‘Would it have made her burden any easier to know that her daughter was raped? I could hear the family crying out, If only we had known! Then they would have turned on me. Rightly. There was and is no way round it, I bear responsibility for Mariam’s death. Seventeen years and nine months old. I left Sana where she sat and hurried out of the house, avoiding the rest of the family. I couldn’t face them. Especially her father. And Mariam’s darling, the little girl, Surayya I was so close to. I walked away from the house and I’ve never been back. Sana wrote to me a few days later, when Mariam’s brilliant exam results came through. I didn’t reply. To be involved with the family in any way would’ve been to add to my deceit. How could I be with them and visit the grave, as she was suggesting, when my presence would be a constant lie?
‘So I grieved alone for my friend. There was no one I dared speak to about her. You’re the first person, Charlie, I’ve told this story to. I grieved and fell into a long depression. I delayed my university course. My father sent me to the doctor, who prescribed antidepressants and I was glad of the cover, and pretended to take them. I think I could have gone under completely that year if it hadn’t been for my one ambition in life – justice. By which I mean, revenge.
‘Gorringe was still living in his bedsit on the edge of Salisbury and that was fortunate, I thought, as I made my plans. I’m sure you’ve guessed what they were. He was working in a café, saving up to go travelling. When at last I felt strong enough, I went in there with a book. I studied him and fed my hatred. And I was friendly towards him when he spoke to me. I let a week go by before I went back. We spoke again – about nothing much. I could see he was interested and I waited for him to ask me round to his place. First time, I told him I was busy. By the next I could see he was getting really keen and I agreed to call on him. I could hardly sleep for thinking and planning. I would never have imagined that hatred could bring such elation. I didn’t care what happened to me along the way. I was reckless, ready to pay any price. Getting him sent down for rape was my sole reason for keeping going. Ten years, twelve, his entire lifetime wouldn’t have been enough.
‘I took a half-bottle of vodka with me. It was all I could afford. I’d had two boyfriends by that summer and I knew what to do. That night, I got Gorringe drunk and seduced him. You know the rest. Whenever revulsion started to get the better of me, I thought of him wrestling Mariam to the ground, ignoring her screams and pleas. I thought of my friend lowering herself into the bath, feeling completely alone, dishonoured and without hope and any wish to live.
‘My plan had been to leave straight after Gorringe was done with me and go to the police. But I was so disgusted and numbed by the experience I couldn’t move. And when I managed to get myself off the bed and dressed, I worried that I had drunk too much and wouldn’t be convincing in front of the desk sergeant. But it worked out well enough in the morning. I made a point of not changing my clothes or washing. So, no shortage of evidence in the right places. The new genetic test had been introduced across the country by then. The police weren’t as unfriendly as I’d feared from what I’d read in the newspapers. They weren’t particularly sympathetic either. They were efficient, and keen to try out their new DNA kit. They brought him in and got a match. From that time on, his life was hell. Seven months later it got worse.
‘In court, I spoke for Mariam. I became her and spoke through her. I was so deep in lies already that my version of that night came easily. It helped that I could see Gorringe across the courtroom. I let my hatred drive me on. I thought he was pathetic when he came up with the story about the texts I was supposed to have sent to a friend called Amelia. It was easy enough to prove she didn’t exist. Not all the press took my side. Some court reporters thought I was a malicious liar. The judge was very old school. In his summing-up he said that I’d knowingly put myself at risk, taking alcohol to a young man’s rooms. The jury still brought in a unanimous verdict. But when it came to sentencing, I was disappointed. Six years. Gorringe was just nineteen. With good behaviour, he’d be out at the age of twenty-two. He paid a bargain price for obliterating Mariam’s existence. But if I hated him with such ferocity, it was also because I knew that he and I were partners, bound forever, complicit in Mariam’s lonely death. And now he wants justice.’
Not long after I was thrown out of the legal profession I formed a company with two friends. The idea was to buy romantic apartments in Rome and Paris at local prices, do them up to a high standard, dress them with antique furniture and sell them to wealthy, cultured Americans or to agencies that would do the same. It wasn’t exactly the quick route to our first million. Most cultured Americans weren’t rich. Those who were didn’t share our tastes. The work was complicated and exhausting, especially in Rome, where we had to learn how and whom to bribe among the officials in local government. In Paris it was the bureaucracy that wore us down.
One weekend I flew to Rome to close a deal. It was important for this particular client that I stayed in his expensive hotel. This one was a well-established place at the top of the Spanish Steps. The client was staying there in a grand suite. I came into the city on a Friday evening, hot and harassed from my ride on a crowded airport bus. I was dressed in jeans and t-shirt, with a cheap Norwegian airline bag hanging from my shoulder. I stepped into a beautiful reception area. Just by chance, the manager happened to be standing by the check-in desk. He wasn’t waiting for me – I wasn’t important enough for that. I just happened to breeze in and since he was a courteous gentleman, extremely well dressed and correct, he welcomed me warmly in Italian to his hotel. I only partly understood what he was saying. His voice was expressionless, with little variation in pitch, and my Italian was poor. A receptionist came over and explained that the manager was congenitally deaf but he spoke nine languages, most of them European. Since childhood, he’d been adept at lip-reading. But before he could read mine I would have to indicate which language I was speaking. Otherwise he couldn’t begin to understand me.
He ran through his list. Norwegian? I shook my head. Finnish? English came fifth. He said he could have sworn I was a Nordic sort. So our conversation – pleasant, of no real consequence – could begin. But in theory, an entire world was open to us, and one piece of information had unlocked it all. Without it, his great gift couldn’t come into play.
Miranda’s story was a version of such a key. Our conversation, in the form of our love, could properly begin. Her secretiveness, withdrawals and silence, her diffidence, that air she had of seeming older than her years, her tendency to drift out of reach, even in moments of tenderness, were forms of grieving. It pained me that she had carried her sadness alone. I admired the boldness and courage of her revenge. It was a dangerous plan, executed with such focus and brilliant disregard for consequences. I loved her more. I loved her poor friend. I would do everything to protect Miranda from this beast, Gorringe. It touched me, to be the first to know her story.