at Caroline’s back to try to make her turn around, to come and rescue me.
“Well, love,” he said, with emphasis, “of course I’m drunk, it’s the fucking Christmas party, right? Tha’s the whole fucking point.”
I stopped walking and turned to face him. Somewhere inside me, the fear had been taken over by fury. “Go and annoy someone else, Robin.”
He stopped too, and his attractive face had become a sneer. “Frigid cow,” he said loudly. “Bet you only get wet for your girlfriend.”
This, for some unfathomable reason, made me smile.
Whatever, it was clearly the wrong response for him. Before I knew what was happening, he’d pushed me back hard, my feet stumbling backward, until I hit a brick wall, his whole body against me. The breath knocked out of me in one go, I couldn’t take any in because of his weight, and then his face in mine, his mouth on mine, his tongue in my mouth.
Monday 17 November 2003
It was nearly midnight when Lee finally put in an appearance.
He’d said he’d be at my house at eight, or thereabouts, and then nothing—no call, no text, nothing at all until nearly midnight. At eleven, pissed off, I had nearly gone out, but decided to go to bed instead. All night I’d been fighting the urge to phone him, to say “Where are you?” but instead I tidied up, cleaned the bathroom, e-mailed some friends and got steadily more and more mad.
Until the knock on the door.
Lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, I wasn’t sure I’d heard it until a second knock, slightly harder. I contemplated ignoring it; that would serve him damn right, standing me up like that! And besides, I was in my pajamas.
I waited a few moments and no more knocks came, but I couldn’t lie there anymore. The anger was sitting on my stomach like a dead weight. With a sigh, I got out of bed and padded downstairs, putting on the light in the hallway. I opened the door, mentally rehearsing giving him a piece of my mind.
Blood on his face.
“Oh, my God! Oh, shit, what happened?” Barefoot, I leapt from the doorway, touching his cheek, his face, feeling him wince.
“Can I come in?” he said, with a cheeky smile.
He wasn’t drunk at all, which had been my first thought. The way he was dressed was very different from the last time I’d seen him: grubby-looking jeans, a shirt that might once have been pale blue but was now decorated with spots of blood and smears of grease, a ratty brown jacket, sneakers that must have been years old. But I couldn’t smell alcohol on him—just sweat, dirt, the smell of the cold night outside.
My second thought, which I voiced, was, “What the fuck happened to you?”
He didn’t reply, but I didn’t give him much of a chance, dragging him in and sitting him on the sofa, while I ran around getting some peroxide and cotton balls and warm water and a towel. In the semidarkness, the light from the hallway, I dabbed away at the blood around his eye, feeling the swelling beneath the skin give. Blood oozed from the cut in his eyebrow.
“Are you going to tell me?” I said quietly.
He gazed at me, stroked my cheek. “You look so good,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
“Lee, please. What happened?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t tell you. All I can say is that I’m sorry I didn’t make it for eight. I tried everything I could to get to a phone, but it didn’t happen.”
I stopped fussing around his face and looked at him. He was telling the truth about that, at least.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You’re here now.” I held a cotton pad up to his eyebrow for a moment. “Although dinner’s ruined.”
He laughed, and then winced.
“Lift up your shirt,” I ordered, and when he didn’t immediately comply I started to undo his buttons, pulling his shirt open. The side of his chest was red and scratched—the bruises wouldn’t show for a while. “Jesus,” I said, “you should be in the ER.”
His hands went to my back and pulled me down toward him. “I’m going nowhere.”
His kiss started gently, but only for a moment. Then it was fierce and hard, and I was kissing him back harder. His hands were threaded through my hair, pulling my face into his. After a moment I fought against him, but only so I could pull my T-shirt off over my head.
For a first time, it wasn’t