Cathy Kelly 3-book Bundle (75 page)

‘This is a great joint,’ he said.

It didn’t look it, but Dara followed him in. The pub was busy. Every other customer was male. They stared at Dara with her velvet coat and heavily kohled eyes. She shuddered. This was the sort of place where her father would be right at home, bursting with men full of bitterness and whiskey, angry with life and everyone that looked crossways at them.

James seemed to know the barman and he sat comfortably at the bar and ordered double brandies. ‘Get that down you,’ he said when the drinks arrived. There were no rounded brandy balloons here, just plain glasses that looked dirty. Dara drank but the brandy didn’t make the fear go away.

‘I don’t like this place,’ she whispered to James.

‘Don’t you, honey?’ he asked, putting a proprietorial hand on her leg.

She shifted uncomfortably but James moved his hand higher.

‘Drink up, then, chickie, and we’ll go.’

‘I’d like to go home,’ Dara said when they were in the car.

‘Sure,’ he said vaguely. ‘I’ll go the back way again.’

‘No,’ she said, panic coming from somewhere, ‘drop me at a taxi rank. I’ll get a taxi.’

‘No, no way,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be safe.’

The brandy and Pink Floyd were giving her a headache, it was like being on a magical mystery ride in the middle of nowhere. James drove down strange streets along the docks, past big empty buildings and boarded-up blocks. Then he turned the car rapidly and drove into a small cul-de-sac in a warren of dockland buildings. James stopped the car and grabbed her, shoving his face into hers.

‘James, no!’ she yelled, pushing furiously.

‘Yes,’ he murmured, forcing his tongue into her mouth at the same time as his hands were wrenching her coat away and pawing over her blouse. ‘God, you’re something else,’ he said, ignoring her struggles.

‘No,’ she shrieked, pushing him as hard as she could.

He was on top of her now, having somehow pushed her seat down and shifted himself over the gearstick to pin her down.

‘You want this,’ he said hoarsely, ‘you know you do.’

‘Not like this,’ she said desperately, hoping to stop him with subterfuge. Maybe she could get him to come to her flat and then she’d scream, then people would hear her.

But it wasn’t working; James was at her breasts now, his breath hot on her bared flesh.

‘I’m the wild child, you can’t do this,’ she begged, trying to shock him out of his frenzy.

‘Wild child, yes,’ he groaned, and then he was holding her down even more forcefully. Dara hadn’t known he was so strong, or that she was so much weaker than she thought. Her strength was nothing to his, he could break her with one hand.

‘Of course you want this,’ he groaned. ‘Why else did you stand beside me, dancing to that music, waggling your ass in my face, asking for it?’

‘No!’ she roared, but he put a hand over her mouth, pushing so hard she felt she might black out. ‘You want this.’

The weight of his body on top of hers, the force and the fear, brought her back to the bedroom in Snowdrop Park when she was small. Another man, another heavy body on her little one. ‘No,’ she breathed inside her head.

‘No!’ she tried to scream, but James’s hand muffled the noise.

There was only one thing left to do: Dara went inside herself. Lockdown time. It was about more than closing her eyes. She
closed her heart and her soul; this was a shell of a thing being raped, not her. And the shell could cope with anything.

‘You all right?’ asked Mrs Davis who lived in the bottom flat. Her front door was in the hall, right beside the phone, and she’d opened her door to take her dog for his morning walk.

Dara had her eiderdown pulled around her, and she was as white as snow, except for the raw redness around her eyes from crying all night.

‘Fine,’ muttered Dara, huddling close to the phone. She hadn’t the coins to drop in, so she was tapping out the number on the little receiver buttons at the top of the phone. It didn’t always work, but sometimes it did and you could make a call without paying.

Mrs Davis sniffed and went to the front door with her dog. Dara leaned against the wall, clutching the phone close to her skull.

Elaine answered.

‘Good morning, Harp Bank, Inchicore branch,’ she said cheerily.

Dara didn’t have to fake a hoarse, sick-sounding voice. She could barely speak, whether it was from the trauma of trying to shout or just plain trauma. ‘Elaine,’ she rasped, ‘it’s me, Dara, I’m sick, a bug or something.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said Elaine. ‘Brandy, that’s the something. Did you sneak off with James?’

