The Girl I Used to Be

by Mary Torjussen

  “You realize you’ve both committed criminal offenses?” I asked. “I’ve spoken to the police. They’ve told me which laws you’ve broken.”

  She looked at me, astonished. “We haven’t broken any laws!”

  “Are you joking? You think threatening to post photos onto a voyeur site is legal?”

  She looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “What are you talking about? A voyeur site? I don’t even know what that is!”

  “Neither did I until your husband sent me a link to it. It’s a site where men post photos and videos of women without the women knowing. Photos of them naked or asleep. Doing intimate things.” I swallowed. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things on that site. I don’t know how it’s not closed down.”

  “Photos?” she said. “You mean the photo of him kissing you outside your hotel room?”

  So she knew about that. And then it dawned on me. I had a dim memory of turning when I reached my room and seeing someone standing at the far end of the corridor. “You were there? At the hotel?”

  She was pale but nodded. “That’s not against the law.”

  “And was it you that photographed me outside my room?”

  I could see shame in her face. “I wanted your husband to think you were having an affair.”

  “But you sent it to me.”

  She said nothing, just stared out in front of her, and I knew she’d been prepared to send it to Joe.

  “And so was it you, Rachel, who took the photos of me naked?”

  Her head swung round. “What? What are you talking about?”

  You know sometimes you hear someone speak and you recognize the ring of truth? That was what happened then. I didn’t want to believe her, but I had to.

  “The naked photos,” I said again.

  “Naked? You had your green dress on. Don’t be stupid, you were in the corridor! How could you be naked?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t believe you! Where are they? Show me them!”

  “They were on Instagram and he withdrew them. I don’t have a copy of them and I’ve deleted my account now anyway.”

  “That’s convenient!” I could hear the cogs whirring in her head. “Where were you when these photos were taken?”

  “In my hotel room. On my bed.”

  She was silent for a long time then. When she looked up at me her face was pale and strained. “Why did you let him do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Go into your hotel room with you.” She was shaking. “Take the photos.”

  I stared at her. “I didn’t let him do anything! I didn’t know anything about them until they were sent to me. I don’t remember anything of that night after I got back to my room.”

  “He wasn’t meant to go into your room,” she said at last. “I took the photo of you both outside your room and went back to our hotel and waited for him. He wasn’t long after me, perhaps half an hour. He said he’d stopped to have a drink at the bar.”

  “So you didn’t know he’d changed my underwear?”

  Her head shot up. “What?”

  “Or that he took my knickers home with him?”

  She looked horrified.

  “I woke up in different underwear than the ones I wore to bed,” I said. “The underwear I was wearing that night had gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “He sent them to my home address a few days ago.”

  I could see her mind racing, trying to make sense of it all.

  “I don’t remember anything after I got back to my hotel room.” And then it dawned on me. Finally. What an idiot I’d been. “He drugged me, didn’t he?”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  GEMMA

  “NO,” SAID RACHEL. “No. You were drunk. Really, really drunk. I saw you, don’t forget. You nearly fell over when you got out of the lift at the hotel.”

  It was as though she wasn’t there. “He must have drugged me,” I said. “I wondered why I couldn’t remember anything.”

  “Gemma, you walked up to your hotel room all right. You weren’t drugged.” Her voice was desperate. “You drank two bottles of wine!”

  “No, I didn’t! We ordered two bottles, but I didn’t drink all that. I wouldn’t be able to. I don’t drink much, Rachel. I haven’t drunk that much for years.” I couldn’t look at her. “The next morning I felt awful. And yes, I know I would have felt bad just from the alcohol. I would have expected a hangover. But I’ve never drunk so much that I couldn’t remember what I’d done the night before. Never.”

  “Except when you were eighteen,” she said spitefully. “You did that night.”

  “Do you really think I can’t remember what happened that night?”

  She flushed.

  “But the night I was in London . . . I can’t remember anything after I left the restaurant. I paid the bill, I remember that. David said his room was on the tenth floor. We went up in the lift and I nearly fell over getting out. And I remember when I got to my hotel room he kissed me and I turned away and I saw someone there.” I paused, remembering. “How did I not know that was you?” I knew the answer, though. I was completely out of it.

  “You were drunk,” she said.

  “I’ve told you; I don’t drink like that. Or I haven’t since my early twenties, anyway. I had a few years after . . . after I left school when I hated myself. I drank then, just to forget. But now, now I don’t see the point. And I can’t remember any of it. It’s not as though I remember going into my room and brushing my teeth or anything like that. I can’t remember a single thing until I woke up the next morning.”

  We sat quietly. I was trying to remember what had happened that night; a glance at Rachel told me that she was wondering the same thing.

  “So when did you get the photos?” she asked. “The other ones.” She grimaced. “Not the one through the post.”

  I stood up and went to the door to fetch my bag. Inside was my mobile and I sat back down next to Rachel and opened my e-mails.

  “Last Saturday. Here’s the e-mail with the voyeur address. I’ll open the link.”

  She quickly shook her head. “No.”

  I ignored her. “You need to know what you’re dealing with.”

