A Song of Isolation

by Michael Malone

  She waited for her friend to speak.

  ‘My big sister, Selina? She was attacked last month. Raped.’

  ‘Last month? Oh my God. Why are you only telling me now?’

  ‘We were told to keep quiet about it. Mum didn’t want anyone to know.’

  ‘Secrecy’s not good, Chrissie. It only helps the rapist.’

  ‘Selina’s in a state. Won’t come out of her room. Doesn’t eat. Sits in the bath for ages.’

  ‘Did they catch the guy?’

  Chrissie nodded. ‘She was in a club. He must have roofied her drink. Next thing she knows she’s in a disabled toilet and … ap­parently there’s a whole load of girls he attacked.’

  ‘Oh my God.’

  ‘I’m so worried about her.’

  ‘Poor Selina. That’s awful.’

  ‘Mum got her some counselling and stuff, but nothing’s helping.’ Chrissie was fiddling with her false nails as she spoke, pulling one up from the nail it had been glued to. Then she looked up at Damaris. ‘Could you speak to her?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You know what it’s like. I wondered if, you know, talking to someone who’s been there might be better than some woman with a big blouse and a chiffon scarf.’

  Wondering what the blouse and scarf had to do with anything, Damaris hesitated before answering. Did she want to go into that sort of headspace?

  ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t told Selina anything about you, in case you said no. We can say it happened when you were wee. We don’t have to tell her you’re the girl in the Amelie Hart case.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll do it,’ Damaris said. ‘I’ll do it,’ she repeated.

  Maybe speaking to someone else who had been through this might help her sort out the mess in her own head.

  Chapter 54

  Dave walked through his parental home feeling like a tourist in his own life. His parents had bought the house when he was in his early teens, when his father’s business really started to take off. He’d spent years on that bed, staring at the ceiling worrying about girls, exams, other boys, his parents, getting enough game time for the school rugby team. Watched TV on that very sofa with his parents. Played in that long, sloping back garden with his mates. Ate porridge at that pine breakfast table every morning for years and years. But the memories came at him as if at a remove. As if they happened to someone else and had been somehow trans­planted into his brain.

  There was so much space. It all felt so big. The quiet rang pain­fully in his ears.

  ‘You alright, son?’ his dad asked.

  Dave tried on a smile of reassurance and realised it had faltered somewhere between his eyes and his cheek muscles. ‘I’m good, Dad.’

  ‘I expect there will be a period of adjustment after prison.’

  Dave pushed his hands deep into his trouser pockets.

  ‘When Amelie moved out of the mews at Thorntonhall, I ar­ranged for all your stuff to be brought over here. The boxes are in the granny flat. I’ll help you sort them out if you want.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, please, Dad,’ Dave said, and then realising his tone was a little harsh he apologised.

  The granny flat was a studio above the giant double garage. It had one bedroom and a large living room with a galley kitchen tucked away into one corner. It had never actually been used for anyone’s granny as far as Dave knew, but his mother used the term once and the name had stuck.

  Mum.

  Dave felt a pang of missing. His eyes sparked with tears.

  His dad put a hand on his shoulder, but Dave shrank from both it and the care in his father’s face. He didn’t want sympathy, didn’t deserve it. He worried that if he started to cry he wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get settled in, and meet me back here when you’re hungry? I’ve got lots of food in for you. I can make you a sandwich or heat up some soup. Or do both.’

  ‘Dad…’

  ‘Or, whatever you want, son. Just let me know,’ his father said, as if he too was lost and anxious to work out what their new ‘normal’ should look like.

  Dave stood in the middle of the large kitchen as if set adrift from his own mind. He didn’t know who to be. How to be. Where to put himself. What do to.

  ‘Hey,’ Peter said and stepped closer. ‘You’re home now, son. You can start to put it all behind you.’

  He opened his arms and Dave stepped inside them, placed his head on his father’s shoulder and allowed the tears to take him.

