Flint smirked, confirming that this was all too adult for a girl like me. ‘I what? I didn’t touch you. None of us touched you, did we?’
‘Not one single finger,’ one of them said.
The one with the sovereign ring shook his head.
I looked back at the blank wall, as if it was still there. Proof that one of them had touched me. It was physically gone, currently out of sight, but I could see the image, every line, every shade, every hue was still there for me to see.
‘Ah, I admit, Doug there got a bit overexcited by those lips of yours, he wanted a proper go, but we reminded him of the rules: no touching. We only touch the ones who are sober and willingly consenting.’ He shrugged. ‘Them’s the rules.’
‘You drugged me, didn’t you?’ I asked. It was suddenly clear: I didn’t drink too much – I didn’t have the chance. He’d put something in that first drink, the conveniently open bottle of champagne.
‘I might have helped you to unwind, but I don’t think you can go as far as saying I drugged you. And what would I drug you for? I didn’t touch you. None of us touched you.’
‘You took my clothes off.’
‘You were sick all over them. Some people have that reaction to the things that help them relax.’
My chest was still moving quickly, my heart was still sprinting in that rapidly moving chest. ‘I’m going to the police,’ I said. ‘I’m going to the police.’ The second time I said it, the more confident I was about doing that. I would go to the police and have them all locked up for this.
‘OK,’ Flint said, calmly. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to tell them, though. We didn’t touch you.’
‘But you did that to me.’
‘And what was that, exactly? I don’t remember you saying no at any time. You willingly came over to my flat, drank alcohol even though you’re only sixteen, stayed out all night. You didn’t complain in the morning or anything. You didn’t tell me you weren’t up for what happened. You left here all happy. In fact, you came back, so you can’t have been that upset about being here last time.’
‘But I didn’t know what you’d done.’
‘Like I say, you go to the police if you want, Anaya. They’re going to have to know that you forged your parents’ signatures on those forms, though. I mean, I suspected, but whenever I questioned you, you just lied to me, didn’t you? And of course, everyone you tell is going to have to see these photos. These photos where you don’t look like you’re protesting at anything. I wonder what your parents will say? I wonder what your school friends would think if they accidentally got leaked? And what about the people at your new sixth-form college? But I’m sure you’re not worried about any of that, are you?’
He smiled at me after he finished speaking, allowed what he had said to sink in: everyone would see those photos, they would see me like that – exposed, naked, vulnerable. They would see me and they would judge me. They would wonder what I was doing there with three grown men; they’d question whether I led them on; they would make assumptions about my character because I’d lied to my parents and bunked off school and had signed their signatures to get what I wanted. I could go to the police and tell them about this, and I would be the one who everyone remembered and looked down on. No one would remember the man behind the camera.
‘I thought you liked me,’ I said in desperation. I was so confused. He had been so nice to me all along, respectful, kind, often acting like a big brother. And he’d done this.
‘I do like you, Anaya. I like you a lot. I told you before that you’re really easy to work with—’
The guy with the sovereign ring smirked and I felt a wave of shame crash through me.
‘Stop it, stop it,’ Flint said to him. ‘Like I said, Anaya, I do like you. I’m going to miss seeing you.’
The other one smirked then. Obviously hilarious since he – they – could look at me, see me, whenever they wanted.
‘Please delete those photos,’ I said. I sounded like I was begging, that I still felt pathetic, but I wanted to fly at him right then. The shame and horror and disgust had left me, replaced completely by anger. But I had to pretend – if I was angry he would use those photos to torment me. If I played pathetic, he might take pity on me and delete them.
He grinned at me, that knowing smile he’d shot me two days ago, that I thought had been benevolent and kind but was in fact a hidden smirk, a laugh at my expense. ‘Why would I do that, Anaya?’
‘Please? Please? I’m begging you, please. Please.’
‘You’re embarrassing yourself now, kid,’ he said. ‘Look, you were all set to go to the police a minute ago.’
‘I won’t, I promise you I won’t.’
‘Yeah, but how can I trust you? I can’t, can I? So I’ll hang on to the photos as evidence that you weren’t touched or harmed, and you can go about your life. As long as you don’t try to harm me, no one will ever see the photos. Is that a deal?’
I wanted to scratch his eyes out. I want to throw myself on him and knock him off his feet and claw and scratch at him until he felt how I felt, until he was raw and exposed to the outside world through no fault of his own. He was cruel, unfeeling. To have done that to me, to have let those other men do that to me and then to feed me lie after lie after lie the next morning, messing with my head, rewriting the story so when my memory began to kick in, began to throw at me scraps and reminders of what had happened, I wouldn’t think badly of him – I would berate myself, doubt myself, think I was going mad. He was sick.
‘Did you want your portfolio?’ he asked. ‘I can nip out back and grab it for you if you want?’
I didn’t reply. I just stared at the wall where I’d seen a giant photo of myself.
‘Cool,’ Flint said. ‘Let me know if you change your mind about the portfolio.’ I heard him close the door a little as I headed for the stairs, unsteady on my feet, my head light. I could barely walk, couldn’t think. ‘Oh,’ he tugged open the door, ‘and thanks for the Quality Street. They’re my favourites.’
