The Rose Petal Beach (16 page)

‘You’d be surprised,’ she says.

‘It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen it,’ he says.

‘That’s why we’re asking you about it,’ she says.

‘The wives often know more than they realise. If they would just put the pieces together.’

‘And look at the bigger picture.’ She lowers her voice to a concerned level. ‘Mrs Challey, has your husband ever hurt you during sex? Intentionally or unintentionally?’

‘I told you, I’m not answering those questions.’ The look again, this time without the smile, but still the same, still deciding what she can glean from my refusal to answer.

‘Do you have any other questions?’ I want this to end. ‘Because I have work to do and children to pick up from school.’

‘Where were you on the night of April eighth this year?’

‘Do I need an alibi or something?’ I reply. That’s the first time I’ve heard the date. Obviously Scott hasn’t told me the date because it never happened.

‘No, we’re interested in your husband’s emotional state when he came home that day.’

‘Erm … Eighth April? What day of the week was that?’

‘A Monday.’

‘Oh, well, I probably didn’t see him. I go running on a Tuesday morning so I go to bed early.’

‘Do you go running alone?’ she asks.

‘No, I’m sure you know I go running with Mirabelle.’

‘Did you go running with Ms Kemini, the morning after eighth April?’

The tingling starts on my scalp then shimmers down my spine, radiating out over my body. That was the week before last, the only time Mirabelle hasn’t turned up for a run without cancelling way in advance. I shake my head.

‘Why not?’

My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth and I’m finding it hard to speak. ‘She didn’t turn up.’

‘Any idea why?’

I’d waited and waited in the usual place at the edge of the Close,
I jogged up and down on the spot until it was ten minutes after our usual start time. I had my phone on me, strapped to my bicep, and I kept checking it for text messages or missed calls but nothing. After ten minutes I called her but she didn’t answer either of her phones. And then I jogged round to her house, to see if she’d overslept, but she didn’t answer the door. I was worried. The blinds were down but I could sense she was in the house.

I paced around outside for a bit, wondering what to do. What if she’d had an accident and was there all alone and unable to get help? Should I get help? But what if she’d met someone and had brought him back? The last thing she’d want is to have me sending in the cavalry while she was mid-coitus.

I tried calling again but no reply.

A few seconds later my phone bleeped.

Overslept. Go without me.

That was it. Not her usual type of text message which were always sunny and signed off with a kiss.

Does that mean …

‘Mrs Challey, you haven’t told us why you went running alone the morning following the alleged attack on Ms Kemini?’

‘She, erm, said she’d overslept.’

Which had seemed ludicrous because in all the time I’d known her Mirabelle had never overslept or been late for anything. Later in the day she’d texted to say she’d hurt her leg so couldn’t go running for a while.

‘Did you go to her house and check?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

The policewoman’s smile returns. ‘Why indeed?’

I look down, still worrying at the cuff of my sleeve. More of the sleeve is unravelling. Unravelling. Everything unravelling.

‘Overslept. Go without me.’

is written in large letters in my mind.

‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Challey,’ Detective Sergeant Harvan says, holding out her hand. ‘That’s all for now.’

The words of Mirabelle’s last text swim before my eyes. I stand and accept her hand. It is a firm handshake, one that challenges me to show what I am made of – am I wimp or am I strong woman? I return the handshake in the spirit it is given, I am not a wimp.

‘I’m sure we don’t have to remind you to stay away from Ms Kemini,’ Harvan says.

‘If she is threatened in any way we will be forced to take action,’ Wade adds.

‘Why would I threaten her? I know Scott’s innocent.’ That sounds hollow to me, probably sounds even worse to them. ‘I know the truth will come out eventually.’

‘You’re right there, Mrs Challey,’ Harvan says.

‘But still stay away from her,’ Wade ends.

I am watching the equivalent of hell on film.

After Harvan’s question, the look on her face as she asked me if I was sure he didn’t masturbate to this stuff, I thought I’d better have a look. After all, I had been equally sure he would be faithful and he had confessed he hadn’t been.

