Catch Me When I Fall (16 page)

again. I jerked back, hearing but not feeling the sharp rap of my head against the wall. He put a hand on the neck of my dress and ripped it, then brought his lips down on mine. I bit hard and tasted blood. I heard him cry out and once again there was an explosion of pain as he hit me.
There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Rees pulled away from me and was gone. As he ran up the steps, two women came down and passed me without speaking to me. They didn't even seem to see me cowering there.
My legs were trembling and my heart thumping so much that for a few minutes I couldn't bring myself to move. I just leaned against the wall and listened to the sound of my breathing. Then the toilet flushed in the cloakroom, so I made myself walk up the stairs, back into the bright lights and laughter of the bar, out into the dark streets again.

17

I stared around. A bulky figure stumbled out of the alleyway and I felt a tightness in my chest but it wasn't him, just another man in a suit. I looked at my watch and it was only just past seven. In June, there would be hours more of daylight left.
Where to? I should go home, but the taxis that sped past were and I couldn't go on the Underground. I pulled out my mobile, but who did I want to call? I put a hand to my cheek, under my eye, and gently touched the puffy skin, wincing as I did so. I pulled my coat round me more firmly, trying not to think about his hand on my body. Ali of a sudden, I felt clammy and sick.
The office was a minute's walk away, so that was where I went, slowly on my shaky legs, looking around me all the time in case he was still near. I went straight to the cloakroom, turned on the light and stood in front of the mirror, gazing at the stranger in front of me, with bloodshot eyes, puffy skin, torn dress and a blue bruise flowering on her cheek. I slid out of my coat and inspected the damage, then ran some cold water and dabbed it on the swollen skin. I touched the back of my head, where I'd bumped it against the wall, and came away with a smear of blood on my fingers. The pain I hadn't felt at the time I felt now, and I was also assailed by a sense of despair, which left me dizzy so that I had to hold on to the wash-basin to stay upright.
I closed my eyes. Then I heard a faint sound outside and opened them again. Footsteps coming through the office. A light turned on. I couldn't move, just stayed staring at the damaged,

helpless woman in the mirror. The footsteps tapped towards me, stopped, continued. The door creaked open.
Then Meg was standing behind me. I didn't turn round, but our eyes met in the mirror and we gazed at each other wordlessly. It was as if she could see right into me, into all the ghastly parts of me that even I didn't know about, and I felt so frightened and alone that I barely managed to stay upright, keep meeting her eyes. Was this friendship, I wondered, beyond affection or even love, a kind of terrible intimacy of knowledge? Or was it something else?
"Meg," I said at last. "What?'
'This can't go on.' She stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. I felt her warm fingers through my thin dress. Her hand felt very heavy. Was she comforting me, or was she like a warder leading the prisoner away? I turned at last; she put an arm round my shoulders and guided me into the office.

'You have to tell the police -I wanted you to before, but now you must.'
'But '
'No buts. He's dangerous -I knew it as soon as I saw him. He won't stop there.'
'Meg?'
"I'm going to take you round to the station now. My car's outside in the loading bay. I just came back to collect a couple of files. I'll go and get your coat for you.'
She came back with it, wrapped it round me, then helped me downstairs to her car. She pressed me into the passenger seat, and fastened the seat-belt.
'Meg,' I said, as she got in on the driver's side and turned on
the ignition.
'Yes?'
'What's going on with me?"

'I don't know."
'I keep thinking there's something you haven't told me.' 'We'll talk about that later.'
"We never used to have secrets from each other. We used to tell each other everything.'
'You're going to report this Rees to the police. Everything else can wait.'
'I hate waiting.'
'I know,' she said drily.
'Is Charlie having an affair?'
'Later, Holly.'
'He is, isn't he? I wouldn't blame him. The question is, who with? Meg, who with?'
'Here we are."

