All in the Mind (16 page)

Angharad – he assumed all these glamorous-sounding names were invented – came in, said ‘hello, my love’ in a cheery Welsh accent, turned down the lights with the dimmer, walked over and playfully smacked him on the backside. ‘Come on, fella,’ she said, ‘we can get rid of those.’ So he removed his pants, and her voice, and signal of intent, began to arouse him in a way that none of the films playing on the four screens had done.

She massaged his back and shoulders quickly, then worked on his thighs, letting the side of her hand brush his ballbag every time she worked up to the top of his leg. Once she knew he had an erection, she asked him to turn onto his back, and worked around his stomach and the top of his thighs.

‘OK, time we put a bit of protection on there,’ she said, her accent appearing to grow stronger the more he heard her. She went over to the cupboard by the sink and took out a condom. She rolled it on, asked him to get off the table, rolled down the tracksuit bottoms she was wearing, leaned over the table and said, ‘Now you take Angharad from behind, love.’

She had a huge barbed-wire tattoo across her lower back, and a scar on her left thigh. As he entered her, he closed his eyes, not out of pleasure, or because of shame, but because he wanted to block out the gaudy, multicoloured tattoo and the pasty white skin it decorated, and imagine that the body he was now inside was Hafsatu’s.

Hafsatu was black, and muscular, and it was her skin he wanted to be touching, her voice he wanted to be hearing exhorting him to go faster and harder. He rocked his head back, and as he held onto Angharad’s hips, and moved his body backwards and forwards, he forced an image of Hafsatu on to the darkness behind his eyelids, and inside his head he was telling her how nice it felt to be with her, here, just the two of them, no danger of anyone else coming in and finding them doing what both of them had wanted to do for so long, and for a few brief moments, he was almost there, the fantasy real, it was
her
body that he could feel against his, it was her moving back towards him as he moved forwards to her, and she was saying she loved him, and she loved the way he made love to her, and as she said it, he felt love and sex were as one, as once they had been with Stella, but now it was Hafsatu who infused sex with love, and love with sex, and gave him these few fabulous moments at the end of a dreadful, dreadful day, but even as his fantasy mind was trying to summon up and hold on to that joy, as he came, his rational mind cut in forcefully, reminded him where he was, what he was doing, and he opened his eyes, saw the tattoo on the pasty white skin, and felt an intense longing to be out of there.

Walking out into the street afterwards, he felt a familiar, but this time more profound, sense of self-disgust. It was the same every time. The urgency to get there, the excitement when he arrived, and then the shame once it was all over. But this was worse than shame. This forced him to confront a question he couldn’t easily answer. What right did he have to be treating people, interfering with what went on in their minds, when his own mind was so sordid?

The shame sat with him all the way home. Usually, he liked to look around the carriage on the tube, study his fellow passengers, take a glance at what they were reading. Today, he had eyes only for his own reflection in the window across from his seat. He looked old, tired, unclean.

When he got home, he told Stella he had a dreadful headache and went to lie down. He spent two hours staring at the wall and then fell into a troubled sleep in which Hafsatu, his father, his wife, Aunt Jessica and David Temple were all vying for attention and he didn’t know what to say to any of them. When he awoke, startled by a dream in which he was giving a consultation to a regular patient about whose condition he could remember absolutely nothing, the house was pitch dark and he could hear Stella breathing alongside him as she slept. He lay for a while in the dark, then got up and went for a shower. It was 4 a.m.

SATURDAY

12

Lirim’s dream took him back to Kosovo. He was fishing on the banks of the River Sitnica, at a spot he had loved since he was a boy. It was a beautiful, sunny day and Arta surprised him by arriving with a lunch of sandwiches, cakes, fruit and wine. They started to eat and drink, but soon they were touching each other, taking off their clothes. As they knelt face to face, slowly kissing, Lirim thought he would like to stay like this for a long time. But his desire grew stronger and he knew he wanted more than to kiss her, so he took Arta by the shoulders and gently pushed her to the ground, rolling himself on top of her in the same movement. And then, suddenly, a farmer came towards them shouting, ‘Hey, stop, this is private land.’ Lirim woke up.

