by Noir, Stella
We have a date for the case. Dad has dedicated himself to this cause completely, almost to the point of consumption, and has managed to apply pressure in exactly the right way to the right part of the system for the right amount of time in order to have the case rushed through as a priority.
January the 26th. That’s just over two months from now, which according to him, is the best result we could have expected. It’s not the best result I could have expected, but I don’t think that matters to him.
I’m back at my old desk, the bright eyed temp girl they’ve had in to replace me moved to the work space in the corner of the office used exclusively for hot desking. We do the hand-over together, and already I feel like I’m out of my depth. She’s newly graduated, ambitious, clever, I feel a spike of concern for my position, and wonder if she secretly resents me for coming back.
I spend a couple of hours clearing out my emails, my heart chilling when I read the regular email reminders for the Friday night social get togethers. Fox and Hounds, Upended Spoon, the Twisted Sister. Bowling, roller discos, rape.
In the end I blanket delete them all. I delete every single email from that day and every single email I’ve ever received about going out after work on Friday, but not before I’ve read an email chain between Fraser and I about that night that nearly makes me cry.
Fraser: Can’t wait to get wasted!
Me: Me too. Is it time to go home yet, I’m bored!
Fraser: Any plans for the weekend?
Me: I’m going to be sat on my sofa, chilling the fuck out!
Fraser and I used to flirt with each other when I first started. We even went on a couple of dates. After that fizzled out we became close friends. I’ve kind of pushed him away a little over the last couple of months because of what happened. Dating seems like a million miles away from where I am now. I don’t know whether it’s something I’ll ever feel like doing again. It’s normal, that’s what they say at least. Resounding effects: Loss of libido, depression, feelings of guilt, lack of self worth, disassociation. Fucked up life.
Jesus, I used think about sex all the time before it happened, and now, now when I think about it, which admittedly is hardly ever, I can’t not think about him. I feel so lonely sometimes. Looking around the office, being with people, I get reminded of that. It’s paradoxical, but here, with other people, I can’t help but get a real sense of my own solitude, as though I couldn’t see it before without something to put it into context. I haven’t had someone to connect to intimately for a couple of years, and now, because of what has happened to me, I can’t help but think it might not happen at all.
I don’t know why I’m thinking about this so much. I guess it’s because things are moving on so quickly around me and I’m struggling to keep up. I don’t want to get left behind, the broken doll left on the shelf because she doesn’t work properly. I don’t want to be in this situation forever, on my own forever.
Yeah I’m here at work, and there are people around me, and I have friends and family, which is more than can be said for a lot of people, and I have the group therapy sessions in which I can connect at some level with people who can empathize because they’ve experienced the same thing, but even with all that said, it’s not the same thing. The problem is letting someone else get close to me, in order to be able to give me exactly what I need to stop me feeling that way. And that takes courage and trust, neither of which I feel like I truly have.
Chapter Nineteen
Jo
24 November 2015. Fifty eight days after.
Ethan is not at the session today. There is an empty chair where he usually sits, and a hole in the group more noticeable than a hole in the roof would be with rain coming through it. We wait for ten minutes to begin the class, all a little unsure if we should proceed at all. Katy calls his mobile, but he doesn’t respond.
“Maybe he’s gone on holiday”, Patricia says, “Didn’t he mention something about family back west?”
“He could be doing something for his birthday, you know as a kind of belated birthday present”, Paul adds.
We spend the first half an hour discussing his possible whereabouts, before moving on from that and beginning the session. It never really gets going. It seems like Ethan is the glue that gels everyone else together. Without him, they all seem a bit lost, Katy included.
I tell them about the court date, because it’s bugging me, and I want to know whether anyone else has already gone through what I’m going to have to do in the new year. Patricia is the only girl who took her attacker to court and spoke up in her defense against him.
“Seeing him there was the hardest thing”, she says. “The lawyers try and trip you up, you know, mess around with what you’re saying about where you were and shit like that, how much you’d been drinking and what went on before consent wise, but that was a piece of cake compared to being stood there in the same room, his eyes on you like they must have been when he was doing it. My trial went on for three weeks because he was a sick sonofabtich and there was a lot of stuff he was accused of doing. It got easier every day, but it still wasn’t no walk in the park, that’s for sure.”
Patricia was raped on her way back from a night out like me. Dragged into the bushes at the edge of the park and forced into the ground with a knife across her throat. She still has the scar. The guy that was responsible? Someone who had tried it on with her at the club she’d spent the evening at, and she’d turned down. It was as simple as that. If she wasn’t going to agree to giving it to him, he was going to take it himself.
“I didn’t want to, but I had to go. They sent him down for what we said about him. Plenty of the other girls didn’t take to the stand, but there wasn’t any DNA evidence on me, so I had to talk and tell my side of the story. I was glad I did too. That was the first time apart from to my sister and Mom. I came here after that case went to trial. He denied it of course, until he was red in the face. Said I’d agreed to it, that we left the club together, that it was my idea we fucked in the park-.” She excuses herself for swearing and it makes the group smile. “-They’ll say anything to get away, be prepared for that. I heard so many excuses I couldn’t have made them up myself.”
