The Girl I Used to Be(60)

“But, Rachel,” I said, “I was raped. Alex raped me.”

Even though it happened years ago, I still struggled to say those words.

“Don’t you dare say that! He wouldn’t do that.” Her voice broke. “You know what he was like—how could you think he’d rape someone?”

“I was there,” I said. “I was the one it happened to.”

“Nothing happened!” she shrieked. “You lied to the police and Alex was arrested. And then you said you wouldn’t testify. After doing all that damage! You’re the reason Alex died. You’re the reason my dad left. And it’s because of you that my mum died. Everything bad that’s happened to my family has happened because of you.”

She stood in front of me, red-faced and triumphant, but all I could think about were those years after the party where I’d had no self-respect and had put myself in dodgy situations with men I didn’t even know, stupidly thinking that initiating things with them would mean I was in control. It had taken a therapist to show me that I was no more in control with them than I’d been that night at the party. If I hadn’t had that help, I don’t know what would have happened to me. And even now, with Joe, I knew that my problems with him were because I couldn’t assert myself. I couldn’t do it that night at the party and I hadn’t been able to do it since.

My mother was on my side—she had been every day of my life—but she’d worried that I wouldn’t be believed. I refused to testify because of that, but now, fifteen years on, I could see that she was right.





FORTY-FIVE


    RACHEL




Last year

IT WAS ON the night of my mother’s funeral that I decided to take revenge on Gemma.

After he kissed me, David said, “Come on, Coco,” and we drank our cocktails in a hurry and left the bar. We were at the Albert Dock in Liverpool and there was a hotel facing us. I said, “Serendipity,” and he laughed and kissed me again. Within minutes we were in bed. When he discovered it was my first time he was so tender. So gentle. I hadn’t dreamed it would be like that.

Much later he rang room service for drinks and we sat out on the balcony overlooking the river, watching as the lights popped on along the dockside. The sky was growing dark, the breeze was fresh, and though it was chilly and there was the threat of rain in the air, there was nowhere I’d rather have been. Being with David felt like I’d been given the chance of a new life, as though I was reborn, not as something new, but as the girl I’d been before it all went wrong. Before I lost my family. Now it was like my family had returned to me. When he put his arms around me I felt sheltered. Protected. Something I hadn’t experienced in such a long time. Like family, it didn’t take long to catch up with what we’d done in the years since we’d last met.

I knew at the time he’d gone to Bristol University when Alex went to Oxford, and my mum had heard from someone that he’d gone abroad to work after his degree. Philadelphia, she’d said. He’d married someone there. I hadn’t known the marriage had ended until he told me that afternoon. He told me a bit about it then, though he seldom mentioned it later. He told me he hadn’t known her well on their wedding day, that he was in love with her until they’d been married a few months, when he really got to know her. He said that was when he knew it was over.

Of course I didn’t have much to contribute when it came to my past. I was so much younger than he was, but I’d hardly done anything anyway.

“So you had to be with your mum the whole time?” he asked in disbelief. “But aren’t you working?”

“I haven’t worked for over a year,” I said. “I’ll be looking for jobs now, of course. When she became ill—well, when she admitted to being ill—I had to stay at home with her. At least she couldn’t drink as much then.”

“She had a drink problem?” He frowned. “I don’t remember that. Alex never told me.”

You can’t believe how good it was to have a conversation where Alex’s name was dropped in, as though he were still here. Ever since he’d died I’d wanted to share my memories of him with someone who knew him, too. My mother talked about him incessantly. If I spoke she just spoke louder. She wanted me to be there, but only as an audience for her monologue. If I talked about him I could predict the time it would take for her to find a bottle to comfort her. It was her loss, that was made clear, not mine. She said I was too young to remember him properly and that only a mother knows true love. Friends avoided talking about him, in case I got upset, and of course my dad went after a year or so, so there was nobody, until I met up with David again, to whom I could talk about Alex. Not about what happened, so much, not about his death, but just passing remarks about him, about what he liked to do, things he’d said.

“It started after Alex died. She hadn’t really drunk that much before. I’d never noticed it, anyway, but then I was only young. But afterward . . . She became a full-on alcoholic. Within a couple of years I couldn’t ask anyone home. I couldn’t go to sleepovers; I was too worried that she’d fall down the stairs or choke on her own vomit.”

He hugged me. “That sounds really tough.”

“I think she’d known for years that she was ill. She kept it from me.” Tears sprang to my eyes. “I think she just wanted to die. She didn’t tell me anything was wrong until that last year. I’d noticed she’d lost weight, but then she’d been thin for years. She wasn’t interested in eating.”