What Red Was

by Rosie Price

  “Are you going to tell me what’s been going on?” Rupert said. Max could hear him inhaling, imagined him standing in the doorway of his house, cigarette in hand: his last remaining vice.

  “I will,” Max said.

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “Did I wake you up?”

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “It’s the air,” Rupert said. Inhaled again sharply. “It’s too heavy. Makes me sticky. I have to sleep in the nude, truth be told. Fortunately I live alone.”

  Max let out a dry half laugh.

  “The rain will help, though,” Rupert went on. “Can you smell it?”

  “Can I smell the rain?”

  “It’s called petrichor. Did you know that? The smell of fresh rainwater on the ground after a long dry spell. You know, that earthy smell. Like relief. It’s Greek, apparently.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You knew the smell, but you didn’t know the word. It smells like redemption.”

  Max found that he couldn’t speak. There was a lump in his throat, he wanted to cry.

  “Take your time, Max. I’m here when you’re ready.”

  Max nodded, then remembered that Rupert couldn’t see him. “OK,” he said.

  “Get some sleep.”

  The line went dead. Max put down his phone. He was close to tears as he sat at the kitchen table. But he stayed sitting there, his fingers numb and his feet growing cold on the tiled floor. He didn’t know what time it was. He stared at the crossword, waiting patiently for the letters he had written out to rearrange themselves into a word that made sense. There were three more clues left to complete the grid; he would not get up from the kitchen table until he had them.

  49

  August, just over a year since the premiere, and Kate hadn’t thought about Lewis once that day. She always took note of the time at which he entered her mind, and it was getting later and later. Seven, a month ago. Last week eight-thirty; and tonight it was already dark and she had not yet spared a thought for him.

  Kate liked to walk alone, particularly at night, particularly on a Thursday or a Friday when women were standing on the streets in high heels and tight dresses, and men were lurking. Sometimes, if it was particularly late and the women were particularly drunk, she put them in taxis, made sure they had enough cash, that the driver had the right address. She no longer walked with her eyes to the ground but would look at any man who looked at her or at other women, and she wouldn’t break eye contact until they looked away, confused. Sometimes, she even saw shame. The ones who kept on looking back were the ones who were dangerous. They were the ones who worried her.

  Tonight, though, she was not afraid. In fact she rarely felt fear, not now: at least not for her own safety. She knew that this was reckless, that there were far worse things that could have been done to her or that could still happen to her, but she believed that she could endure it, that she could look in the eye any man who hurt her and tell him, even as he raped her, even as he denied her her humanity, that this was his choice and not hers; that it was he who would have to live with it and not she. There were times when she thought she would be glad if it happened again, and this she had told to nobody, not even Andrew. If it happened again, she would get it right. This time she would scream, she would fight, and he would have to hit her. He would have to leave bruises that would correspond to the damage done, and she in turn would take his flesh into her fingernails, his cum inside her, so that she could walk herself to the police station, wearing his violence, and tell them what had been done. It didn’t even have to be the police, or the law: justice had little to offer her except a platform. All that mattered was to speak and to be heard. And this time, she knew, she would be her story’s sole teller.

  Kate was taking the long way home. The bus made her feel sick, so she was walking to the Tube instead, taking residential roads, where the streetlamps disappeared into the cherry trees. When she reached the turning to Venn Street, she stopped. On the billboard outside the Picturehouse Late Surfacing was listed. Kate had still not seen it all the way through. She went inside and bought a ticket from the vendor who gave her a flyer listing the events being held for a Zara Lalhou season. Kate smiled at him and folded the flyer into her back pocket.

  It was hot, that night, but in the auditorium somebody had opened a fire door down by the screen, which let in a slight breeze. She was wearing loose cotton shorts and ankle boots, and as the narrative began to unfold, she began to feel calm. She sank deep into her seat, propping her water bottle between her open legs and letting the cold water sit against her bare thighs. It still made her wet, being forced to think about rape, with a searing pain where the memory of her violation still ghosted inside her.

  Although she had deliberately positioned herself near the exit, this time she had no desire to leave. Once she had made it through the opening scene, she knew that she owed it to herself to see the film through to the end, and the longer she sat, the more capable she was of distancing her own experience from what she saw on-screen. The rape scene took place not in a bedroom but in the middle of the day in a brightly lit restaurant kitchen. When he pinned his victim to the tiled floor, he slammed her head against a black-and-white-checkered step so that she bled from the back of her skull. She bled too from her thigh, where he held a knife. Black, white, and red. Such clarity, such vibrancy. There was no ambiguity here.

  How Kate wished that there had been more clarity when she’d been in this woman’s position, but Lewis had moved so slyly, pinned her to such soft surfaces, had stopped short of breaking her skin, of leaving any visible lesions, not like the man on the screen. For Kate there had been only that private breach, the breach that nobody could see, a thick-bladed knife sliding into a cluster of nerve endings and then swiftly retreating, leaving the body to heal itself before anybody could bear witness to what had been done to it.

