The Girl Before(9)

It’s okay, I call out. I’m awake.

His footsteps pause outside the door. To show I’m not angry I add, I know you’re drunk.



Voices, indistinct. Whispering.

Which means he’s brought someone home. Some drunk colleague who didn’t make the last train back to the suburbs. That’s annoying, actually. I have a busy day tomorrow—today, now—and providing breakfast for Simon’s hung-over co-workers isn’t part of the plan. Although when it actually comes to it, I know Simon will be charming and funny and call me babe and beautiful and tell his friend how I almost became a model and isn’t he the luckiest man in the world and I’ll give in and just be late for work. Again.

I’ll see you later then, I call out, a bit peeved. They’ll probably get the Xbox out.

But the footsteps don’t move away.

Annoyed now, I swing my legs out of bed—I’m decent enough for a colleague, just, in an old T-shirt and boxers—and pull open the bedroom door.

But I’m not as quick as the figure on the other side, the one in the dark clothing and the balaclava who pushes his shoulder against it, hard and sudden, knocking me backward. I scream—at least, I think I do: It might just be a gasp, fear and shock paralyzing my throat. The kitchen light’s on, and I see the flash as he raises the knife. A small knife, such a small one, hardly bigger than a pen.

His eyes stand out against the dark wool of the balaclava. They widen as he takes in the sight of me.

Whoa! he says.

Behind him I see another balaclava, another set of eyes, more anxious this time.

Leave it, bruv, the second one says. One of the intruders is white, one black, but both are talking the same street slang.

Chill, the first one says. Sick, innit.

He raises the knife farther, until it’s directly in front of my face.

Gimme your phone, you stuck-up bitch.

I freeze.

But then I’m too quick for him. I reach behind me. He thinks I’m getting my phone but actually I’m grabbing my own knife, the big meat knife from the kitchen that’s on the bedside table. The handle comes into my hand, smooth and heavy, and in one fluid movement I bring it around so that it slides into the bastard’s belly, just below the ribs. It goes in easily. No blood, I think as I pull it out and stab him again. There’s no spurt of blood like there is in horror movies. That makes it easier. I punch the knife through his arm, then his abdomen, then lower still, somewhere around his balls, twisting it savagely into his groin. As he crumples to the ground I step over his body to the second figure.



You too, I tell him. You were there, you didn’t stop him. You little prick. I jam the knife into his mouth, as easy as mailing a letter.

And then everything goes blank, and I wake up screaming.

—

It’s normal, Carol says, nodding. It’s perfectly normal. In fact, it’s a good sign.

Even now, in the calm of the sitting room where Carol does her therapy sessions, I’m shaking. Nearby, someone is mowing a lawn.

How’s it good? I say numbly.

Carol nods again. She does this a lot, whenever I say pretty much anything in fact, as if to indicate that she doesn’t usually answer her clients’ questions but is going to make an exception, just this once, for me. For someone who is doing such good work, making such excellent progress, perhaps even turning a corner, as she concludes at the end of every session. She was recommended by the police, so she must be good, but to be honest I’d rather they caught the bastards than dished out therapists’ cards.

Fantasizing you had a knife might be your subconscious indicating that it wants to take control of what happened, she goes.

Really? I say. I tuck my feet under me. Even without shoes I’m not sure this is strictly allowed, given the pristine state of Carol’s sofa, but I reckon I might as well get something for my fifty quid. I say, Is this the same subconscious that’s decided I mustn’t remember anything that happened after I handed over my phone? Couldn’t it just be telling me what a dick I was not to keep a knife by my bed in the first place?

That’s one interpretation, Emma, she says. But not a very helpful one, it seems to me. Survivors of assault often blame themselves rather than the attacker. But the attacker is the one who’s broken the law, not you.

Look, she adds, I’m not so much concerned about the actual circumstances of what happened to you as the process of recovery. Seen from that perspective, this is a significant step. In these latest flashbacks, you’re starting to fight back—blaming your assailants rather than yourself. Refusing to be defined as their victim.

Except I am their victim, I say. Nothing changes that.



Am? Carol says quietly. Or was?

After a long, significant pause—a “therapeutic space” as she sometimes calls it, a pretty stupid way of describing what is, after all, just silence—she prompts gently: And Simon? How are things with him?

Trying, I say.

I realize this could be taken two ways, so I add, I mean he’s trying his best. Endless cups of tea and sympathy. It’s like he feels responsible because he wasn’t there. He seems to think he could have beaten them both up and made a citizen’s arrest. When actually, they’d probably have stabbed him. Or tortured him for his PIN numbers.

Carol says mildly, Society has a kind of…construct of what masculinity is, Emma. When that’s undermined, it can leave any man feeling threatened and uncertain.