‘No, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’d like to get this over with as quickly as possible.’ I knew, on many levels, that this was a doomed exercise. Modern life, new-age technology, all so wonderful and helpful in many ways. So damning, too. Unless I tore his place down looking for memory sticks and memory cards and other laptops, I could never be sure that he had truly deleted everything. All I could hope for was that he would stick to his word, and that he would forget about me after this. Trusting someone like Flint was like building your house on sand, I knew that. But there might be some parts of the sand that were less unstable than others; there might be parts that were solid, almost rock-like.
‘Don’t be unfriendly, Anaya. We always had something special, me and you, I have good memories of the times we spent together. Don’t ruin it.’ He smiled softly and I was startled, truly shaken, to realise that he thought I still harboured some feelings for him. After everything he’d done to me, he thought I hadn’t merely come to pay him off, with £1,500 of my parents’ money, my next month’s rent and my tiny amount of savings, but because I wanted to see him too. I cast my mind back, way, way back to how I’d felt about him before I properly saw him, how I would smile shyly at him, and I tried to make my smile like that, to placate him with a similar expression and by sitting meekly on his hateful sofa. He grinned once his delusion was back in place, his role as my crush secure.
‘That’s better. Now, I’ll get the laptop, you get the, you know, out.’
He wanted to retraumatise me, of course. He deleted every photo, all right, but he called up every single one – nearly a thousand of them – and made me look at every single one of them before he hit delete. I had to see myself as I had been then, I had to see what they’d done, how they’d posed me, how they’d violated me, how I had been awake but unaware for almost all of it. I dug my toenails into the soles of my shoes, breathed through my nose and pretended I didn’t care. He had his money, and I was getting what I wanted.
After it was over, after he went through the files on his computer to show me there was nothing else there, I got up to leave.
‘Thank you,’ I forced myself to say. ‘Thank you for doing that.’
‘That’s it?’ he said, confused.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked lightly, while moving very slowly towards the door. The atmosphere was electrified. Dangerous. All the fine hairs on my arms, on the back of my neck, stood up, telling me to run.
‘That’s it? You just come over, get me to delete a load of photos and you leave? Just like that? No reward when I did something pretty huge for you?’
‘I paid you three thousand pounds,’ I said and placed one foot behind me, rocked back onto it, then placed the other foot behind that, without ever taking my eyes off him. ‘That was a fair deal, don’t you think?’ I took another step backwards, tried to keep it casual. I only had six more steps, seven at most before I was at the door, out of there, out of reach. Five steps. Four steps.
‘You always were a stuck-up bitch,’ he said in a low, vicious voice. I was expecting it, but when he did it, when he pounced at me and smacked me across the face, I was still shocked and stumbled back against the door, my hands on my face where he’d hit me.
After a second of reeling at the shock of being hit, I peeled myself away from the door as he came towards me, fists clenched, ready to do it again. I went towards him too, grabbed his shoulders and brought my knee up between his legs. Sharply, cleanly, no hesitation. Amma had taught me that. Over and over, until she was confident I would do it without a second thought if I was in danger. He yelped, as surprised by the way my knee knew the exact place to aim for as by the fact I wasn’t cowering or trying to escape. I punched him, clean across the jaw, while he was bent forwards. Amma had taught me that, too. ‘If you can run away, always do,’ she’d repeated, ‘but if you can’t run, fight back as much as you can. There’s no shame in freezing, either. If you freeze, do what you must to survive, but if you aren’t frozen, then fight, mihiri dæriya, fight.’
While he was down, I turned towards the door and ran for it. I ran down the three flights of stairs and burst out onto the street like a mechanical rabbit at a dog track. I didn’t stop when I hit the pavement, I carried on running, dodging people and dogs and cars. The area, unlike Flint’s flat, had come a long way in the past few years. Everyone wanted to live around there now; there were no boarded-up buildings, no homeless people lurking in doorways, it was all glass and steel and craving to be on home renovation shows. I ran and ran, ignoring what I must look like – sprinting in an area that was almost too cool to exist – and ran and ran until I was at the Tube station. I pushed my travelcard into the machine, and then sprinted down the escalator, onto the platform, before I threw myself between the doors of a train heading west. I flopped into a seat at the quieter end of the carriage and tried to calm myself.
