Summer's Edge (12 page)

"Can we go and talk somewhere?" she asked.

"That’s not a good idea. You know why," he said before she could protest.
 

Just then Chris came up. Alice had never been more relieved to see him. Maybe he could fix this and make it happen.

"Managed to find your girl, Stewie?" he said.

Alice felt radiantly happy at the acknowledgement.

"Alice was just going back to her friends." It was a command, not an observation.

She wanted to defy him but he was clearly resolved to keep her at arms’ length. Yet again. She couldn’t hang around the two men with one of them barely refusing to speak to her. He had won this round but she was determined that she would win the next.

Perhaps she should go all out and flirt back with Joe and the other guys to try and provoke an even stronger reaction in him?
 

What held her back was the guilty knowledge that she would quite enjoy flirting with Joe but it would seem a betrayal. Then she felt annoyed. After all, she was a free agent. Mr Walker was constantly pushing her away. Maybe she should just go and have fun, to hell with it.

She managed to find a bathroom on her way back and bumped into Jules there.

"Did you find him?" Jules said.

"He blew me off again. Made some snarky comments about Joe Jackson."

"He’s jealous! That’s great."

"Not if he gets too jealous though. He might just give up."

"If I were you," Jules said, "I would just go for it with Joe Jackson. He’s clearly up for it. You know he’s being tipped for selection to the England squad?"

This didn’t mean a great deal to Alice as she didn’t follow cricket. All the same she had to fill the evening somehow.

When she returned to the room where Joe was she found him already surrounded by another group of girls. Before she could make an exit again he saw her. "You’re back." He pushed past the other girls and put his arm around her. So it was settled, she thought. She was effectively his date for the night.

He was young, he was handsome, he had bright blue eyes and tousled dark hair that he pushed back off his forehead. He ticked every box. But he wasn’t Mr Walker.

Still, he was obviously a bit of a player, so she didn’t feel too bad about leading him on.

* * *

They ended up outside in the garden: Joe, Alice, Graeme, Jules and a couple of others. The evening was balmy and there was a half moon in the sky. Despite the skyglow from Gloucester the stars were also bright.

As Becky had said, Graeme was still clearly keen on Jules. If Jules got drunk enough she might just yield, Leafy or no Leafy, Alice thought.

Someone passed a joint around and the familiar tang filtered through the night air. Alice skipped it because it wasn’t her thing and she wanted to keep some wits about her.

She had tried to get drunk but it didn’t seem to make her feel any better. She envied Jules who was in high spirits, telling various outrageous stories. Alice felt she was sobering up more quickly than she could drink.

Joe didn’t seem to notice she was quieter. He had his arm around her shoulders and his other hand was resting on her thigh.

Maybe Becky was right. Maybe she should just lose her virginity, get it over and done with. Joe might be ideal for the job.

Thinking about this she went to the bathroom again. All the alcohol was going straight through her. She kept an eye out for Becky and of course Mr Walker but didn’t see either of them.

"Have you seen Matt anywhere?" some girl asked her. Alice didn’t recognise her and she hadn’t heard of anyone called Matt.

It was one of those parties that got busier the later the hour as people were continuing to arrive after the pubs shut. The downstairs cloakroom was occupied so she made her way up the stairs to find another. A house this large must have several.

There were still people upstairs - couples mainly - but it was less crowded than downstairs. Various bedrooms had been taken over and there were empty glasses strewn all up the stairs and on the landing. Whoever owned the house had a massive clean up ahead of them.

Alice found an unoccupied bathroom and locked the door. After going she sat on the edge of the bath for a while, her thoughts confused. What was she doing? Where would this lead?

Eventually she got up and looked in the mirror. She was still looking ok. She swivelled to try and see where her dress was positioned and hitched it upwards and forwards a bit to avoid her underwear showing.

As she exited the bathroom she bumped into one of the Somerset players they’d spoken to earlier. "Jackson not with you?" he asked.

