The Good Girl (35 page)

Ailsa moved closer to the screen until her forehead was almost touching it.

‘It’s the Fairports’ sweat lodge, isn’t it?’ said Ailsa. ‘It’s Jay.’

‘No shit, Sherlock,’ said Luke. ‘Haven’t you heard of revenge porn? Romy got it on with Marley at the party. Jay saw. It’s all over those slut-shaming websites too. Get Mr Harvey to check them out too.’

Ailsa hammered on the front door of the Fairports’ house with the flats of her hands. When no one came she curled her fingers into fists and began a rhythmic drumming that brought Romy to her bedroom window to see what was going on.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Harry, who had caught up with her. He tried to pull her away but she shook him off.

‘We’re going to have a little discussion with the Fairports,’ Ailsa said firmly.

‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

‘I’m going to nail him.’ After days of deadlock it felt good to be taking action.
Know what you want to achieve
was Ailsa’s advice to students when they were trying to resolve a conflict.
Always keep your eye on the bigger picture
. She applied the strategy now and knew that what she wanted was retribution.

‘We need to talk,’ said Ailsa as Loveday tentatively opened the door and peered through the gap. She was wearing her long purple kaftan with orange fringing around the neckline. No bra, noted Ailsa, turning her attention to Loveday’s face. Loveday smiled but Ailsa could see no warmth in her eyes. She beckoned them in and closed the door without saying anything.

‘Who is it?’ Wolf shouted downstairs.

‘Next door,’ Loveday wearily shouted back. She sounded almost bored. Wolf emerged on the landing wearing a tie-dye sarong and a pair of socks. Ailsa glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was almost nine o’clock. Where had the day gone? She realized that Loveday was in her nightdress and they must have been in bed together. Either having sperm-free sex or sleeping. Both possibilities enraged her. She held her arms stiffly by her side, clenching and unclenching her fists, her body aching as if she were coming down with flu.

‘Sorry,’ said Harry to Wolf as he stumbled downstairs rubbing his eyes.

Why is he apologizing to them after what their son has done to Romy?
Then she realized he was apologizing for her, but the time for restraint was over.

‘We’d like to talk to you for a moment,’ said Harry when he realized that Ailsa couldn’t speak. ‘If it’s inconvenient we could come round another time?’

‘It’s brave of you to come. Requires courage,’ said Wolf gravely as he stepped forward to shake hands with Harry as if they had just agreed on some business deal. His Texan drawl was more in evidence late at night. They followed him into the sitting room.

‘Please, make yourselves comfortable. Is there anything I can get you? A tea or a beer?’

‘No, thanks,’ said Ailsa.

She sat down on the sofa next to Harry, their knees touching. Wolf and Loveday were opposite them on the other sofa. A bowl of cherries sat on the table between them, and Ailsa was grateful for the screen it provided between her line of vision and Wolf’s splayed legs.

‘You are aware of what has happened,’ Harry said.

‘Marley told us. Something about a video. We haven’t seen it of course.’ Wolf was being disingenuous, Ailsa decided. Some people reacted in this vague manner as a way of trying to reassure Ailsa that it wasn’t such a big deal. But this wasn’t his strategy.

Loveday pushed the bowl of cherries towards them. Ailsa deliberately fixed her gaze on Wolf’s face. He
fiddled with his beard and said something about how it was a confusing time to be a teenager.

‘All those contradictory messages for girls,’ Loveday chirped. ‘Twerking, Rihanna’s S and M fetish, MILFs, thigh gaps …’

‘Thigh gaps?’ repeated Harry and Wolf in unison. If you weren’t familiar with the term it sounded like something you might buy in a stationery shop, thought Ailsa.

‘No one criticizes Paris Hilton’s partner, do they? Or Robin Thicke for twerking with Miley Cyrus. Did you know that he’s got a young daughter? He should know better. By criticizing these women instead of the men we are perpetuating female repression.’

‘I’m afraid I’ve lost you,’ said Harry apologetically.

‘I’m talking about the way contemporary sex is all about male pleasure,’ Loveday continued earnestly. ‘Boys never come home from parties bragging about how many girls they have orally pleasured, do they?’

Ailsa caught Harry’s eye. No matter how hard they tried, the Fairports always left them floundering around for a response.

‘Wolf and I are at the vanguard of a new revolution. To bring men and women together sexually for the mutual benefit of both.’ She put her arm towards Wolf and they held hands. ‘Maybe we could help Romy to find her centre? I’m a trained sex therapist. This could be a wonderful opportunity for rebirth and renewal.’

