by Rosie Price
She had tried to verbalize it to Max, but she had been cut short. Alone, she had kept on trying and she had even succeeded once, five days before Christmas, looking herself in the eye as she brushed her teeth at her mother’s house.
“I was raped,” she said, trying it out. The word was too shrill, though; she censored herself: “I said no. I said no but it happened anyway.” No blame apportioned, no specificities, just the barest details. How ridiculous she appeared, in her baggy pajamas, toothpaste around her mouth, her face pale and round in the merciless light of the bathroom mirror.
But lying in this spare bedroom of Bernadette’s house, replaying those fragile sentences over in her mind, she thought that perhaps she could do it, and perhaps now she had no choice but to do it. She could not live like this for much longer, segregated from the world by a cracked pane of glass, at the mercy of the sudden swooping in her chest and fog in her mind that signaled blind panic. Surely there would come a moment when the pain of staying the same would be greater than that of change. In a way that moment came every morning for Kate, it was what forced her out of bed, the moment at which lying immobilized was a greater struggle than to move onto her side, to push herself upright, to feel the floor on her ten toes. And if she could do it, if she had done it every morning since August, then what else was she capable of doing?
* * *
—
The house downstairs was empty. The lights on the eight-foot Christmas tree in the hallway had been left on all night, and the space below it was scattered with pine needles and scraps of wrapping paper. Daydreaming, whenever she’d had reason to pass the iron gates of this house over the past few years, Kate had imagined what it would be like to be on the inside, enclosed by those once-golden limestone walls. She had expected that she would come to the house one day, invited by Max for a week in summer, or for one of the family’s dinner parties. She had envisaged endless days and sunshine: not these dusty hallways, this sickness. Kate turned on lights and, as she waited for the kettle to boil, she flexed her right hand, which was beginning to heal. She thought of how Zara had looked at it yesterday, when they’d sat together and talked, and she wondered whether Zara believed that it had been an accident.
Kate made herself black tea, without milk in case it made her sick again, and sat by the window waiting for it to cool. Titus came and sat by her, nuzzling his wet nose on the tops of her bare feet. She could hear, after a few minutes of sitting there, that there was somebody else awake in the house. The water pipes in the walls began to clunk; there were footsteps and there was the sound of a door shutting. She thought the noise could be coming from the room Elias was staying in, but it seemed unlikely that he would be up this early. She hoped it wouldn’t be Elias; she wasn’t sure she could face him being here, demanding Max’s attention.
Titus knew before she did who it was; he leapt to his feet and scuttled to the kitchen door, which he nosed open as Zara walked in. Of course, Kate thought, it was Zara who should find her here. It seemed only right that they had both been woken at this early hour, that they should be given this time alone together. Their conversation yesterday had been interrupted, and now she knew that they had to pick up where they had left off.
“You’re up early,” Zara said.
“I couldn’t get back to sleep,” Kate said.
Zara was wearing an ankle-length dressing gown made from dark blue satin. Her hair was loose, gathered thick over one shoulder. She looked fresh, though she had just woken. She had the same eyes and nose as Max, the elegant bone structure that both he and Nicole had inherited and that made them look like they had been born into a superior breed, a race of natural aristocrats who were so used to being waited upon that, over the generations, all the bulk had been bred out of them.
The rest of the house was quiet. There might not be another moment like this Kate knew.
“Can I talk to you about something?” she said at last.
Zara sat down at the table and Kate got up to join her. Zara sat with her hands folded, studying Kate’s expression with an appraising look that was, at the same time, devoid of judgment. This was a look that told her she was going to be taken seriously. Kate started, for want of a better place, by explaining to Zara the persistent feeling she had of standing on the edge of a precipice, that it was taking all her energy not to fall into it.
Zara nodded: she too had looked into the precipice. “Do you know what’s causing it?”
Now Kate nodded, mirroring her.
“Do you think you ought to talk to somebody?”
“I know what it is,” Kate said before pausing. Now there was no path back. She couldn’t unsay this, but neither could she not say it, just as she wouldn’t have been able to not throw up two days earlier.
“What’s on your mind?” said Zara gently.
“I keep thinking about this thing that happened. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Zara said nothing, waited for Kate to continue.
“This guy, I went into the room with him and, you know, I said no, but, you know, it happened anyway.”
“How old were you?” said Zara without missing a beat.
“It was four months ago.”
“I was raped when I was nineteen,” said Zara bluntly, as if she were telling Kate that she had started her period when she was twelve or had lost her virginity when she was sixteen. Nobody had ever said anything about this third rite of passage, somewhere between virginity and motherhood; but there it was, as ugly as it was undeniable: the first rape. “It does terrible things. Waves of anxiety and depression?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. I know.” Zara reached out and held Kate’s hand. Kate wanted to say more, but before she could, Zara spoke for her. “You don’t have to tell me any more. I understand. Have you told anybody?”
