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‘Let us in NOW,’ he says, then pulls and pulls at the bathroom door handle.
You can’t break a door down if it opens towards you.
One of the nurses is standing next to him. ‘Arianne? Please open the door.’
‘You should never have let her go in on her own,’ says the policeman.
A man in overalls walks up. ‘Let me at that lock,’ he says and puts in a long key. The door swings open and Dr Rani pulls me back but I see her, my mum, swinging from the ceiling by the belt of her heron-patterned dressing gown.
She must have climbed onto the toilet cistern to push that ceiling tile to the side so she could tie it round that pipe. She must have thrown herself off, the belt looped round her neck.
How did she do it with her arm in a cast? With her face all bandaged and two ribs snapped?
‘Get her down! Get her down!’ says Rani.
But it’s too late. I can tell from the angle of her head.
59
NOW
When will you open your eyes? As I drive home from the station, Lydia’s voice comes back to me.
I’ve just reported my brother for attempted murder. Murder and what else? We were getting along just fine. Murder and rape?
That’s what I think happened, isn’t it? My big, handsome brother never had anyone say no to him and he couldn’t take it.
My eyes feel like they’ve been punched.
I remember once when we were walking back from the woods, the sun heavy on our backs, and we came across our cat, lying on the grass verge with a broken leg.
Tristan twisted her neck till it snapped.
Because it’s kinder, he said.
Even at six I knew it could’ve been fixed.
I ran home crying. Mother had patted my head and Father had shaken Tristan’s hand and called him brave.
I pull to a stop outside our gates.
If we hadn’t been there when he’d come on to Georgia, would he have tried to kill her? We had planned for him to flirt with her, then laugh and walk away when she begged for it. But he didn’t do that, did he?
Come on to? Is that what I call attempted rape?
Why can I think about him killing someone more easily than I can consider rape?
I stare out into the gloom, the long drive stretching into darkness.
Guilt runs through me. All the times I’ve heard mums discussing how to talk to their daughters about consent and I’ve nodded along while rolling my eyes internally.
Is it all part of me avoiding thinking about this one thing? Have I made Jenna vulnerable with my own inability to face the truth?
Georgia said no, and he’d kept going, and maybe I pushed her over, maybe Mina got in a punch and a kick and Lydia pulled out some hair, but I know why I ran out from the bushes. I ran out to stop him. After it happened I would never have dreamed of calling it ‘attempted rape’, never in a million years, but as I was watching it some part of me knew he had to be stopped.
But does that even count for anything?
God. I remember him on the way back to school. What was it he said?
