What Red Was

by Rosie Price

  “Being raped, you mean?”

  “Being raped,” Max said, allowing himself to be corrected.

  They had been sitting there for over an hour, neither of them inclined to move, and it was one of the few times that Kate felt that he was fully engaged with what she was saying to him. She wanted to take advantage of the rare and brutal clarity of the moment.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know if you can just ‘put it behind you.’ It’s not like a normal memory. I wear it, I feel it every day. It’s under my skin, in my flesh. We talk about it all the time in therapy. It’s because the memory of it is fragmented. It was too intense to process at the time so it’s kind of in bits, stuck in my short-term memory. And these little fragments just take over, whenever there are reminders.” She had told Max this before, but she felt now, perhaps because she was leaving or perhaps just because they were alone together for the first time in a while, that she really needed to make sure he understood. “It could be anything that takes me back there. A color, a smell. A time of day, an object.”

  “What kind of an object?”

  “Anything; things that were in the room, things I looked at. The lightbulb, and the slight burn on its shell where the filament was too hot. A mark on the ceiling that looked like a tire mark but couldn’t have been, because we were inside and it was the ceiling.” She paused and looked at him for any signs of recognition, but he did not meet her gaze, so she continued. “All illogical. The things I focused on to take myself out of my body, and the things that return me to that same state of disembodiment. And that’s why it’s so confusing, and so difficult, because the things that served me at the time, and enabled me to survive, there are moments when they make it impossible for me to be in the world.”

  Max nodded. “But you feel all of that in your body, too?”

  “Yes,” Kate said. She was a little drunk, and something about the understated romance of the setting—out on the balcony, overlooking the city, and the authority she had found—made her want to speak more freely than she had before. “Particularly, I remember pain,” she said, and at this Max winced, and she felt a slight thrill at her ability to shock, and she dug deeper, again using the word she had just made Max say. “I think people sometimes forget that rape is painful as well as everything else. So much of it is to do with dehumanization, and humiliation, and power. People forget that it’s an act of violence.”

  “I guess some people like that kind of power,” Max said, retreating from her point, latching onto the part he could more easily understand. “But why?”

  Kate shrugged. “It’s sadistic,” she said. “But I wonder whether maybe he was a masochist, too.”

  It was the first time she had said anything to Max about what she actually thought of her rapist, and she felt liberated by her freedom to depict him however she wanted, it didn’t matter that he was family to Max: he didn’t know that, to Max he could have been anybody.

  “Why?” Max said.

  “He had a tattoo,” she said. She put her hand over the inside of her hip, and watched Max to see how much he understood, whether perhaps he understood too much. Perhaps now would be the moment that he would ask her, for the second time, who this man was; Kate did not know what she would say, and she moved her hand up, so it half covered the top of her pubic bone, where the tattoo had been. “It just made me think, maybe his feelings about his own body are complicated.”

  “Oh,” Max said. “What was it?”

  Kate took her hand away. “Words. A quote. Something very pretentious. Hilarious, when you think about it.”

  Max didn’t laugh. But nothing about his demeanor suggested that the information Kate had given him had gone any way toward revealing the identity of her rapist. She thought now of that conversation with Zara, her first disclosure, when Kate had told her about the tattoo. Zara had turned away from this piece of information as soon as Kate had offered it; now, too, Kate allowed Max to steer the conversation away, as he always did, from the intensity and violence of what she was saying. When they finished their second bottle of wine they said good night, and Kate went to bed, her mind thick with drink, playing over their conversation. She was not fearful that she had said too much, but neither did she feel the old exhilaration she had hoped for: that she could shock him into paying attention to her. Before she fell asleep, she tried to imagine what Max would have done if she had unbuttoned her jeans and showed him the scars, old and fresh, thatching her thighs.

  That night she dreamt of Lewis for the first time in weeks. In the dream, he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the kitchen in Latimer Crescent, holding his hand to his eyes and crying. Kate couldn’t quite recall why he was sitting on the floor, but she knew that it was her fault, that she had hurt him, and that she was unsure of whether to ask for his forgiveness.

  * * *

  —

  Andrew had borrowed a van from the shoot he was working on, and he came over the following day to help Kate move. They packed up after lunch, and Max, who hadn’t yet seen the flat, came with them. He sat in the middle front seat, twiddling the dials on the stereo, he and Andrew listing things Kate might have forgotten.

  “What about that weird fur jacket thing?” said Andrew.

  “No. Why,” said Kate suspiciously, “did you want me to forget it?”

  “And that vibrator thing on charge in the bathroom?” said Max.

  “That’s an epilator. For leg hair.”

  “Oh. Well, did you remember your epilator?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your vib—”

  “Oh my God,” Kate said. “Yes, I remembered everything.” In the driver’s seat, Andrew shifted, swapping the steering wheel from one hand to the other and hiding his smile as he did so.

  “What big arms you have,” said Max to Andrew.

  “I even remembered the butter dish.”

  “What butter dish?” said Max.

  “My butter dish. You know, the blue-and-white china one.”

  “That’s the communal butter dish,” said Max, affronted. “Owned by the flat as a collective.”

