I’d told him the whole story, but it felt like things had gone way past that. I could have gone back to my house, but the thought of being all on my own there scared the shit out of me.”
She rearranged herself more comfortably, curled on her side, elbow propped on the arm of the sofa and her cheek leaning pensively on her hand. “But in the end,” she said, “it was totally fine. I dodged Dominic the whole way through the party, and he didn’t even come after me. I was so happy. The college place offers had just come out like two days before; I thought maybe there’d been a miracle and he’d actually got in somewhere decent, and that had sorted his head out . . . Only then I asked around and found out: nope, he’d got nothing. No offer at all. He’d only applied for the big-shot courses, no safety backup stuff for him. So that wasn’t reassuring.”
I remembered that, awed hushed voices, Shit he got nothing at all? and the odd snarky joke about McDonald’s. Except at the party Dominic had seemed totally fine, louder than ever, bellowing with laughter, leaping off the kitchen table. I had meant to keep my mouth firmly shut so I didn’t get a punch in the face, but down at the bottom of the garden, the coke making me jabber: Dude that sucks about college, no I mean that really sucks, what are you going to do? And Dominic staring at me, eyes white-ringed in the moonlight: Like you give a shit. Like anyone gives a shit. I know you’re all laughing your arses off about this. You bunch of fuckers. And then he had laughed at the flash of fear on my face, punch in the arm that sent me staggering, Relax dude I’ll be fine, have some more of this!
“And then,” Susanna said, “I found out he’d spent the party nicking the garden key.”
She sighed. “That was what did it,” she said, “in the end. It meant he could get to me here, any time he wanted. Here.” An iron spike of outrage through her voice, a jerk of her head to the house, and for a moment I saw it the way it had been: warm, shabby, happy, us noisy and tangled in our fort and our contraptions, Hugo calling Dinner! up the stairs through a fog of savory smells.
“And he did, too. A couple of days later Hugo sent me out to the garden to get rosemary, for something he was cooking. Remember where the rosemary bushes were? Right down the back? The second I leaned in to pick a bit, something came barreling out from behind that oak tree and rugby-tackled me. I went flat on my face in the strawberries. I got the wind knocked out of me and there was this huge weight squashing me flat, I couldn’t turn my head to look, but I knew who it was, obviously. I knew the smell of him, by that time; that shitty body spray, eau de jockstrap. He started fumbling under me, trying to undo my jeans. I was flailing around trying to dig my nails into him, but he got his other hand on my throat and started squeezing. And everything started to go all gray and fuzzy and faraway.”
She examined her glass, picked something real or imaginary off the rim. Her face hadn’t changed, but it was a moment before she went on. “Luckily for me,” she said evenly, “right then Hugo stuck his head out the back door and called me. So Dominic rolled off me and grinned and whispered, ‘Rain check,’ and pulled my hair and oozed back off behind the oak tree.”
“You know,” Leon said tightly, “sometimes I wish you’d picked a different method. Something slower and more painful.”
“Hugo spotted that I was covered in dirt and bits of grass,” Susanna said, “but I said I’d tripped and he didn’t guess, because in fairness, who would. I did think about telling him—I was pretty seriously shaken up. To put it mildly. But . . .” A small shrug. “Hugo, you know? What was he going to do? He was hardly going to rush out and beat the shit out of Dominic. He couldn’t have if he’d tried.”
You should have told me, I wanted to say. “Jesus,” I said, instead.
“She didn’t tell me,” Leon said. “About that. Not then.”
“You’d have gone for him,” Susanna said, “and got beaten