The Rose Petal Beach

  Her eyes are full of tears, her face is no longer twisted in disgust, it is drenched in agony. ‘I’m not a liar. I am not making it up. I only just got away from him. If I hadn’t … I’m not a liar.’

  It sounds true, and I’d know it was true if it wasn’t for the fact she is talking about Scott.

  ‘You know what he can be like. Deep down, in that place inside that you avoid visiting because that’s where all your bad thoughts and experiences live, you know, don’t you?’

  My memory flickers with that time. That time I said yes, when I felt yes. But … there had been the act that I had not been expecting, had not wanted. There had been the words he’d never used before. There was the bruising on my body afterwards because that was the roughest he’d ever been. It’d been rough before, it’d been getting marginally rougher over time, but that was the worst, the most painful. Then there had been afterwards: when he’d been tender, and caring and close. And the holding afterwards, which had been becoming shorter and shorter, again by increments, was longer this time. Afterwards I felt loved, wanted, adored. And scared, scarred, hollow, insecure, used. ‘That was amazing, TB, wasn’t it?’ he said. I had closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at his face, I tightened my grip so I wouldn’t push him away, and I inhaled his scent so I would be reminded what the man I loved had always smelled like, and I murmured, ‘Hmmm’ so he wouldn’t know how horrible it had been.

  That was that, though, it wasn’t like what Mirabelle was saying. What she has been saying makes him a criminal and a monster. What I have been remembering was a time of yes, of consent and of misunderstanding. The two are completely different.

  She crumples a little, the corners of her mouth turning down. ‘Oh, Tami, he did it to you, too, didn’t he?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. There’s a difference between rough sex and … and what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, yes, there is. Who doesn’t like rough sex every now and again? As long as it’s what you wanted?’

  Was it what I wanted? I don’t remember. Does anybody remember what sex they wanted each and every time they do it?

  ‘Was it?’ she asks my silence. ‘Was it what you wanted or was it what your sex life had become?’

  ‘This has nothing to do with that,’ I tell her.

  ‘God, Tami, all the time we’ve been friends, all the chats we’ve had I’ve known there was something wrong. He’s got worse, hasn’t he? The higher his star rises, the worse he treats you. He’s probably been dominating you and pushing your boundaries for ages. I didn’t realise it’d got to the point where he’s ra—’

  ‘Don’t say that. Don’t say that word. He hasn’t done that to me so don’t say it.’

  ‘I love you, Tami,’ she says. ‘You’re one of my best friends, you’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, I just wish you would wake up and see what he’s really like. What he’s doing to you and what he’s done to me.’

  I have to get out of here. I have to leave because if I stay any longer, if I’m around her any longer, if I listen any longer, I’ll start to hear her. I’ll start to remember elements of my marriage differently, I’ll start to pick it apart to fit what she’s saying. That’s what the human mind does, it finds evidence to back up the things we believe. If I do not leave, I will start to believe what she is saying. ‘Stop it. Just stop it. I’m not listening to any more of this.’

  I turn without another word to her. As I open the door, she comes up behind me. ‘Every time I see you, I realise I did the right thing going to the police,’ she says. ‘Not only for my sake, but also for yours.’

  As I step out of the house into the driveway, fury rises up inside me. I haven’t got her to retract her allegation, I am actually leaving with more doubts than when I entered.

  The car that has pulled up from the road is silver and older than either of the two cars sitting on Mirabelle’s driveway. I’m sure it’s in good working order and will pass all the necessary checks. It has to: it is a police car. One of the police officers is in the process of getting out when I exit the house, the other was obviously going to wait in the car. But now, when he sees me, he opens his car door and exits too.

  ‘Mrs Challey, I’m surprised to see you here,’ Detective Sergeant Harvan says, coldly. The warmth and concern she showed me the other night is long gone, probably spirited away on having to release Scott without charge.