  “No,” said Kate. “It’s my butter dish. Which I bought. Look, it’s here.” She reached into the bag at her feet and took out the butter dish, which was one of the last things she had packed. She turned it over and showed Max its base: it had been purchased in Randwick.

  “Let me see that,” said Max.

  “Why is it wrapped in cling film?” said Andrew, glancing at the dish.

  “To stop the butter falling out.”

  Max gasped. “You took the butter dish AND the butter?”

  Kate shrugged. “Well, I bought the butter, too,” she said.

  Andrew shook his head. “That’s tight. At least leave the butter for the flat.”

  “I was going to have toast tomorrow,” said Max ruefully.

  “Buy your own butter.” Kate put the dish back in the bag smugly. “I’m going to have mine with dinner.”

  * * *

  —

  The excitement began to dissipate somewhere south of Shepherd’s Bush, after twenty minutes spent at a slow crawl, stuck in traffic. By the time they were driving over Battersea Bridge, it was dark, and rainwater was streaming down the windows. To the east, Albert Bridge and Chelsea Bridge rose from the water below, each strung with yellowish bulbs whose light was reflected in the black surface of the Thames. Being driven through this city, a city she was so used to traversing independently, on foot, by bus or train, made Kate feel like a child again, particularly with the sound of the heater blasting, the fans on full to demist the windscreens. Downriver, away from the city and to its west, the riverbank obscured the view of the water, curving southward and filling Kate’s field of vision with high, half-lit office buildings. There were no crossing points farther west that she could see: the next bridge was Wandsw
orth, and it was far round the bend. And so she tried not to look west, keeping in view the decorative lights of the Chelsea bridges, their warmth and extravagance, and blocking out the sight of the river disappearing into obscurity.

  The flat she and Claire had found was in Tooting. The rent was cheaper than Kate had been paying Max, but only marginally, while the flat itself was significantly smaller: a kitchen crowded with a table and a two-seater faux-leather sofa beneath a small, barred window that only opened halfway. Kate liked it. In her room there was a tiny alcove just big enough for the flat-pack desk she’d ordered to arrive the next morning, at which she would sit to mark up the set plans she’d been given and to work on her own designs. Her room in Max’s flat had been more beautiful, without the ominous damp patches or the scrubby school carpet, and there she’d had a double rather than a single bed. But this was hers; there were no discounts, no favors, no obligations. This bedroom, with its low-hanging, bald lightbulb and its creaking metal bed frame, for now belonged to her and nobody else.

  Max and Andrew stayed to help her unpack, and once they’d moved in all the boxes, Max invited them to come for dinner with Elias.

  “I want to finish here,” Kate said. “But I’ll see you really soon. I’ll come over before you go back to Latimer Crescent.”

  Max hugged her. “The end of an era,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “And don’t worry, I’ll be back before you know it. I’m coming to reclaim the fucking butter dish and anything else you’ve stolen.”

  Andrew left soon after to return the van to the studio, having said he would come back later that night.

  Left alone, Kate’s instinct was to find something to drink, but, of course, the fridge was empty. She put on her raincoat and leather boots and went to the corner shop, where she bought a bottle of wine and a carton of milk. There were no wineglasses in the flat; Claire was bringing those tomorrow. Kate had forgotten what it was like to live somewhere only half made, what it felt like to start from the beginning. But she washed out a mug with her hands and hot water and poured wine into it. Half a bottle down, she hadn’t started to unpack, nor could she make the television work, and they hadn’t yet installed Internet, so she listened to the same old album on her phone on repeat, the speakers vibrating thinly against the plywood tabletop, their sound half drowned by the Saturday-night noises from the street down below: conversation and laughter, high heels on the pavement, which would later turn into the arguing of couples, the drunken shouts of men, walking in groups of two or three, with nowhere to go and with nothing to fear.

  35

  On the first morning in her new bedroom, Kate woke late. Andrew was asleep beside her, arms folded over his stomach, his chin tucked into his chest. His chest was moving heavily with his breathing, his breath stale, but she turned toward him and, without waking him, pulled his arms around her so that her waking body was enveloped in the warmth of his, her breath in his. Today, she knew, was the first time in a while that she had woken to the certainty that she wanted to live.

  It was Sunday, and neither of them had anywhere else to be, and Claire wasn’t arriving until the evening. They hadn’t often had Max’s flat to themselves, and Andrew was making the most of not having to worry about waking Shona, who worked long hours and slept late on the weekends. He turned up the Isley Brothers, sang in an irritatingly tuneful mock falsetto. The flat filled with the smell of coffee, and Kate did a little more unpacking while Andrew put bacon under the grill. She came in for breakfast wearing his hooded sweatshirt, which came down over the tops of her thighs, grazing her scars.

  “Thief,” said Andrew, tugging at the sweatshirt and pulling her into him. He looked down at her, kissed his teeth disapprovingly, but his eyes were smiling. Kate pulled away, stuck up her middle finger, and slid the butter dish toward her.

  “You never let me take any of your shit,” she said. “Your room is so horribly tidy I never get the chance.”

  “I have to be careful with you there.”