‘That’s a very kind offer,’ said Harry calmly. ‘But we’re not really here to discuss that.’ He took Ailsa’s hand and
squeezed it. Ailsa took a deep breath. Her diaphragm was tight as a drum.

‘The film of Romy is everywhere. Porn sites, social media sites. A lot of the kids at school have downloaded it onto their phones and sent it on to other friends at other schools in other parts of the country. We will never know who has it. We will never be able to get rid of it. There are comments on websites telling Romy to kill herself, threats to rape her on the way home from school. She has been called vile and terrible things.’ Ailsa had forced herself to read all the comments that Matt had sent her way. Even though they had made her retch into the bin in Harry’s office. She wanted every detail so that anything Romy might read, she had read first, and she could confront the situation head on. ‘Even if this fades, she will never know who might have seen it. Every time she has a job interview she will worry that someone might do a background check on the Internet and find it.’

‘Unfortunately in a world without privacy, it is the reactions of complete strangers that end up defining these situations,’ said Wolf. ‘It is terrible how one quick stroke on a keyboard can impact the rest of someone’s life.’

‘It will be impossible to know where it stops,’ Ailsa continued. She paused for a moment until she was certain she had their full attention. ‘But we know exactly where it started.’ She waved her hand in the direction of the sweat lodge in the wood.

‘The boy’s face isn’t visible,’ said Loveday. Ailsa reeled.
Although she knew that it had been viewed by millions of people, every time she knew for sure that someone had seen it she felt sick all over again.

‘I thought you hadn’t watched the video?’ Ailsa fired back.

‘Marley has,’ Wolf interjected a little too quickly.

‘Not Jay?’ asked Harry.

‘Not as far we know,’ said Loveday. ‘It would be too painful for him to watch his ex-girlfriend with another boy, don’t you think? He has been very hurt by Romy.’

‘She wasn’t his ex-girlfriend when the video was made,’ said Ailsa. ‘The date is recorded at the end. It was made at 21.57 on 28 February. That’s three days before the party.’

In the silence that followed Ailsa caught Harry’s eye. He looked simultaneously impressed and horrified by her meticulous grasp of detail.

‘I don’t see how this relates to us,’ said Loveday with a shrug. She was stonewalling.

‘You know as well as we do that the other person in the video is Jay,’ said Harry impatiently. ‘Your son has ruined our daughter’s life.’

‘We are aware there was a fight between Marley and Jay over Romy at the party,’ said Ailsa. ‘We know that he sent this film out to people as an act of selfish vengeance. His cynical motivation is crystal clear.’

‘You don’t have any proof,’ said Wolf coolly. ‘All this is conjecture.’

‘The film was made in your sweat lodge,’ said Ailsa. ‘The stones are visible. The boy has removed his shoes.
He is wearing socks with a marijuana leaf insignia on the side like the ones you are wearing right now.’

Wolf glanced down at his feet and back up at Ailsa. He was frowning. She had got to him.

‘And the earring in his left ear. It was a present from Romy,’ said Ailsa.

‘We intend to get the police involved,’ warned Harry.

‘I think you’re overreacting,’ said Wolf, now on the back foot. ‘Teenagers do this kind of thing all the time. We need to work together to help them resolve this.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Hormones and the Internet are a deadly combination.’

‘Jay has committed a crime. Romy is seventeen. In the eyes of the law she is a minor and he has distributed child pornography. He could go on the sex offenders’ list for five years. He will have a criminal record. We will press charges,’ said Ailsa.

‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’ said Loveday.

‘We have nothing to lose. Romy has lost everything already,’ said Ailsa.

‘If the police discover that he forced her to do this, the repercussions will be even greater,’ said Harry. ‘We will push for a sexual harassment charge as well.’

‘Jay will of course be expelled from school,’ said Ailsa. ‘We have a zero-tolerance approach to this sort of bullying.’ This wasn’t true. As Mrs Arnold had pointed out with barely restrained glee at being vindicated, there was nothing in the rulebook about sexting, which now seemed a monumental oversight.

They both leaned back into the sofa. Harry put his hand on Ailsa’s knee. There was a sense of relief. They could go home now and tell Romy that they knew it was Jay who had sent the video and that he would be punished. It was crucial that justice was seen to be done. It would take the spotlight off Romy and put it on him.

