Kate stood up angrily. 'That's just it, I don't know what happened. I don't remember leaving the pub, I don't remember going home. I remember being in the pub, listening to Madeleine Peyroux, drinking Bloody Marys, talking to Paul Archer and the next thing I remember is waking up in my bed at seven thirty this morning, bare as a jaybird with a stark bollock naked man lying beside me.'
'Dr Archer?'
'Yes, Dr bloody Archer.' She sat down again and looked at her friend with sore, bloodshot and devastated eyes. 'I think he raped me, Jane. I think he slipped some Rohypnol, or something like it, in my drink and he raped me.'
Jane took her friend's hand and held it as tears ran down her cheek. 'It's going to be okay, Kate. We're going to find out what happened and if he has done what you say, then we are going to make him pay for it.'
'But if I can't remember . . . ?'
'The first thing we are going to do is take a blood test. See if there is anything in your system.'
'And then what?'
'I've asked Dr Caroline Akunin to come over here.'
Kate looked up agitated. 'No, Jane. I don't want that.'
'You haven't showered, have you?'
Kate shook her head.
'So you must have had it in mind.'
'I don't want to go to the police. I can't.'
'That's why I asked her to come here.'
Kate held her head in her hands again. 'I've performed the procedures often enough in the past. Feeling sorry for the women. Pitying them. Christ, Jane, I never thought I'd be in their shoes.'
Jane took her hand again. 'You're not at fault here, Kate.'
'Aren't I? I went out and got smashed. Maybe I did want to act like Jack. Wash my problems away in a lake of alcohol, have meaningless, emotionless sex.'
Jane shook her head. 'Are you saying this is what you wanted?'
'If it's what I wanted, I would have remembered, wouldn't I?'
Dr Caroline Akunin was a stunningly beautiful, black woman in her late thirties. She was tall, elegant, shaved her hair and was seven months pregnant. She looked sympathetically at Kate as Jane Harrington closed the door behind her office, leaving the two women alone.
Kate nodded at the doctor's swollen belly. 'Nearly due then?'
Caroline ran her hand instinctively across her bump. 'How can you tell? A couple of months to go.'
'And how's your gorgeous husband?'
'My gorgeous husband is being a pain in the butt right now.'
'Why?'
'He wants this little one to be born back in his own country.'
'Russia?'
'Yup. Moscow, just where I want to be in the middle of winter.'
'Will you go?'
Caroline smiled, the brilliance of it lighting the room. 'I don't mind really. Quite looking forward to it. Never let him know though. You have to keep your man on his toes, don't you?'
