‘Go to the police tomorrow morning. Tell them you’re dropping the charges.’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘I’ll give you until five o’clock tomorrow. If I haven’t heard from the police that they’ve stopped the investigation by then, I’ll have no choice but to tell them what you did. And I don’t want to do that.’
‘No,’ Quinn said again, but he’d already hung up. She dialled Hannah’s number with shaking fingers.
‘Hey!’ came Hannah’s cheery voice. ‘Have you heard from the police? Have they started bringing in the women for questioning yet?’
Tears began to flood from Quinn’s eyes. ‘I’ve fucked up, Hannah.’
‘What? What’s happened?’
Choking on her words, Quinn told Hannah about her confrontation with Simon, how she’d showed him the photos, how he’d threatened her.
‘Oh, fucking hell, Quinn,’ Hannah said when she’d finished. Her voice was hard, angry. ‘Why do you have to be so impulsive?’
‘I didn’t … I didn’t think,’ Quinn stumbled.
‘That’s just it, you never stop to think; you just act. I told you not to take those photos.’
Shame swelled inside Quinn. Hannah was right; she put more thought into choosing her lingerie than major life decisions. She was forty-two years old, for Christ’s sake, and she was still having temper tantrums. ‘What do you think I should do?’ she asked dully.
‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do. You’ve breached some pretty serious privacy laws.’
‘We did,’ Quinn said in a small voice.
‘Yeah, we did,’ Hannah conceded. ‘And if you’d done what I said, we would’ve pulled it off. You might’ve been halfway to a conviction by now.’
‘So you think I should drop the charges?’
‘You don’t really have a choice. Simon was right; this will pretty much destroy your case.’
‘Represent me,’ Quinn said desperately. ‘Be my lawyer. We’ll take him on together.’
Hannah gave a blustery sigh. ‘I haven’t practised law in eight years. I’d need to apply for my practising certificate again, and inform the regulator, and meet the compulsory continuing legal education requirements. It’s too late.’
Hannah’s formal language made Quinn feel small, as Hannah must have known it would. ‘Oh.’
‘I can’t believe you’d be so stupid,’ Hannah said. Quinn shrank and shrank beneath the contempt in her tone until she thought she might disappear. ‘Haven’t you got yourself in enough mess already?’
Deep down, Quinn knew that Hannah’s cutting words came from a place of frustration and love, but it hurt too much to hear them coming out of her friend’s mouth. She had to make her stop now, before all the judgements burrowed their way so deep inside that they became part of her.
‘You want to talk about mess, Hannah?’ she snapped. ‘You want to talk about the giant fucking mess I got you out of? I committed a crime for you, and I’ve never once asked you for anything in return. Think about that while you’re calling me stupid.’
She hung up. Then she went immediately to Facebook and searched for Patrick’s name. There he was: Patrick Yates. His good-natured face smiled back at her from the screen, a balm for her blistering pain. She sent him a friend request. When, a few minutes later, he accepted, she opened up a message to him and began to type.
Can I see you? I need a friend right now.
She saw that he had read her message, but he didn’t respond. She waited half an hour, an hour, until self-loathing began trickling into her, gradually filling her belly until she thought she might drown in it. All these years of insisting she didn’t need anyone, of pretending she was this tough woman who had claimed her own destiny, trodden her own path, and this is where it had left her: alone. No one who loved her. No friends, other than Hannah, but after the things she’d just said, it was obvious she thought Quinn was a lost cause too. A loser. Worthless.
After another half an hour, she opened Tinder and swiped right on the first option that came up.
Constable Findlay looked confused when Quinn told her she wanted to drop the charges against Simon.
‘Are you sure?’ she said. ‘I think you might’ve been onto something with that thing about the sexual harassment training.’
Quinn ground her teeth. ‘I’m sure. I made a mistake.’
Findlay looked closely at her. ‘For what it’s worth, I believe you. If he’s intimidating you, we can protect you.’
