The Lies We Told(50)

Jade got up to fetch her a tissue. ‘Look, please don’t upset yourself,’ she said, and then, as if she’d suddenly come to a decision, she went on: ‘The fact is, Luke cheated on me. We were very young, and you know what it’s like at uni, all the parties, everyone drunk most of the time. Luke and I got together in our first term and it was great for a while. But halfway through our second year I found out he’d slept with someone else.’

Clara looked at her in surprise. ‘Who with?’

‘A friend of a friend. I didn’t believe it, not at first. I went to find the girl myself. And as soon as I confronted her, I knew it was true.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ She remembered how she’d felt when she’d found out about Sadie, and she winced in sympathy.

Jade stared down at her cup. ‘It wasn’t just that he’d cheated on me,’ she said very quietly. ‘The girl was telling everyone that he’d pressured her into it, that they’d kissed but then she’d changed her mind and he’d pestered and pestered her until she gave in. And afterwards, Luke started harassing her …’

‘Harassing her?’

‘She said he turned up the next night, and when she said no and showed him the door, he began bombarding her with texts, turning up at her place, trying it on with her. She said he was a nightmare, and in the end she reported him to the university. God, I felt so ashamed – you can imagine the gossip.’

Clara’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Did you talk to him about it?’

‘Of course. He was very upset, burst into tears in fact, admitted that he’d got hammered at a party and kissed the girl, but denied everything else. Said she was lying, insane, that she’d come on to him, had wanted to take things further, then made it all up about him harassing her because he’d turned her down.’

‘Jesus. And did you believe him?’

She paused. ‘I didn’t know what to believe.’

‘But … didn’t this girl show you the text messages she said he’d been sending her? The missed calls and so on. I mean, did she have the evidence?’

‘No. No, she didn’t. She deleted it all. She said that as soon as he sent her a message it freaked her out so much she got rid of it, that she didn’t want to give him headspace.’

‘Well … she could have been lying,’ Clara said desperately. ‘She could have made it up.’

‘Yeah, she could have.’

‘OK, so …’

Jade shrugged. ‘Why would she lie about it? She was so certain, so sincere. You can usually tell, can’t you, when another woman’s lying to you. In the end the uni let him off with a warning. Typically, he got no comeback, apart from me dumping him of course, and a reputation for being a pest, but the general feeling was “naughty old Luke, boys will be boys” sort of thing. He continued to swear blind that the girl was lying, and he certainly had no trouble getting another girlfriend. Let’s be honest, it’s the sort of thing that happens all the time, just the sort of shit women are expected to put up with, be flattered by, even.’

Clara thought about it. About a time at a party when she was a teenager, a lad she’d fancied buying her shot after shot after shot, then, later, things going too far, too quickly, him not taking no for an answer until she finally managed to push him off. She’d told no one, worried it had been her fault for leading him on. Jade was right that it happened all the time, in different forms. A friend who often slept with her boyfriend when she didn’t feel like it because she couldn’t stand his endless moods if she didn’t, the time Zoe had been hit on by her flirty boss, who’d then made her life miserable when she’d turned him down. They were ordinary men, not monsters leaping out of bushes: friends, boyfriends, colleagues, getting drunk, getting carried away. A bit selfish. A bit entitled.

She remembered the emails Luke had been sent: Women are nothing to you, are we, Luke? We’re just here for your convenience, to fuck, to step over, to use or to bully. We’re disposable. You think you’re untouchable. Think again.

‘Did you tell the police about this?’ she asked.

Jade shifted in her seat, looking slightly uncomfortable. ‘No, it’s not something I like to dwell on. And there’s no way it would have anything to do with Luke going missing now, so I didn’t think it was relevant.’

‘Can you remember the girl’s name?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Her name was Ellen. Ellen Michaels. We have a few Facebook friends in common from our uni days and I saw that she’d got married recently, in fact. She’s living in Hong Kong now.’ Jade was silent for a bit. ‘I wonder if she thinks about it ever, about what happened with Luke.’

‘So what did Jade say?’ Mac asked her later that evening ‘Anything interesting?’

They were slumped on his sofa, picking at a stir-fry she’d made for them. And to her own surprise, Clara found herself saying, ‘No. Not really. Bit of a waste of time, to be honest.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a shame. So who’s next on the list?’

‘A couple of his old colleagues,’ she said vaguely. ‘I’ll get on to them tomorrow.’

She realized that she couldn’t quite face telling Mac what Jade had told her. He would, she knew, be as horrified and shocked as she was, yet she also knew that his loyalty to Luke might lead him to defend his friend, suggest that the girl was exaggerating perhaps, or even making it up, and though part of her was desperate to believe that, to be persuaded that the person she had loved for three years was incapable of behaving so badly, she also couldn’t quite face hearing it brushed aside, denied or disbelieved either. She watched as Mac got up and began to clear the plates away, and when he smiled at her, she smiled too, before turning back to the TV.