‘Did you realise it was wrong?’
‘What?’
‘You and me.’
‘No.’
‘You never thought about our ages?’
His eyes fix on me while he shakes his head, that startling navy blue. ‘You were always so self-possessed, so intelligent, all I could think of was—’ He breaks off. When he starts again, his voice is hoarse. ‘—I’d found the one.’
I struggle to keep my features steady. ‘So, you didn’t think about the legal definitions?’
‘Legal definitions?’
In my fantasy of this moment, I am iron, I am steel. I’ve practised the three words I want to say thousands of times, watched myself mouth them in bathroom mirrors, changing rooms, the matte black of my computer screen. But now, when the moment presents itself, something in me gives way. Could he have done this, this man with his razor-sharp blazer and navy eyes? I look at him and the jury of my mind is still out.
Yet, this is also why I’m here. To show him, to show myself, that however absurd it seems, however unlikely, there is only one answer to what he did, what that makes him, what that makesme.Nothing is ever that neat, he said. This is. It’s clean-cut. Black and white. I push out the words, though my fingers are twisting round and round themselves: ‘You raped me.’
He is still for the longest time. Then, he caves in. His eyes close first, he covers them with his hands but nothing can hide the collapse of his body, which folds over his knees. And although I have done this, the sight of him devastates me. I squeeze my own throat.
‘How can you think that?’ he whispers.
‘That’s what it was,’ I say, although my strength for this has disappeared, I’m not even here, I’m over there, by the orange bookshelves, watching a woman parrot words to a man who looks like he’s reeling from a blow. ‘It’s the intentional penetration of the vagina with your penis when the other person doesn’t consent—’
‘You consented, you consented!’ His hands slide from his face. ‘You did more than consent! You started it, remember? Months before I did anything back. In the museum!’
The memories detonate. Carved pillars. The balcony. The pulse of his throat.
He reaches for my hand. I jerk back. But if he tried again, I’m not sure I wouldn’t let him, I am tempted, badly, I’m so frightened of everything he’s saying. ‘There’s no need for this. I wanted you and you wanted me. It’s all right.’
A jar of fluttering Blues. His lips on my arm.I wanted to, I wanted to and then, I understand this is less a fight with Daniel than a fight with myself, because it takes every ounce of me to blink back the romance of a seaside cottage and see instead the man sitting across from me, trying to pin me silent.
My vision clears. Back then, I had no words to describe what happened except, ‘I started it,’ so that became memory, slick and sticky with my shame. But I’ve acquired a new language now, I have different memories. I didn’t seduce him, I was groomed. I wanted him. But wanting isn’t the same as consent. ‘You can’t consent when you’re under sixteen.’
I watch him, anticipate another blasting apart. But it doesn’t happen. He doesn’t seem to register the importance of what I’m saying. ‘You didn’t want to?’ he says, slowly.
‘It doesn’t matter if I wanted to.’
‘Your feelings are irrelevant?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Not to me.’ His eyes are wide and unrelenting. ‘To me, your feelings matter more than anything in the world.’
I don’t understand. If the law is axiomatic, incontrovertible, why doesn’t truth feel true? Why does my assailant feel like my biggest defender? I fall back to the lines I’ve practised, not because I believe them like I did seconds before, but because there is nothing else to cling onto, they’re cliff face, they’re rope when I am derailed, blown off course. ‘This isn’t about me. It’s about you. You committed a crime. It’s not a defence that I came on to you.’
‘It should be.’ He looks at me like he loves me. ‘Anyone confronted with the astonishment of you wouldn’t have been able to resist.’
Lamplight.
My wrist in his hand.
‘You’re utterly rare,’ he said. ‘Astonishing.’
He pushes back his chair, stands up. His voice is very soft. ‘Besides, there is a defence.’
I shake my head, the only movement I can summon when I am barely treading water, I am drowning in the treacherous shallows of memory.