Quinn stood up, itching to flee before she blurted everything out and incriminated herself even further. ‘Sorry to waste your time.’
‘You know you can always re-open the investigation at a later time if you change your mind.’ Findlay’s gaze was laced with pity Quinn couldn’t stand to see.
‘Thank you.’ She hurried out of the police station, the tears behind her eyes threatening to fall.
Alistair was not as sympathetic as Constable Findlay had been. When Quinn told him she’d asked the police to discontinue their investigation, he pursed his lips and gave a little sigh. ‘This is a serious thing you’ve done, Quinn. You accused a good man with a family of a crime he didn’t commit. We don’t look well on those kinds of values at this agency.’
Bile rose in Quinn’s throat. ‘I didn’t say it didn’t happen. I just said I didn’t want to pursue charges.’
Alistair tut-tutted. ‘I’m sure you can understand that makes it rather difficult to take you at your word.’
‘So are you firing me, then?’
He gave a little laugh. ‘Oh, no. I don’t think we need to go that far. But I’d like you to be a better team player from here on.’
Quinn nodded, too angry to speak.
‘I’ll give Simon a call today. I’ll tell him to take the whole two weeks, let things blow over.’ He stood up from his chair, signalling Quinn’s dismissal. ‘Thank you for telling me, Quinn.’
By the time Quinn got back to her office, Simon had sent her a message:
Good girl. I look forward to continuing to work together.
Her jaw clenched together so hard she thought her teeth would break. The prospect of several more years of working with Simon, watching him pick off his next victim, with little hope of anyone ever believing or even acknowledging her story, was more than she could bear. Alistair had shown that he would sooner believe the word of a man with a documented history of, at the very least, sexual harassment, over hers. She may have kept her job, but it was clear that her trajectory at the agency was over.
She could sit back and let it happen, or she could take action. She was done waiting.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
HANNAH
Hannah hadn’t meant to explode at Quinn like that. She’d been so absorbed with worrying over the part she’d played in accessing those records that she’d lashed out without thinking about how much worse Quinn must be feeling about it.
Quinn’s voicemail recording sounded in Hannah’s ear as she ignored yet another of her calls, and Hannah began to worry that Quinn would do something even more foolish now that she had no further pathways to punish Simon for what he’d done.
Nevertheless, Hannah was still angry. If Quinn had just listened to her, done what she’d advised instead of flying off the handle the second someone pissed her off, she wouldn’t be in this position. She refused to be helped, and nothing frustrated Hannah more than a client who didn’t follow advice.
Then there had been Quinn’s plea for Hannah to be her lawyer, and for one euphoric second, Hannah had imagined it. Imagined returning to the courtroom, fighting an unwinnable case, engaging the brain that had once been her most formidable weapon … before she’d laid it down in exchange for dangling plastic toys over a baby’s face; pushing chubby toddlers on swings; making school lunches; reading picture books and tucking kids in bed. She’d wanted it with a ferocity that took her breath away. She loved her kids, she did, but there was nothing – nothing – in the world that compared to t
he feeling of standing up for those with no power. And for that brief second, she’d wanted it more than she’d ever wanted anything before. The next second, of course, she’d realised it was impossible, and she’d hated Quinn for that, wanted to tear her down for the feeling of powerlessness it had left her with, the knowledge that when she hung up from the call, she’d have to return to emptying the dishwasher, wiping down the benches, sweeping the crumbs off the floor, and telling Sam for the six hundredth time to go back to bed.
But what had really tipped Hannah over the edge, what had crunched her insides ever since, had been Quinn’s jab at the end, the reminder that Hannah was no stranger to breaking the law. That she had, in fact, broken the law well before she’d even become a lawyer. And there was something else, something Hannah couldn’t bear to name, something that had seemed like the hint of a threat. Quinn had the power to destroy her if she wanted to. If it came to that. If Hannah didn’t watch herself. The threat had always been there, swimming below the surface of their friendship, she realised. And Quinn had been waiting for it all this time.