For a few moments, he was still in Kosovo, and happy to be so, though scared of the farmer he imagined to be shouting at him. Then he blinked his eyes open and realised amid the near darkness that he was at home, in London, in bed with Arta. He had no idea what time it was, somewhere between midnight, when they had fallen asleep, and 7 a.m., when his alarm would ring to get him up for work. Arta seemed at peace, the rapist absent from her mind, the turmoil of yesterday’s confrontation with Professor Sturrock seemingly gone.

As Lirim’s dream faded, and with it the hope of making love, he lay still, trying to make sense of what had happened with her psychiatrist yesterday, and the violent reaction he had provoked.

He hadn’t expected to see his wife till the evening. He had a particularly busy day at the car wash because they were preparing for their first Sunday opening. He’d told Arta he wouldn’t be home
till
gone seven, but there she was, at two in the afternoon, crossing the street towards the car wash. He could tell as soon as he spotted her, pushing Besa in the buggy, negotiating her way through the queue of cars waiting to be cleaned, that she was upset about something. He hoped she wasn’t bringing him problems. He was on the phone in the little cubbyhole that served as an office, renewing the ad he had placed in
Southwark News
for two more staff. His current team were all Kosovans, as was the builder who rented the space to him. Now that he had decided to turn the business into a seven-day operation, he needed extra manpower. He paid his boys, as he called them, just above the minimum wage, and they were allowed to keep their own tips. Lirim had got his first customers through a heavy leafleting drop in the area, which he’d done himself. After that, he’d built up a good pool of regular clients, and word of mouth was doing the rest.

Lirim smiled as he watched his daughter enjoying the noise and the splashing of the power hoses being trained on the car at the front of the queue. He held up a finger to say he would be one minute and tried to finish his call as quickly as he could. His staff noticed Arta, and shouted hello. They knew what had happened to her, but it was a while back now, and their greetings were nothing more than happy hellos from people pleased to see the boss’s wife.

As Lirim came off the phone, he could see that she was agitated.

‘I tried not to come,’ she said. ‘I tried to stay home and calm down but I can’t. I had to come and tell you.’

‘What is it?’

‘The psychiatrist. He really hurt me.’

‘What? How?’

‘He says I have to forgive the men who did it. I said I can’t do that, and he said it’s not that I can’t, but I won’t, like it was my fault that I feel like this, my fault I have all the dreams, my fault that I can’t let you touch me. It upset me so much, I just had to get out of there and get away from him.’

When she had started talking, Lirim had had the improbable thought that the psychiatrist had physically attacked his wife, and so
felt
relieved when she explained herself in more detail. But his relief was short-lived. It had been some time since Arta’s appointment with the psychiatrist and yet she was still extremely angry. What if she didn’t get over this? What if she stopped wanting to see Professor Sturrock? Lirim had been so glad when their doctor had managed to get her those first appointments at the Prince Regent Hospital. Until then he had felt completely alone with the problem, as if he was the only person who could help Arta. Everything he had heard about Professor Sturrock made him feel he was a good thing, and important to Arta’s recovery. But this morning’s appointment, and his demand for forgiveness of the rapist, had put all that at risk.

Until the rape, life in England had been good for Arta and Lirim. They were amazed how quickly they recovered from the ordeal of the journey, and they had impressed themselves and each other with how they had become virtually fluent in English, though Alban would still occasionally gently mock their accent. Their son’s school reports were beyond reproach. He was a good football player. His parents were proud of him to the point where Lirim knew that sometimes Alban found it embarrassing, the extent of praise they lavished upon him.

