The Sanatorium(108)

“It wasn’t one of those clichés,” Cecile continues. “A stranger, dragging me off to some dark alley. He was my friend. Your best friend. Practically part of the family, and I was sixteen, Lucas. A kid.”

“Cecile, don’t—” Lucas’s words are slurred.

“What is it, Lucas? You don’t like hearing what you tried to ignore?” Her expression hardens. “Daniel and I were kissing, laughing about needing to be quiet, not waking anyone. Then he started pulling up my dress, nudged my legs apart. I tried to say no but he clamped his hand over my mouth, and then he raped me.” She shakes her head, self-recriminatory. “I did nothing. Froze. The opposite of what I thought I’d do in a situation like that. Just let him do it.”

Lucas watches her, tiny flakes of snow catching in his hair.

“When he finally climbed off me, I turned my head to you. You pretended to be asleep, but I’d seen your eyes open. I knew you were awake, had seen what he’d done.”

He clears his throat. “That isn’t right, Cecile, you know it isn’t.”

“It is, Lucas. It sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? That you wouldn’t have done something? Tried to stop him? I thought so too. The next day, I kept running through it in my mind, wondering why you didn’t pull him off, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. Thought you weren’t sure what you’d seen, or didn’t want to embarrass me.” She steps toward him.

Elin tenses. Despite the cold, she can feel sweat beading on her forehead.

“I never thought that would be it, Lucas. I kept waiting for you to say something, ask me what happened, if I was okay.” Cecile hesitates, a new rhythm, curious, autonomic, to her words. “I had it all planned out: what would happen after we talked, how we’d go to our parents, tell the police.”

Lucas, too, has sensed something awry in her robotic tone. He’s rousing slightly, trying to change position, lift himself higher, but the sedative she’s given him is making his movements slow, labored.

“But it didn’t happen, did it, Lucas?”

“Cecile, I was a kid. We both were. I didn’t know exactly what happened, how to handle it.”

“No.” Her eyes harden. “You weren’t a kid. A kid might lie once, but not twice.” She turns to Elin. “A few weeks later, I managed to tell our parents.” Her words are crisp, precise. “They asked you, didn’t they, Lucas? I know they did. They asked you and you lied. Pretended you hadn’t seen anything.”

Elin sees the first flicker of emotion, and with it a glimpse of something in Cecile’s hand—a blade, overhead lights bouncing beads of reflection off the metal. She can feel her fingers juddering at the sight, has to clamp them into a fist to stop the movement.

“After everything I’d done for you . . . all those hours in the hospital, then at school, standing up for you against the bullies. This was the one thing I needed you to do for me, and you couldn’t do it. Couldn’t put your head above the parapet.”

Lucas’s expression changes, a jerky move from shock to guilt. His bloodshot eyes roam across Cecile’s face before he hangs his head. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Cecile says flatly, her grip on the knife tightening, knuckles turning white. “Sorry doesn’t do it now, Lucas. Because you didn’t stand up for me and tell the truth. Mama and Papa tried to cover the whole thing up. Thought there was an ‘explanation.’” She rolls her eyes. “They knew I had a crush on him, so I never worked out if they simply didn’t believe me or just took the easy way out. Chose not to rock the boat because they were friends with the family, and Daniel was Papa’s golden boy. All they said was that it was over, that bad things happen sometimes and there was no point going over it, making myself upset.” She gives an icy smile. “Even when I found out I was pregnant, they told me not to make a fuss. I had an abortion, and that was the end, in their eyes.”

Lucas turns his head. Elin knows why he can’t look at Cecile: guilt. He’s trying to literally block it out, block Cecile out.

“Things were never the same after that.” Cecile takes a breath. “When I tried to swim, all I saw, with every stroke, was his face looming over me. Every pore, every freckle. His body pushing down on mine, proving it was stronger than me.” She pauses. “It made me feel . . . tiny. That all the strength I had in the pool . . . it was imagined. Nothing compared to his strength, his power.” Cecile steps forward again, twisting the handle of the knife between her fingers.

Lucas’s eyes spring open, sensing the movement.

“That’s how he made me feel, you know. Like nothing.” Cecile holds up her hand, only a tiny gap remaining between finger and thumb. “That small. A fraud. Every time I got in the pool, I couldn’t perform. The racing, my career . . . it was over.”

“But you never spoke to me about it.” Lucas’s words are still slow, indistinct. “I didn’t know how it had affected you.”

“You didn’t ask, Lucas. You didn’t ask because it was easier to look the other way. Daniel was your friend and you chose your friend over me.”

She falls silent. Elin watches her, sensing there’s more to come.

“I suppressed it, tried to be normal. I gave up on swimming, went to hotel school in Lausanne. I started to convince myself I could have a different future, that I wouldn’t be defined by what Daniel had done.” Cecile kicks at the snow on the decking with her feet. “That’s when I met Michel. A year or so later, I tried to get pregnant. Nothing happened. We had tests, and the specialist said I couldn’t get pregnant. I had an infection after the abortion. . . . It made me infertile.”