Ethan had seemed relieved when Hannah told him Quinn had dropped the case. ‘It’s probably for the best,’ he’d said.
Hannah had been puzzled by this comment at first. How could a rapist getting away with their crime be for the best? But then she’d realised that he was referring to the amount of time she’d been spending with Quinn.
‘I’ve missed you,’ he’d murmured the night she’d fought with Quinn over the phone. ‘Seems like you’ve hardly been around lately.’ While she’d cleaned her teeth, he’d kissed his way down her neck to her shoulder, and Hannah had had to resist the almost overpowering urge to push him away. Often, she found her husband’s predictable sexual urges boring. Their infrequent couplings almost invariably began in the same way, with few variations to positions and mild dirty talk (his, not hers). The sex was fine. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had an orgasm (with him, anyway), but she didn’t care enough to make any changes or talk to him about it. Besides, sex wasn’t the only thing that made a good relationship. It wasn’t a deal breaker for her. There were other, more important things she loved about him.
Despite her frustration with Quinn, Hannah missed her. Her friend’s absence had left a hole in her life, and she craved the carefree pandemonium and emotional intimacy they’d once shared.
Days after Quinn had hung up on her, the names of the women in Simon’s file refused to leave Hannah’s mind as she ferried the kids from holiday activity to playground to swimming pool. The police probably hadn’t even got around to calling any of them in for questioning before Quinn had blown up the whole case. But they deserved the opportunity to talk about what they’d been through, too. Maybe, if they could be convinced to speak out, Quinn would have a case again. Hannah may not be able to practise law now, but she could still play a role in finding justice. If she could gather a team of women, all with similar stories to tell, she could not only give Quinn what she needed, but also get a serial sex offender off the streets.
One day, while the kids were all in the pool for swimming lessons, and she had half an hour with two free hands, she got out her phone and entered the first woman’s name into the search engine.
It took longer than Hannah had expected to track down the women. She didn’t know what any of them looked like, for a start. And some of them had common names, so she had to cross-match the search results against the scant work history she was able to find, and hope she’d remembered the details Quinn had told her about them correctly.
After a few days, though, she had got in contact with Andrea Finch, the first woman they had found in Simon’s file, and convinced her to meet up for a coffee. Hannah had been upfront in her initial message: she knew Simon was due back to work in a week, and she wanted to get things back on track before then so he’d be forced to stay away for longer. It was the only way she knew how to protect Quinn. She hadn’t been completely truthful, though. She’d told Andrea that Quinn was her client and she had reason to believe Simon might have done the same thing to other women. It wasn’t entirely ethical, but Hannah reasoned that she hadn’t exactly told a lie. She was a lawyer, and she was trying to track down other victims. The fact that she couldn’t actually practise law right now was beside the point. And the fact that Andrea had agreed to speak to her without argument confirmed that there was something to tell.
She found the next woman, Freya, quickly. By coincidence she worked with one of the others, and before Hannah knew it they’d both agreed to come along to the meeting with Andrea. Three birds, one stone. This was going a lot smoother than she’d expected.
But the last two women weren’t quite so easy to track down. One had moved interstate, so she was out, and it took another couple of days to find the final one on Facebook. Samantha was unemployed, she told Hannah when she replied to the message, and had been since she’d left Big Sky two years earlier. She made no bones about the fact that her fate was solely due to ‘that prick, Simon Mandalay’. Hannah’s heartbeat quickened at this. If she hadn’t already known she had a case, she knew it then. She offered to buy Samantha a coffee if she would agree to come along.
Now she had everything set up, she sent Quinn a text with the details, hoping it wouldn’t all come to nothing and be one more in a long line of crushing disappointments.
Hannah got to the cafe early, then fidgeted over a coffee while she waited for the four women – and Quinn – to arrive. Quinn hadn’t answered her message the night before, but Hannah felt sure she would show.
