The Things We Do to Our Friends(77)

I had thought of her from time to time over the years. The few memories I had of her were of her smiling as she ran around the lake, throwing herself in, running up to the car afterward, dripping with water. Her body, all shiny like a wet fish in her swimming costume.

And that was how it had happened. We had called my father afterward, and he presented it to the police. And we told them what had happened. He was a predator. A violent man who’d attacked us out of nowhere, picked us up and dropped us off as a favor, then stayed on without invitation. Mauled at us with fat hands. It was disgusting—we were practically the same age as his own daughters and, fighting for our lives, we’d managed to slip him something. To drug him. After all, there were three of us. Why would three teenage girls abduct a grown man? Well, this girl’s mother had corroborated our tale when she stood up in court looking haggard, her clothes hanging on her tiny frame, and her hair scraped back so you could see dandruff on her shoulders. She was sorry, she said, so sorry for those poor girls who he’d abducted (because by then the idea he’d abducted us was firmly established), and yes, she had perhaps seen something in him, something dark when they’d been sitting together in a restaurant. His hand inching up her leg to the top of her thigh and then pinching her hard and twisting the flesh, enjoying her wince. At the time maybe she’d convinced herself she’d enjoyed it. She hadn’t really, and there was that time at a dinner party when he’d accused her of being too loud in front of his colleagues, saying she sounded like a whore, and he’d laughed and said he was glad he wasn’t paying for it. She said she was terribly sorry for those girls, especially considering her own daughters, so young now, but if he was that type of man then who knows what could have happened, or what had already happened.

The court case had been difficult. All three sets of parents were heavily involved, and the publicity caused the man’s business to fail, so the family was left with virtually nothing.

The girl had to withdraw from school along with her sister. As for us, we withdrew too.

I looked hard at the girl, couldn’t stop myself, but it wasn’t her I was seeing. It was her mother. I felt bad for them all.

“I can’t help you,” I said.

That was what did it, and her face broke. Everything she had been holding in came out, and she looked so ugly.

“You’re disgusting,” she spat.

Time for it to end.

“I’m sorry. I think you should leave,” I said as authoritatively as I could.

“Fine.” She stood up.

“Can I ask you how you found me?” I asked.

She sneered. “A friend of yours called me up and said she thought I might be interested in speaking to you. I wasn’t looking for you before.”

“When did she call you?”

She seemed insulted at my question. “Why would I tell you anything else?” she said. “I wanted to give you a chance to tell the truth and to let my family have some peace. I know it didn’t happen like you said it did, but you obviously don’t care about any of that.”

I stood up to match her. “Have you been calling me? At night?” I asked her.

“Calling you? No.” She barked the “no.” I could tell that she was clinging on to the faint hope that I might say something to help her.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You can go back and tell your mother that I’m sorry about the way it all panned out.”

She didn’t have anything with her, no bag or coat, and it looked like she could have appeared from anywhere. She nodded, no crying or shouting, and I admired her self-restraint.

Did I want to tell her about that night? I couldn’t. What would I have said?

She was stiff like she didn’t quite know how to cut the exchange off. She didn’t even seem angry anymore, just tired, and I thought she was about to walk out.

Then I saw there was a problem. I couldn’t just let her leave.

She’d found me, and there was no way that was going to be enough. How could it be? Who knew which one of them had given her my details.

I’d learned so much about self-control since Dina and Adrienne. I didn’t shout or even raise my voice, but I knew I needed to handle her. Nip it in the bud.

“You should leave, and you can’t come back here,” I said.

She pursed her lips. “And why is that?”

“If you come back, if you get in contact with me, I’ll find your mother and tell her stories about your father. I’ll find her and tell her things that will mean she’ll never be able to sleep again.”

She went to speak and I interrupted her. “It’ll be your worst nightmare. Like you said, I’m a liar. Even if she doesn’t believe me, it doesn’t matter.”

The girl was braver than I would have thought. I could see her rooting around, trying to think of what she could say. A million thoughts and options: she weighed them up. “I won’t come back here,” she said mechanically.

Once she’d left, I collapsed on to the sofa and Ashley came out of her bedroom.

“That was quick. What was all that about? Where was that girl from? She sounded foreign.”

“Foreign” was said with a nervous tremor.

“Just someone I used to know,” I replied.

“Oh, fun!” She smiled, waiting for more.