  ‘Hope you’re not trying to coerce or in any way intimidate our witness,’ the male officer says. He is tall and muscular with black hair, dark skin and the biggest pair of brown eyes I have ever seen on a man. Both police officers look from me to the woman behind for a microsecond before returning to me. Almost synchronised.

  ‘Of course not. We were just … we were just talking.’

  As one person, they again move their line of sight to Mirabelle.

  ‘Erm … yes, just talking,’ Mirabelle says. Mirabelle and I have duplicate echoes of anxiety and nervousness in our speech. We sound as if we have something to hide.

  ‘Well, in the future, don’t “just talk”,’ Harvan says.

  ‘Just stay away from each other,’ the policeman adds.

  ‘We don’t want any misunderstandings to occur,’ Harvan says.

  ‘That could jeopardise the case,’ the policeman adds.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ I say. ‘I’m not like that.’

  ‘No one ever is,’ Harvan replies.

  ‘Until they are,’ the policeman adds.

  ‘Do you two do a double act on the stage or something?’ Mirabelle snaps. I was thinking the same thing but would never say it. ‘Because what you’re doing – all the finishing of each other’s sentences – it’s not endearing, it’s not funny, it’s irritating.’

  I certainly wouldn’t have gone that far had I been inspired to say anything at all, but I suppose she can say that sort of thing, she’s the victim after all. She can do and say whatever she likes. It’s me that can’t step out of line.

  ‘Can I go?’ I ask the officers.

  ‘Of course,’ Harvan replies. ‘Just don’t let me catch you here again.’ She smiles a smile that would curdle milk. The policeman doesn’t smile. He stares at me with cold eyes that are accusing me of something I know I haven’t done.

  Beatrix

  It didn’t happen with the man from the plane. He was nice, but not interested. I hope that’s not a smirk on your face there. It was only a little flirtation, I wouldn’t have done anything so don’t get all judgy and think I need to be taken down a peg or two. I suppose, since my husband left, I’ve been desperate to know I’m attractive to men. I mean, I know it, I do look in mirrors, I do go out of my way to dress well, but it’s nice to have external validation every now and again.

  To know I’m not all those things he said when he left. Did I mention he left me for somewhore – sorry, some one – else? She wasn’t even that much prettier than me. Oh, I don’t know. I do know that some days it’s a wonder I get out of bed at all. The things he said about my body and our sex life and pretty much the whole of who I am scored me deep. It was like he took a branding iron to my soul, burnishing every criticism there for eternity.

  I suppose any man who looks at me or shows interest in me is kind of proving him wrong, is rubbing out all those things he said. That does make me sound desperate. But before you start to look down on me, look at yourself. I bet you do it too. And if you don’t, I really, really envy you.

  Still nothing from the Challeys. I’m almost too scared to call now because if something has gone wrong, it’ll be a very big wrong.

  Tami

  ‘Thank you for coming in to see us, Mrs Challey,’ the policewoman says.

  I didn’t have much choice in the matter. They followed me down from Mirabelle’s and stopped me outside my house and said they would like to talk to me. I’d been given the choice of coming down to the police station there and then or for them to come visit me at home at some point in the near future. The way DS H
arvan spoke, she made it abundantly obvious she was pushing my buttons, using my weakness – Cora and Anansy – to get me to do what she wanted and come to the station. Then it would be official; they could record the conversation, they could sit me in a room like the ones they reserved for criminals and they could be in charge. Which is currently what is happening. Me installed in an interview room on one side of the table, them on the other, recording machine on.

  Not what I wanted, but after what happened last week, I didn’t want there to be even the slightest chance that the girls would see them. Neither Cora nor Anansy have mentioned it again, but I know the memory is still there: that the experience probably stalks their nightmares in the same way it fuels their need to know where Dad is every moment of the day. I did not want them to see me being questioned, too.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I reply, shifting uncomfortably on the seat. Considering how long people must sit on these things, they’re pretty unforgiving, no seat pads, no comforting lines you can mould your body to. That’s most likely the point: you’re not there to be comfortable, you’re there to suffer until you confess – whether you’re guilty or not.