‘Admit it. You hate us, don’t you, Ailsa?’ said Loveday, her jaw clenched so tight that it sounded as though she was hissing.

‘I don’t hate you, I hate what your child has done,’ said Ailsa smoothly. ‘And in my experience this kind of behaviour reflects the context in which a child has been brought up. You have a very loose and permissive approach to child-rearing where boundaries aren’t properly defined, and Jay has been left too much to his own devices to work out what is appropriate behaviour. For all your therapy-speak you have no idea what he really gets up to. I’m sure he hasn’t been helped by your line of work.’

‘I strongly resent the inference of what you are saying,’ said Wolf, abruptly standing up and using his index finger to emphasize each word. ‘You understand nothing of our work.’

‘You give complete strangers vaginal massages,’ said Ailsa. ‘I saw it on your website. What more is there to understand?’

‘Believing in the power of vaginal orgasm doesn’t make us pornographers,’ said Wolf defensively. ‘It makes us feminists.’

‘God, you are such a stuck-up, patronizing, judgemental
cow,’ Loveday interrupted. ‘You’ve looked down on us right from the moment we moved in. You seem to be forgetting that it’s your daughter’s mouth around our son’s penis, saying those disgusting words at the end …’

‘He put those words into her mouth,’ Ailsa shouted back at her. ‘He wrote the script.’

‘You can’t be sure of that,’ said Harry, appalled and bamboozled by the high-speed unravelling of this encounter.

‘You are so fucking repressed, Ailsa,’ yelled Loveday. ‘No wonder Harry played away. You are so squeaky clean that you probably disapprove of all bodily secretions.’

‘Compassion, Loveday, compassion,’ shouted Wolf. ‘Remember, we’re all about compassion.’

‘There can be no compassion when it comes to protecting our child,’ shouted Loveday.

For a moment Ailsa wondered if Loveday had punched her in the stomach. She couldn’t breathe. Her head and body felt liquid. How could Harry have betrayed her like this? To these awful people? Why would he have told Loveday? There must be something going on between them. Men and women only talked about sex together if they wanted to fuck each other. It was one of Rachel’s pet theories.

‘That is no way to speak to my wife,’ said Harry, sounding like a character from a 1950s film.

‘That was no way to speak to your student,’ Loveday countered. ‘Have you considered that Romy might have been inspired by you, Harry? Or perhaps neuroscientists will find there is a part of the brain responsible for
sexting and Romy has inherited the gene. You’re so good at expounding all your theories but not quite so efficient at putting them into practice.’

It took Ailsa a few seconds to pull together the different threads of this conversation. Harry looked completely panicked. Fight or flight. With Harry it was generally flight. She saw him head towards the door of the sitting room.

‘How did you find out?’ Ailsa asked as she pulled herself out of the sofa. Her body felt so heavy that every movement was an effort.

‘Romy told Jay,’ said Wolf, a hint of shame in his voice. ‘Jay told us.’

‘Romy doesn’t know,’ Ailsa countered. ‘The children never knew about the problems in our relationship. We protected them from the truth. Unlike you, we don’t believe that everything is up for discussion.’

‘Some parents have no idea what their children get up to,’ said Loveday, repeating Ailsa’s words. ‘Didn’t you realize she found a phone with texts between Harry and his girlfriend?’

‘Let’s call the police, Harry,’ said Ailsa coldly. She stood up and pulled out her mobile phone from her pocket.

‘If you do that, we’ll show the police the other images that your daughter sent to Jay,’ said Loveday. ‘Maybe we’ll post them online. We’ll tell them about her performance for Jay every night at her window. Did you know about that? About her pleasuring herself for Jay in
front of her bedroom window? And we’ll give them the context for all of this.’

‘You’ve overstepped the mark now,’ said Harry. They all stood facing each other. Harry and Wolf drew closer, chests puffed out like angry turkeys, until they were almost touching. There was a brief stand-off. Then Harry used his upper body to shrug off Wolf. Wolf lost his footing and stumbled backwards into the bookshelf. A couple of the painted Ukrainian eggs fell to the floor and shattered. Wolf righted himself and stepped towards Harry, oblivious to the broken glass underfoot, and tried to grab his shoulders.

‘Slow down, cowboy!’ shouted Wolf over the noise. He swatted Harry away with one hand while the other clung on to his sarong, which was threatening to unravel. Harry danced around him like a boxer, unable to decide where to land his first punch.