worse for wear on four peach schnapps and lime, Mike and Karen had. Done that. I shook my head in disbelief, as if trying to clear water from my eyes. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘It’s true, Ali. I mean, God, way more off than on, but it’s been years now. If he said it was just once, he was lying.’
I gripped the edge of the sofa. ‘When I was having Benj. When I had to stay in hospital that week.’ Karen had come down, helping to look after Cassie, then just five.
She just nodded.
‘When my dad died?’ Mike had been so sweet to me then, rubbing my back as I cried myself to sleep for ten nights in a row, holding the fort at home while I went north to help my mother clear out the house.
‘Yes. Ali – you realise it hurts my case. If we had a previous . . . relationship. I’m telling you so you know I’m not lying that he hurt me.’
‘But you lied all those other times!’
She looked at her feet. ‘I didn’t lie. I just . . . never told you. Jesus, Ali, what would I have said? I love you. You’re my best friend. But him and me – it’s like some drug you can’t quit. When I saw him on Saturday . . .’
‘I don’t believe you! You’re lying!’
‘Why would I lie?’
‘I don’t know!’ To hurt me, I was thinking. To take everything I had and crush it. ‘Why would he do – what you’re saying, if it was going on for years? It doesn’t make sense.’
She paused. ‘We’d ended it. That day.’
‘He said he ended it.’ Or rather, he’d said she’d come on to him, moment of weakness, never again etc. And how easily I’d believed him.
Karen stared at the ground. ‘Ali, I don’t know. Clearly, he lies sometimes. And anyway, just because we – I still didn’t want it later on. He still forced me. That’s still – Ali, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You know what rape is.’
I bit down hard on my lip. ‘How did you know it was him? You were drunk. All of you were so drunk. And it was dark out there.’
‘I . . . Ali, for God’s sake. Who else was there? No one got into the garden. The police already checked.’
‘There was Callum. There was . . . Bill . . .’ And there was the problem. If it had to be someone, then it had to be either my husband or these friends of ours.
‘Cal had passed out, you know that. He was hammered, and we’d smoked all that weed. And Bill had gone to bed ages before, and – I think I’d know the difference in six foot four and five foot nine, Al.’ Her usual tone had crept through, even in all this. Karen the wise and cool, showing me the ropes. Teaching me about real life. ‘Anyway, I know him. His jumper. His smell . . . I know him, Ali. Even if I was drunk. I’d have thought you, of all people, would know that shouldn’t matter.’
‘Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe he thought you’d say yes – if you had so many times before.’ I was clutching at straws now and I knew it. I’d lost this fight, lost it comprehensively, and now I was throwing punches, trying to hurt her maybe. As if she hadn’t been hurt enough. I’d seen that, hadn’t I, the bruises? She hadn’t made it up? But he couldn’t have. He couldn’t have. I was looking for a way for this all to fit, for Mike not to be a rapist and Karen not a liar. Maybe that didn’t exist.
She pulled on her collar again. ‘He knew. And even if he hadn’t, I was way too drunk to consent. Again, Ali, I know you’re not thinking straight, but hear what you’re saying. You. I was drunk and maybe I wanted it because we slept together before? Come on.’
‘You’re saying you slept together for years! Twenty-five years, behind my back!’ It burst out of me. ‘What the hell?’ Did I even believe her? Mike had said just one time.
‘I know.’ She looked at the floor again. ‘I should say sorry, I know that. And I am sorry for hurting you. God, I’d never want to hurt you, not ever. You’re . . . But there was just this thing, between us, this terrible dark thing that I couldn’t stop. We’d try but