What Red Was
Page 27
“Did I?”
“Yes, oh my God, yes. You remember all those slasher films we watched?” He pointed up. “Right here in the living room.”
“Were they slasher films?”
“I don’t know, but everybody died.”
Kate laughed.
“You should come to the premiere,” Max said suddenly. “Of Mum’s film. They’re screening it at one of the film festivals next month. Say no if you think it’s a terrible idea. But you know, maybe it will help. Or maybe it will just be fun, which is the same thing, really. What do you think?”
43
Kate left Max’s house feeling lighter. She had needed to do this: to make herself revisit the scene of the crime, to confront it without fear. That was progress, surely. Being in the house had not quite overwhelmed her, and already she felt she could go back and face it again. The second time would be easier, and then the third. And if she could be in the place where it happened, perhaps she could once again be wholly at ease in Max’s company. No longer would she balk at the mention of Lewis’s name, no longer would she freeze up or flee whenever she was reminded of him.
She didn’t quite know why she had mentioned the party. There were moments when she felt like she wanted to expose Lewis. But it wasn’t because she wanted justice, rather there was a perverse part of her that wanted Max to feel responsible for what had happened to her. For so long he seemed to have been able to detach himself from her suffering, which for all its strength had only ever belonged to her and not to him, and she wanted him to carry the burden with her, but only temporarily, just so he could feel for himself how heavy it was, so that he would give her the respect she felt she deserved for having borne it all herself these last two years.
It was the same part of her, she knew, that had spoken up the night before she had moved out and had told him about the tattoo. She had been playing a dangerous game, just as she was playing precariously with their shared memories when she’d started quizzing him about the night of the party. She had given him shards, only shards of information, she would not give him all of it. Even though she sometimes longed to, she could not bear to surrender this most private piece of her history, which she knew she would have to do if she revealed to him the whole of it.
* * *
—
When Max had asked her if she wanted to see Late Surfacing, Kate had said yes straightaway. He said that she could bring Andrew if she wanted, but she told him that she wanted to see it with him: just the two of them. It was Andrew’s sister’s birthday, and she knew he was annoyed that she was going to the premiere instead of coming to celebrate: this would have been the first time she’d been for dinner with his family. She’d apologized, told him she would make it up to him, but that this was something she needed to do.
She was nervous about the film, particularly after her last meeting with Zara. She did not want to see too much of her own experience reflected there, or any of the details she had divulged to Zara in the months following her disclosure. But she was sure that Zara would have drawn on some of those conversations for her material, however loosely, and if she was right about this, she didn’t want Max to see it without her. She was not sure whether this was because she hated the thought of him imagining her being raped, or because, if that was what was going to happen, she hated the thought of not bearing witness.
She knew there was a strong risk that Lewis would be there. She had to prepare herself as best she could. Before she left the flat, she swallowed three beta-blockers and then took another two on the Tube. Three was the prescribed daily dose, but three was never enough; she stopped at five because six would make her too tired. She put on lipstick that was almost exactly the same shade as her lips, and perfume, both of which provided her with invisible protection.
Kate had borrowed from Shona a pair of dark pink silk trousers and green block-heeled shoes, which were a size too big for her. It was a cool summer evening, and the coarse silk moved roughly against the tops of her thighs as she walked quickly up the steps of Leicester Square Tube station and toward the Odeon. Though she had worked on the sets of half a dozen films by now—and many more television shows—she had never yet been invited to a premiere. Max was waiting for her; she met him at the edge of the railings.
“So handsome,” she said as she kissed him on the cheek. He did look good in his dark suit: his black hair was thick and clean, and his skin looked a little less gray than it had the last time she’d seen him. Though the entrance to the Odeon was cordoned off there were few spectators: the film did not have a starry cast and the people who had gathered round to watch seemed mostly to be tourists. There was an air of excitement to it, though. Kate caught sight of her and Max’s reflection in the glass doorway—both of them sharp, well turned out, fooling everybody, including themselves—and she was glad then that she’d come. She owed it to herself not to punish herself, and as Max put his arm around her shoulders and hugged her to him, she felt that with him beside her there was very little they could not conquer.
The foyer smelt of popcorn, faintly of bleach, and as Max gave their names at the box office Kate watched the holograms spinning across the carpet. Because this was Leicester Square, Kate had expected something grander than the usual carpet tiles and stacked paper cups, but the familiarity was reassuring. She could easily be in the entrance to the cinema near her mother’s house, except that now she was wearing silk instead of a school skirt, and her name was on the guest list.
When they went into the auditorium, though, it was even bigger than she had expected, its ceiling arching high above the red velvet-covered seats, the lights already half lowered. It was only once they were in their seats that she saw Lewis. The dull shock she felt at the sight of him was nothing like the panic she had experienced in Finsbury Park the summer before; here, from a distance, sunk in his seat next to his father, his back hunched and chin doubled as he tore at his thumbnail with his teeth, he was drained of power.