  An hour or so later he was in his new bedroom. The wardrobes were full of his clothes, the bathroom shelves studded with his toiletries, and his other belongings placed into workable spaces around the flat.

  He’d changed his clothing. He’d taken off the chinos and T-shirt that he’d been wearing the day he was arrested and that had spent the subsequent years in a bag in the prison, waiting for his release date, and threw them in a bin. The prison had also returned the more personal items he’d been carrying on his person that day. Wallet, watch, and a certain little, black, velvet box.

  That proposal worked out well, he thought, and with a pang of missing he opened the lid. The little diamond caught the light, fractured it and bounced it back at him. Emotion tightened his chest, setting the air to a quiver in his airways. How could he have thought a marriage proposal would have worked given their situ­ation at the time? It was a desperate act from a desperate man.

  Idiot.

  With a sigh he closed the lid and put the box in the little drawer of his bedside cabinet. He’d wait until his father was out and return it to his mother’s jewellery box. Where it would likely stay until the end of time.

  Back in the living room he threw himself onto the sofa, luxur­iating in how much space he had, and switched on the TV. With a small thrill he realised this TV had its own satellite subscription. With a mental thanks to his father, he scrolled through some channels, landing on sports. All this choice was amazing after being limited to terrestrial TV for so long. He lay back on the soft cushions, watching the screen as a man in a suit jacket talked about the English Premier League. As he shifted, a scent lifted from the cushion and he recognised it instantly. It was Angel, Amelie’s fa­vourite perfume. Of course. His father told him she’d stayed over for a few days when she visited for Claire Brown’s trial.

  He wondered what she was doing, where she was, who she was with, if she ever thought of him.

  That’s your old life, he told himself. Don’t go there. But the thought was trailed by an ache in his heart. He saw her face, her smile, felt a ghostly imprint of her hand in his. Heard her laughter.

  He buried his face in the cushion and breathed in deeply, her scent filling his nostrils. Then he sat up briskly. Not a good idea. His life was going to be difficult enough without pining for a lost love.

  Noise sounded from outside his window. Someone was shout­ing. He got to his feet, walked to the window and looked out. His father was at the gates, face almost purple with rage, gesticulating wildly at a group of people standing there, all bearing cameras.

  Before he knew it he was out there with him, pulling his father away, worrying that if he carried on like this he was heading for a heart attack. Then he noticed a man standing at a distance from the paparazzi. Something about him – his stance, his stare – drew Dave’s attention, and the danger-alert system he’d built during his time in prison turned on, full beam.

  When he’d pulled his father back along the drive to the front door he paused.

  ‘Did you see that guy, at the back? The one with the black leather jacket?’

  His father was breathing heavily, his white hair sticking up all over his head, face deathly pale, his shirt untucked. ‘Who? What guy?’

  Dave stepped forward and looked around. There was no one there.

  ‘Probably some weirdo,’ Peter said. ‘We get them every now and again. Don’t know what the hell they are
looking for.’ He stiffened his back, tucked in his shirt. ‘Sorry you had to see that, son. Word is clearly out that you’re home.’ He forced a smile. ‘Soup?’

  Chapter 55

  Selina, Chrissie’s oldest sister, was curled up on the sofa. She was wearing grey baggy sweatpants, a navy wool sweater with too-long sleeves and her brown hair was pulled back from her face in a ponytail. When Damaris walked in the room what struck her most was Selina’s eyes; they were red-rimmed, puffy and looked as if they were shrinking into her head. This was so far from the vibrant, fun-loving woman she’d met countless times when she had visited Chrissie. Usually on those occasions Damaris caught only glimpses of Selina, as she sailed out of the door in a variety of fashionable clothes, a cloud of perfume and good humour.

  ‘I’ll, eh, leave you to it,’ Chrissie said, shooting Damaris a look of thanks as she stepped back out of the door.

  ‘Hi, Selina,’ Damaris said as she sat on the far edge of the sofa, unsure what to say or how to be in this moment. Regret that she’d agreed to come over and talk to Selina was a heavy lump tucked under her heart. What did she think she could achieve?