“Not until now,” Kate said, “not even Max.”
“It’s a difficult thing to talk about,” Zara said, squeezing Kate’s hand. Kate looked down at Zara’s hand on top of hers.
“He had this tattoo,” Kate said, before she could stop herself. She put her free hand on her lap, half a gesture, but here she paused: changed tack. “I feel like I’m going mad.”
“You’re not mad,” Zara said firmly. “I promise you, you’re not mad.”
Kate had already said too much. But now that she had started she wanted to keep on talking, to show Zara that she was afraid but not enough to be silenced.
“I quit my job just before Christmas,” she said quickly, “I’ve been thinking about moving home so that I can get proper help, but I realized that would mean telling my mother everything, and I can’t bear to do that.”
“Stop,” Zara said. “You don’t need to worry about any of this. You especially needn’t worry about money. There will be a way through. For now, we have to take care of you. I’m going to give you some names and some numbers. People you can phone and people you can talk to.”
Kate put her head in her hands.
“You don’t have to do it now,” Zara said. “There’s no rush. But for when you’re ready.”
From upstairs came the sound of a door slamming. Zara got up and passed Kate a box of tissues.
“You don’t even look like you’ve been crying,” she said, pinching her cheek. “Brave girl. Your secret is safe with me; as I trust mine will be with you.”
Above them they could hear Max singing falsetto, his muffled voice growing louder, and then his footsteps thundering down the wooden stairs.
“Max,” Kate said, wiping her eyes.
“Are you going to speak with him?”
“I think so,” Kate said. “I think I want him to know.”
Zara nodded. “Let me get out of your way. I’ll keep the others out of the kitchen. Take as long as you need.” At the door, though, she paused. “One thing I would say,” she said. “Max will understand, Max is f
ine. But be careful who you speak to about this. You never quite know how people will react, and once you’ve said it, you can’t take it back.”
Kate nodded.
“You know where to find me.”
Kate nodded again. “Thank you,” she said as earnestly as she could. But as the door closed, she did not feel quite the relief she had been expecting to feel at this first disclosure. She felt instead that in articulating what had happened, she had begun to lose control of it. Zara had not doubted her—and, of course, Kate had only told her part of the truth—nor had she pressed her on any of the details. She had taken what Kate had said at face value, embellished it, even, with the word that Kate had not been able to muster. Worse, she had warned Kate against what she had spent the last months building up to: the act of externalization. Words said could not be unsaid.
When Max came into the room, though, Kate’s angst dissipated. Zara had stopped him outside the door, had given him some kind of warning, and when he saw Kate at the kitchen table, head in her hands and a box of tissues next to her, he came to her and put his arms around her shoulders, kissed her on the cheek, and pulled up a chair to sit next to her.
“Kate,” he said, “will you tell me what’s happening?”
It was far easier the second time. She still didn’t say the word rape, but she took her time over the narrative, contextualized it a little more, though she lied and gave the impression that the perpetrator was not somebody she knew and that it had happened when she had been with her old school friends, and not with Max, so that he wouldn’t begin to fear that he had been involved or responsible in any way. She was protecting Lewis, she knew, but in doing so she was protecting her friendship with Max, and to her this was far more important. Max was silent as she spoke. When she had finished she saw that he had tears in his eyes.
“When?” Max said. “When did it happen?”
“Over the summer,” Kate said. She had thought about this moment; she knew what question was coming next.
“And do you know—”
“No,” she said. He could see that she didn’t want to say any more: this, he could understand, and an expression that might have been relief passed across his face.
“It’s OK, though.” Kate reached out and touched his arm. “I’m still here.”
Acknowledging how absurd it was that she should be the one to comfort him, he drew away.
“So what does this mean?” he said. “What do we need to do? What can I do?”
Kate shook her head, put her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”
Max, understanding that his eagerness to help was premature, fell silent.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “This is fucking shit for you.”
“There are worse things,” said Kate from behind her hands.
“Have you told your mum?”
“No. I don’t know how.”
Now she looked up at him, her face gray, blank. Max looked as though he had something he wanted to say but stopped himself.
“There’s no rush,” he said. “Family don’t go anywhere. Even if you want them to.” He laughed harshly.
Kate let Max make her a cup of tea, even though she didn’t want one, and he let Titus out, who was whimpering under the table. She was exhausted, her brain tired. She heard Elias on the stairs above them. He barreled through the closed kitchen door, waving his phone at Max.
“It’s a catastrophe,” he said. “I’ve got to go back to London. I’m going to be dumped.”
“Oh God,” Max said, “why?”
“It’s the longest story. Julia accused me ages ago of sleeping with her friend, even though I wasn’t, but she’s started fixating on it again, and now she wants to finish it. Women are fucking crazy. No offense.” Elias nodded at Kate in a generous acknowledgment of her demonstrable sanity.
“None taken,” Kate said on behalf of all women.
