Lara shrugged. “I don’t know. Livi said the main bartender might be the owner, but she hadn’t found out.”
“Is he local?”
“English, I believe. I heard that from Marcus. He was there a couple of nights ago.” She looked at me curiously. “If you’d feel better being here without him, say.”
I stared at the fishing boat bobbing up and down at the line where the sea met the sky. “It was years ago, Lala. It wasn’t him.”
I knew without looking that she was gritting her teeth.
“It was his friend. And he knew what his friend was going to do.”
I moved my gaze to my toes and stretched up my legs, feeling my hamstrings pull. Livi’s love of yoga had been passed down to me. “I want to move on from it. It was six years ago. I’ve spent time with Marcus since.”
“Not months like this. I told Livi you weren’t coming here like you used to because of him.”
“That’s not completely true.” But it wasn’t false either.
“She said she’d tell Lawrie that Marcus couldn’t stay if that was how you felt. If you hadn’t come this year, she was going to do that anyway.” Lara made circles in the sand with her finger.
I swallowed. I hated talking about what had happened. I’d come to terms with it, moved on, accepted it. I’d also known that worse things had happened to other girls, and I’d been lucky.
Someone had told me that I’d been lucky.
“It needs to be part of my past, Lala.”
“But if Marcus reminds you of that past…”
“He doesn’t. When I’m around, he keeps his distance. He’s away now – that’s no coincidence.” I actually thought it was.
“Okay. Are we pretending it never happened?”
“Yes.” It was six years ago.
Lara stayed quiet. I could tell she was thinking, and that she wouldn’t let this go just now.
When it happened, she’d been at a party. We’d shared a room in the school where we boarded, the expensive, private college that Livi had been kicked out of. We were her do-over, going there.
Lara had gone out to the party. I’d stayed in, working on a project for my art portfolio. The girl in the room next door had invited some people from the boys’ school that was near ours to her room; I’d heard the noise already, but I’d just plugged in my headphones and focused on the design I was engrossed with anyway.
Until my door was pushed in by a laughing man-boy.
Afterwards, when I gave my statement to at least three different people, I recounted how he’d grabbed my headphones away from me and taunted me about who my dad was, and how my mum had been a slut. He’d been high, his friends egging him on as he told me to get on my knees and blow him. Else.
When I didn’t, he threw me to Lala’s bed. I remembered the screaming from the girl, telling them to stop. I remembered his friend holding my hands down until I stopped resisting and went still.
I remembered kneeing him so hard in the groin that it had been his scream that had brought half a dozen more people to my room.
I remembered the conversations, the accusations, the arguments. It was my fault, according to him. I slept around andMarcushad told him I was easy.Marcushad shown him pictures of me on nights out, on holiday, topless. My mother had been easy, so I was too.
His father had fucked Livi.
His father shouted to Livi that apples didn’t fall far from trees. This was when they turned up at our home in Buckinghamshire, telling me that I couldn’t report it to the police. It would ruin his life. Then they’d ruin ours, somehow.
It was only a bit of fun. He was high. You know how boys were.
Nothing that she hasn’t done before. Just a bit of fooling around, like kids do.
There were statements from others. The girl whose room they’d been invited too; his friend who I knew like Lala confessed what had happened and cried.