  Max, even less than Andrew, was only very sparsely memorialized among her possessions. His absence seemed more remarkable, given the years they had known each other. There were some photographs that had been stuck childishly onto the pin-board in her old room: matt, low-lit images of them at some party together, their arms around each other. There were presents he had brought back from holidays—a dusty bottle of wine whose label was printed with the image of Dali’s melting clock, a novelty bottle opener—and business cards he had given to Kate because he hadn’t quite worked out what else to do with them.

  There was also a poster that Kate had never got round to putting up, a freeze-frame from L’Accusé that Zara had given her, the old image that had stayed with Kate all these years of Lucille looking out of her window, makeup smeared, tights run. Zara had signed the poster in black marker pen for her, a message that read: For Kate, who would have made this a far better film. Z. Zara had sent the poster to her after they’d talked about the film on the phone, and Kate remembered that she had sounded rueful that day, but Kate had not asked her why.

  “This is cool,” Andrew said when Kate took it out to show him. “It’ll be valuable when you’ve won your Academy Award.”

  “She was in a weird mood when she gave me this. Told me she regretted making the film.”

  “You’re lucky,” Andrew said, looking at the poster. “Takes some people years of running to get the kinds of jobs you’re getting. She’s shown you a lot of shortcuts.”

  “I know that,” Kate said. She took the poster back, started to roll it up. “It wasn’t just a whim, though, you know. I was going to apply for an MA, but…”

  Andrew shrugged. “I’m just saying. I’ve got mates from film school who stuck at it for most of their twenties. Half of them are training to be lawyers now.”

  “Oh, poor them.”

  “You’re defensive,” said Andrew. He sat back on the bed, made that kissing noise with his teeth again, looked sideways at Kate. There was that slight sternness about him, which she’d seen when they’d first gone to the cinema together: Kate regretted her sarcasm. She climbed on top of him and put her forehead against his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled. “I just don’t want you to think I’m like Max.”

  His chest rose and fell under her. He put his hand on the back of her head.

  “You’re not,” he said. “They treat you like one of their own, though. It’s not a bad thing. It’s nice. They must like you a lot.”

  “Is that so hard to believe?” Kate said.

  Andrew was pushing her, not quite challenging her loyalty, but asking her to show him how much of it he was entitled to. It was for this reason, then, as well as the fact that they were in new, neutral territory, that Kate started to talk properly. She sat up as she spoke, and he sat up with her, she not quite looking at him, and told him that she’d known the man who had attacked her. Still knew him—in fact, had even come close to having to face him socially, because he was a cousin of Max’s.

  “It’s good that you’re away from him,” Andrew said, and she didn’t know whether he was talking about Lewis or about Max. “I thought it might be something like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “I thought it might be someone you knew. Or Shona did, anyway.”

  “Shona knows?” Kate felt suddenly panicked.

  “Well, yeah, we’ve talked about it. She said she thought you probably know him.” He stopped. “Why, does it bother you, me talking to her?”

  In fact, it did not bother her. It was a relief, even, to know that this did not have to be a secret, and for a moment, she couldn’t remember why it was.

  “No,” she said. “I suppose I just didn’t think about the fact that you might want to. But now you say it, it makes sense that you would. I’m glad.”

  Andrew didn’t need to ask her whether Max had any ide
a who had raped her, nor did he ask what to Kate was the most obvious question: are you ever going to tell him? She supposed he saw that she didn’t have an answer. For the moment, though, the most important thing was that she had trusted him enough to tell him what only her therapist knew. And she realized, after he left, that they had spent nearly twenty-four hours together. She’d asked him to stay another night, tugging the cord of the hoodie he’d now reclaimed. But he was watching First Dates with Shona: this was their weekly tradition and he wasn’t going to break it for her, even if she had just entrusted him with her deepest secret.

  “I’ll put in a good word, you might get invited next time,” he said, putting his hand over her face and pushing her back through the doorway by way of goodbye. She liked that Andrew had tested her, but she knew that her alliances had changed long before, even if she’d only been able to admit this to herself when Max had told her he was moving out; when he had given her permission. She had always resented the thought of neglecting a friendship for a relationship, but Kate knew that she had been absent from her friendship with Max for some time now: another thing Lewis had taken from her. As she finished unpacking, ready for when Claire would arrive that evening, Kate asked herself whether she missed Andrew more than Max, and she found she could not answer. For Andrew, her body ached, just as it ought. But for Max, it was something different. She could have wept if she’d let herself. For Max, there was insurmountable sadness that was most akin to grief.

  * * *

  —

  Claire arrived that evening, laden with possessions that quickly dominated their small shared space. Kate was happy in the afterglow of Andrew’s presence, and she helped Claire to unpack while they drank wine and waited for pizza to arrive. They finished their first bottle quickly and, when Kate went to get the next from the fridge, Claire squatted in front of the television, playing with the remote until it flickered into life. With the unobtrusive noise of Sunday-night TV in the background they could just as easily have been at school again, drinking the wine freely provided by Alison up in Kate’s room, smoking stale roll-ups out the window and flushing the stubs down the toilet. When they were drunk enough, Claire recounted in detail the disintegration of her relationship with Alex.