‘I stayed in bed for a week. I cried and I couldn’t eat, and this is going to sound really stupid but I cut up that cardigan, I cut it up into pieces and I burnt it in the fire. Wool really smells when it burns. Then I cut my hair off, because it was always pretty. I was pretty. Pretty, naive and stupid. I didn’t know what happens because nobody had ever told me.’
Finn runs gentle fingers through my hair.
‘Didn’t look much different from the way it looks today,’ I say. ‘I wanted to be invisible, I didn’t want anyone to ever look at me and see anything different because, being naive, thinking the best of people, had got me raped and I didn’t think I’d ever get over it.’
By now, he’s rocking me and I can feel his heart beating fast and furious through hisT-shirt.
‘I stayed in bed all week. Mum rang and Stefan rang and I said I’d got some terrible bug. The office rang and I pretended to be Daisy and I said that Sidonie was really sick and wouldn’t be back. I got a job waitressing, so I could pay the rent, but I couldn’t go home. I told Daisy something had happened, but not all of it. I think she guessed, but I told her she was never to tell anyone. I told her my boss had tried it on and it scared me.’
‘He raped you, he didn’t try it on. He deserves to pay. I want him to pay for what he did.’
‘That was fifteen years ago,’ I said flatly. ‘It’s too late and Finn, I can’t go through that and I won’t. He victimised me once and he won’t do it again. It’s just my word against his word. And you know, I sat in his room and I drank his wine; it doesn’t help me.’
‘He was your boss. You weretwenty-one, he was what? Forty something. That’s, oh Jesus, I want to kill him.’
‘No.’ I had to make Finn understand this. ‘I need you to listen to me,’ I say. ‘Not avenge me or fix me. I moved away from Daisy, because I couldn’t deal with that. And eventually I went back to Rivendell. Started wearing black clothes and never going out. Both Mum and Stefan knew something was wrong but I wouldn’t tell them, I wasn’t going to tell them. I rang the Rape Crisis Centre, but I told them I wasn’t going to report it. I just needed to talk to someone. They were so amazing and they told me it wasn’t my fault. But I knew it was my fault, I believed it was my fault. I should have known better. And it took years, years and years and years to let go of that. And I had lots of therapy, healing. Marc was from near me at home and his dad used to beat him up. He wanted to move out and I wanted a man with me so I felt safer. Because I never felt safe from then on. So we moved in together. We let people think that we were together because it was easier, you know. We were broken and we tried to love each other that way, but we were too messed up. Still, we were happy, you know, we had each other.’
Finn kisses me as if I might break.
‘I’m so terrified of hurting you now. I wish you’d told me before we...’
‘If I’d told you before, you would have seen me differently. I needed you to seeme, to wantme. I’m sorry I used you.’
He looked at me, his eyes heartbroken, and I smiled.
‘No really, I’m making a joke. I know you think I can’t make a joke right now. But I’ve had fifteen years of living with this, Finn. So I can make a joke about it, because I know what is mine, I own it.’
‘But that bastard is still running around?’
‘I did one thing, one right thing, that I think helped. I told Lois from the law office. She came round after three weeks. I was sitting there and rocking my new goth look, you know, all black: black eyeliner, blackeye-shadow, black nails. We were talking and she just knew it was something to do with Quinn. She was adamant I had to do something about it. I said no, I don’t have to do anything, I told her.
‘Someone needs to know.’
‘Well, you can figure out how to tell them,’ I said. ‘But I’ll explain it to you really simply, don’t bring me into it. Because if you do, I will deny everything. But they won’t listen to you anyway.’
‘My father will listen to me,’ said Lois.
‘Your father who got you the job?’
‘Yeah,’ says Lois, ‘he’ll listen to me.’
‘OK, good,’ I said. ‘Don’t keep me informed, I don’t want to know.’
Lois wasn’t exactly touchy feely, but she tried to reach out and touch me, but I wasn’t touching, you know. I’m not so good at touching. That’s why I hated Nate when I first met him, because he was so handsy.’
‘I know, I saw.’
‘And I don’t know what happened, where he is, what he’s doing. But the name Quinn isn’t on the company branding anymore. I used to dream about killing him. The rage is very fierce but most of the time, I can deal with it.’
‘I love you, you’re so brave, so brave. But I do still want to kill him.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘hold me, Finn, just hold me and love me and be you. And let’s just talk about this some other time, because for you now this is a huge thing. But for me, I’ve lived with it for a very long time and I have come to terms with it in my own way. And you unlocked me, like I don’t know, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, whichever one of them was locked up. Not that I’m a princess who needed to be saved no, but –’
‘Nobody needed to save you, you saved yourself,’ he says instantly. And he pulls me to him and I can feel him rocking backwards and forwards, as if he’s in absolute pain.
‘I told you this, so we can have a future, OK?’
‘A future.’ He looks at me and his eyes are wet.