Kate and Max sat in the two seats Nicole was saving for them, Kate on the end of the row. A few seats to their right and behind, Zara was sitting with William on one side and a woman Kate didn’t recognize on the other. Rupert was there, too, wearing glasses. Max leaned across and tugged at his mother’s arm; she reached out and clasped his hand, before she saw Kate.
“Hello, darling,” she said. “Max said you might be coming.” She was too far from Kate to touch her, but she reached out her hand anyway. “I’ll come and find you afterward.”
The lights darkened and the screen widened as the words Late Surfacing appeared on it followed by Zara’s name in bright white against the black background.
It was not the first time Kate had seen her own experience played out in front of her, and it did not frighten her to know that it was coming. No, this she could handle: she had been right to come here. There was a thrill in knowing that an entire theater would be witnessing the violence of the attacker, the agony of his victim, and she would see now how they coped with it. She knew that there would be those who wanted to look away and that she was stronger than them. She knew that there would be those who would be fascinated and that they were weaker than her.
As the screen went momentarily black, Kate imagined first her own face stretched across it, meters high, then her body: all of it, bare. Arms, with a small showing of muscle under fat; the rounded belly and small breasts. Doughy white thighs, pale red ladders leading the way to her cunt. In her seat, she suppressed a shudder, but the image detained her for only a second before the film began. It opened not on a woman’s body but on a street; gray, lightless. The camera followed a man, dark haired and broad-shouldered, as he walked. The rapist was called Jack, Max had told her, and she wondered whether this was supposed to be him.
Max had shared with her what sparse details he knew: the rape would be happening in the first twenty minutes, so they were both prepared. The man stopped, and t
he camera stopped, and he walked into a shop, whose bell clanged loudly. Music was playing from the basement. He seemed to know the man inside, who was tattooed and bearded, with a bull ring in his nose. The camera, which sat just behind the man with the short black hair, panned around and took in the shop: it was a tattoo parlor, posters and designs lining the brick walls, and the bull-ringed man was leaning on the glass display case in the corner.
“Decision?” said Bull Ring.
“Just show me one more time,” said the short-haired man.
Bull Ring reached behind the till and pulled out a large book, filled with letters in different fonts. In the corner of her vision, in the row behind, Kate saw Zara move, just a little, and Kate thought for a moment that she might be watching her. But when Kate turned to look Zara’s gaze was fixed on the screen, where Bull Ring was taking the short-haired man into a back room.
“How many of these have you done?” the man said. He sat down on the chair and began to unbuckle his belt, pulled his jeans down to the tops of his thighs.
“More than you’ve had hot dinners. It’ll hurt, though, where you’re getting it. And you’ll be out of action for a little bit.”
To her right, Kate saw Nicole lean across and whisper to Max. She was nodding her head at Lewis, and she was laughing. Max’s face was lit up by the screen, briefly bright as the shot showed the man filling in a form in blotchy black capitals, JACK EVANS. For the few seconds that Max was illuminated she saw that he understood everything and that he possessed in that moment the same brutal clarity from which she had ultimately tried to shield him.
This was her doing. The pieces of information she had fed to Zara and to Max, trading on the now worthless currency of her trauma, had come together at last, and the image they created was all too clear. She knew now why she’d felt that Zara was looking at her. She had taken what Kate had confided in her and, without her permission, she had used it. Zara did not yet know it, but she had sent a fault line through the Rippon family: those who knew, and who did not; those who might forgive, those who would not. And at its center, Max, who wanted only ever to believe that people acted with goodness and grace, who wanted never to look into the truth of what a man was capable of doing.
Now, Max turned back to Nicole, and Kate knew that he was asking her to repeat what she had just said; of course he would not quite be able to believe it. And in the moment that he turned, she stood, and she walked as quickly as she could back up the aisle, through the double doors, out into the foyer, and into the mass of strangers who moved beneath the electric lights of Leicester Square.
44
Max knew what was coming. After Kate fled, he knew there could be no other outcome than this. He’d made to follow her but had slumped back in his seat, transfixed both by the hope that he might yet be proved wrong and by the inability to face her. He was immobilized, unable to look away, but unable to process what was happening as the film reeled on. Max knew what was going to happen to the woman on the screen and who was going to do it to her. Doors closed. Keys turned, and as each exit was blocked he felt his voice strangling in his throat, wanting to shout out at the screen, wanting to tell her to get out, to run, while she still could.
The rape itself seemed to be over very quickly, but it was shot with merciless clarity: a single blow to the face, the crack of a skull against the edge of a step, the sound of fabric ripping. And, in that moment, he imagined that it was Kate who was there on the floor. For a second, just a second, it was not this fictional rapist, but he himself who had pinned her there. The image burned across his mind, filled him with a sick self-loathing, but before he could process any further it was over. It was already over, and he had been unable to look away. Disbelief compelled him to keep watching, and the conviction that surely it could get no worse than this; surely it would be better, once it was all over. But there was worse still to come. It was not the attack in isolation, but what it did afterward: the way it shattered perception, distorted senses, disabled the ability to trust and love and be loved, drained the world of color and light.