While the train dashed through darkened tunnels, taking me further and further away from Flint, I pretended I didn’t notice people looking at me, at my wild hair and reddened face and heaving, out-of-breath chest. I pretended, too, that Flint wasn’t going to now do his level best to screw me over.
9:45 p.m. Cece swaps hands and puts her arm around me too.
May, 2002
‘Miss Ranatunga,’ the policeman began. They had come to my workplace and arrested me. There was no way that the owners of Oysle & Wade would allow me to carry on working there after this. There were clients in the building, who had most likely seen the police arrive and march up to my desk. My only hope would be that they would give me a glowing reference so I could go off and be someone else’s public relations nightmare.
‘Yes?’ I replied, eager to be helpful. It would go in my favour if I was fully cooperative. At least that’s what the good cops, the ones who were in it to make a difference, always said on telly.
‘Did you assault Mr Bruce Flint two nights ago?’ he asked.
‘Not in the way that you mean. Which is to say I hit him, but only because he hit me first and I thought he was going to do something far worse to me, so I kneed him in the … you know, and I punched him once, then I ran for it.’
‘So you’re saying you didn’t fracture his jaw and wrist, cause extensive bruising to his stomach and chest area with repeated punches and kicks, and give him a black eye?’
‘What? NO! I couldn’t do that, even if I wanted to. I thought he was going to … I don’t know what I thought he was going to do, but I thought he was going to do something and he’d already hit me and he moved in to do it again so I defended myself and ran.’
‘He says you were having a dispute about some photographs he’d taken for your portfolio a few years back, and you got angrier and angrier about him refusing to give them to you until you couldn’t contain yourself any longer, which led to this sustained and unprovoked attack.’ As he spoke, he laid out photos of a bruised, battered Flint. My eyes widened in alarm at what I was seeing.
‘That’s not true! And I didn’t do this,’ I said, sitting back. ‘I didn’t do this to him.’
‘Look, Miss Ranatunga, I’m not stupid. You and Mr Flint might think we are or that we’ve got nothing better to do than settle scores between two people, but there’s obviously more to this than either of you are telling. The first person to tell the truth is obviously more likely to be believed. So, here’s your chance, Miss Ranatunga: tell me the truth.’ As he was talking, his voice had taken on a tired, heard-it-all-before, cynical slant; he’d obviously said something like this many, many times before and had yet, I guess, to have someone tell him the complete truth. I wasn’t sure when I became such a people-pleaser but I had a very strong urge to make him believe in people again. To tell him the whole truth so he wouldn’t feel so jaded about the world we lived in.
‘When I was younger, about fifteen, I used to do a bit of modelling for Flint. Then I stopped modelling and a year later I went over to get my portfolio.’ My leg started twitching, anxiety at what I was about to say. I wanted to sta
nd up right then and put myself into mountain pose, slip my mind and memory into the safe, serene, wide-open spaces that yoga and praying created in me. ‘He … he drugged me with something he put in a glass of champagne and then him and his friends … they … I was barely conscious and they took off my clothes.’
‘Did they rape you?’ the other police officer asked gently.
I shook my head, wiped at the tears that were cascading down my face. ‘They didn’t touch me. He made sure of that. They took photos of me. They posed me. In some of the photos they’re all naked as well and the photos show that they all … you know, on me.’
The policemen were confused for a few moments then one said: ‘Ejaculated?’
I nodded. I’d been having sex for years, I could swear with the best of them, but I still couldn’t say words like that without a big run-up and almost whispering it. ‘I didn’t know about any of it until two days later when I turned up at his flat unexpectedly and I saw them looking at the photos through a projector.’
‘Did you go to the police at the time?’ the first officer asked.