When, after forty minutes of waiting, I found myself sitting opposite a policewoman called Gill Corcoran, I found I didn't know how to tell the story. It seemed so hard to grasp, vivid and yet blurred, a nightmare that makes you wake up with sweat pouring off you in the small hours. It was Meg, sitting to one side of the desk, who prompted me so that in the end I managed to stumble through the squalid tale.
Gill Corcoran had a pleasant face, shrewd eyes, a sympathetic way of listening. She kept pouring water into a polystyrene cup for me, and I kept gulping it back, as if I could swill everything through me, out of me. She made me go over in detail how Rees had hit me. She looked at my cheek and the gash on my head, which was still bleeding. She told me to show her exactly where he'd touched me, what he'd done.
Without looking at Meg but feeling her eyes on me, I told her how I'd met him. I told her about the night we'd spent together. I told her about the phone calls he'd made to Charlie, about the knickers he'd sent. Meg looked down at her hands, which were

resting on her knees. At one point I sensed, rather than saw, her flinch, but I kept going. Now she was going to see what kind of person I really was. Gill Corcoran didn't look shocked or judgemental and I was grateful to her.
I'm going to be honest with you, Ms Krauss.'
'Holly.'
'Holly. We can interview him. There are various potential charges. But it won't be easy.'
'Look at that bruise," said Meg.
'You have had a relationship with this man.'
'Not a relationship, a pointless, ugly one-night "
'That's none of my business. I just know how it would look-how it would be made to look -if it ever came to court.'
'I was drunk,' I said. 'Drunk, stupid, treacherous, mad. Are you saying that because I had sex with him once, he can attack me and threaten me and get away with it?"
'No. Not at all. I just want you to know what it will involve. You would have to describe to a jury everything you've described to me. You'd have to let your private life and your behaviour be scrutinized. Do you know how many rape cases result in a
sentence?'
'No."
'In some areas of the country it's fewer than one in five. And that includes stranger-rape cases. And these are the cases that reach court, where the police and the GPS think there's a chance of conviction. In the case of date-rapes '
"He didn't rape me. And he was never a date,' I said bleakly.
You don't need to convince me, Holly. You need to know
this before you go any further. In your own interests.'
'I see."
'You're a married woman.'
'Yes.'

There was a pause. Then Meg said angrily, 'But he may try again.'
Gill Corcoran didn't speak. She just looked at me. She was clearly right.
'They'd eat me alive,' I said. I turned to Meg. 'I had this dream recently. Nightmare. There were all these people pointing at me and screaming, and their faces were coming in and out of focus. Rees was there, and Deborah. And the guy who had the poker game, and that man I knocked to the ground.' I saw Meg blink in surprise but I ploughed on, 'And Charlie was there, I think. You too. You were all accusing me. If I went to court, I'd be making my nightmare come true. I'd bring it all about.'
I stood up and found my legs were no longer so shaky. "Thank you," I said to Gill Corcoran. "You've been very helpful."
We shook hands and I thought, She could have been my friend. A careworn police officer on the night shift. It was a little shaft of light in the grim dark.
Meg drove me home, and although she wanted to come in, I insisted she left. I wanted to see Charlie alone.

18

But Charlie wasn't at home. The house was dark, silent, empty.
I went upstairs, took off my dress and threw it in the corner, then put on a dressing-gown. I brushed my hair, without looking at myself in the mirror again, tied it back in a severe ponytail, put my feet into warm slippers. Then I went into the kitchen, where I took ice cubes from the freezer compartment, tied them up in a cloth and pressed them to my throbbing cheek.
I called his mobile. But it rang from its hiding-place behind the toaster. A small part of me was relieved that I didn't have to talk to him about what had happened, but I also knew that every time we didn't talk, putting off the hour of reckoning, delaying the explanations and the confessions, our relationship unravelled a little bit more, until there would be nothing left to knit up again, just a string of memories. Ah, yes, I was that woman once and he was that man. There had been a time when we knew every detail of each other's days, and also the thoughts that passed through the other's head. You share the little things -the mild sore throat, the sandwich he had at lunch, the words someone said to you on the bus, the sunset you saw, the socks he bought -as well as the big, and they are almost more important.
I didn't know where he was now. I didn't know who he was with or what he would be doing with them. I didn't know what he would be thinking about. I didn't know, when he came in, what I was going to say to him and I didn't know how he would reply. Would his face be kind, or would it be hard? Would smell another woman on him? A woman who was kind, calm tolerant, easy on the nerves.