  ‘We’re trying to get some background information to help us with our enquiries,’ Harvan says. I get the impression that she’s in charge although I may be wrong and her colleague is the more senior of them and likes to take a back seat to watch their suspects’ responses.

  I nod at her.

  ‘What’s your relationship with your husband like, Mrs Challey?’

  ‘Normal, fine, OK. Not perfect, but which relationship is perfect? It’s all right, you know. We have our ups and downs but none of that matters because we love each other, we’ve been together since the dawn of time and we’re going to grow old together.’ That is the reply I should have been able to give. I would have given a week ago, six days ago, even.

  ‘Not great at the moment,’ I reply, pulling the sleeves of my fuchsia cardigan over my hands and then picking at the edges of the cuffs with opposite hands. One of the threads on the right-hand cuff has worked its way loose, so the seam is slightly unravelled.

  ‘And why’s that?’ she asks, as if she doesn’t know.

  ‘Something to do with him being arrested and me finding out he was having an affair with one of my friends. Doesn’t make for a great time as a couple.’

  ‘So you had no idea he was allegedly having an extramarital relationship with Ms Kemini?’

  I shake my head. I really didn’t. I have been too trusting. Too gullible. Too blinded to whatever it was that was going on under my nose.

  ‘How often do you have sex with your husband, Mrs Challey?’

  What? I think. ‘What?’ I say, shrinking back in my seat. My gaze flies from her to him. They stare back at me with twin expressions of nonchalance.

  ‘How often do you have sex with your husband?’ she repeats.

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ I reply, lowering my head and picking harder at the unravelled thread.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel that way, but it would really help your husband if you could give us as full a picture of him as possible.’

  ‘I’m not answering that question,’ I state. That memory, the one that talking to Mirabelle dislodged, is fighting to be released. It wants me to look at it again, examine it, explore it, experience it – then explain to myself why I have been avoiding thinking about it. Why, apart from the night when he told me about the affair, I haven’t had sex with Scott since. Nearly four months and we haven’t made love. I find that hard to admit, even in the privacy of my own thoughts. That time, the time of yes that felt like a no, killed any desire I had for him, and it put a barrier between us in our bed, in our lives. We didn’t talk about it, but I think we both knew that sex was not on the cards for the foreseeable.

  ‘That’s your right, Mrs Challey,’ she says with a small, hardly noticeable smile. Triumph. She thinks I’ve proved her point. She’s going to use that, my refusal to answer the question, as evidence to say that he did it. He wasn’t getting it at home so he had to go out and force it on someone else.

  In my memory Scott’s hands are gripping me, controlling me, then he’s hurting me; in the echoes of my mind his voice is breathing out words I can’t believe he’d ever say; in my body, the shaking is back. With force, I push them – the memories, the feelings, the shaking – all away. I shove it all behind me and slam shut the door. Concentrate on what is happening now, I order myself.

  ‘Does your husband look at pornography?’ she asks.

  ‘Don’t all men?’ I reply.

  ‘No,’ she says with a shake of her head, ‘they don’t.’

  ‘I don’t,’ the policeman, Detective Wade he told me his name was in the car over here, says. He seems a normal man, not inhibited or overly ‘in touch with his feminine side’.

  ‘I assumed all men did,’ I state. I sound pathetic. Clueless and pathetic. I don’t even believe that. I tell myself that to make it OK that Scott still does it. Even though he knows I hate it, he still does it and does it regularly.

  ‘Not all men get aroused watching women being brutalised,’ Harvan says.

  ‘What? Looking at porn doesn’t mean you get aroused by women being brutalised.’

  ‘Read around the subject, Mrs Challey, I think you’ll find out a lot of the stuff is made in disgracefully unethical ways,’ Wade says. ‘And a lot of the images that are out there are of women being degraded, humiliated and, yes, brutalised.’

