‘I took them off,’ he says sheepishly. ‘But you didn’t seem unhappy about it.’
‘Unhappy? So, what, I was smiling? Opening my legs and asking you to fuck me? Is that what I was doing?’ Now her words land like daggers in him. And she wills herself not to cry.
‘You didn’t seem unhappy. I swear to God. I swear on my life.’
‘At least swear on something I give a shit about.’
‘On Maisie’s life then.’
She holds onto the bed-head then, for balance. ‘Hurry up, you’re making me want to vomit.’
‘Then we had sex. And afterwards we cuddled up.’
‘We cuddled up? So I put my arms around you?’
‘No, it wasn’t that exactly.’ His face strains. ‘You just, you kind of fell asleep in my arms is what I’m saying.’
‘I don’t remember that, we didn’t do that.’
‘You were so wasted. But we both were.’
She swallows down her words. She never wants to hear him speak again, and yet she wants to hear it all, every last detail.
‘And then I realized how late it was,’ he continues, ‘I had to go home. So I put your top and pants back on you.’
‘You tidied up your mess. What a polite boy,’ she says, her teeth clamped, like gates holding back the hungry, decimating energy inside her. She wants to tear his fucking head off. She imagines the grey fleshy structure of his brain lying under her foot, the maggot shapes it would make pressed outward under the pressure, a series of little grey balloons holding sixteen years of his memories.
‘The next day I thought maybe I should call you, but then I was really worried you’d say you’d regretted it. So I thought I’d see you at school and in my head, if you were happy about it, then I’d know we were maybe going out together. And if you avoided me then you’d be letting me down gently. That kind of thing. And I tried to come up to you. Don’t you remember that?’
She does remember. A half-wave from Adam in the hallway while she went lesson to lesson, living a waking nightmare of having been a nameless somebody’s black-hole fuck. A piece of meat built for someone to ejaculate into. Yes, he had waved.
‘So I thought, OK, she doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I was heartbroken, to be honest.’ Adam tries to look her in the eye. ‘I just assumed for ages that you were being weird around me because you hated that we’d had sex together and you were trying to forget about it. I felt … It doesn’t matter what I felt. But I thought I’d made you hate me.’
‘You have.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t like what? Not like fucking what? Say it.’
He is flustered. ‘Not like … I mean, until you told me you thought you’d been raped I had no idea that you didn’t even remember any of it. I remembered it even though I was really high. For me it was the biggest thing that’d ever happened to me. It was the best thing and then—’
‘The earth moved for you, did it?’
‘And then after you blanked me it hurt. Becky, it was like the biggest thing in my life.’
‘Me. Fucking. Too.’
‘I didn’t think it was that, I really didn’t. I’m telling you the truth.’
‘You didn’t tell me the truth though, did you?’ she shouts, spittle exploding into the air, sticking to her chin.
‘I was sixteen.’
‘You didn’t tell the truth.’
Adam takes a long breath. Staring at her, like he has suffered some great injustice and is doing very, very well to remain so patient with her as he explains. Or is he frightened? Or is he telling the truth, now, at last? Becky’s head swims.
‘The girl I was in love with slept with me and then ignored me. That was bad enough. And suddenly I was going to be her rapist? I was never that. That’s not who I am. And that’s what you were going to think of me if I said—’
‘No, Adam. That’s not enough. When you knew I couldn’t remember, you chose not to tell me. Fucking say it.’
‘Part of me was scared of going to prison after what you said, but more than that, I just … I honestly, in my head, in my heart, I really hadn’t done that. I could never do that, to you or to anyone. And once you’d said that and I already hadn’t admitted it, I hadn’t told you what happened, after that I realized, oh fuck, how do I go back? How do I tell her now? And the longer it went on I just … I was a coward about it. That’s true. But I couldn’t face the idea of you thinking that about me. And once I knew you were going to put the baby up for adoption I thought, well, this is terrible, but I can at least be a friend to her. If she needs someone to take the blame for it, let me … And then, and then … Ever since we met … I’ve always been my happiest when I’m with you. I’ve never loved anyone else like I love you. And when we got together?’ He blinks like he might cry. ‘It was the happiest I’ve ever been.’
‘What about my happiness, Adam? All those times I was so grateful to get any scrap of what you could give us, all the time thinking: he’s doing us a favour. I never asked for more. Never asked you to stay with us and help while you were off at festivals getting high with your friends because it’s not like you were her father. But you were! You fucking were! And you let it look like charity. Buying all that stuff. All the times … You let me get eaten alive by not knowing what happened. You found me looking at Scott’s Facebook page and when I told you why I was doing it, you didn’t give me an answer.