But then the screen went black, applause filled the auditorium. Behind Max, Zara rested her head briefly on William’s shoulder and then stood up. As she bowed her head to the audience, she looked at Max, saw the seat next to him. A shadow of something like disappointment passed across her face. Surely she did not know; she wouldn’t have put it in the film had she known.
“She doesn’t know,” Nicole said. She started to laugh. “She has no idea. Poor Lewis. He’s going to think it’s about him.”
Nicole did not know that she had voiced what Max had not yet allowed himself to think. He had not yet turned to look at Lewis for fear of what he would see. But he had to look. He had already wasted too much time neither looking nor seeing.
“It is about him,” Max said, his voice barely audible over the sound of applause. “It’s about him and Kate.”
Nicole looked back at him blankly. Max did not clarify. Soon she would understand.
“What are you talking about? Max?” Nicole was digging into his ribs. Max didn’t answer. He remembered that first conversation he and Kate had had about what had happened to her, when he had tried to ask her. He felt a flicker of anger. He’d asked, but he should have asked again. Perhaps she had seen the relief in his expression when she had cut him off, but she’d let him believe that she didn’t want him to ask. None of this mattered now, though. Nicole was saying his name, pinching his arm. He had always thought that he would be able to recognize a man capable of rape. But Lewis. He had never thought that a handsome man would need to rape anybody. The credits had stopped rolling and the lights came up. Max pushed Nicole’s hand away and twisted in his seat. There was Lewis, a few seats away, sitting beside his father, his expression inscrutable. Max stared at him. He ignored Nicole, who was snapping her fingers in his face, and continued looking at Lewis until Lewis looked back at him. Max did not break his gaze until he was sure that Lewis knew.
45
When Kate left the cinema, she walked, blindly, not knowing where she should be going. She was numb, barely aware of the blisters that were rubbing against the backs of her borrowed shoes and of the fact that it had been raining. At the entrance to the Leicester Square Underground, she stopped. This station offered a route home for her, but also a black tunnel. Her phone vibrated; she shut it off, tried to shut off the thought of the train hurtling out of the darkness. At this moment she could see no futures available to her, no possible means for her to continue to exist.
Knowing only that she must keep moving, she found herself at the river. On Waterloo Bridge she stopped and leaned over the barrier, not caring that she was covering herself in filth. Her mind was flying, detached from her body. How this body had failed her; how many more times could she allow it to fail her? No longer did she want to punish it. She wanted to relieve its suffering.
The water was clouded and foaming at the river’s edges where debris, feathers, cans, pieces of plastic were caught on the stony shore. She closed her eyes and allowed the pressure of the stone barrier against her stomach to deepen the nausea until she thought she would throw up over the edge of the bridge and into the Thames. The river would swallow up her vomit, could swallow her up, too. A lorry hurtled along the bridge behind her.
Not now.
If she stepped back now, she would only be robbing herself yet again of what Lewis had taken from her, of what Zara’s film had also taken—her agency. Of course it would be a kind of freedom, too, to take that step back, or that leap—but what was the point in making such a choice if she disappeared in silence? It was this thought that carried her to the south end of the bridge, and she stood there with her back to the river, head in her hands. If only in this moment, in this small way, she could direct her own path, and for now, this would have to be enough: deciding to step away from the bridge, to cross the road, to walk, and to continue walking.
/> * * *
—
When she got to Andrew’s door, she leaned on the bell and let it ring. The sun hadn’t yet set, but she didn’t know what time it was. She kept ringing, but there was no answer. Only now did she remember that Andrew was out celebrating, that of course he wouldn’t be at the flat. But there were footsteps inside and then Shona opened the front door. She looked at Kate, the streaks of makeup, and without waiting for her to speak, took her inside.
“Andrew isn’t here,” she said, though she knew Kate knew this already.
“I forgot,” Kate said. She was standing unsteadily in the hallway, unsure whether to stay. Shona was wearing fresh makeup she realized. “Are you going to the dinner?”
Shona checked her watch. “I’m meeting them for drinks. Do you want to come with me?” She looked at Kate again, glanced down at the hems of the pink trousers she had lent her. “Why don’t you come and sit for a minute?”
Kate sat at the kitchen table, trying to focus on her hands, while Shona got her a glass of water.
“I don’t know you that well,” said Shona, sitting down next to Kate. “But if you want to talk, we’ll talk. Or if you just want to sit, we’ll sit.”
Kate nodded. “I don’t want to come to the party,” she said.
“OK. Do you want to stay here?”
“Yes, please.”
“You want me to stay with you?”
“No, it’s OK.”
“You want me to call Andrew?”
“No,” Kate said firmly.
“He’ll want to know something’s up.”
“Don’t call him,” Kate said. “Please. I don’t want to talk. I’m just tired.”
“I can see that,” said Shona. She reached across, put her hand on Kate’s chin, lifted it, and looked at her. “Hold your head up. And I mean this with kindness.”