him. It was rambling. But he more or less – he did it, Kar.’
Her jaw set. ‘Him.’
Timidly, I said: ‘Do you . . . is that something you think might have happened?’ I meant, was it Callum who had sex with you on the lawn, not Mike? Had sex with. That was not the right phrase, but I still didn’t know how to say it. ‘Did he – attack you?’
Karen thought about it. ‘I wasn’t lying. The aftershave, the jumper. They were Mike’s.’
‘The jumper was in the rubbish pile.’ I explained that Benji found it, shoved right to the bottom.
‘So someone wanted to destroy it? Wanted it burned?’
‘I guess so. Mike had taken it off, before dinner. It was so hot during the day, remember. It was lying on the decking. I was cross because he never put things away.’ Using the past tense to speak of him, my husband. Because I was afraid he would die, or because I knew things would never be the same again?
Karen’s mouth was pursed. She was hunched over, and the hands that held an empty paper cup were shaking. ‘He put it on. So I’d think it was Mike.’
‘Maybe he was just cold or . . .’ I stopped. I didn’t know why I was defending Callum. Why I was still, after all this time, trying to ease the brutal facts of what had happened. Trying to spare myself, when it was Karen who’d had this done to her, to her body and her mind.
‘He knew. About me and Mike. Mike said he thought Callum suspected.’
Me and Mike. It was a knife in me, but I was so numb I couldn’t feel it now. Later, sometime, all these wounds would make themselves felt, I was sure of it. ‘He did, yeah.’ Would Callum ever have told me? Did all our friends know, everyone except me?
‘He knew I’d think he was Mike, and I’d want to . . . that I’d not put my guard up. I was drunk. I was really really drunk. You don’t know what that feels like, when it’s being done to you, and you can’t get away, you can’t even move . . . he was kneeling on me, Al. On my . . . my legs. My back. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see him. It was so dark. All I could see was the jumper, and there was the smell too. The aftershave.’
It was all making sense to me now, so much so that I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. Blind, distracted, dazzled as I had been all the way through. Looking at the wrong thing all this time. Mike had doused himself in aftershave that night. Of course – he’d wanted to shower before dinner, and I’d nagged him not to, because there wasn’t time, not knowing he’d been with Karen just minutes before I got back. He’d been trying to cover up the smell of her, of sex. His jumper would have reeked of aftershave, obliterating any other smell. And it had been sitting there, conveniently, on the decking, in a discarded heap.
‘What now?’ I risked. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to be with her.
She shook herself all over. ‘I feel like I’m going mad. I was so sure. So sure it was Mike.’
I had felt that way too at times. ‘I’m sorry.’ My voice cracked under the weight of it, how inadequate those syllables were for everything I had to say sorry for. ‘I should never have said those things. I should have believed you.’
She lifted her chin slightly. ‘But it wasn’t true, Ali. What I said. Was it?’
I swallowed. ‘Maybe not. But you didn’t . . . you thought it was him.’
‘I did. I hope you understand that.’
‘Of course. I should have – well, it was unforgivable, what I did. I’m fired, basically. My career’s over.’
‘What a mess.’ Karen was strangely detached. ‘What a bloody mess, eh. What will I do?’
‘We should tell the police everything. Callum confessed to me, I don’t think he’ll fight it. Tell them you remembered the truth, and then they can drop the charges against Mike.’
‘But Mike’s sick. Right?’
‘Yeah. He’s very sick.’
‘And Jake is the only donor.’ She sounded like she was puzzling it all out in her head. ‘OK.’ She pushed her hands off her thighs lightly, as if getting organised. ‘I’m going to tell them. That it wasn’t Mike, it was – him. Then you and I are