‘I willknowif he’s lying.’ He smiled at her.
I played along. Taking photos of my daughter’s bruised body was truly traumatic. There were teeth marks on her breasts, almost as if he had tried to bite her nipple off, bruising across her stomach, teeth marks on her buttocks where he had drawn blood. Her knees were scraped as well, though that might have happened when she fell. She did not remember how she got these marks.
God knows what kind of porn was out there, all available at a click. Twelve-year-olds were watching it on their phones. Sexual activity had certainly changed since my youth. Had their encounter been consensual? Maybe violent sex was a turn-on for some girls, but my Lucy? Then I hated myself for thinking that.
Part of me was thinking ‘that bastard’ about Simon Perry. And part of me was thinking of how ambitious Lucy was, how driven, how badly she had taken loss or rejection in the past.
When she was five or six at a Sports Day in elementary school, she smacked the girl who beat her in a race, her face red with fury.
When her first boyfriend broke up with her at fifteen, she stole his bicycle. We didn’t know a thing about it until spring arrived and Jack went to the shed for the lawnmower and found the bike, immediately recognizable as Tommy’s. I thought it wasfunny at the time. I guess I was relieved that she hadn’t done anything worse. In fact, I thought she had handled that rejection well, though we made her return the bike.
And then, when she was older, her team had come second to two girls from another school in the Young Scientist of the Year competition. I was called into the school a week later. Lucy had found the kids on the winning team on Snapchat and Instagram and had left nasty comments about them cheating, suggesting they had won by blowing one of the male judges. God knows how it hadn’t become a bigger story, but she had done it using an anonymous account. Both schools got involved and it took very little to uncover her identity. I was ashamed of her. We took her phone and turned off the Wi-Fi router in her room for a month.
Our beautiful Lucy, such a brilliant, smart and funny child from the beginning, and yet she could be devious. And she could be as dishonest as I was.
Had Simon rejected her after consensual violent sex? Had he told her he was never leaving his wife? Was that why she was upset? Had she been obsessed by him? She had certainly mentioned him often enough.
Yes, Lucy was book-smart, but she was younger than her peers, and she wasn’t as emotionally mature as them. Maybe she had gone along with what Simon wanted and then regretted it.
I remembered being back in Boston in the cop station making my statement. I lost count of how many times I had to tell my story to different people and then again behind a screen in court. I loved the attention but they tripped me up a few times. I gave two different versions of how I got the cut on my head. The mechanics of how Milo got my jeans off were questioned. He had said I was wearing shorts. I said jeans in my witness statement. I was asked why I thought he called me Daisy Duke if I was wearing ordinary jeans. She famously wore denim shorts. I was asked why I’d invited him into the house when I knew thatErin wouldn’t be back until very late. Lots of little lies that I had to make up on the spot and then remember for the next time.
Lucy’s story was full of contradictions, and we were her parents. Iwantedher to be lying. I needed a drink badly.
Lucy stayed in her bedroom. I left Jack to take care of her and said I was slipping out to get some groceries. Instead, I went drinking. That was the night I ended up in the Merrion Hotel, out-of-control drunk for the first time in fourteen years, in bed with Karl from Austin, Texas.
59
When I arrived home the morning after Lucy appeared, I told Jack I’d been triggered by Lucy’s experience, that I’d needed to get away. I’d stayed the night in the Merrion Hotel by myself, I told him. I had been smart enough to shower and sober up with gallons of coffee and breath mints before I came home that morning.
Jack had been worried sick, and Lucy was distraught because she thought I’d relapsed because of her. I went to her bedside and lied that I believed her. We assured her that she certainly wasn’t going to have to go back to ComStat Holdings while Simon was there. We would call in sick for her.
I stayed home that day, disguising my hangover as distress, although Iwasdistressed. Was my daughter like her mother?
Lucy stayed in bed with the door closed, her tears audible from the corridor outside. Jack ordered takeaway, but Lucy wouldn’t come out of her room to eat it. He was angry, furious. He wanted to kill Simon Perry. I tried to talk him down. If Lucy had been a victim of violence, she wouldn’t want to see any aggression in her home.
‘If?’ he said, looking at me strangely.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘let it be.’
‘You have to tell her,’ he said.
‘Tell her what?’
‘About your own rape.’
‘Absolutely not. We are never telling her that.’
‘But she –’
‘Never, Jack.’
That evening, Jack began his investigations and duly reported back. There were no cameras outside L’Étoile Bleue, but the manager was more than willing to help Jack when he heard that the restaurant might make headlines for all the wrong reasons. He knew Simon, he was a regular customer, although usually with big groups. According to the manager, Simon and Lucy both seemed a little drunk on arrival. Lucy was alert all the way through the meal. They had ordered dessert and eaten it. This didn’t tally with Lucy’s assertion that she remembered nothing after the main course. They had ordered a bottle of wine in the beginning and then were given complimentary shots of Sambuca with their bill. He remembered Lucy had drunk both shots. Simon paid the bill. When they got up to leave, Lucy had stumbled out of the booth and Simon had helped her up. She was unsteady on her feet, but still chatty. They had been offered a taxi, but Simon said he lived nearby and indeed the Zevon Building (‘the most dazzling example of luxury living’ as it was touted at the time of its launch a few years ago) was within walking distance. Simon wasn’t exactly carrying her, but he had his arm around her. There was nothing to suggest any bad behaviour on either part. They had laughed a lot, the manager said.
Jack told me these details reluctantly.
‘Oh God, she lied,’ I said.
He looked at me strangely. ‘She was drunk but that doesn’t mean anything. It means she doesn’t remember that part of it. When we were drunk or high back in the day, we both heard about crazy shit we did after the fact. She liked him, she was planning his divorce before she’d even kissed him. But she has no reason to lie about the rape. I think she wanted to sleep with him. But if it was consensual and nothing untoward happened,why would she come home yesterday morning in pieces and bruised all over?’