  I can’t read around it, it’s bad enough I know it exists; it’s bad enough that periodically that woman’s face I saw for a fraction of a moment on that film all those years ago wells up in my mind and I briefly imagine what she is going through, what she is feeling, what happened in her life so she smiles while she is obviously being hurt. I can’t read any more about the subject. What would I do with that knowledge? How would that make Scott any better in my eyes?

  ‘Does your husband masturbate to rape pornography?’ Harvan asks.

  ‘What? No. Absolutely no.’

  ‘You sound very sure, have you checked?’

  ‘No, but he wouldn’t. OK? He wouldn’t.’

  ‘Are you sure? Most men start with very vanilla types of porn, the so-called “tame” stuff, but their tastes become more extreme as the need for a bigger hit increases.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Like he wouldn’t attack a woman?’ she says.

  ‘Like he wouldn’t have an affair?’ Wade says. Their tag-team is back.

  ‘Depending on whose version of events you wish to believe,’ she says.

  ‘Either way, it’s not looking good for your husband, is it, Mrs Challey?’ he says.

  ‘Being a cheat and looking at porn doesn’t make you a … doesn’t make you guilty of what you’re accusing him of.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ she says.

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen it,’ he says.

  ‘That’s why we’re asking you about it,’ she says.

  ‘The wives often know more than they realise. If they would just put the pieces together.’

  ‘And look at the bigger picture.’ She lowers her voice to a concerned level. ‘Mrs Challey, has your husband ever hurt you during sex? Intentionally or unintentionally?’

  ‘I told you, I’m not answering those questions.’ The look again, this time without the smile, but still the same, still deciding what she can glean from my refusal to answer.

  ‘Do you have any other questions?’ I want this to end. ‘Because I have work to do and children to pick up from school.’

  ‘Where were you on the night of April eighth this year?’

  ‘Do I need an alibi or something?’ I reply. That’s the first time I’ve heard the date. Obviously Scott hasn’t told me the date because it never happened.

  ‘No, we’re interested in your husband’s emotional state when he came home that day.’

  ‘Erm … Eighth April? What day of the week was tha
t?’

  ‘A Monday.’

  ‘Oh, well, I probably didn’t see him. I go running on a Tuesday morning so I go to bed early.’

  ‘Do you go running alone?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I’m sure you know I go running with Mirabelle.’

  ‘Did you go running with Ms Kemini, the morning after eighth April?’

  The tingling starts on my scalp then shimmers down my spine, radiating out over my body. That was the week before last, the only time Mirabelle hasn’t turned up for a run without cancelling way in advance. I shake my head.

  ‘Why not?’

  My tongue feels stuck to the roof of my mouth and I’m finding it hard to speak. ‘She didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Any idea why?’

  I’d waited and waited in the usual place at the edge of the Close, I jogged up and down on the spot until it was ten minutes after our usual start time. I had my phone on me, strapped to my bicep, and I kept checking it for text messages or missed calls but nothing. After ten minutes I called her but she didn’t answer either of her phones. And then I jogged round to her house, to see if she’d overslept, but she didn’t answer the door. I was worried. The blinds were down but I could sense she was in the house.

  I paced around outside for a bit, wondering what to do. What if she’d had an accident and was there all alone and unable to get help? Should I get help? But what if she’d met someone and had brought him back? The last thing she’d want is to have me sending in the cavalry while she was mid-coitus.

  I tried calling again but no reply.

  A few seconds later my phone bleeped.

  Overslept. Go without me.

  That was it. Not her usual type of text message which were always sunny and signed off with a kiss.

  Does that mean …

  ‘Mrs Challey, you haven’t told us why you went running alone the morning following the alleged attack on Ms Kemini?’

  ‘She, erm, said she’d overslept.’

  Which had seemed ludicrous because in all the time I’d known her Mirabelle had never overslept or been late for anything. Later in the day she’d texted to say she’d hurt her leg so couldn’t go running for a while.