Dara had to hold on to the wall to steady herself. ‘No, I went home, I felt sick then, just had to go.’

‘Oh.’ Elaine sounded a little more convinced.

‘Tell them I won’t be in,’ Dara said, and hung up.

There was no hot water for a bath this time, although she’d had a scalding hot one last night when James had dropped her home, smiling as if they’d had the date of the century, seemingly oblivious to Dara sitting mutely beside him, her hands shaking as she held her ripped blouse together. She’d
half fallen out of the car and her shoes were in there somewhere, shoved off. She didn’t care; she’d stumbled barefoot up the steps of her building, holding her handbag and herself together until she was safe.

She lay in the cool bath, not wanting to look down at the paleness of her skin in the water. Her legs were bruised, and she had a bite mark on one breast. Her neck hurt from the force of being pushed back and her spine ached where James had shoved her round the car, lying on her, forcing her down on to the gearstick once.

She knew what she had to do next.

The doctor in the women’s clinic was a woman, for which Dara was grateful. She couldn’t have coped with being alone with a man.

Dara sat in the chair and looked at her knees as she asked for the morning-after pill. The nurse had all her details, her blood pressure had been taken, now it was down to the doctor.

‘You may feel nauseous,’ the doctor said matter-of-factly when she’d scanned the blood-pressure results and the alleged reason for needing the pills.
Getting confused about the safe period.
It was the excuse Elaine had used when she’d taken the morning-after pill and it had stuck in Dara’s head, to be remembered today when her head was blank.

Dara nodded. ‘I know.’

‘It’s not a form of contraception to be used every month,’ the doctor went on. ‘It’s for emergencies only, you should remember that.’

Dara still didn’t look up.

The doctor handed over some pink and some white pills. ‘The white ones are for nausea,’ she added.

‘Thank you.’

‘Is there anything else you want to talk about?’ There was a slight softening in the medic’s voice. Maybe she’d seen the scrapes on her knuckles, Dara thought as she reached the door. No, nobody could help her. Not here.

‘No thanks,’ she said and was gone.

The white tablets didn’t kill the nausea caused by the pink ones. Dara knelt on the floor of the bathroom and retched dry heaves. When each session was over, she lay with her cheek on the tiles and she could see all the dust and dirt that had accumulated in the corners. Bits of cotton wool, burnt matches, a glitter of a piece of broken glass from one time she’d been having wine in the bath and dropped the tumbler. When she’d got out of the bath, she’d cut her foot on a sliver of glass and even then, she’d laughed. Hopping around the flat, leaving bloody drops everywhere, it had been funny because she was drunk. Only the next day, when she was sober, had she realised how sore it was.

Drinking had brought her here. Drinking had led her to James, too much brandy and being raped in his car. Drinking meant she was as culpable as he was. Nobody would let her cry rape when she’d had so much alcohol inside her.

She was pissed, Your Honour,
they’d say in court and everyone would look at her with disgust, the drunken floozy who had danced in the pub with the accused, had drunk brandy with him, had gone off happily in his car. Nobody had forced her, nobody had put her in a headlock and said, You must go with this man. You must drink this brandy.

What can this young woman’s word be worth, Your Honour? Nothing at all. She cannot be trusted.

Niall, one of the guys in the house, was having a party on Saturday. Mrs Davis was away and she was the only one who told the landlord about parties. Everyone else in the house would come and have fun.

‘You’ve got to come down, Dara,’ he said, leaning in her door and looking curiously at her, still wrapped in her eiderdown.

Niall was friendly, and he had the maddest hair: bright red and it stood up like a brush.

She shook her head at him.

‘Ah, go on,’ he said. ‘You’ll be over your bug by tonight, and we need some fun people to liven it up.’

By nine that night, Dara had barely eaten anything and the thirst for something alcoholic was vicious. She had not one single thing to drink in the flat. Nothing.

Pulling on jeans and a big woolly jumper, despite the warmth of the evening, she went downstairs to the party. She needed a drink, just the one. A single drink couldn’t do her any harm, surely? Just enough to damp down the fear and then she’d be fine.

By midnight, the party had spread out into the back garden of the house. Dara was in a happy place now, warmed by vodka punch. She was smoking a cigarette and holding a can of beer as she stood beside the wooden shed that the house owner kept spare furniture in. There was a ladder leaning against the shed. Looking at it made Dara think about flying.