I made myself scrambled egg on toast and forced myself to eat it, then drank two cups of green tea. I pressed my forehead against the kitchen window, looking out into the dark, unkempt garden where a gusting wind was swishing up the long grass and plucking at the branches of the trees. A shudder passed through rile.
The doorbell rang. I moved into the centre of the kitchen and stood there uncertainly. It wouldn't be Charlie, and I didn't want to see anyone else. The thought of making any kind of effort to curve my lips into a smile, form shapes with my mouth so that the right words came out, "Yes, no, I'm fine, come in...' Unbearable.
Then the bell rang again. Two quick jabs and a longer one. Maybe Charlie had forgotten his keys. I pulled the belt tight on my dressing-gown, walked down the hall and opened the front
door a fraction, peering out through the crack.
'You must have the wrong '
His hefty boot was in the door before I could slam it shut, and at the same time he gave a funny little scream of laughter, as if I'd said something hilarious.
'Wotcha,' he said, and pushed the door violently so that I staggered backwards into the hall. 'You must be Holly.'
He was young, maybe still in his teens, with the acne of youth across his face and a thin neck. His hair was shaved to bristle. He had a ring in his left eyebrow, several more in his left ear but none in the right because only the remains of an ear was there. It was as if someone had taken a giant bite out of it. He was wearing baggy combat trousers and a grubby grey singlet in spite of the cold. There were swirling tattoos on both arms and I saw the beginnings of another on his chest.
"I don't know you,' I said. 'Please leave now.'
'Nice place you have,' he said, with another screech of laughter, then sniffed violently and wiped his arm against his nose.

'I'm going to call the police.'
He took an object from his pocket -I couldn't see what it was -and tossed it from one hand to the other. Then, suddenly, there ,vas a click and a blade shone in the dim light. We both stared at it. He gave a smile as if he'd just performed a conjuring trick.
"Don't," he said, closing the blade and pushing it back into his pocket. He sniffed again and scratched one arm ferociously. There was a powerful smell of wet dog, armpits and solvents on him. This man is off the wall, I thought. He could do anything,
anything at all. I clenched my fists. 'What do you want?' 'A beer for a start.'
He grabbed me by my wrist and yanked me after him into the kitchen, opened the fridge and peered inside.
'This'll do.' He snapped it open, took a swig and belched loudly. 'All neat and dandy. Sheets turned down." That curdled
laughter again. 'You know Vic Norris.'
"No, I don't."
'You owe him eleven thousand pounds. Or, specifically," he drew out the words as if he was proud of knowing them, 'you owe it to a company called Cowden Brothers.'
'It was all a mistake,' I said. 'I've not been well. I can't really play poker. I didn't know what I was doing.'
He was looking at me, still smiling broadly. "Nasty bruise on your cheek," he said.
"I lost nine thousand, not eleven,' I said. "And I don't have it. I don't have anything.'
He drank a few more gulps of beer and sighed heavily. 'I don't care,' he said. 'I'm just telling you what he told me. Pay up. Geddit?'
"Yes," I said. I just wanted him out of the house.
But he sat down on a kitchen chair as if he had all the time in

the world, spread his legs. He had scabs on his head and on his arms, which he kept scratching with his chewed fingernails.
'Let's have a look in here, then,' he said, pulling my bag
towards him and rummaging around in it for my purse, which he opened. There was twenty-five pounds in it and some change. He took it all and put it into his trouser pocket. 'What's your old
man say about all of this?'
I didn't answer.
'I bet you haven't told him.' He stood up and came up to me, his beery breath in my face. 'Right, what haven't I told you? Oh, yeah. Vic says it's eleven at the moment, in a week's time it'll be twelve. The next, thirteen. And so on. Geddit? I'll come again
and get it. Cash.'
I nodded.
'My name's Dean. See you, then, Holly.'
He ambled out of the kitchen, into the hall, out of the door. I went to the door and watched him as he walked on to the pavement, then down the road, with his lopsided, addled gait. Watched as he passed Charlie coming in the other direction. Then I closed the door and leaned, whimpering, against it until a few moments later I heard the key in the lock.
I stood up, straightened my shoulders, put a welcoming smile on my face. 'Hello, Charlie,' I said, as he came in from the cold, his cheeks glowing and his eyes bright, a spring in his step. Ive just got in too. I had a fall and hurt my cheek, but don't worry, it looks worse than it is. Good day?'
Oh, help me, help me, help me, darling Charlie. Help me, someone. Anyone. Help me before I fall apart, is what I didn't say.