you have to do is say there’s an investigation and you fully cooperate with it, even though this is your husband. That all victims should come forward, as your friend has, and let the police do their job. They’re trying to change. It’s up to us to support them.’
‘But I don’t . . . I mean, I don’t . . .’
‘Ali.’ She set down her coffee and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I never disclosed this to you, but there’s a reason I do this job. I was raped at university. A friend of a friend spiked my drink, I think, and when I woke up he was having sex with me.’
‘Oh my God. Did you report him?’
She shook her head. ‘I knew him. I’d been drinking – not enough to pass out, but some. I tried to talk to a few friends but he was popular, and they didn’t believe me. But then a few weeks later he did it to another girl. I felt so guilty. If only I’d come forward, maybe he’d have been arrested and none of that would have happened.’
I could see where she was going with this, but followed to its conclusion it meant Mike was dangerous. That if we didn’t deal with this now, my husband might attack someone else. And that was ludicrous. Mike was a good man. I had married a good man – I had been so very careful to.
She went on, ‘If you could bring yourself to, you could just say that victims – I mean, alleged victims – should come forward. That’s all. They aren’t allowed to discuss any details anyway before the trial.’
For a moment, I considered it – clawing back control, being Ali Morris the Chair, the media personality, the campaigner – but then I was standing up, so quickly I spilled coffee on to my skirt. Images were flickering through my head like a crazed magic-lantern show. Mike, in that tracksuit in a dingy little room, the fear in his voice as he’d begged for my help. Karen in the kitchen, shaking, the blood running down her thigh. Karen. Mike. The two of them having sex in our house. But then there was Cassie, and Benji, crying for his dad. I knew what I had to do. I had to protect them, at all costs.
‘I can’t. He’s my husband. I . . . I’m not going to say anything publicly at all.’
Vix stood up too. I saw her eyes harden. ‘In that case, Ali, I’m afraid we have no choice but to ask you to stand down as Chair. The board are in agreement – we had a conference call earlier. I’ll draft a statement saying you’re out.’
Benji
Everything was horrible. Since the moment he’d woken up in the night, and seen all the adults standing about in the kitchen or outside, his mother shouting and Auntie Karen crying harder than he’d ever seen a grown-up cry, things were horrible. His dad was at the police station and no one would tell him why, just that Auntie Karen was saying he’d hurt her, and he didn’t understand why everyone was fussing round Auntie Karen but no one seemed to notice Cassie had her black eye stuff smeared all over her face, like she’d been crying too. Hurt her how? he kept asking. How did Dad hurt Auntie Karen? But no one would tell him. Now his mother was gone too and it was just him and Cassie, and she’d locked herself in her room to tap at her phone, all she ever did these days. He knew she’d got up that night, gone out – he’d felt her stepping over him, trying to be quiet. He knew there were things she wasn’t telling Mum. They were supposed to be having Sunday lunch right now but everything was wrong. He couldn’t even go in his room because his things were all put away still for Bill to stay, his Minecraft bedspread replaced with the boring striped guest one.
He thought about the night before – waking up, hearing everyone shouting. He’d gone on to the landing, and the door to his room had been open. Bill wasn’t in there, and Benji could hear his voice downstairs. Bill’s bag, a sort of canvas one like an adventurer might have, was open on the floor, and Benji just couldn’t resist. There might be anything in there. Guns. Fishing rods. Maps. Mum had made Bill sound a bit like Indiana Jones. So he’d