  When, at last, Kate saw the rapist unmasked, when she saw his brazen lack of guilt, she felt nothing. There was no fear, no loathing. There was only dispassion and the knowledge that he would eventually find that his narrow view of the world had left him nowhere to turn; that sooner or later his existence would lose all breadth and meaning; that he would find he had only the company of those who had an obligation to him, and in the darkness would be paralyzed by the knowledge that there was nobody there who cared who was not already obliged to care.

  She was relieved, when the film came to its end, that it was the woman he’d raped who killed him. There was a pleasing symmetry to his death, his blood on her white sheets, the back of his head caved in like an egg from where she had raised her metal lamp and brought it down upon his skull, the expression of disbelief that stayed on his face even after the fact, for as with rape, it was easier not to believe in murder. If only theoretically, structurally, Kate understood the desire for symmetry that propelled this penultimate act. Do to others as they have done to you.

  But the problem was that now that the final retribution had been committed, now that the balance had been restored, there was no longer a cause: this woman had brought her story to too neat a conclusion, her existence so narrowed by rage that there was no longer any reason for her to continue to live. As Kate watched, she knew that she would kill herself that way, too, if ever she wanted to. A sharpened knife between the ribs, slipping into flesh as easily as into a sheath: another act of symmetry. If she ever decided to do it, that was. She had not made up her mind about it and neither would she tomorrow. There was always the weekend; there could be weeks, perhaps decades, to come. There was no rush. There was only each day, and the next.

  For my parents

  Acknowledgments

  Jane Finigan and David Forrer, I could wish for no better champions. Kate Harvey, my editor, for her intelligence, empathy, and vision. Lucie Cuthbertson-Twiggs and the Vintage family for their suppor
t. Parisa Ebrahimi at Hogarth and Deborah Sun de la Cruz at Penguin Canada, whose wisdom has been invaluable. For their early guidance, Zoë Waldie and Peter Straus.

  Sara Adams, Abbi Brown, Madeleine Dunnigan, Charlotte Hamblin, Lexie Hamblin, and Emma Paterson—my first readers, who gave me courage. For their love and friendship, Johnny Falconer, James Browning, Hannah Barton, Raffaella Taylor-Seymour, and Rosie Faulkner. Guy Edmund-Jones, for the word petrichor, and for always believing in me. The incredible women—past, present, and honorary—of Number 8. Kace Monney, who has shown me there is more.

  My family, above all my parents, for everything.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rosie Price, born in 1992, grew up in Gloucestershire in England. She graduated from Cambridge University and worked as an assistant at a literary agency before leaving to focus on her own writing. She lives in London.

  A Reader’s Guide

  In order to provide reading groups with the most informed and thought-provoking questions possible, it is necessary to reveal certain aspects of the plot of this novel. If you have not finished reading What Red Was, we respectfully suggest that you do so before reviewing this guide.

  1. This is a novel that encompasses many themes and topics—including friendship, sexual violence, trauma, power, privilege, and consent—but which theme takes center stage for you and why?

  2. Did you think the differences in Kate and Max’s backgrounds may have caused a shift in power in their relationship? If so, how?

  3. If you believe there was an imbalance of power, how might it have affected Kate’s willingness to tell Max what happened?

  4. How might the differences in backgrounds between Kate and Lewis, real or perceived, have influenced what happened?

  5. Alcoholism plays a role in both families, but particularly in Max’s. What do you think this might suggest?

  6. “If she had been so wrong about what a color could be, then there was little about the world that she had understood correctly.” (This page) What does the color red come to symbolize for Kate?

  7. “She had only lately begun replaying her account silently to herself as if in court, picking holes out of inconsistencies, bringing accusations upon herself until she could no longer bear to think of it but neither could she not think of it, until she resolved never to tell anybody because the horror of being disbelieved was worse than the horror of bearing it alone.” (This page) Why do you think Kate decided to confide in Zara, and later Max and Andrew, about the rape?

  8. When Kate confides in Zara about the rape, Zara advises, “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.” Why do you think Zara gave this advice to Kate? Was it good advice?

  9. How did Zara and Kate each deal with their traumas differently?

  10. “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…and she wanted him to carry the burden with her, but only temporarily, just so he could feel for himself just how heavy it was….” (This page) How has Kate’s experience and her processing of it impacted her relationship with Max? What other reasons does she offer for “protecting” Lewis? In what other ways has Kate’s trauma surfaced as she processes her assault in her daily life?

  11. Are there other examples of violence—physical or emotional—towards women in Kate’s life?

  12. Was Zara right to use elements of Kate’s story in her film without asking permission? Why or why not?

  13. “It was not the attack in isolation, but what it did afterwards: the way it shattered perception, distorted senses, disabled the ability to trust and love and be loved, drained the world of color and light.” (This page) Do you think it was important for Zara to portray this graphic scene in her film? Did it a serve a purpose to ground Kate’s own experience and perception in reality or did it serve the opposite outcome by forcing her to revisit her trauma?

  14. Why do you think the author employed this type of narrative structure in the novel (an omniscient narrator encompassing multiple characters’ points of view)? How did it benefit the story? Did you find value in learning the perspective of a character like Lewis?

  15. While Zara’s film has a neat resolution, that doesn’t feel true to Kate’s experience. How do you feel about the way the novel ended for Kate? Where do you imagine Kate to be in one week, one year, ten years from the novel’s end?

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