She could fly, she was sure of it. She did it all the time in her dreams: just launched herself and slid her arms and legs out, a bit like swimming.

Sometimes when she woke up, she was so sure she could fly that it was a shock to realise that she couldn’t.

Earthbound was horrible, no freedom to it. But tonight, she could fly for sure. She was invincible. Running her hand along the smooth skin of her arm, she could feel the muscles beneath, sleekly ready to propel her above the ground, and then she’d be able to skim along on hot currents of air, like a bird, free. She could launch herself off the shed.

It was a marvellous plan.

She began to climb the ladder.

‘Whaddya doin’?’ said someone. Niall. He looked funny, Dara thought. His hair was weirder than usual.

‘Hair?’ she said. She’d sort of meant to say
Your hair,
but the words weren’t coming out right. She tried again but still no joy. Words were bound up in her mouth, clumsy. She hated
feeling clumsy and shook her head to clear it, as though shaking might realign everything, but still the clumsiness remained.

Niall was holding on to her now.

‘Stop,’ she mumbled.

‘Whaddya doin’, Dara?’ he said again. ‘Don’t do anything crazy, or we’ll all be out on the streets.’

At least, she thought that’s what he was saying.

‘Not crazy,’ she replied and got him off her by the simple motion of slapping him on top of the head.

‘Ouch, that hurt!’ he cried.

Dara giggled and kept climbing the ladder. She’d say sorry properly when she was flying.

She felt as if she was dancing now. On top of the shed was a bucket of dirty water. The roof itself was coarse wood.

Dara barely noticed. Her skin felt so alive that she didn’t care about earthly things like pain; she was above all that.

From below, she could hear shouting. She smiled indulgently, they didn’t understand. At the edge of the shed roof, she looked down.

‘Dara–Jesus, Dara, what are you doing up there? Get down,’ roared Niall.

‘OhmiGod!’

Dara felt the rasp of the wooden roof as she slid one foot forward. They’d understand when they saw her flying. She leaped, waiting for the whoosh of the currents of air under her body, the glorious lift of becoming airborne.

It never came. There was a sudden screech of fear and a stomach-whooping sensation like being in a rollercoaster, and then nothing but darkness.

‘It’s hard to know what she’s taken…’

The words drifted into Dana’s consciousness.

‘Drinking, all of them–’

‘Never seen anything like them…police are here. No, she did it herself…told them she could fly. I have no idea how
nothing’s broken. Badly sprained ankle, though. She fell on the bin bags, else she’d be in bits.’

The words receded as pain hit Dara like a hail of bullets. Sharp, stinging, aching, unbearable. At least it took her mind away from the other pain, the one in her heart. Physical pain was easier to deal with. You knew where you were with it.

The small front room smelled of a wood fire and stale sweat. When Dara had lived in Snowdrop Park, she’d never realised how dirty and drab the house was, with wallpaper that had been the same all her life. The paper in the front room might once have been small blue flowers on a cream background. She pictured her mother choosing it and urging Dad to wallpaper the room. Now it was yellow, with the flowers faded into nothingness, more yellow at the top from years of smoke, and with large strips of paper torn off the chimney breast, the result of an argument some night.

‘So you’re back.’ Dara’s father sat in his old chair beside the fire, his cigarette-making paraphernalia beside him on the stained card table, and the ever-present glass in his hand. Clear liquid sat in the glass, therefore Dara knew he’d got poteen from somewhere. The illegal Irish spirit was very strong, beautifully sweet and mellow if made properly. Made incorrectly, it could make a person go blind. But Dad wouldn’t care about that. He was with Machiavelli on that one: the end justified the means. Good or bad, if it made you drunk, it worked. All the rest was immaterial.

‘I’m back,’ she echoed, although she didn’t want to say anything. It was bad enough to have to move home. She didn’t want to have to talk to her father. She and Greg had discussed it.

‘He’s not so bad these days,’ Greg said. ‘He doesn’t drink at home so much, he goes out a lot. Makes it easier.’

‘Make it easier if he’d drop dead,’ Dara growled at her brother.

‘It would make it easier if you hadn’t got thrown out of your bedsit,’ Greg said flatly. ‘You going to tell me about that?’