  ‘Hey,’ Selina said and wiped at her nose with her sleeve. She looked away out of the window, then her gaze darted back to Damaris, then to the floor, then to the TV, which was on mute but showing some sort of shopping channel. ‘Did Chrissie get you a cuppa or some juice or something?’

  ‘I’m fine, ta,’ Damaris answered. As she did so she lifted her hand to put her hair behind her ear. Then aware that her sleeve had fallen down a little she hastily brought her arm back down and tugged at the material, making sure her wrists were not on display. But she was too slow to hide her scars.

  ‘You cut too?’ Selina asked in a quiet voice.

  Damaris’s mouth fell open. Her face and neck grew warm.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t say.’ Selina pulled a sleeve up quickly and Damaris caught a glimpse of familiar, pale, jagged lines across her wrist. ‘I stopped a year ago.’ Selina bit down on her lip. ‘It’s all I can do not to start again now.’

  Damaris didn’t know what to say, but felt a little lighter now that she realised she and Selina shared some other common ground.

  ‘Chrissie told me your secret.’ She shook her head. ‘I won’t tell.’ Selina looked into her face, as if searching her eyes for something. Something to hold on to. Something that might stop her from drowning. ‘You were the kid in the Amelie Hart case?’

  Damaris exhaled. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘God,’ Selina said. ‘Poor you.’ She paused. ‘A few of my girl­friends have been pawed at by men, groped and stuff.’ She said this with a cold, matter-of-fact voice that chilled. ‘But I don’t know anyone else who’s actually been…’ Moisture gathered in the corner of her eye. Leaked onto the skin at the side of her nose. ‘You were only a wee girl, eh?’

  Damaris nodded.

  ‘And you’re still only a kid really,’ Selina said as she wiped at her face.

  They talked for a little while longer. Inconsequential things. Movies, celebrity gossip, and the good and the bad around social media, as if Selina wasn’t quite ready to talk about it.

  ‘You should stay away from all those things,’ Selina said. ‘I hate them and love them at the same time. I see people with these perfect lives and get so jealous I want to scratch their eyes out, you know? Cos they haven’t gone through what I’ve gone through. And I know it’s not real. It’s only edited highlights. Nobody shows the pile of dirty laundry in the basket, or the dishes piling up in the sink, or the bruises…’ She trailed off. Eyes staring into her recent past, the horror of it twisting her delicate features into a mask animated by self-loathing and shame. ‘I can never get clean,’ she added. ‘It doesn’t matter how long I sit in the bath I just can’t get clean.’ She scratched at her right forearm, her fingers working so hard that Damaris was sure if she wasn’t wearing a thick wool cardigan she’d be drawing blood.

  Selina held herself tight, staring into space, a trail of tears on the silk of her cheek. Damaris was caught up in the other girl’s pain. She reached for her hand and gripped it tight.

  ‘You’ll get there,’ Damaris said, hearing the tremble of uncer­tainty in her voice. ‘It’s not easy. You’ll get there, cos if you don’t the bad guy wins, right?’

  As she spoke she had no idea where the words were coming from, or even if they might help. What did she know? She was only a little girl when it happened.

  In this moment, watching Selina, observing her pain and drive to be scoured clean of the event, but recognising the emotion at a remove, as if she’d only read about it in a book, she wondered about her own experience, and why she had never felt any of that.

  After supper, Damaris had developed a habit of sitting on the sofa to watch some TV with her mother, but only for a short while. As if there was a prescribed amount of dutiful family time before she could escape to her bedroom sanctuary, and her cutting kit. That evening as her mum watched another one of those dumb cop shows, this one with a snowy background, she itched to leave.

  ‘You’re even more quiet than usual,’ Claire said without taking her eyes off the action.

  ‘Just tired, Mum. Alright if I…?’

  ‘Sure, baby.’ Claire shot her a smile and held her hands up. ‘A quick kiss and a hug first?’