Lalita Patel appeared first, thin and nervous-looking. She paused just inside the doorway, looking around the cafe, until Hannah stood and beckoned to her.
‘Hi, Lalita, I’m Hannah. Thanks so much for agreeing to talk to me.’
They sat down at the table. Lalita clasped her slender fingers together. ‘I’m not sure if I even remember Quinn,’ she said. ‘I didn’t work at Big Sky for very long.’
‘And what are you doing now?’
‘I’m at Cliffords, with Freya. She left not long after I was made redundant, but I didn’t know her very well then.’ Her hands worked. ‘It was only once we were both at Cliffords that we realised what we had in common.’
‘Wait, you were made redundant?’ Hannah said.
‘Not long after I complained about his behaviour.’ Lalita nodded. ‘The managing partner was so nice to me during the whole complaint process, but then, two weeks later, he called me into his office and said the agency hadn’t been doing too well and they had to let me go. Oh, there’s Freya.’ She waved to a woman who’d just walked in.
Freya looked around fifty and had shoulder-length blonde hair pulled back in a low ponytail. Hannah introduced herself and waited until she’d sat down before speaking. ‘What about you? Were you made redundant too?’
‘Oh yeah,’ Freya said. ‘It was a convenient story, because then they could fire us without an explanation. Tell you what, though, it was a pretty generous payout for an agency that wasn’t doing too well.’
‘They paid you off,’ Hannah said.
‘Yup. And I knew it, too, but after what happened I weighed up my options and decided the money would do more for me than being dragged through the courts trying to get a conviction with zero evidence.’
Hannah grimaced. ‘I understand.’
‘Of course, that was before I knew what he’d done to Lalita. And now, knowing he’s done it to others … it makes me feel bloody sick.’
‘What did he do to you?’ came a voice from behind Hannah, and she twisted in her seat to find Quinn standing behind her. It was such a relief to see her friend again that she immediately got to her feet and hugged her. Quinn stood stiffly in her arms, but when Hannah withdrew, she gave her a tight little smile before joining them at the table.
‘Why don’t we wait until the others arrive?’ Hannah suggested. ‘Then you can all tell your stories and I’ll note it all down.’
Andrea showed
up next. She remembered Quinn, but hadn’t met the other two women. And though Hannah hadn’t seen a photo of Samantha, she knew it was her the second she walked in. She was wearing an old, stretched-looking T-shirt over faded jeans and scuffed sneakers. Her auburn hair hung in greasy strips over her shoulders. She must have been around thirty, but she looked much younger as she spotted them and came over, shaking all of their hands with limp, nail-bitten fingers. Hannah ordered the coffees then returned to the table to sit with the five women.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s start from the beginning. Who was first?’
‘Probably me,’ Freya said. ‘Simon had a reputation for being a nice guy, so when he started giving me compliments, I guess I was flattered by the attention … it’d been a long time since anyone had made me feel attractive, and it felt good. And because it was all out in the open, it seemed harmless, you know?’
They all nodded, even Samantha.
‘He touched my bum a few times in the work kitchen. I knew it was unprofessional, but he seemed like he was just joking around, and I knew he had a family … I didn’t think he’d put that at risk.’
‘That’s how he gets away with it.’ Andrea’s mouth was a grim line. ‘Everyone assumes they’re the only one who doesn’t get the joke, so we all stay quiet.’
‘One day he grabbed my boobs while I was making a cup of tea,’ Freya went on. ‘That’s when I made the complaint to Alistair.’
‘What did Alistair say?’ There was an edge to Quinn’s voice.
Freya flashed Quinn a sad little smile. ‘He said he was sorry it had happened, but he didn’t think Simon had meant anything by it. He said he’d speak to him and make sure it didn’t happen again. So I let it go, until the next time.’
‘The next time?’ Hannah said.
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