"He’s outside," Alice said and instantly regretted it because the guy was leering drunkenly at her.

"Come and have a drink with me."

"No thanks, I’ve got to get going," she said. The drunken player was pawing at her, not letting her past him to the stairs.

Afterwards she couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. He had somehow manhandled her through a bedroom door and pushed her onto the bed. She was crying out but he put a hand over her mouth and pushed her dress up.

He was swearing at her but his words were slurred. Alice thought she heard "fucking cocktease" but her ears were ringing with panic and everything was a blur.

He used his bodyweight to pin her down. He had a heavy, chunky build and he stank of booze and cigarettes. It made her feel sick. She couldn’t move.
 

"Let me go," she was pleading with him, but he was groping her roughly, forcing his fingers beneath her underwear, trying to rip it off.

She was crying in fear but no matter how she struggled she couldn’t get away from him.
 

Where was everyone else? Why did no one come?

His hand was over her mouth again, practically covering her nose, she could hardly breathe. She couldn’t even bite his hand because he was mashing her lips against her face.
 

She was getting exhausted from struggling against him, trying to escape.

His body squashed hers and with his other hand he was fumbling with his own zip. He’d got it stuck and he was swearing again and calling her names as he got angrier.

If he had been only slightly less drunk he might have been less clumsy and things could have been a lot worse.

The rest of the events were almost like being in a trance.

There were voices and shouts and suddenly he was pulled off her and she was lying there dishevelled, trembling and weeping. Her dress was in disarray, perhaps torn.

Two men fighting and a punch and one dragging the other out of the room.

Someone was asking her if she was alright, some girl, and Alice was huddled into a ball. The girl had her arm round her, trying to console her.

Finally, the only people she wanted to be with were there, Jules and Becky. Joe was also there but Alice was barely aware of him as her friends took her into the bathroom and closed the door. They were both hugging her as she sobbed.

"He’s scratched your face," Becky said and dabbed the blood off with a damp tissue.

She never knew how long they stayed with her but eventually she was ok again and they helped her fix her dress and walked her down the stairs, one on either side of her like bodyguards.

Joe was very concerned about her and offered to drive her home.

"You’re way over the limit," Jules said.

"She should go to the hospital," Becky said.

Alice managed to say that it hadn’t gone that far, that she was ok, just bruised and shaken up.

"You could still press charges though."

But she just wanted to be home, in her own house, in her own bed. She wanted to take a shower and wash every trace and memory of his horrible clammy hands off her, his raw beery breath.

In the end Joe ordered them a taxi. He wanted to come back with them but they assured him they would look after her. "You can go and beat the living hell out the arsehole who did this," Jules told him.

"That’s already been taken care of. Not by me, worse luck, or he’d be the one needing hospital." The player had been dragged off somewhere while they were looking after Alice and no one was quite sure what had happened to him. Or who he was.

"Did you recognise him?" Becky asked Joe.

"No. We’re due to play them next week. He’s in for a bat round his skull if he so much as shows his face."

They bundled Alice into the taxi, getting in after her, and gave the driver her address.

"I really am fine now, you guys can stay on at the party."

"No way are we leaving you," Jules said and the three of them travelled together back to Cheltenham.

Alice was so glad of them. So grateful. No one in the world had such amazing friends as she did. They didn’t ask her anything about it, didn’t make her relive it. They were just there for her.

Alice’s parents were asleep when they got back at around two o’clock in the morning, so they tried to be as quiet as possible.
 

"I’ll run you a bath, you can soak it all off," Becky said.

Getting out of the bath Alice was overcome with a wave of exhaustion so intense that she could barely pull a t-shirt on.

She had feared that when she tried to sleep she would be kept awake by visions of his leering face and her terror and panic. But when she closed her eyes there was only gentle darkness.

They all slept in until nearly midday on Sunday. Alice’s mother didn’t disturb them but when they eventually wandered down the kitchen she looked concerned. All the more so when she saw the scratch on Alice’s face and that her lip was bruised.