‘No. I was too scared, too ashamed. I didn’t want my family to find out and he said he’d leak the photos if I told.’
‘So what’s all this about now? This was obviously years ago – why did you go to his flat two days ago?’
‘He wanted money to delete the photos. When I told him no, he said he’d send them to my parents and to my brothers. So I went there to pay him and to watch him delete the photos.’
The officers were silent when I finished my story. I blinked and lowered my head as I tried to dry my tears and still neither of them reacted or even spoke. There was something off about their silence. I knew they believed me, but that was a problem. My story, the truth, was a problem somehow. I looked up at them and saw the looks they were exchanging: regret, frustration, sympathy. This was not going to turn out OK. I’d told the truth, but it was not going to be OK.
‘It sounds like you’ve been through a terrible time,’ the first officer said. ‘But from everything you’ve said, no one would blame you for attacking him. In fact, some people would say you were kind to leave him with the use of his legs.’
‘But I didn’t do it,’ I said.
‘I believe you, but the evidence says otherwise. Mr Flint says otherwise. Human nature says otherwise.’
‘I thought he was going to hurt me again.’
‘I don’t doubt it, but think about how all of this looks to us, Miss Ranatunga. Would you believe you if you were sitting where we are?’
‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘I believe you. We believe you. But you have no evidence to back up your claims. You should have come to us when he started to blackmail you – extortion is a criminal offence. Hell, you should have come to us ten years ago when he first took those photos, we would have helped you then.’
I covered my eyes with my hands, then slowly ran them through my hair. ‘What’s going to happen next?’ I asked. My voice sounded weary and small and absolutely terrified. Everything Flint had wanted all along.
‘Well, I think you should get some legal advice, but one option would be for you to accept a caution.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means you admit you did it. It goes on your record and if you ever need a CRB check done it will show up as a caution.’
‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘I believe you.’
‘So why would I say I did?’
‘Because the alternative could mean court. Where you would get the chance to stand up and tell everyone that you didn’t do it. And he would be able to stand up and show everyone those photos and say you were a willing participant but are now making up stories to save your reputation.’
‘How is this fair?’
‘It’s not,’ he said kindly. ‘We’ve done some checking into Mr Flint. He’s involved with some very nasty people; he probably got a beating from one of the people he owes money to and decided to use that to get back at you. But we can’t prove any of that. All we can prove is that you hit him because you’ve admitted to that.’
‘OK,’ I said resignedly. ‘I’ll speak to a solicitor and then we’ll have to see about going to court. Because I’m not saying I did something when I didn’t do it.’
‘Good. I’m glad you made a decision,’ the policeman stated. ‘We’ll be back with details of the duty solicitor for you and the other relevant forms.’
By the time I’d finished talking to my solicitor, I had, of course, decided to accept the caution. I was always going to, I knew that. But I didn’t want the police to think I was simply going to willingly accept being branded as a violent person. I was always going to accept the caution because I couldn’t risk another human being seeing those photos.
When I was finally allowed to leave, the stench of having to sign papers saying I was something I was not clung to me, made me feel filthy. It was now on record that I was violent, that I had beaten someone up. I knew what I had to do, though. I’d had the thought while I was signing those forms, while I was listening to the words of what I supposedly did being read out to me: I was going to change my name. This was what I had to do to move on from Anaya Ranatunga and the mistake she once made.
10:05 p.m. It’s odd talking about all of this because I have not told anyone the whole story. The police heard bits but no one heard my voice, my intonation, my words shape this whole tale. And I feel sick about it, a see-saw sensation filling and draining at the centre of my being. Cece stops walking. I stop as well and almost give in to the nausea, only just prevent myself from bending over and emptying my stomach into the nearby flowerbeds.
Cece slips her arms around me and begins to cradle me, hug me, hold me like I have been recently hurt. ‘Oh, you poor, poor girl,’ she says in a soft crooning voice. I imagine she uses this voice with the boys, with her daughter. ‘You poor, poor girl.’