When I came home and went from room to room, searching for him, but couldn’t find him, I decided this was as good a time as any to take a quick peek: I was in the loft room – the last place I looked for him – so I might as well refute the ridiculous thought that Harvan had planted in my head.

The folder wasn’t that well hidden, but it had over a hundred sub-folders. And each sub-folder had over a hundred images or video clips.

I clicked on one movie without a proper title and began this nightmare. I kept choosing random movies, random files, hoping that they would be different, they would be ‘tame’.

Instead, I am watching the end of my marriage played out on the screen in front of me. This is hell. This is what hell would look like to every woman I know. And it looks real. It feels and plays like what is happening in front of me is not happening to an actress, someone who is performing and will be paid for her trouble, it is actually happening to a woman who looks like an ordinary person. Someone like me. Someone like me is being brutalised, battered,
raped
on film.

And my husband has downloaded this ‘film’ so he can watch it whenever he likes. He has downloaded film after film after film of this. The ones I have seen are playing in loop in my head. And it
is there: that act, what happened the night of yes that felt like a no. And it is there: what Mirabelle described to me.

He did it.

My stomach spikes as it twists painfully and I wrench the cable from the back of the computer, hoping I have fried the hard-drive, fearing I haven’t, before I have to run through the house to the toilet and throw up everything I haven’t eaten. My retching is dry and painful, my stomach almost cut in two with each one, but eventually there is nothing, not even pale, slimy bile, and I collapse on the floor beside the bath. I put a trembling hand to my mouth, and scream into the silent void. It’s over. He did it. They weren’t having an affair, he did it. He tried to rape her.

Fully clothed, I step into the shower and turn on the water. I want to wash this away too. Like last night, like what I did, I want to remove all this filth clinging to me, I want to feel clean again.

The shaking is getting worse.

Everything I do, I have to will my body to settle itself so I won’t shake. The horror of what I saw on the computer earlier has lodged an unmoveable ball of nausea firmly in my solar plexus. I have tried making myself sick again, I have tried drinking water, I have tried forcing down food but it is still there. It is embedded behind that smooth, flat piece of skin equidistant from each of my breasts, in front of my spine, cleaving apart the prongs of my ribs.

The girls are talking ten to the dozen. They have been talking since I pulled together the pieces of myself and collected them from school. It was a burbling I couldn’t decipher, I smiled and nodded in what I hoped were the right places and said, ‘Is it?’ a lot. They might have told me they had visited the moon, but I could not have understood.

I keep looking around at our house, at the items we own, the knick-knacks and
things
that we have collected over the years that have slotted together to make our home, and I wonder why? And when? And how?

How has Scott become the type of man who can do that? Not even the crime, how can he orgasm to moving images – faked or real, I do not know – of women being brutalised?
When
did he progress to the real thing?
Why
didn’t I notice?
Why, why, why
?

‘Burble, burble, burble,’ the girls continue at the table behind me. We need to leave. I need to pack up and take the girls. Now. Right.

I cut the flame that is heating water to cook pasta. I need to be quick. I will pack the bare minimum and when we get to wherever it is we’re going, we can—

‘Hello everybody!’ He beams at them and I know with absolute certainty that I have got it wrong: he can’t have done it.

‘Hi Dad,’ they say at different times.

‘Come on, get ready, I’m taking you all for a slap-up dinner,’ he says. And I know with absolute certainty that I have got it right:
he did do it
.

‘Yeah!’ the girls say as they jump down from their chairs and hurry to get changed.

‘They haven’t done their homework,’ I say, trembling, still trembling.

‘It’s one time. They can start it when we get back and finish it in the morning.’
He can’t have done it.

‘Well, you mind they do, because it’s me who has to deal with any letters home from the Head.’

‘They’ll be fine. I was always having letters sent home from the head, never did me any harm.’
He did do it.

‘If you say so.’

‘Look, Tami, about yesterday—’

I raise my hand to halt him. ‘I don’t even want to think about it.’ I don’t want to think about whether I had sex with a … ‘I just want to concentrate on the girls. Anything else is not important.’