So that was how it was – a nice, tidy home, a business being established, the children doing well – when Arta was raped. They continued to live in the nice, tidy flat in one of the huge blocks near Elephant and Castle tube station. The business, a short walk down Walworth Road, continued to expand. And the children continued to do well. But life had changed for all of them. Much as she tried, Arta could not get through a minute, let alone an hour, without thinking about what happened. Lirim had suggested they move house, but she felt she had to stay and conquer the feelings she was having, added to which the children had had to suffer enough with what had happened to her, and she didn’t want to unsettle them further.

Once he had got over the initial shock, which made him want to roam around the streets looking for a man in a balaclava, and kick him to death, Lirim had done everything he could to support Arta, sitting with her as she spoke to the police, stroking her hair and her
hand
, just being there. She told him she had worried he would be angry with her. He was angry only with the people who had hurt her, and desperate for them to be punished.

He had been told by the victim support officer that sometimes women who were raped by strangers would find it very difficult to resume a sex life with their husband or partner, and it was important he tried to understand that, just be supportive, be patient, help what could be a slow recovery. At first he’d found it easy to be patient. It was his natural instinct to do what was best for Arta. But recently he’d found it more difficult. He was pouring himself into his work, but he was surprised by how many of his waking moments were dominated by two men he had never met, the rapist and the psychiatrist. He had put a lot of hope and trust in Professor Sturrock, but now it looked as if he might be back on his own with the problem.

Arta was crying and Lirim noticed his staff looking over at them. He led her into the little cubbyhole office.

‘Why does he say that? Why does he say “Can’t or won’t?” like I have the choice?’ she asked.

‘He must have his reasons. He is the doctor. He is the one who knows how the mind works. You have to ask him.’

‘But I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back.’

‘You said before he is a good man, and kind. He hasn’t changed, has he? All that’s changed is he asked you a question you didn’t like. Don’t turn your back on him yet.’

Arta had given him a weak smile, and then trudged off to collect Alban from school. All that evening, he could sense her anger simmering. But although he was worried, in some ways, he actually found it reassuring to see his wife angry about something other than the attack itself. It felt as if she was coming back as a full human being. And he surprised himself by thinking the psychiatrist might have a point.

He got out of bed and started dressing for work. He was about to leave the room when Arta started screaming in her sleep. He rushed over and shook her awake.

‘Arta, Arta, Arta, wake up, wake up, it’s OK, it’s OK, you’re here, it’s fine.’ As she opened her eyes, she looked petrified, then realised she was safe, and flung her arms around his neck, breathing deeply as the fear began to fade.

13

Lorraine Parks woke, as she did every morning, to the sound of Classic FM on her clock radio.

She had never been a classical music fan, until the fire. She’d always listened to Radio 2 in the car, middle-of-the-road CDs at home, and the last time she’d been to a concert it was to see the Eagles at the old Wembley with a friend who’d won two tickets in a radio competition. But the nurses had Classic FM playing in the background at the burns unit where she had spent hundreds of hours beside Emily’s bed, many of them watching her daughter sleep. The music became an important part of her life as she tried to come to terms with what had happened.

Most of the time, unless she made a point of listening to the announcer’s voice, she had no idea whose music she was listening to. But it was rare that she didn’t find it soothing. Sometimes she found it deeply moving, either stirring in her enormous hope that Emily would one day rediscover her beauty and zest for life, or mirroring the hopelessness she felt at what Emily’s life had become. Whichever set of emotions was stirred, she was lost in wonder at the ability of a sound to provoke them. It could have been Mozart, or Bach, or Beethoven, or Wagner, she had no idea. She didn’t know their first names, let alone what they had composed, but at least now she knew why their names and their music had endured. They had created works of art which, centuries later, performed by people not even alive when they wrote their music, could help a mother who was struggling more than she dared to admit with the despair of her daughter. Within a few weeks, despite initial opposition from her
husband
, the radios in the kitchen and the bathroom and the family car were all tuned to Classic FM. She saw it as a little piece of good to emerge from something terrible.