The Girl I Used to Be(81)

When my parents offered to take Rory for a long walk along the beach, I agreed quickly. I sat on the sand and thought about what had happened. If David was the one who’d raped me that night, then Alex had died because of him. But he’d died because of me, too.

Why had I thought it was Alex? But try as I might, when I thought of that figure as he hurried from the room that night, I could see why I’d thought it was him. He was the same height, a similar build. It was the T-shirt, though, that had convinced me.

The Glastonbury festival had been on after our exams had ended. I’d known he was going. I don’t even know who had told me, but it was probably Lauren.

And then on the day of the party we’d had our exam results in the morning and he was wearing that T-shirt then. I’d stood behind him in the queue to get our results and I’d heard him talking about it, about The Coral, and how brilliant they were. For those ten minutes or so I was in that queue, I was standing just inches from his back and I knew the image well by the time I saw it on the back of the man leaving Alex’s bedroom.

I didn’t see David at the party. I certainly would have noticed someone wearing the same T-shirt. The photos that Jack had taken were pretty thorough. I couldn’t think of anyone he’d missed out. And David was only in one of them, one that was taken just before I went upstairs. I’d looked through them again and again, and he wasn’t there.

Rachel had told me about the list that Alex had written: a list of those at the party. He hadn’t written David’s name down. He mustn’t have seen him there.

And Jack knew him and hadn’t noticed he was there. I wondered then whether that had been deliberate on David’s part. I remembered what the therapist I’d seen when I was living in London had said about rape, about how it wasn’t caused by the desire for sex but for domination. Control. It was driven by anger, she’d said. Anger and hatred. It had confused me so much. I could never link those emotions to the Alex I’d known in school.

My phone beeped, startling me. It was a text from Rachel.

I’m so sorry I did those things to you.





SIXTY-THREE


    GEMMA


AS SOON AS I saw Rachel’s message, my anger toward her vanished. We both needed to focus on the person who’d done this to us, not each other. I was about to call the office to see whether she was there, when she called me.

“Rachel,” I said quickly, “I’m sorry, too.”

“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Neither of us is to blame.”

“I know,” I said. “But are you all right? What about last night?”

“It was okay,” she said. “Nothing happened. We just watched a couple of films and went to bed early. He had to be in Newcastle today for a meeting, so he set off at about five this morning.”

“Where does he work?”

“Andrews and Fitch,” she said. “They’re in Warrington, a big engineering company.”

“He’s in sales there?”

“No, he works in their legal department.”

So everything he’d told me was a lie. Of course it was. And then I thought about it. “He studied law at university?”

“Yes,” she said. “At Bristol. Why?”

She started to say something else, but I interrupted her. “Did he apply to Oxford?”

She stopped in her tracks. “Yes, he did. He didn’t get in, though. He missed out on an A grade in one subject.” She paused. “Why? Why does it matter where he went to university?”

I shrugged. “He told me he’d studied in London. Maths.” She was quiet and I guessed she already knew he’d told me that. I shook my head. I had to get over her involvement in this. So he lied about studying in London. He must have been trying to give us something in common. “He must have been angry that Alex got into Oxford and he didn’t.”

“I’ve never thought of that,” she said slowly. “He would have been angry with himself, too. He sets really high standards for himself. Actually I don’t think he would have been able to keep up the friendship with Alex long-term. It would always be a reminder of his own failure.”

I thought of David turning up at the party, furious and jealous. There must have been six or seven students from my year group that had got into Oxford, and I wondered how he’d felt as he hovered on the edge of groups that were excited about a future he was denied. I wondered whether that was what led him upstairs to me, the desire to punish. To take revenge.

How had he felt when Alex was arrested? Was that when David really started to celebrate his own success?

“I know I said I wanted to confront him,” said Rachel, “but I’m terrified.”

“So am I.” Just the thought of being in the same room as him made my heart pound. “I can’t do it. I’m too frightened of him.”

In the distance I saw my parents walking with Rory. Each of them was holding one of his hands and he was swinging between them. When he saw me looking at him, Rory started to run toward me. I felt awful for Rachel but I really couldn’t talk to her. All I had time to say was, “Sorry, I have to go. Call me later,” before he bounded on top of me, pinning me to the ground with hugs and kisses. I wrapped my arms around him and breathed in the summer smells of suntan lotion and ice cream, but my pulse was still racing at the thought of what we had to do.