try to smile but I can’t. How can I smile or enjoy myself when I don’t know where Kate is or what’s happened to her?
‘Is Marlow OK?’ I ask, realising I’ve been so concerned with Kate I’ve not asked a single question about her.
‘She’s fine,’ Rob says. ‘I put her down for a nap.’
‘Don’t let her sleep too long,’ I tell him. ‘Or she’ll be up in the night.’
‘I know,’ he says, his tone edgy. He hates me telling him what to do when it comes to Marlow; he says it implies he doesn’t know how to parent. ‘I’ve got it. Everything’s fine. I better go. Call me when Kate shows up.’
‘OK,’ I say and hang up, sipping the rest of my now cold coffee.
Chapter Eight
Another thirty minutes walking the neighbourhood yields nothing except sore feet, though several times I could have sworn I’d spotted Kate in the distance, only to be disappointed when I’d drawn level and seen it wasn’t her at all but a stranger who looked like her. I’m tired and grumpy by the time I decide to call it quits. I haven’t been able to enjoy the sights or been able to browse the shops I’ve entered looking for her, and I’m annoyed about what a waste today has turned into. I think about hailing one of the many taxis that prowl the neighbourhood, obviously trying to pick up silly tourists like me who’ve walked too far and can’t handle another hill, but decide to stick it out in case I spot her en route.
When I finally make it back, the apartment feels quiet as a tomb. I call out Kate’s name anyway and even after getting no response I still check her room, hoping against hope I might find her napping on the bed. Damn you, Kate, I think to myself, when I find it empty.
Annoyed, I walk into the kitchen and drink three glasses of water, glugging them down. My body seems unable to sate my unquenchable thirst, as if whatever I drank or was drugged with last night has turned my body into a dried-out husk. Will drinking so much water affect any drug test, I wonder? But I know deep down I have already dismissed the idea of going to the hospital to get tested. It’s probably too late anyway and I can’t imagine having to explain last night to a nurse or a doctor. And the thought of a sexual assault exam is too much to bear.
I had to go with Kate one time after she was sexually assaulted by a guy on the street. He grabbed her from behind when she was walking home alone at night from the bus stop and forced her down an alley. It wasn’t full penetrative sex but he did assault her and beat her before she managed to get away and run into a petrol station for help. They never found the man and Kate, after a few shaky days and once her bruises had faded, put her own spin on it, casting herself as the plucky heroine who kicked butt and fought off her attacker, leaving out the cruder details for anyone curious. She said her attacker ‘copped a feel’ when it had been much more aggressive and terrifying than that. I knew as I’d been with her, holding her hand, when she gave her statement to the woman detective. I never saw her cry though. She was stoic throughout the interview and the exam, as well as afterwards.
I can’t claim anything as horrible as that happened to me last night. In fact, probably nothing happened at all. The man put me to bed. End of story. It seems silly to make a thing of it when lots of worse things happen to women every day.
After standing in the middle of the living room for several minutes, thoughts drifting, I decide that I need to distract myself. I do a quick bustle through the apartment and balcony picking up towels, finding a pair of boxer shorts underneath one of the sun-loungers and a pair of red lace knickers beneath the coffee table in the living room.
I start to rinse out the glasses I dumped in the sink earlier, hesitating as I dunk them in the soapy water. There’s a fine powder in the bottom of one of the glasses. I examine it closer. It might just be dishwasher powder. Or it might be something else. There’s a faint lipstick mark on the rim