“And you know the worst fucking thing?” said Elias. “I hadn’t even slept with her until Julia started accusing me of it.”
“So you did sleep with her?” Max said.
“Well, yeah,” said Elias, “eventually, but only because she thought I had already.”
“Right,” Max said.
“So there’s a train in a half hour,” Elias said. “Are you coming with me or what?”
Max shook his head and glanced at Kate. “I’m going to stay here,” he said.
22
It was only once she and William had left Bisley House that Zara could make space to think about what Kate had told her: there was no room for her own history in this house already crowded with histories; it would have to wait until they had come back to the sunlit rooms of Latimer Crescent, to which they were returning in time for New Year’s Eve. It was while she was sitting on the edge of her bed that her understanding of what had happened began to clarify. It was as if, unknown to Zara, she and Kate had begun to share the same bodily memory, which could only be fully recalled when Zara returned to the place of its conception, when her own body occupied the invisible outline that had been left there by Kate.
Zara thought at first she must be mistaking the feeling that had surfaced within her, but she had come to know herself too well not to recognize the particular emotion with which she had been burdened since her conversation with Kate. Nor would she quite have believed it had it not been so unmistakably powerful. Just as she had been when William had avoided looking at her at dinner two nights before Christmas, and when at the party her children had abandoned her to go out together and drink instead of staying and suffering with her, she was consumed by a crushing loneliness.
This feeling, which made little sense to her at first, soon began to gather its logic. It was, of course, to do with Kate, and the fact that she already seemed to have chosen a different path from Zara in processing her trauma, in speaking up not only so soon after the event, in comparison to Zara, but also to a relative stranger. Privately at least, Zara had managed to disclose, but only after years, and only to a very select few; publicly she had never managed it. What stirred in her as she sat on her bed, waiting for William to finish brushing his teeth, was the fear that not only had she been getting it wrong all these years, but that she was entirely alone in having done so.
* * *
—
The week that the London universities went back, Zara had been invited to give a lecture to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of L’Accusé. On the Sunday she got up early and set herself up in the living room, the film on the projector, her glasses on the end of her nose, and a notebook by her side. Her intention was to work, but she knew before the film started rolling that it would be near impossible to keep Kate from her thoughts.
When, about a third of the way through, Lucille appeared in the window of her fourth-floor apartment—framed, contained—with her tights torn and her face smeared with makeup, Zara pressed pause. She remembered that day very clearly. She remembered Nadia, the actress playing Lucille, squealing as Zara had knelt in front of her, pulling at her tights with her fingers, and then, when they did not tear, pushing the blade of her silver-handled costume scissors through the nylon and slicing roughly upward, grazing Nadia’s thigh as she did so.
How she had detested Nadia and the way she allowed herself to be consumed by her dramatized assault, crying in the canteen between shots, allowing herself to be comforted by the second cameraman or third prop man or whoever it had been, all for the mere trauma of having to look as though she had been raped. She had been weak, and Zara, at that point violated and entirely silent with it, had resented her for her frailty.
Zara did not know whether Kate had seen this film, but as she wound back and played the scene again, and as she saw the fear frozen on Nadia’s face, the genuine tears that had begun to well in her blue eyes after Zara had shouted at her for the second time that day, she found her
self picturing Kate’s face in the middle of a cinema audience, and imagined that Kate was able to see Zara’s image shadowed in Nadia’s, and the unbridled resentment of hers that had triggered in Nadia what turned out to be such a convincing performance.
Zara didn’t watch the rest of the film, but instead she called her son, who was still asleep when the phone rang.
“I’ve been thinking about Kate, darling,” Zara said. “We must make sure that we help her.”
“I know that,” said Max, groggily defensive. “I am helping. What do you mean?”
“I’m sure you are. But sometimes it’s difficult to ask for things, particularly if you don’t know you need them.”
“What things?”
“I mean therapy. Professional help. Time to recover. A place to stay.”
“She’s going to the doctor,” said Max.
Zara put the phone on speaker and reached for her notepad. “Right. Darling, I’m going to send some emails. She was going to apply for film school. Does she still want to work in film?”
“Mum,” Max said. He sounded a little hesitant now. “I know you want to help, but I don’t think it’s for you to push her into anything.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, well, don’t you think that sometimes talking can do more harm than good?”
Zara sighed. “You’ve been spending too much time with your father, Max.”
“I’m serious. Why do you think you know what’s best for people? Not everybody’s the same. In fact”—he lowered his voice—“it seems like she’s worse now that she’s having to talk about it. Way worse than she was before. She pretty much shut me down when I asked her about what happened.”
“Or maybe it’s because it’s worse that she’s started talking about it, Max. She just needs time.”
“I’m just saying,” said Max. “You don’t always know what everybody is feeling. Maybe there are some things better left alone.”
“You know that’s not true, Max,” Zara said gently. “No matter how much you’d like it to be. Your friend needs you. She needs support.”