma. I need to help Hanya with the workshops.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Luma says. ‘Hanya feels having you involved, after all that’s happened, might be . . . controversial. Counterproductive even.’

  I let her words sink in.

  ‘Are you saying she believes my son’s guilty as well?’

  ‘Look. No one’s saying that. But the fact he’s been accused of rape . . . and that he’s run away, it gives these trolls ammunition to say your workshops are hypocritical at best.’

  I stare out of the window. The trees are releasing their leaves. The air is full of burnt-orange flakes shimmying on eddies of wind before floating to the ground. I’m beginning to hate my view of the green, of the seasons slowly changing before my eyes.

  ‘What I’m going through . . . what this has put Saul through,’ I say, ‘it’s worse than anything I imagined. Having an allegation like this attached to his name’ – I try not to break down – ‘could have driven him to suicide. That’s what the police are thinking. It’s what I’ve begun to think. I don’t know how to cope. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Oh, Holly. This is particularly fucking awful for you, isn’t it? As the workshop adviser. Of all people.’

  ‘I’m a mother, Luma. It would be particularly bloody awful for any mother.’ I swallow back the urge to cry.

  I hear Luma sigh on the other end of the line. She’s caught in the middle too, of course.

  ‘There are only a few more weeks until Christmas,’ she says at last. ‘I can hand your tutorials and lectures over to Ayesha. It would help if you could say you’ve taken sick leave. Due to stress? It might help you, too. Because I’m sure you’re going through hell, and you don’t want or need animosity at work.’

  ‘I suppose I have no choice.’

  ‘Just for the rest of this term,’ Luma says again, softly. ‘I’m sorry, Holly.’

  *

  ‘Who was that?’ Pete asks, coming into the bedroom. He’s working at home this morning on his computer up in the girls’ attic room. He looks tired, and unkempt in his crumpled T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘It was Luma. She’s told me to take time off. The Stag is cashing in on this, apparently.’

  We both look at my Twitter account. Sure enough more tweets have been pouring in while I’ve been busy worrying about Saul.

  @Hollyseymore fuckingbitchhypocrite #feminazi #UniversityofLondon

  @Hollyseymore motherofapaedo #feminazi #UniversityofLondon

  They go on and on.

  ‘How do they know Saul’s my son?’ I look up at Pete.

  He shrugs.

  ‘You only have to google your name. You have a very public internet profile, which makes what’s happened to Saul pretty damn hard to hide.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Anyone interested in you can find links.’

  ‘After a coupl
e of articles in the broadsheets?’

  ‘Once you’re out there, you’re out there,’ Pete says. ‘There’s no going back once the internet’s got you. It’s not called “the web” for nothing.’

  I look back at Twitter. There’s a message I’ve missed and it knocks the breath from me.

  @Hollyseymore servesherrightifhersonsdead #feminazi #UniversityofLondon

  ‘Bastards,’ Pete mutters. ‘Come here, Holly.’ I let him put his arms round me, let the tears come. ‘This has gone too far. You’re coming off Twitter. You’re to close your account right now.’

  ‘I don’t even know how to do that.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’

  We’re in the middle of googling ‘how to deactivate your Twitter account’ when there’s a rap at the door downstairs. A woman stands on the pavement outside. She holds up her ID card and introduces herself as Fatima Gumby, family liaison officer. She’s black, wearing plain grey trousers and jacket, with huge brown eyes and long hair in cornrows.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asks. ‘I’m here to support you. You’ve been through quite an ordeal, I hear.’

  She asks if she can stay for a cup of tea. I take her into the kitchen. She says she’d like to chat to me alone, and Pete nods, squeezes me on the shoulder and leaves us to go back up to the attic. Fatima begins by asking me how I’m coping. She sits and listens.

  And I let myself rant. I say I am not coping. That I feel a fool. That I’m to blame for making Saul feel I mistrusted him. That someone on Twitter knows that a rape allegation’s been made about my son and it’s all over the internet. That it means I can’t go to work. That if Saul sees this, it will be the last straw for him. If it’s not too late already. I don’t think I can take any more.

  ‘You go on and cry,’ she says. ‘Don’t mind me. There’s nothing I haven’t seen, or heard of. Nothing left to surprise me in this strange old world of ours. Cry all you want, all you need to.’

  So I do. And Fatima sits and lets me weep, unruffled by my outpouring.

  Eventually, drained, I fall silent. Feeling floaty, lighter, it’s as if I’ve cried away a burden, part of it at least.