I heard the others laugh at that, share his enjoyment of humiliating and violating me all over again.
Out on the street, the world felt unsafe. It was night, the crumbling, decaying area that he lived in, complete with boarded-up buildings and broken street lamps, reminded me of what I had done to my parents. How I had let them down. How I had put myself here by letting them down. The world was scary. I didn’t know who I could trust. He might have been planning that from the start.
I staggered to the side of the entrance of the building and leant against it, hoping the building’s strength and solidity would keep me upright. I wrapped my arms around myself, the coolness of the night going through me, rubbing over every raised goosebump on my sensitised skin. I had to stay there. I had to stay there until I could breathe enough to walk, to move, to make my way home.
8:45 p.m. ‘Oh, Anaya, oh, Anaya,’ Cece whispers. I don’t think she’s even aware she’s saying it out loud. She keeps repeating it, her voice hiccupping with a small sob over the ‘oh’.
August, 1995
I was standing in the doorway of the living room, watching my mother pray. Every night, after everyone went to bed, she would unroll her prayer mat, which most people called a yoga mat, and she would begin her prayers, her meditation. She would use her whole body, stretching, holding, breathing, meditating. She told me once that she and Tatta used to do it together, way back before he became a full-time intellectual.
My mother’s long, slender leg stretched up, stepped forward, then planted itself firmly at the edge of the mat. Her body moved up, seeming to add inches to her frame, and in one movement she stretched her arms out, moved them smoothly upwards until her palms met in the air, then slowly she brought them down to meet in front of her chest.
‘Amma,’ I said. I wanted her to comfort me, even though I couldn’t tell her what had happened, what I had done to cause what had happened. I knew it wasn’t my fault, I knew that he had chose
n to do that, but I also knew everyone would blame me. I would be the one in the wrong, I would be the one forever tarnished because of this thing.
Amma came out of her reverie and focused on me. When she saw me, she brought both her feet together, briefly nodded her head to signal the end of her prayers and came to me. ‘Anaya, my little one, what has happened?’ she asked as she brought me to the sofa and made me sit down.
‘I did something really stupid,’ I said, on the edge of tears, on the brink of telling her everything. If there was anyone who would understand it was my mother. She would know what to do. But then it flashed through my head again: that man’s thing so close to my mouth, the other men’s things near my breasts, near my genitals, so close but not touching. I’d never seen a man’s thing looking like that before. I’d seen glimpses of them when they were all floppy and flaccid; I’d never seen a real one erect. Let alone three of them. Let alone three of them over my naked body. How would I explain that to my mother? She’d known nothing good would come of me being a model. She’d known I would get in to trouble.
‘What have you done?’ she asked gently. I felt bad all over again. I had been so awful to them, I had lied to them. And I would have to keep lying.
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You can tell me anything, Anaya. Anything.’
‘I know, Amma.’
I looked into her face. I rarely did that. I rarely noticed my parents and how they looked. Sometimes I noted if one of them looked tired, if one of them was a bit under the weather, but I didn’t look at my parents like I looked at strangers in the street and noticed their features, their colouring, the expressions that sat in their eyes. My mother looked like my grandmother, and I looked like my mother. I had the same oval face, and slightly hooked nose, the same large mouth, the same slightly slanted eyes. She was lighter than me; I had a darker shade of pale brown skin like my dad, like his dad.
‘Will you teach me?’ I asked her.
‘Teach you what?’ she replied.
‘To pray, like you do. To meditate and use yoga to pray.’ And to find inner peace. If I could find inner peace, could remove myself from the panic and disgust, even for a little while, I would be able to cope. I would stay away from the ideas I’d had on the way back of doing anything – anything – to stop the shame and self-disgust that were eating me up. Maybe if my mum taught me to do what she did, I could escape my mind with the help of my body.
‘You would really like to learn?’ she asked. She’d tried to teach us all when we were young, but none of us had been interested. And it wasn’t my mother’s way to force her beliefs upon us. She knew we would all eventually find our path, our way of navigating our route through this life until we found ourselves in the next one.
I nodded. ‘I want to learn. I want to calm my mind and my body.’
‘Come.’ She stood up and held out her hand. She led me to her mat, and left me in the middle of it. ‘We will start slowly,’ she said. ‘I am no guru, but I will try to teach you how to breathe, how to focus, how to find your inner strength.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘Close your eyes.’
I had to take a few deep breaths, I had to brace myself, I had to not flinch when the image revealed itself in my mind. I had to because I needed to get to the other side. And to get to the other side, where I would be able to clear my mind, focus my thoughts, stretch my body, I had to go through the areas I did not like. I had to accept the image would be there until I had found a way to meditate it away. The only way I could do anything about all of it was to learn how to control and relax my mind.
9 p.m. Cece’s fingers slip through mine, she holds my hand and we carry on down our chosen path, heading back to the beginning.
May, 2002
‘All right there, Anaya girl.’
Flint. Flint was standing in front of me. He looked used up, spent, like everything good about him had been siphoned away years ago.
