‘He made you feel comfortable,’ Judith said.
‘It didn’t get weird until near the end. I think about half an hour in, maybe forty minutes. I don’t know exactly because I wasn’t looking at my phone. My phone was in my bag, you know? But then he asked me if I ever smoked anything to relax. He said I should try it. I said that it was a cliché, the idea that all uni students do is sit around, you know, punching cones or whatever. My roommate is studying civil engineering, and she’s got like forty hours of lectures a week, plus study. She doesn’t have time to get high.’
‘And you? Do you have a similar schedule?’
Alexis laughed. The same twisted painful laugh from earlier.
‘He asked the exact same question. I’m doing a double major in Chemistry and Food Science. I have twenty hours of lectures. But I also have tutorials and practicals and even if I didn’t, I’m not interested in baking my brain. I told him that. And that’s when he said that he enjoyed a smoke sometimes. That I should come by for an evening session, and we could smoke together. He said it would help me to relax.’
‘What did you say?’
‘What did I say? Probably I didn’t say anything. Probably I just smiled, or something, because I’m a people pleaser, right? And I didn’t want him to feel uncomfortable, because I liked him. I thought he was a good guy. Trying a bit too hard to be cool, or whatever, but harmless.’
‘What happened next?’
‘He just kepttalkingabout how important it was to relax. He asked if I meditated. I said no. He asked me if I went for massages. I asked him if he was joking. I’m a student. I have literally no money. And then he put his hands on my shoulders and told me to close my eyes. He said we were going to try something.’
Judith’s mouth felt dry, and her hands felt cold. She swallowed. She felt an unsettling combination of pity for the girl in front of her and intense anticipation. This time she was going to get the bastard. Finally, after all these years, she was going to get a second chance.
‘What did you do?’
‘I just froze. I didn’t close my eyes. He started massaging my shoulders. He was standing behind me the whole time.’
The tone of Alexis’s voice had changed. She was almost reciting now, as if she was reading someone else’s account, not talking about something that had happened to her. Which wasn’t unusual. Many people who had been through a deeply traumatic incident disassociated in some way; tried to put distance between them and their pain.
‘He massaged my shoulders and told me to picture my safest place and all this shit. And then he just reached down the front of my shirt and started massaging my breasts. He just... like it was a completely normal thing to do. He kept talking the whole time. He sounded like a yoga instructor. Like... monotonous and gentle. It was... it was completely head-wrecking. His voice was so normal, the tone never changed.’ Alexis drew in a shaky breath. ‘I literally had a moment where I doubted myself. How can his hands be on my body when he’s talking like that?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Judith said. How many times had Walker done this, over the years? ‘That sounds... that sounds very upsetting.’
‘You think?’
Judith watched Alexis as the girl steadied herself. There was no sign of tears, not in this one. She was hurting, of course she was, but it was fury that was making Alexis’s voice shake, that made her shift in her chair and tug at her sleeves. Alexis wanted to hurt someone. She wanted revenge. Judith could almost feel that want in the room.
‘What happened next?’
‘I just freaked out. I pushed him off me and I stood up and I grabbed my bag and I left. I just ran out of there. I went straight home and I got in the bath and I stayed in it all day. My roommate found me there. The water was cold and I kept just shivering and shivering but I couldn’t get out. She got me out of the bath and she kept asking me what happened, but I couldn’t tell her because I felt so stupid.’
‘A lot of victims blame themselves, but there’s—’
‘I’m not avictim,’ Alexis said, sharp and hard, like the crack of a whip.
‘There’s no negative connotation to the word victim,’ Judith said. ‘It just means that someone hurt you. Being a victim, it doesn’t mean that you did anything wrong, and it doesn’t mean you’re weak.’
Alexis stared back at her. Even with that face half-hidden under her hoodie, Judith couldn’t miss the cynicism in her expression, the disbelief and the fury. Judith felt a surge of admiration for the girl. She was tough. There was no give in her.
‘Okay fine, I hear you,’ Alexis said. ‘But that’s it. That’s the whole story. I got up this morning and I decided that I didn’t want to let him get away with it. He’s done it before, I know it. A guy like him... he was so chilled out the whole time. So relaxed. It wasn’t his first time.’
‘I’ll take your information and open an investigation.’
‘But it will be my word against his, right? And I’m the screwed-up girl with the panic attacks. So it’s going to be pretty easy for him to paint me as a fantasist, or an attention seeker.’
Judith couldn’t deny it. The words were her own, come back to haunt her.
‘Just think about it,’ Alexis said, her words tight with suppressed anger. ‘How easy it must be for him to pick a good target. He knows all about you, whether or not you have a family that will support you. Whether you’ve already got a reputation as a flake, or whatever. He chooses people who won’t be believed.’
‘You think that’s what he did with you? You think he chose you because he didn’t think you’d be a credible witness, if you did step forward?’
Alexis ignored the question. ‘Has anyone else ever come here and made a complaint against him?’