Her attacker got six years for what he did. He was convicted of two counts of rape, the nine other charges reduced to either sexual assault or thrown out completely. On appeal, his sentence was reduced to three years, and after serving only a year and a half of his sentence, he was let out for good behaviour. He still lives in the area, you can look him up on the sexual offenders register for Pittsburgh.
“Sometimes I wonder if our system is enough, you know? We talk about how we feel and what we’re going to do to rebuild our lives and shit like that, but we never seem to talk about how we’re gonna get justice for what happened. You think a year is justice enough for what he did to me and all those other girls? Hell, no. Whereas here I am, over two years later, and I’m still just as fucked up as I was the day after it happened. I can’t get a relationship, I lost my job and I can’t get another one, I’m on medication, I can’t sleep, I have bad dreams, I still can’t go out at night on my own, and on top of all of that, I’ve got to think about what I’ll do if I ever bump into that sonofabitch in the street.”
“You’ve got us”, Katy reminds her, and takes her hand to give it a squeeze. Patricia smiles timidly.
“Yeah”, she says. “You lot have been my rocks this last few months.”
Later, when the session is over, she comes over and apologizes to me. “I didn’t want to make you feel bad, I realized after saying it I might have given you the chills.”
I tell her it’s ok, that I’d prefer her to be honest.
“Just make sure you got people around you to support you”, she says, giving my hand a squeeze now in the same way Katy had done to her earlier. “We all gotta stick together.”
I walk to the intersection thinking about Ethan. I hope he’s ok, wherever he is. The more I think about him, the less I find
I have to think about myself. The clock is ticking. Christmas will come and go in a heartbeat, and then it’ll be upon me. January 26. Doomsday. The day I face my attacker.
Part Two.
Chapter Twenty
Jo
2 December 2015. Sixty six days after.
Christmas is coming. Snowmen and tacky lights and fucking platitudes. Although we haven’t got snow yet, it’s forecast to hit before the end of the year. I can sense the approach of it at work. The winding down before the clock begins again. It’s a time of contradictions, where despite awful weather, severe lack of sunlight, and pressure to conform, people seem happier, more cheerful, more human. People dress up, take themselves less seriously, are more inclined to help others. It’s literally the season of goodwill.
I feel like shit today. Christmas exists everywhere except my own apartment. My own head. I miss my old life. The one before all of this began. My clock started again sixty six days ago, and it feels like I’ll never be able to pass a day without thinking about him.
I hope Ethan is at the next group session. We don’t have many more before the Christmas break. And after Christmas, everyone knows what happens. Depression, debt and standing up in front of him. I’m not ready.
Chapter Twenty One
Ethan
3 December 2015. Eighty one days after.
James William Cutler is not the man that murdered my wife. Nor is Joseph Bekele or Aaron Tate. These men are all guilty of their own crimes, but they are not guilty of what happened to Alice. The search for that man continues. I have a list and I’m working my way through it methodically. Doing Cutler was difficult, but I know it will only get easier. I’m on a mission now, and with each man I take off the list, I know I only get closer to completing it.
“Ethan?”
I turn my head to my name, more slowly than I intend to.
“Ethan?”
“Hi”, I say, the smile spreading across my face a genuine one.
“It’s Jo, you know, from the group. How’s it going?”
“Hey, Jo”, I say. “Alright, thanks.”
“We missed you last week. It was kind of empty without you. Were you ok?”
Jo seems genuinely concerned about me, and that surprises me a little. I put the apple I’ve been holding for what could be a long time back into the basket with the others and turn to face her.
“I just had a few things to do, that was all”, I say. “How did it go?”
“Ok”, Jo says.
I watch her cross her arms over her chest protectively. This must be difficult for her, alone here with me, a stranger essentially. Someone more powerful. After it happened, I became much more aware of myself as a man, of my capabilities, of how I might come across in this kind of situation.
I try not to make her feel uncomfortable in my presence. I open up my arms and lean casually against the table to my left. I smile at her too, keeping myself a relatively normal distance away.
“We waited for you, and then talked a little. I have my court case coming up in January, so there’s that.”
“Oh”, I say. “How do you feel?”
Jo smiles and then she looks away. When she looks back, I can see her eyes welling and tears brimming ready to crash over. She’s vulnerable. It’s how Alice would have been had she survived. Strong on the outside but falling apart on the inside. It’s how I am. I go to her quickly, naturally, without thinking. I have a natural desire to comfort her, but Jo steps away as I approach, and I suddenly realize that what I was about to do - touch her on the arm, hug her even - would have been wildly inappropriate given the circumstances. I quickly back away.
“Sorry”, I say, my hands up. “I didn’t mean-.”
“No, it’s ok”, Jo says, pushing the tear away from the corner of her eye. “It’s just. It’s so soon, you know, and I’m not ready. I don’t know. It’s been a hard couple of weeks settling back into work and now this.”
“I understand”, I say. “What you have been through already, you know-. It must be hard.”
