'Not that. To see if it really happened with me. I want to know about him.'
'You want to know about Paul?'
'I'm sorry.'
Helen Archer sighed, her fingers clutching her ring, the knuckles white. She took a deep breath. 'Don't be sorry,' she said finally. 'None of this is your fault.'
'I'm still sorry. You have enough to deal with.'
'I know what it's like to not be believed. To have a man rape you and others believe him when he denies it. I know what it's like to be attacked. To be attacked by a man you trusted, who you once loved.' Helen blinked back tears now. 'I know what it's like to be hurt.'
Kate bit her lower lip, not noticing the pain, and said again, 'I'm sorry.'
Helen came across and sat beside her on the sofa. 'It's not your fault,' she said, taking Kate's small, cold hand in her own. And Kate cried now, the tears running down her cheeks.
The curly-haired man leaned back against the wall and looked with disdain across the road where a group of office workers had gathered for a cigarette. The smokers' room was now al fresco by law after all. He had never been a smoker. He had tried it once, buying a pack of ten Camels off a boy at school when he was twelve years old. He had only smoked one of them and hadn't cared for it at all, never felt the urge to smoke again. In his book it was a sign of weakness. He looked at his watch. One o'clock. He slipped headphone buds into his ears, turned on his portable radio and listened to the headlines he had been waiting for.
A few minutes later he turned it off again. The fools still hadn't made the connection. A small mention of a woman found dead. Being treated as murder but that was it. No mention of the one on Hampstead Heath. No mention of what they signified. He laughed out loud, quite careless of the curious looks he was getting from across the street. Idiots the lot of them. Delaney smoked, didn't he? Another idiot. He couldn't see a clue if it was served up on a silver plate for him.
He looked at his watch once more, started whistling a Michael Jackson song and wandered back towards his office. In a couple of hours he'd be off rota. Then the fun could begin again.
Helen's eyes were like cold flint as she remembered. 'There was no evidence of any date-rape drug that they could find. I got away whilst he was dressing. Locked myself in my bedroom and called the police from there. But he had plenty of time before they arrived to rinse out the decanter. Replace the brandy. Clean the carpet where it had spilled.'
'Yes.'
'They took me down the police station. It was horrible, Kate. You could see it in the eyes of the men. They didn't believe me. My voice was slurred, I'd drunk a lot of brandy, laced or otherwise.'
Kate looked at her sympathetically. She knew what it was like, she'd drunk far too many vodkas to have any control, to have any defences that night. Helen was blaming herself for that much at least, and Kate could well understand how she felt. The
'The police surgeon on call was different. She believed me. She treated me like the victim I was in all this.' Her voice hardened. 'But I'm not going to be a victim any more, Kate. I'll see that bastard in court and make him pay.'
'I know.'
'And do you know what the worse thing was, Kate?'
'Go on.'
'On our fifth wedding anniversary I bought him a watch.' The bitterness sharp in her voice. 'A Rolex. An eighteen-carat white-gold Rolex Oyster Perpetual Cosmograph Daytona. Seventeen thousand pounds' worth.'
