6
JANE
She slept badly the night after the reunion with Daphne. Their conversations ran through her mind on a loop and the creepy collage became a nightmare. These were mementoes from a time she had managed to forget and it was harrowing to be confronted by them again. At five thirty, sleepless and drained, she rose quietly, trying not to wake Michael.
‘OK?’ he mumbled, reaching out a hand that would have held her if she’d been close enough.
‘Fine.’ She had avoided talking about Daphne the previous evening, unable to find a way of explaining her wretchedness to him. ‘Fine,’ she had replied, when he asked how it had gone. ‘But I don’t know if I’ll see her again.’
Running was often a way of solving problems and she set off into a leaden dawn so damp she couldn’t tell if it was raining. After reaching the river, she turned eastwards along the empty Thames Path and arrived at Battersea Park just as the gates were being opened. She did a circuit, hardly noticing where she was, tormented by Daphne’s blind insistence that a child can be happily raped by an adult – for that is what Ralph did. How could she blithely claim there had been no negative consequences? It made Jane want to kick and scream, almost as incensed with her old friend as she was with her abuser. It was only on the way home that the regular drum beat of her feet on tarmac calmed her and her spent physical energy brought a feeling of greater control.
By the time she opened her front door, she was drenched in sweat and aching, but she had the beginnings of a decision. Her anger would be channelled and turned into a force for good. There was a way of doing the right thing. Instead of fleeing, she could fight. She could help her old friend, make Daphne realise how misguided she was. She would persuade her that child abusers should not be garlanded in roses and displayed on the wall, but reported to the authorities and put behind bars.
Michael was in the kitchen. The room was warm and comforting, aromatic with coffee and toast. A low rumble of polite, Sunday morning voices burbled from the radio. Jane fetched a glass of water and sat down at the table opposite him. She should have taken a shower and changed her clothes, but this moment needed grasping. Her plan would be made real by declaring it. She had to tell him.
‘That’s very bright and early for a run,’ said Michael, crunching toast and briefly glancing up from the Observer. ‘Impressive. Coffee?’
‘No thanks.’ She wiped her face on her sleeve. ‘There’s something I want to talk to you about.’
‘Oh yes?’ He only put the newspaper halfway down, evidently hoping this would be something easy – a plan with the boys or a work trip.
‘I’ve been quite upset since yesterday. Since seeing Daphne.’
‘Oh?’ Realising this required attention, he folded up his paper and the three vertical lines between his eyebrows deepened with apprehension. ‘What happened?’
‘Nothing happened exactly. But we talked about the past. She had this… she was sexually abused as a child. I knew him. It was Ralph Boyd. You know, the composer?’
Michael nodded. ‘Oh God.’
‘She was so young when it started – only twelve or thirteen – and he was married with children. And the awful thing is that she still doesn’t think he did anything wrong. In fact she’s making a huge artwork about it, as though it’s something to be glorified.’
‘That’s appalling.’ Michael got up and switched off the radio.
‘I know. He’s a monster. And it’s brought it all back, how I was part of it. I was there, witnessing the whole thing, complicit.’ Her voice broke momentarily and, though she tried to disguise it by coughing, Michael came round to her side of the table and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘He didn’t…? Not with you?’
‘No!’ It came out louder than expected. ‘No, it’s not that. But I can’t bear that she just smiles about it as if it’s not a crime. Just because he’s cultured and charming, there’s no reason he should be treated any differently to Jimmy Savile or Gary Glitter. He deserves to be arrested along with all the other child molesters.’
‘I don’t know how people can do that.’ His reactions were so familiar to her that she knew he would run a hand through his hair, as he often did when stressed. He’d gone completely white now, though when they were first together his hair was like hers – a mousy blonde that turned flaxen in the sun. ‘So what will you do? Will you report him?’ His fingers were already touching his scalp.
‘No, it needs to come from her. I have to make her see there’s been a crime committed and that she’s the victim. I’m not going to just leave it. People should know he is a child rapist.’
When Daphne returned from her sneaky trip to Greece with Ralph, she’d changed. Even before she admitted she’d ‘done it’, there was something different about her. After the summer she always looked smooth and brown as a polished nut, but this time it was as though the small, internal piercing made her walk with a new looseness, a voluptuous sway. After she confessed, Jane quizzed her. ‘What was it like? Did it hurt?’ She was hungry for knowledge. This seemed only fair for agreeing to pretend, whenever required, that she was going to travel to Greece with Daphne and Ralph on the Magic Bus. ‘What about foreplay? Did you do 69?’ She knew the theory, but sexual intercourse was as distant as a far-off continent. And now Daphne had been there and was annoyingly stingy with details.
‘You can’t describe it,’ she claimed conveniently.
Just before school started in September, Daphne asked Jane to go with her and Ralph to Brighton. At first, it sounded appealing, despite the subtext that she was merely a suitable chaperone, though even after the shenanigans of the summer, Daphne’s parents were more bemused than suspicious.
‘We’ll have fun. Oh go on,’ pleaded Daphne when Jane said she didn’t want to be a gooseberry. ‘Please! We’ll mix you up with cream and sugar and turn you into a gooseberry fool. It’ll be great. You need some sea air.’
‘I bet Ralph doesn’t want me there.’
‘Course he does,’ Daphne replied, not convincing Jane, but evidently believing herself at that moment. ‘We both want you.’
Jane realised it would be awkward when Ralph turned up at Barnabas Road in Maurice, and there was a baby on the back seat.
‘Jason’s come along for the ride,’ Ralph said, smiling as though that was normal. ‘Nina’s got an exhibition and she’s a bit exhausted.’
‘She’s about to pop,’ explained Daphne in a cold voice, as though ‘pop’ was a medical term.
Ralph ignored this, adding, ‘Anyway, it’s high time this young man had an expedition with his father.’
It was still early – about 8 a.m. – and Ellie came out on to the street barefoot and wearing a fragile, silken kimono with nothing underneath. Her dark, curly hair fell loose around her shoulders and Jane stared in wonder that you could have a mum like that. Ralph bounded over, kissed her, whirled her around as if they were going to do ballroom dancing and then went on one knee and sang something in Italian. ‘Madam Butterfly,’ he clarified afterwards to the ignorant girls. Jane was horrified: how pretentious can you get? Ellie appeared delighted by her serenade, which was obviously the whole point. She smiled absently as the girls piled into Maurice.
‘Be good, children,’ she said, which might have been ironic. She was often hard to gauge.
Jane took the back seat without asking – second-class citizens know where they belong. The car reeked of a milky, nappyish aroma from the baby next to her. Her period had started the night before and she felt like a giant baby herself, with a bulky, thigh-chafing sanitary towel wedged between her legs and an abdominal ache pulling like overweight gravity. She watched miserably as Ellie waved and made some Greek coo-y noises through the window at Jason. Daphne got into the front seat, as ladylike and refined as if Ralph was her chauffeur and Jane and the fat baby were bags of shopping dumped behind.