  Damaris untangled her legs from the faux fur blanket she’d been seeking comfort in, and allowed the kiss and hug from her mother to happen.

  In her bedroom she pulled a small tin from under her mattress and held it in her hand. Just knowing the ability to cut was within her grasp was sometimes enough for her, and she willed the hard coolness of the metal to seep from her palm, up her arm and into her heart, because then the feelings might dim.

  She curled up on top of her quilt, holding the tin to her chest, just as another girl might with a cuddly toy, and she allowed her emotions about her visit with Selina that afternoon to unspool.

  Hours later, during which she heard her mother’s tell-tale foot­steps through to the kitchen, and the clink of glass on glass, she was still there, her lights off, staring into the darkness. Her mother had been on the phone for much of that time. On other occasions Damaris would have crept to her door, opened it a little and listened in, just as she had done many times throughout her childhood.

  When did that habit start, she wondered?

  And why?

  Eventually, just before sleep took her, the deep, velvet curtains of memory opened and a long-forgotten conversation slipped through.

  They were back in Thorntonhall as if the intervening years had never happened. It was the evening after Dave had been driven off by the police. Concern about who she thought until then was a nice guy, combined with a need to make sense of what had hap­pened, had her eavesdrop on her parents. Hearing her father cry almost made her run into their room and give him a hug, but something held her back.

  ‘Your little girl will get over this,’ her mother was saying in a ca­joling tone. ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? You’re always saying that.’

  There was a pause, and Damaris tried to imagine what her parents were doing. What their faces were like. Had Daddy stopped crying? Then her father spoke as if his emotions had been placed on hold. His tone was weird. Quizzical, as if something strange had just popped into his head.

  ‘Why aren’t you more angry?’ he asked.

  Silence.

  ‘I am. I’m furious.’

  ‘You don’t actually sound furious. You don’t sound much of anything. What are you not telling me, Claire?’ He sounded on the verge of anger now.

  ‘You said it yourself, Roger. We’re skint. We’re out of our house if this thing of yours doesn’t work out.’

  ‘Jesus, kick a man while he’s down, won’t you?’

  ‘So, butter-wouldn’t-melt Amelie Bloody Hart is loaded. Bound to be.’

  The
re was a long silence.

  Then her father spoke. His voice an accusation. ‘What have you done, Claire?’ There was anger there in the gruff tone. Like that time Damaris had left the rabbit cage open and the rabbit had escaped and done little drops of poo all over the living room.

  Damaris could hear a shuffling sound, as if one of her parents was moving across the carpet towards the other on their knees.

  ‘Damaris is fine…’ Her mother’s voice grew so quiet that Damaris couldn’t make out the rest of her words.

  Then.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Relief. Even from where she was listening Damaris could sense it. ‘But that’s … that’s…’

  ‘No harm done. We get some cash, save our home. Then that daft prick gets out of prison. Everyone’s happy.’

  ‘I don’t know, honey. That man’s reputation is ruined for life. He’ll never get work.’

  ‘Yeah, but his girlfriend will keep him. He’ll be fine.’

  She slept in the next morning and had to rush to get ready for school, a sense from the previous night’s memory tainting her mind, like the taste of butter on the turn. Was it a memory or a strange dream? Had her parents even had that conversation? The replay, if that was what it was, seemed so real.

  After school she went to her father’s, even though it wasn’t his night to have her. He opened the door before she had the chance to place a knuckle to the wood.

  ‘Hey, baby,’ he said, his face large with smiles. ‘This is an unex­pected pleasure.’ He paused as if a thought had interrupted the words queuing on his tongue. ‘Everything alright?’ He drew her into a hug. She closed her eyes for a second, enjoying the weight of his arms on her shoulders, across her back.

  ‘I’m good, Dad,’ she said, reluctantly stepping back from the security of him. ‘Got any chocolate biscuits in?’ This was a ploy. He always complained she was too thin and should eat more.