  I opened the link and showed it to her. She scrolled down past video stills of women in the shower, on the London tube, at work. She paused at a photo of a woman who could be seen through the opaque glass of her bathroom window and closed the screen, a look of disgust on her face.

  “I hope you don’t think I had anything to do with that.”

  I didn’t know anything anymore.

  She looked down at the e-mail address that had been used to send the link. “I don’t recognize this.”

  “I wrote back,” I said. “It bounced. It must have been set up just to send that. And there’s another, too, from a different address.” I opened the e-mail containing the timer gif and showed her. The timer had stopped at 00:00:00.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “What is it?”

  “It was a timer.”

  She looked startled. “What do you mean?”

  “It was ticking when I opened the e-mail. It was counting down to midnight.”

  Realization dawned on her. “What happened at midnight?” she whispered.

  “I didn’t stay to find out,” I said. “It was the night before Joe and Rory came back and I was on my own in the house. I thought someone was going to break in. I went to a hotel.”

  She winced. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

  “Was he with you that night?”

  “He’s usually with me. Which night?”

  “Last Tuesday.”

  She nodded. “He was at home with me.”

  “Were you awake at midnight? Did he do
anything? Was he using his phone or iPad or something?”

  She looked away. “No. He wasn’t doing anything.”

  One glance at her was all it took to know exactly what he was doing at midnight. I shuddered at the thought of him having sex with her while he knew I was terrified something was about to happen to me. He was getting a kick out of this.

  “So you met David again after your mum died?”

  She kept her eyes averted, but nodded. “My mum never recovered from Alex’s death,” she said. “She’d always had a problem with depression, but this really tipped her over the edge.”

  I thought of Rory and how it would feel to lose him. “I’d be the same.”

  “And nothing seemed to work. She had antidepressants, she had sleeping pills, the lot. Nothing made a difference. The house was a shrine to Alex. Photos everywhere, videos running, candles burning. It brought her no comfort. Basically she spent all those years wanting to die, wanting to be with him. And in the end she had breast cancer. By the time she saw the doctor, it had spread to her liver. Apparently she’d found a lump years before and didn’t say a word. By the time I realized something was wrong, it was too late.” Her eyes were wet with tears. “Don’t tell me that would have happened if Alex hadn’t died.”

  “Rachel, I’m really sorry Alex died. I’m sorry you lost your mum, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that he raped me.”

  “But you withdrew your charge,” she said. “Why would you do that if you thought he’d done that?”

  “I know,” I said. “I did withdraw it. You know what it was like back then. Well, maybe you don’t; you’re younger than I am. I’d been to a party; I was drunk. My family was going on holiday the day after the party; we’d been looking forward to it all year. It was supposed to be a celebration. I’d got into university and my parents were so proud of me. I cried the whole holiday and my mum thought I just didn’t want to leave home.” I sat for a few minutes, thinking of that holiday, how I’d stayed indoors in the baking heat, scrubbing and scrubbing myself in the shower. “And then when I got back I told Lauren and she took me to the police station. When my mum and dad found out I’d told the police, they begged me not to take it any further. My dad had been on a jury in a rape trial a few years before. There was a not-guilty verdict; he was the only juror who disagreed with it. He was horrified at the way the woman was cross-examined, and he was frightened that would happen to me. He said Alex’s defense lawyers would pull me to pieces.” I met her eyes. “They would have, too. I would have been destroyed.”

  She was quiet, then said, “I was eleven when Alex went to Oxford. I remember that New Year, just a few months later. He came home for Christmas but he wouldn’t leave the house. And then when he did, a couple of days before New Year, he came home crying. He never told us what happened.”

  I turned away. I knew my friend Lauren had seen him while she and Tom were out in a pub in town. I hadn’t asked what she’d said to him, but I guessed it was pretty brutal.

  “The next day he went back to Oxford. The term hadn’t started, of course, so I guess there weren’t many people around.” She put her head into her knees and wrapped her arms around herself. I could barely hear her. “On New Year’s Eve he phoned my mum and said he was going down to the river. There would be fireworks there, he said. And the next day we got a visit from the police. His body had washed up in the early-morning tide.”

  She was crying now and there was nothing I could do to comfort her. I wanted to tell her it wasn’t my fault, but there was a dead brother between us. Whatever had happened to me, I hadn’t died, though I’d wanted to at times. I made a move to hug her, but she wrenched herself away.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t touch me.”

  A shift in the light in the room made me look at my watch. I stood up. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” I said. “I’m going to have to go. Joe’s got something on at the running club tonight.” I sent him a quick text telling him I’d be five minutes.

  She scrambled up and picked up her bag off the breakfast bar, then hesitated. “Gemma, what are you going to do?” I said nothing, and once again she broke the silence. “Are you going to tell the police?”

  “I have to. You know that.”

  “Can you just give me some time? He wasn’t meant to go that far. It’s just . . . if you do tell the police, will you let me know in advance, so I can be prepared?”

  I laughed. “What, you want me to give you both time to get your story straight?”

