Your phone goes dead, and you blink at the screen. It is, indeed, in flight mode. Then you look up. High above the roof-tops, twenty or fifty metres up, the grey discus of a surveillance drone ghosts past the elaborate columns and stone railings and domes of the former bank headquarters.
Blink and it’s gone: But the sensation that you are being watched remains.
DOROTHY: Rewind
Flashback:
The door opens. You take a step forward into Liz’s open arms, and her friendly face and welcoming hug is just too much. You tear up as you slump chin first onto her shoulder. She tenses up for a moment, then relaxes. “Oh hell. Let’s get you inside.” Two steps forward, the door closes, and you find a futon behind you. You crumple slowly backwards on it.
Gentle words: Liz fusses around, offering tissues, tea, and sympathy. But, inevitably, the question you’ve been dreading arrives: “What happened?”
You open your mouth and find the words have gone missing. I don’t know.
Liz squats in front of you. Takes your right hand in her own, strokes the back of your wrist. She looks—intent. Focussed. You try to speak again, but end up shaking your head.
“Is it the stalker?” she asks.
“I—” You’re appalled at your inarticulacy. “I don’t know. Didn’t think so. Not sure now. I’ve been so stupid.” Sniff. Is this self-pity or anger, filling the spring of tears? Which is it? “I, uh, I wasn’t telling the truth the other night. When I said Julian was in Moscow.”
“No?” She’s waiting, hopeful and loyal and… just being there. You don’t deserve this.
“He dumped me a couple of months ago,” you mutter, not meeting her eyes. “I’m not myself right now.”
“What happened?” she asks, gently stroking your wrist and watching you with inquisitor’s eyes, not accusing, mildly curious.
You tell her. Then, when she doesn’t explode in a fiery octopus of molten blame, you tell her some more. Being conflicted. Wanting a casual pick-up. Dinner with Christie, and dessert, and, and.
She listens quietly until you get to the way he chucked you out, and what you thought, the safeword. “Did he rape you?” she asks, gently enough. But you can feel the tension in her fingertips, rubbing.
“No. Yes. Maybe: I’m not sure.” You take a deep, ragged breath. “I… it was regrettable sex. I shouldn’t have done it and felt really bad afterwards, kind of sick… I think he might have raped me, if I’d wanted to stop short. But we didn’t go there. Not at that time.”
“At. That time.” Her finger motion stops, leaving your wrist limp and open to the air. She’s pulled completely away, withdrawn without your noticing. “What happened then?”
You take a deep breath. “That’s when it got weird. I went back to my room, wedged the door. Then there was a work email.”
“Work.” You’ve been avoiding eye contact up to now, afraid of seeing what your confession is doing to her. But you force yourself to look up. To your surprise, she looks thoughtful. There’s no contempt or anger or hatred; she looks almost… business-like? “What kind of work?”
“Head office wanted a special type of assessment performing, a sociopathic disorder assessment on a named executive. It was him. Liz, I should have seen it coming before—I mean, I was just stupid. John Christie is a narcissistic psychopath—”
“Who did you say?”
You flinch. “John, uh, Christie? He said he got picked on at school for it, sharing a name with a murderer—”
“No, wait. Stop right there.” Liz is looking at you with a very odd expression on her face. “Would you mind describing him? I mean, how tall is he? How old? How much does he weigh—”
Now you’re on the receiving end of an inquisition—but it’s not at all what you expected. Part-way through, Liz reaches for a pair of specs and switches them on. She seems to be looking something up. Then she takes them off again, holding them carefully, as if afraid they might explode in her hands.
She stares at her specs. “Jesus, Dorothy.”
“I’m—” You lick your lips. “You don’t hate me?”
Her gaze flickers across you, sweeping you from top to toes. She looks profoundly disturbed: stunned, even. “Jesus, Dorothy, you’re lucky to be alive.”
“But he—” You do a double-take. “Is he a murderer?”
She won’t meet your eyes. “I don’t know. Hopefully not; but he’s certainly a psycho, and what happened to you—are you sure it wasn’t rape?”
Your mind goes blank. You try to think back to what you were thinking in the run-up to dinner, in the lift up to his room… skulking away with your tail between your legs. Showering to forget his touch. (Why didn’t you use the safeword—were you afraid he wouldn’t stop? Were you enjoying it? It’s so confusing.) “If it’s rape, there’s a script to follow, isn’t there?”
“Yes, but you don’t have to worry about that.”
“The hell I don’t.” Your throat’s raw. “There were no witnesses. Okay, so suppose I say ‘yes’ and you take me round to the station where a trained counsellor talks me through giving a report and taking”—you swallow—“samples. And let’s suppose you, uh, your people go and arrest him. At that point it’s his word against mine, and you know what his advocate will make of my background? Polyamory still doesn’t get equal rights, never mind civil partnerships… I just get dragged through the mud, and to what end?”
“But you’ve got—” Liz jolts to a stop, like a Doberman at the end of a choke chain. She’s staring at you. “Oh,” she says softly.
“Oh, indeed.” You reach out your hand towards her. “You don’t want this, Liz. You don’t know what you’re opening yourself up for.”
After a moment, she takes your hand.
“It wasn’t rape,” you say, trying to keep any trace of doubt out of your voice for her sake. “But I’m really worried about the, the other thing.”
“Yes, I’d say you should be.” Liz is silent for a few seconds. “I’d like to take a statement, though. All the same.”
“What? But I told you, it wasn’t non-consensual—”
“Not about the sex: about the appraisal.”
You shiver. “I’d rather not. If you don’t mind.”
She sits down beside you on the futon. “It’s, it’s about Christie. He’s, uh, a person of interest in another investigation. We want to question him in relation to a violent crime. I can’t tell you about it right now, but what you’d told me—it’s really important. My colleagues—they need to know about this. Do you mind if I file at least a contact report?”
You sniff, then rub a hand across your eyes. There’s no mascara or eye-liner, luckily: You stripped before you showered. “You’re going to insist, aren’t you?”
She manages a weak smile. “You said it: I didn’t.”
“Oh hell.” You struggle to sit up. “Just… do you mind if I stay overnight? I can’t face that room…”