"You’ve had several phone calls, Alice, all from men asking how you are. What on earth has happened?"

"Some guy got a bit too drunk and had to be thrown out of the party," Alice said.

"But look at you! What happened to you?"

Alice really didn’t want to say. It would only worry her mother and she felt totally fine now. It all seemed to have happened a very long time ago.

"This player got a bit friendly with Alice and had to be pulled away," Jules said. She guessed that Alice wanted to play it down to her family.

"It was all very quick and nothing really happened," Alice said, seeing her mother’s alarm. To try and change the subject she asked who had rung.

"Someone called Joe rang and left his number," Alice’s mother said, looking at the notepad by the phone. "Then there was a Graeme. And someone who sounded Australian who didn’t leave a name or number."

They all caught one another’s eyes. No prizes for guessing who that was.
 

"Will you call Joe?" Becky asked. "He was pretty great last night, getting us the taxi and everything."

Alice really didn’t want to call anyone except the one number she didn’t have.

"I’ll call Graeme," Jules offered. "They must have broken for lunch by now and if he rang at eleven o’clock he probably gave the dressing room number." She went into the hall to use the phone and was gone for a short time while Becky and Alice rather nervously chewed toast. They couldn’t really discuss things in front of Alice’s mother.

Eventually Jules came back and it was clear from her face that she had something she needed to tell them. "Graeme was just checking how you were, he’ll let the others know you’re ok. It’s caused a bit of a stir because apparently that arsehole has done this before and was already on his yellow card. So now he’s out."

"You mean from the team?" Alice asked.

"Yes. I don’t think he was their star player, I’d never heard of him and you know how my dad goes on about cricket all the time."

"We should get outside, it’s a lovely day," Becky said. Like Alice she was dying to know what more Jules had to tell them.

"Should I ring Joe first?" Alice asked. She didn’t want to be rude.

"You can do that later. Worcestershire are playing in Birmingham today aren’t they? I’m pretty sure that’s not a Birmingham number as my aunt lives there and her code is different. So it’s probably his home number from Worcester or wherever he lives."

It was a beautiful late May day and very sunny. They didn’t have school tomorrow thanks to the Bank Holiday and no one felt like revising. Jules suggested they went down to the beer gardens in town and sat in the park there. "We can get some crisps and stuff and try and get a tan."

* * *

The beer gardens, more formally known as the Imperial Gardens, lay between the Town Hall and the town’s grandest hotel. Being such a central location they attracted large crowds on a sunny day and there was a good chance of bumping into people you knew.

They bought some snacks from the nearby off-licence and found a spare stretch of grass next to a flowerbed of garish, regimentally-planted petunias.

"Civic flowers. They’re always really fake looking, aren’t they?" Jules said.

"We want to know what Graeme said." Becky and Alice were getting impatient because Jules had refused to reveal anything until they got there.

"Do a little drumroll for me then," Jules said.

"Come on!"

Jules finally yielded. "Someone we know may be walking around with grazed knuckles today." This left them none the wiser. "Your rescuer, Alice, the one who ripped that Somerset arsehole off you and punched his lights out was none other than your beloved Mr Walker."

Alice didn’t know how she felt. Glad and grateful, of course, and thrilled, but also anxious.

"I never got a chance to thank him. I never saw him again that night, not since way earlier," she said.

"He was there the whole time, just brooding and avoiding you I imagine. You were pretty full on with Joe." Alice felt ashamed at this.
 

"But you can’t blame yourself," Jules continued, seeing her face. "Mr Walker took himself out of the running. Anyway he was there all along, and by coincidence or whatever he saw you being assaulted and saved the day."

"Where was he when we left?" Becky said.

"No idea. Probably outside giving the guy a good thrashing. We were in the bathroom for some time. He may have left the party then, but I doubt it. You’d think he would have wanted to speak to Alice, check she was ok. Especially since he rang the next morning."