  “No! I don’t want to be with him when he’s arrested. I know I need to speak to them. I know I shouldn’t have done those things. It’s just . . . I think he could be trouble if he’s confronted. I don’t want to be there.”

  Something about the way she said that made me say, “Has he hurt you, Rachel?”

  She shook her head, but I wasn’t convinced.

  “Don’t say anything to him about this, will you?” I asked. “Keep yourself safe.”

  She stared at me then, her eyes brimming with tears, then she turned, her shoulders hunched, and hurried to the lift.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  RACHEL

  I CHECKED MY phone as soon as I left the building and saw that David had sent a text, saying he’d be late coming home. He was waiting for a call from a client and couldn’t leave the office until he’d spoken to them. I looked at the time of his message; he’d sent it three minutes before. Quickly I sent a reply, Will miss you, sweetheart xx, and breathed a sigh of relief. He hated it if I didn’t reply quickly. I’d had a warning from Gemma about using my mobile at work when I’d been working for her a few weeks, and after that I had to tell him I couldn’t just answer the phone whenever he wanted. Actually it was a relief she’d warned me; I was finding it stressful having to respond when I was meant to be working.

  “I’m always worried something’s happened to you, Coco!” he’d say. “I can’t help it; I love you so much, and if you don’t reply I think the worst.”

  It was romantic, really, I knew that, but I wanted to be seen as a professional, and more than once in that first month at work I’d looked up from replying to see clients exchanging glances. I’d make up an excuse, but I knew it sounded pathetic. Once I’d been warned, though, he backed off. The last thing either of us wanted was for me to lose my job.

  I was so glad he was going to be home late. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, I could see how shocked he’d be to see me like this. My eyes were pink and all of my makeup had gone. My skin was shiny and my hair looked damp and bedraggled. I winced. I’d have to get back quickly and get into the shower before David got home.

  It was rush hour now and the traffic was congested on the route home. My mind was full of the things Gemma had told me. Voyeur sites. Her underwear. Naked photographs.

  I wanted to disbelieve her. I wanted to be able to laugh at her and tell her she was mad. That if those things had actually happened to her—and after all, where was the proof?—that David had nothing to do with it.

  I couldn’t.

  None of this really surprised me. Not really. There was a dark side to David; I knew that. I hadn’t been married to him for a year yet, but I knew what he was like. He liked control. He liked secrets.

  He liked to mess with people’s minds.

  * * *

  * * *

  ONCE I WAS home I got straight into the shower and washed my hair and face, to cover up the fact that I’d cried away my makeup. I’d just stepped out of the shower when I heard David come into the apartment and call my name.

  My body went into full alert then. I could tell, just from the way he’d called my name, that he wasn’t happy about something.

  “Hi, David,” I called.

  He came into the bathroom and stood in the doorway watching me.

  “How come you’re having a shower?” he asked.

  “I was so hot toda
y,” I said. “I just couldn’t cool down at work. And I’ve been stuck in traffic for ages.”

  He said nothing and I knew he wasn’t convinced.

  “And Sophie had styled her hair in a different way,” I said. “I thought I’d have a go at doing it myself.”

  Sophie was always safe ground with David. He found her absolutely no threat at all.

  “I would have thought you’d be cooking dinner,” he said. “It’s nearly seven o’clock.” He smiled at me, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “How long does a guy have to wait round here for his dinner?”

  “We’ve got chicken and salad in the fridge,” I said. “Remember? You said last night that that’s what you wanted today. I went out to Tesco, remember?”

  He stood watching while I put on my robe, then walked behind me into the kitchen.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Your eyes look pink. Has someone upset you?”

  Yes, you have, I wanted to say, but instead I said, “No, I squirted shampoo in them when I was washing my hair.” I smiled up at him. “I’ll put some makeup on after dinner, sweetheart. You won’t notice it then.”

  David was the sort of man who liked women to look immaculate. I think he thought it reflected on him, somehow. When Gemma had taken him out to view the properties that day, he’d bitched about her all evening, talking about the state of her car—apparently, Rory had left his mark on the backseat—and the fact that she looked tired and didn’t have much makeup on. He kept saying how unprofessional she looked, though really she just looked like any other working woman. Her flaws needled him; I never knew why.

  Tonight he seemed on edge. I wondered whether there was a problem at work, but I didn’t dare ask. He’d already fallen out with a woman at work who’d picked him up on a mistake he’d made. Apparently she’d been promoted beyond her capacity and would soon be found out for the charlatan she was. I’d heard quite a bit about her for weeks; I used to want to write to her and ask her to quit, just for my sake.

  We sat and watched television—there was a film he’d been wanting to watch on Netflix—and I brought him a bottle of beer and then another. He asked me to get him some whiskey while I was in the kitchen and refused to pause the film, so I missed a crucial scene. I knew that appeased him in some way and I wondered what I was meant to have done to him. When someone is like this, you spend all your time trying to second-guess them and it is really, really tiring. Yet I massaged the back of his neck when he complained it was sore from driving, and I laughed as he told me about a guy at work who’d made a fool of himself. All the while I knew something was wrong. I would probably never know what it was; I was used to that.