‘How is telling the truth racist?’ Heather demanded.
She and Jess K started yelling at each other. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Rani asked me. ‘She hit you pretty hard.’
My jaw was aching a little, but I nodded. ‘Nothing that’ll leave a scar.’
‘If it starts hurting worse, tell me, okay?’ she said. ‘I might not be able to do much, but I’ve got a bunch of ibuprofen.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
She patted my arm. It was the closest one of the other women had come to being friendly towards me the whole time I’d been living in the Convent.
Slowly, I melted back against the wall. ‘I can’t believe you’reall taking her side!’ Heather said. ‘She took me completely out of context!’
‘What context?’ Jess K said.
Tears started spilling down Heather’s cheeks. ‘Oh, stop crying,’ Samantha snapped.
I managed to slip out the French doors without anyone noticing.
I sank down on the verandah steps and put my head between my knees, taking deep breaths until I had almost stopped shaking.
It wasn’t the first time someone had hit me. Not even the first time someone had hit me in the face. A foster dad had slapped me so hard when I was eleven that I nearly lost a tooth (which, thankfully, had made my social worker notice that he was an abusive piece of shit and move me on). I’d had plenty of other foster parents who believed that sparing the rod would spoil the child, and I’d endured my fair share of violence from the Fionas of the world.
This hadn’t been anything like that. It hadn’t even really hurt that badly.
It was the shock, not the pain, that took me right back there.
I was twenty-six years old. I was an adult. How was this still happening to me?
‘Cece!’ Dylan yelled.
I looked up. He was running – no, sprinting – towards me, having clearly vaulted out of one of the golf carts that were in his wake. ‘Are you okay?’ he said, falling to his knees in front of me, clutching me to him in a hug and then taking myjaw in his fingers, turning my face from side to side. ‘Did she hurt you?’
‘I’m all right.’
He pulled me close again, one big hand on the back of my head, pressing me into him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said into my hair. ‘I should never have put you in this situation. I’m so sorry.’
I managed to pull back. ‘What are you doing here?’ I said. ‘How did you know that she…?’
‘We were filming an interview when one of the PAs came rushing in to tell us that she’d seen Heather beating the shit out of you on the monitor,’ Murray said, clambering out of another golf cart.
He wasn’t the only one. There were two PAs with him, as well as two camera operators and a sound guy with a boom.
‘Did she?’ Murray asked. ‘Beat the shit out of you?’
‘No,’ I replied, my mouth getting slowly dry as the camera crew started setting up. ‘She just slapped me. It’s not that big a deal.’
‘Not that big a deal?’ Dylan exploded. ‘She hit you!’
He let go of me and started up the stairs.
‘Dylan, wait!’ Murray barked.
‘No,’ Dylan said. ‘This can’t stand. Absolutely the fuck not.’
‘I’m not saying it will stand. Just wait a minute.’
‘One minute,’ Dylan said tightly, turning and folding his arms. ‘That’s it.’