‘I’m sorry I hurt you,’ he mumbles.

‘No you’re not, you’re only sorry you got caught. Now leave me alone.’ What has he been caught for, though? Cheating or rape?

I go to leave the room and he grabs my arm. ‘Do you still think I did this thing? Do you still believe I’m a rapist?’

I tug my arm free. Glaring at him but saying nothing, I leave the room.

Nearly three years ago

‘Are you sick of me, Scott?’ I asked him once the girls were tucked up in bed and, having finished our meal, he was about to head out to the gym.

Pocketing his mobile, he stopped walking through the door and
revolved slowly on the spot to face me. Irritation slithered over his features, answering my question more clearly than his words ever could.

‘Why would you ask me something like that?’

‘Because …’ My courage failed me. We had barely spoken during dinner, just like every night he was home in time for us to eat together – he seemed to be here but not here. He was busy, he had visitors from America he had to entertain, he had a project that could make the company millions if he pulled it off, his life was away from me. But it’d been like that many times in the past and it hadn’t felt like this. I had to know if it was me that he was sick of, fed up with. If it was me that needed replacing. I wanted to know, but after I asked, I thought of all the things that would end when he answered that question. No more seeing the girls every day, no more ticking the married box on forms, no more financial security, no more house probably because it’d be hard to keep it going on just my earnings. No more having someone who came home to me. No more looking at the sleeping face of the man I loved and wondering who he had become. The answer would lead to the end, I was sure of that. Was I ready for that?

‘Never mind,’ I replied. ‘It’s not important.’ I picked up the salad dressing, the homemade hot pepper sauce and the low-fat mayonnaise from the table and returned them to the fridge. ‘I’ll see you later. Have a good time at the gym.’

‘Is this about going to counselling again?’ he asked, his disdain as apparent as daylight.

I kept my head in the fridge, the air cooling my burning, humiliated skin; tranquillising the raw edges of my nerves. ‘No. It’s nothing. Ignore me.’
Like you often do.

‘TB, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

‘I’m saying nothing. Nothing at all. I think I need an early night or something.’

‘Do you want me to stay home and not go to the gym tonight?’ he asked.

‘Absolutely not. You go. I’ll see you later or tomorrow if I manage to get an early night.’

Scott did nothing for a few seconds, he seemed to be deciding something. Eventually he came to me, still hiding in the fridge, and pressed his lips against my cheek. ‘You try to get some sleep, OK? Take good care of yourself, you belong to me, don’t forget.’

My face found a smile but I couldn’t look at him, nor leave the fridge until I heard the front door click shut behind him. After he was gone, I picked up my black Mulberry bag and returned to my place at the table. I had the almost full glass of water I’d poured with my dinner. From my bag I retrieved the white paper pharmacists’ bag. Curling back the top, I took from it the box of citalopram, the antidepressant my doctor had prescribed. I sat staring at it, knowing what I had to do.

The sadness, the anxiety, the hopeless had to stop. It was no good for the girls, it was no good for me, it was no good if I wanted to rescue my relationship. I couldn’t help but look at the door, seeing the Scott-shaped hole that he’d left when he departed. I was trying to save that all on my own, though, wasn’t I?

‘Mama,’ Cora called from upstairs. ‘Mama, I need some water.’

Stuffing the box and paper bag back in my bag, I decided that tonight wasn’t going to be the night I started these. I’d give it a little while longer and if I still felt like this, if the despair and hollowness continued, I’d take them. I’d claw my way back to normality and then deal with things from there.

‘Mama!’

‘Coming, Cora, coming.’

This is my third large glass of wine since we’ve been home, the only thing that will stop the shaking.

‘Where were you earlier? I waited and waited to see if you’d come back before I left, but you didn’t.’ Scott asks. His approach has been silent, as if to try to catch me at something.

Was it this morning I went to see Mirabelle and defended him? Was it this morning I went to the police station and defended him again? I know it was this afternoon that I found out that he likes to watch criminal sexual acts upstairs in our house.