Jo tries to smile, but I can see the corners of her lips vibrating as though she’s trying not to cry.
“What about you?”, she asks, desperate to compose herself and move the focus away to something else.
“I’m getting on”, I say. “A day at a time.”
“You always seem so relaxed. I mean, I know we don’t know each other at all, but you seem, I don’t know, I’m rambling on here.”
“It’s the medication”, I say, and smile to break the tension. Alice used to say the same thing about me, that I was relaxed, even at the times I didn’t feel it. I knew I had that capacity, to make my body lie to hide the truth. “Every day is hard for me too”, I say, “I lose focus, I wonder what the point of it all is, I have bad days and good days and days where I can’t even get out of bed, but they are still days. I have my running, and i’m keeping fit and eating well. I’m doing everything they tell me I need to.”
“That’s good”, Jo says, her arms relaxed a little and down by her side now. “You look like you’re in shape. I’m eating like a pig, I can’t be bothered to cook most nights so I just get takeout and sit on the couch and end up leaving half of it anyway. I’m not very motivated.”
“You’ve motivated yourself to come here”, I say. “That takes motivation.”
“I live right at the end of the street”, she says, laughing a little. “I’m going crazy at home and even crazier at work. All this Christmas stuff is driving me insane.”
“Yeah? It’s a bit much isn’t it?”
To be honest, I hadn’t really even noticed. I’ve been too busy with training and searching for people to stop and take things in. She’s right though, I notice it as I take a look around the shop. Advertisements, new packaging on products, there’s even a jingle coming over the tannoy so subtle I hadn’t even consciously realised it was there. I’m zoning out again, and Jo’s smiling sweetly at me as though it could have been a long time de-focussing.
“Sorry, I-.”
“The zoning out, it’s ok”, she says. “I get that sometimes too.”
“I don’t even know where I go”, I say. “I mean, I know physically I don’t go anywhere, but mentally, it’s kind of weird, I just, I don’t know, it feels like a hole. It’s not unpleasant. Quite the opposite actually.”
“Maybe it’s what your brain needs to recover”, Jo says. “Sometimes I wish I could do that too, you know, totally detach myself from reality.”
A moment of silence passes between us as we both contemplate this. A complete and total disconnection from reality.
“Are you coming next week?” Jo asks, her arm folded back over her chest.
“I’ll be there”, I say. “I can’t let Paul bore you again with his stories about his amateur dramatics club, it wouldn’t be fair.”
“Professional amatuer dramatics club”, she says, “They’re going on tour in the new year. Plus he wants us to come and see his Christmas production. It’s twenty dollars a ticket.”
“Huh”, I say, biting my lip a little. “Good for him. Maybe we should go.”
“I think he’d really appreciate it”, Jo offers.
That silence crisps the space between us again, and neither one of us really knows how to end the conversation. It’s Jo, finally, that takes the lead.
“I better get to it”, she says. “I hate shopping with a passion, but I haven’t got anyone else to do it for me. See you in the group?”
“Yeah”, I say, smiling at her again. “I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me too. Don’t forget your twenty dollars”, she says as she disappears into the labyrinthine network of the supermarket.
After Jo has gone, I realize that during my short conversation with her, I didn’t think about Alice, her brutal murder, or the people I’m searching for once. I disconnected without zoning out the whole time and I don’t even get that in the therapy sessions. I think about that for the rest of the day, pondering exactly
what it might mean.
Chapter Twenty Two
Jo
8 December 2015. Seventy two days after.
I’m excited to see Ethan back with us. He’s sat in his chair, casually slouched into one corner of it, as much as anybody could be on a fold-up metal and plastic office chair, with his hands tucked away into the pockets of a runner’s hoodie. When I’ve taken my own seat, pulled it into the group to close the ring more tightly, I notice he has a black eye and a cut on his cheek, his glasses do little to conceal. In fact, his glasses themselves appear to have been broken and fixed with sealing tape.
“Shit, Ethan, what happened?”
“Fell off his bike”, Paul says, before Ethan gets a chance to respond to me. His hand goes up to indicate that what Paul has said is the truth.
“You should see his hands”, Paul adds.
“Come on, Paul, it isn’t that bad.”
“Show us again, Ethan”, Emily encourages.
Ethan shifts a little on his chair and then reluctantly takes his hands out of his pockets to show me. One is bandaged, the other covered in cuts and bruises where swelling hasn’t yet gone down.
“Took a bad hit”, Paul says.
“I was going too fast”, Ethan confirms.
“You’re lucky you didn’t break anything.”
“Are you ok?” I ask.
“Yeah”, Ethan says, in his usual, languid way. “A bit sore, but I’m ok.”
“What happened exactly?”
“Oh man, it’s kind of embarrassing”, Ethan says, pushing those broken glasses up his nose a little and dropping his shoulders. He is so likeable, I suddenly realize. His body movements, his way of speaking, the way he kind of looks at you, but not directly, as though he’s timid, but polite with it, comfortable within himself, but aware of himself too. “I kind of zoned out on the bike.”