I was twenty-four now. I was a woman now. I had a degree, a master’s degree, I had this fantastic job working for a marketing firm. I got to come to events like this and work with people who did amazing things. I did not need to see this vile specimen; I did not need to have him drag me back to the hell he put me through at sixteen.
‘Do I know you?’ I said. I had hidden my shock and sudden burst of fear behind a quizzical look and a calm, slightly irritated voice.
‘Come on, girl, don’t be like that,’ he said. ‘It’s me, Flint. I “discovered” you. Got you your fifteen minutes of fame. Although it was more like half an hour.’ He laughed, a donkey-like heehaw, at his own pathetic joke. He’d always been like this. And I hadn’t seen it because I’d had that crush on him.
‘What do you want?’ I asked sternly. ‘In fact, what are you doing here at all?’
‘I came to see you, didn’t I? There I was, flicking through the latest issue of a business magazine, and there you were. The newest recruit of some big-shot advertising firm. When I gave them your name at the door, they just let me in. You must be doing really well for yourself if it didn’t take much to get in to see you. Your name opens doors.’
I hadn’t had a flashback to that image in years. I had literally meditated it all away. But now it was crowding in again, the panic and shame swirling together inside like the parents of a cyclone coming together, spinning in unison, to produce something huge, scary and destructive. ‘What do you want, Flint?’
‘Like I said, to see you.’ His suit was grubby and fraying around the edges – it sat on him like his mother had bought it and had gone for the bigger size hoping he’d grow into it. When he turned slightly I realised his greasy hair had been slicked back into a ponytail that sat in the middle of the back of his head.
‘I was thinking you might want your photos back.’
My eyes stopped scanning the room and focused on him.
‘You left without your portfolio, I thought you might want it back.’
He was messing with me. He had probably loved seeing me beg, had probably not got that much satisfaction from anyone since that night. I was sure he and his mates had done that loads of times, but the women never found out about it. Not like me.
‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I think you should leave now.’
He nodded slowly at me with his head on one side and a streak of admiration running through his features. He’d obviously wanted me to ask about those other photos; he’d have got a thrill from knowing I had spent years terrified someone I knew would see them. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I said no thank you,’ I replied. ‘And I’d like you to leave before I have to call security.’
‘You sure you don’t want those photos back?’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. Of course I wanted them. I would have done anything to get them, but he wasn’t to know that.
‘How about dear old Mum and Dad? Do you think they’d want them back? Or how about your brother? He’d be about sixteen now, so probably does need schooling on what happens when men get horny and girls get slutty.’
He would do it. He would show them. Flint didn’t make idle threats. That was what had kept me away from the police all these years. As I’d got older I’d realised the wrongness of what he had done, how the police probably would have been able to prosecute him for sexual assault as well as drugging me, but I also knew that he would have no qualms about leaking those photos, putting them up on the Net, making sure everyone saw them if I reported him. He would definitely show my parents, my brothers, those photos without a second thought.
‘What do you want?’ I asked through a tight mouth.
He took a step closer to me so he could lower his voice. My stomach turned over, at his proximity, at the smell of stale fags, old booze and drying sweat. ‘Two thousand pounds.’
‘What?’
‘Two thousand pounds.’
‘Where am I supposed to get that sort of money from?’
He looked around, encompassing the overt wea
lth of the people around us. Like it was anything to do with me, like I had anything nearing their money – some of them had chairs that cost more than I earned in a year. ‘You’ll work something out,’ he said.
‘I don’t have that kind of money.’
‘Like I said, you’ll work something out. And if you don’t, well … let’s just say you’d better work something out.’
‘All right, if I were to get you that money, I want those photos back. I want you to destroy every single trace of them and I want proof before I hand over even a single penny.’
‘For that, the price is going to have to be three grand,’ he said.
‘No. I can’t get that kind of money.’
‘Take it or leave it. Two grand or three. Your choice.’
‘All right, all right. I’ll get it. But it is three grand for all the photographs, all their copies and everything on your computers to be erased.’
‘Three grand and you’re golden.’
‘OK, I’ll have to start saving. I should be able to get it to you in a couple of months.’
‘Months? No can do, darlin’. I have a bit of a cash flow problem right now, I’ll need it inside a week.’
‘A week? Where am I supposed to get that sort of money inside of a week?’
‘All right, all right. But don’t say I don’t ever do anything for you. Ten days. Get me the cash within ten days and no one ever has to find out what you used to do.’
‘I didn’t used to do anything – you did it to me.’
‘You say potatoes, I say chips.’
Ten days. I had to get that money within ten days or he was going to ruin my life.
9:20 p.m. I like having Cece’s hand around mine, I realise. It’s comforting, makes me feel connected to her, to someone who cares about me.
May, 2002
Flint’s place hadn’t changed at all.
In all those years, after all those photographs and shoots and models, everything was exactly the same – just grubbier, tattier, greyer. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said as he welcomed me with a smile that I’d have once swooned over. ‘Take a seat,’ he said. He pointed to the sofa where his friends had sat and laughed at me while watching photos of what they’d taken part in while I was drugged.
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