The Family Remains(86)
‘No. I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess so? But I kind of liked being married to you, Rachel.’
He looked at her, flirtatiously, affectionately, as if all that lay between them were a failed romance, not rape, not blackmail, not the risotto crawling down the kitchen wall.
‘Michael. You raped me.’
‘Oh, come on, Rach. Hardly.’
‘I was asleep. You put your hand over my mouth. Around my throat. You fucking raped me.’
‘Rachel. Come on. You and I both know that you’d been waiting for me to take control. To dominate you. It was what you wanted. You know it was.’
Rachel pulled in her breath against the wave of pure rage that was throbbing around her rib cage. ‘Do you understand, Michael, the subtlety, the nuance of BDSM? Soft BDSM in particular? It’s a game between two people who both understand the rules. And you, Michael, did not understand the rules, and what you did to me was not a game. It was violent and it was misogynistic and brutal and animal. It was all about you, Michael, and nothing to do with me, and if you enjoyed what you did to me that night then you are not just a rapist, Michael – you are a fucking monster.’
He smiled at her then. It was his good-old-boy smile, the one he used to pull people into his orbit, that made them feel safe and golden. ‘Whatever you say, Rachel. Whatever you say. We both know the truth about that night.’
‘It’s called gaslighting, you know? What you’re doing? It’s a classic abuser technique.’
Michael snorted. ‘Abuser? Fuck’s sake, Rachel. I put you on a fucking pedestal. I worshipped you. I would have given you everything, if you’d let me. But no, one thing doesn’t go your way and boom, you were out of there. Like the princess I always secretly knew you were.’
‘You were lucky, Michael, that I didn’t go to the police.’
‘Yeah, Rachel, why didn’t you go to the police? If you were so sure you’d been “abused”.’ He made quote marks in the air.
‘Raped, Michael. Not abused. Fucking raped. And I did not go to the police because for so long I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, because if it had happened then that meant that I wasn’t me any more, and more than anything I needed to be me. But now I know that the two things can both be true; it can be true that I married a man who violently raped me, and it can also be true that I am strong and special. Just like it was for Lucy.’
‘Lucy?’ Finally she saw the smug smile fall from his face.
‘Yes. I met Lucy. A few months ago. She told me that you abused her too. Yet, wow, she is some woman. Isn’t she? Just beautiful. And holding it all together single-handedly with two kids.’
‘Two kids?’
‘Yeah. Her life didn’t stop after you. And neither will mine. Anyway, it’s been lovely seeing you, Michael. I just really, really wanted to see this house. I always thought you and I would spend time here together, but then it turned out you were a crook and liar and a total fucking loser. So yeah. Never mind.’
Rachel got to her feet and pulled her rucksack on to her shoulder. ‘Bye, Michael. Have a good summer. And good luck with the novel. Don’t forget to put the bit about raping women in it, will you? Your readers will be fascinated by that.’
She put her head around the corner at the back of the kitchen and called out to Joy: ‘Thanks so much, Joy, lovely to meet you!’ and then she left Michael’s house, slamming the door behind her, her feet hitting the sun-baked cobbles with a satisfying thud.
58
June 2019
The Chicago police give the children drinks from a vending machine and settle them in another room. In the room where Lucy sits there is a computer screen and on the screen is a pair of British police detectives, one black with close-cropped hair, wearing a short-sleeved linen shirt, and the other white with a thick fringe of brown hair, wearing a fitted green polo shirt. They introduce themselves to Lucy as Detectives Owusu and Muir and tell her they are talking to her from a room at Charing Cross Police Station. They tell her that they have just spoken to Libby and to Miller. The detective called Samuel Owusu says he has also spoken to a man called Justin Ugley today, whom Lucy may have known by the name of Justin Redding, and that he had told them that life in Lucy’s childhood home had been unpleasant, maybe even traumatic, and was there anything, he wants to know, that Lucy would like to tell them about the period of time when Libby was a baby, just before she and her brother Henry disappeared?
Lucy gulps drily and takes a sip of water. She is astounded that these detectives know so much. She is astounded that they have somehow found Justin, who for her feels like a sub-plot in a distant dream. She can’t even really remember what he looked like; he was always much more Henry’s friend than hers. She is astounded that they know her real name and that she is Libby’s mother.
‘What did Libby tell you?’ she asks now.
‘She told me very little. Because of course she was only a baby when these events occurred and so was not party or witness to them; all she would know would be what you and your brother might have told her. And what she would have read in her boyfriend’s magazine article. She didn’t know Birdie, she didn’t know Justin, she didn’t even know you, her own mother, until a year ago. Her insight was limited. Which is why we need to talk to you, Miss Lamb.’