I want to cry, but I’m dry-eyed, strangely detached. It’s as if I’m standing back in Flint’s studio, watching myself on the big screen, knowing that it is me, but not really registering. I want to cry, but I refuse to collapse, to simply melt in her arms and let myself cry. I was using her, really. Testing out how it sounded out loud before I tell Sanj. ‘It’s OK, I’m all right,’ I tell Cece, and make an attempt to step back from her. It’s a weak attempt and she continues to hold me.
‘I had no idea,’ she says. Her hands stroke my back. ‘You must have been so confused about so many things.’
I’ve never really known how to describe what happened because it wasn’t as if I remembered it properly – only tiny flashes came back to me of that night; it wasn’t as if there was any trauma to point to how I had been violated – there was nothing but the images. It was a very hands-off crime that altered my life. The blackmail, that was a crime; the assault, that was a crime; but they came after the original ‘event’. I have been confused all these years. Scared, hurt, but mainly confused.
‘Confused,’ I repeat. That is the word that describes the world I’ve lived in since that time.
‘What an absolute bastard he is.’ She steps back but holds on to my forearms, keeps us connected. ‘Absolute bastard.’
She looks at me in the dark, peers at me with inquisitive eyes. ‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asks. ‘I mean, I’m honoured, but I get the impression this is the first time you’ve talked about all of that. And how does it relate to Yvonne—’
I flinch inside when Cece says her name, when she reminds me why I have to do this.
‘What did Yvonne do?’ Cece asks, telling me that I’ve physically shuddered, too.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask. Why I am trying to obscure the truth after all I have laid bare, I don’t know.
‘Come on, Anaya, you nearly jumped out of your skin when I said her name then. You said you wanted to tell me what happened the night she was attacked. What’s she got to do with all of this?’
‘She tried to blackmail me,
too,’ I say. ‘I changed my name to Harshani. She found out my original name; she found the photos that Flint had posted online and threatened to tell Sanjay and his mother about them.’
‘Excuse me – what?’
I repeat what I have just said. I feel better already. I knew what Yvonne was threatening was a certain kind of evil, but Cece’s reaction proves it is not normal behaviour.
‘Wow. Wow! Bloody hell. I’m not sure what to say to that. Flint I can maybe understand because he’s a sleaze, but Yvonne? I thought she was your friend? And nice?’
‘She was my friend. And she was nice. Most of the time. At first all the time, if a little intense. Oh, I don’t know, it all came apart at the seams and towards the en—I mean, before what happened, it was pretty miserable.’
‘What did she want? Money?’
I shake my head. ‘Money? No. Power, control. Which, when I say that out loud, makes me sound like the crazy one, but that was what it was. She wanted to be in on the world Sanjay is involved in; she liked being in control of me. Maybe because being my friend took too much effort in the end and she couldn’t sustain it or be sure I wouldn’t walk. I always found her hard work in the beginning and felt guilty about that. When she showed her hand, guilt gave way to anger and fear, I suppose.’
‘Did she do that to others? You know, the blackmail?’
‘I don’t know.’ Lie. Absolute lie. That night on the beach, the raised voices, the distorted faces. The pushing and shoving … ‘We never really talked about it, but, you know, friends fall out all the time. There’s no such thing as the perfect friend, is there?’
‘Suppose not,’ Cece says quietly. She’s looking at me strangely – maybe my lie was not good enough. Maybe she’s guessed that they were victims of Yvonne, like me. Yvonne, who was almost famous for looking perfect, behaving altruistically, and having your back way before you knew there was a threat looming on the horizon, changed. Probably slowly, certainly when I wasn’t looking, but over the years, she stopped being all those things that made her likeable and fun to be around, and instead she became that threat you had to keep around for fear of what they would do once they were out of sight. I was impressed when Maxie binned her; I didn’t have that option by that point, not when she had found those photos. I wasn’t surprised when Maxie turned up at the beach that night when we were meeting to discuss what to do about Yvonne. When Yvonne arrived and started throwing around threats, things unravelled quite quickly. We were all less than our best selves. We were all horribly guilty of what happened next.
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