‘Yeah, cheers, Billy,’ I said, with fake flippancy. ‘But maybe not today.’
I wrestled from his grasp then, and turned to head for the door, but as I did so he said, ‘If not today, then when?’ – which was another Argonauts song lyric – and then grabbed me from behind, throwing one arm round my waist.
In an attempt at making a joke out of it, I forced a laugh and continued on my way, dragging Billy behind me towards the door. But then he surprised me by pushing me sideways and, as my legs hit the side of the mattress, I lost my balance, and there was no option but to fall onto the bed.
As I pushed myself up onto my forearms, I caught a glimpse of Billy’s bedside table and noticed a mirror on which stood a razor blade and a vial of white powder – no doubt coke. There was also a family photo that, under any other circumstances, I would have liked to study more closely. But as Billy was, by then, straddling me and trying to roll me onto my back, that simply wasn’t possible.
I tried to crawl away from him, but he had blocked me between his thighs, so I went with the flow and rolled to face him.
‘Billy,’ I said, using the voice I use to reason with my children when they’re being unreasonable. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
He’d released the belt of his gown, revealing the full horror of his blobby stomach and white chest hair. He rubbed the not-inconsiderable bulge in his pyjama bottoms with one hand and asked, ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
‘It’s looks like you’re pinning me to a bed against my will, and actually consideringrapingme,’ I said. Lucy’s self-defence teacher had told her that naming what was happening could be useful in making it stop.
But it didn’t work on Billy. He lunged for my belt buckle, so I slapped his hand away.
‘Rape,’ he said. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, you little slut!’
‘No I wouldn’t!’ I gasped, struggling to speak through my outrage. ‘And you know, many years ago, someone told me to never say “yes” to anything I didn’t really want. Do you— Billy,stop! Jesus! Do youknowwho said that to me, Billy? Do you?’
‘Nope,’ Billy said, grinning inanely. ‘But he sounds like a right twat.’
‘It wasyou, Billy. It was you that taught me that incredibly important lesson.’
‘So even I talk shit sometimes,’ Billy said, laughing maniacally. ‘Well, I did. When I was, like, a teenager. But now I’m all grown up, and I’m going to fuck you. Because despite all this play-acting you’re gagging for it. I know you are.’
I slapped his hand from my belt a second time. ‘Christ, stop, Billy. You’ve been watching too much porn, hon!’ I said. I was trying to keep things fluffy because of my fear. ‘I think it’s fucked with your brain.’
‘You always did like it rough,’ he said, and I slapped his hand away a third time. ‘Remember how I used to fuck you to kingdom come?’
I did remember, too, how rough the sex had been, and how I had, indeed, liked it. I remembered in that split second, too, how meek and boring I’d found Rob’s lovemaking by comparison, and how disappointed I’d felt that he didn’t bang me the way Billy had.
‘It was a game back then, Billy,’ I said, starting to get breathless from struggling beneath him. ‘This isn’t, Billy. I’m saying “no” here, so if you go any further this is rape. Let… me – Jesus! – go!’
He leaned down to try to kiss me, and by then the idea had become worse than repulsive, it had become terrifying.
I pushed his face away from me with the flat of my hand, so he grabbed my right wrist, then the left.
‘I like a struggler,’ he said. ‘Little bitch.’
He still needed a free hand to undo my buckle – thank God I’d worn jeans – and he transferred his grip of my wrists to his left hand so that he could undo my belt with the right, and I thought, and for the first time believed, I’m about to be raped, closely followed by a rush of adrenaline and another thought,No. I’m not. Not by Billy fucking Ruddle, I’m not!
I writhed with all my might then, and managed to free my hands. I started pounding at his face with my fists but he was too close to really get a swing. He looked shocked, though, I remember that. He looked suddenly very shocked and very angry and I think I realised – correctly or incorrectly – that he was about to take a swing at me.
So I pushed him with all my might, and was a bit surprised when he actually toppled sideways.
Once he was off me, sprawling on the bed, I scrambled from the room.
‘Dawn!’ Billy shouted, behind me. ‘Dawn, come the fuck back!’
I’d reached the bottom of the staircase before he’d even made it out of the bedroom door, and I was at the top of the stairs pushing my way into the garage by the time he’d reached the bottom. ‘Dawn, come back and we can talk this through. I thought you were messing about. I thought you wanted to be slutty like the old days,’ he said.
For a moment, in the garage, I panicked because I couldn’t find a button to open the doors, but then I saw the panel of three controls on the wall behind Billy’s Porsche, so I ran over and hit them all.
As I slid into my car, Billy appeared. The garage doors were still only halfway open.
‘Dawn,’ he said, ‘for fuck’s sake. I was only mucking around. Come back!’
