“There was something about Asian Babes, I think.”
“There would be.”
“What are we going to do?” she asks, and the we feels both presumptuous and entirely right.
Nothing is what we’re going to do. “We’ll think of something.”
I put the main light out and leave the bedside lamp on. Next to it in a vase is a desiccated sprig of lily of the valley, left over from Donald and Barbara’s visit.
“I don’t understand, Kate,” Momo says. “Why would Bunce do that? Why would anyone want to do that?”
“Oh, because you’re beautiful and you’re female and because he can. It’s not very complicated.”
For a second, she ignites with anger. “Are you saying what Chris Bunce did to me was nothing personal?”
“No. Yes.” I suddenly feel exorbitantly tired, as though my veins were filled with lead. The terror of there being something wrong with Ben and now this. Why do I always have to explain things to Momo, important things, when I’m at my most stupid? I lay my hand on her cool brown one and will the words to come. “I’m saying that there was all history and now there’s us. There’s never been anything like us before, Momo. Century after century of women knowing their place — and suddenly it’s twenty years of women who don’t know their place, and it’s scary for men. It’s happened so fast. Chris Bunce looks at you and he sees someone who’s supposed to be an equal. We know what he wants to do to you, but he’s not allowed to touch anymore, so he fakes pictures of you that he can do what he likes with.”
Under the duvet, she shakes, the shudder of a still-fresh shame, and tightens her grip on my fingers.
“Momo, do you know how long they reckon it took for early man to stand upright?”
“How long?”
“Between two and five million years. If you give Chris Bunce five million years he may realize that it’s possible to work alongside women without needing to take their clothes off.”
I can see the opal precipitate of tears in her eyes. “You’re telling me we can’t do anything, Kate, aren’t you? About Bunce. I just have to put up with it because that’s what they’re like and there’s no use trying to change anything.”
That’s exactly what I’m saying. “No, I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
AS MOMO SIGHS and winces her way to sleep, I go downstairs to switch off the lights and lock up. I miss Richard all the time, but this is the time I miss him most. Locking up is his job and the bolt feels less safe when I draw it across, the creaking in the window frames more ghostly. As I close the shutters, I keep thinking of what will happen over the next few days. In the morning, Momo Gumeratne will make a formal complaint about the behavior of Christopher Bunce to her line manager, Rod Task. Task will refer the complaint to Human Resources. Momo will then be suspended on full pay pending an internal inquiry. At the first meeting of the inquiry, which I will be invited to attend, it will be publicly noted that Momo Gumeratne is of previously impeccable character. It will be silently noted that Chris Bunce is our leading performer who last year moved 400 million pounds of business. Quite soon, the offense against Momo will be referred to as “a bad business” or simply “that Bunce business.”
After three months at home — enough time for her to start feeling anxious and depressed — Momo will be called into the office. A financial settlement will be offered. The Cheltenham Lady in her will stand up straight and say she cannot be bought off; all she wants is to see justice done. The inquiry panel will be shocked. They too want justice to be done; it’s just that the nature of the evidence is — how shall we say? — problematic. Casually, imperceptibly, it will be implied that Momo’s career in the City could be over. She is a young woman of exceptional promise, but these things have a way of being misinterpreted. No smoke without fire, all tremendously unfortunate. If news of the pornographic computer images, say, were to get out to the media….
Two days later, Momo Gumeratne will settle out of court for an undisclosed sum. When she walks down the steps of Edwin Morgan Forster for the last time, a woman reporter from the TV news will poke a microphone in her face and ask her to give details of what happened. Is it true that they called her an Asian Babe and ran porno pictures of her? Lowering her lovely head, Momo will decline to comment. Next day, four newspapers will run a story on page 3. One headline reads asian babe in city porn pics storm. Momo’s denial will appear in the second-to-last paragraph. Soon after, she will take a job abroad and pray to be forgotten. Bunce will hold on to his job and the black mark against his character will be erased by a steady tide of profits. And nothing will change. That much is certain.
As I’m reaching for the light switch, I notice a new picture stuck to the fridge under the Tinky Winky magnet. It’s a drawing of a woman with yellow hair; she is wearing a stripy brown suit and her heels are as high as stilts. The glare from the light means it’s hard to make out the writing in pencil underneath. I go up close. The artist is Emily, and with the help of a teacher she has written, My Mummy goes out to work, but she thinks about me all day long.
Did I really say that to her? Must have. Em remembers absolutely everything. I heave open the freezer and force my face into its arctic air. The impulse to get in and keep walking is immense. I’m going in now; I may be some time.
Back upstairs, I look in on Momo. Her lids are closed, but the eyes beneath them flutter like moths. Dreaming, poor baby. I’m turning the lamp off when the eyes open and she whispers, “What are you thinking, Kate?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about what I said to you the day we first met.”
“You said that I had to stop saying sorry.”
“Too damn right you do. And what else?”
She stares up at me with that trusting spaniel look I saw at the final all those eons ago. “You said that compassion, although expensive, is not necessarily a waste of money.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You did.”
“God, how appalling. I’m such a cow. What else did I say?”
“You said that money can’t tell what sex you are.”
“Exactly.”
“Exactly?” she echoes uncertainly.
“Where does it hurt them most, Momo? Where can we hurt them most?”
ALL THAT NIGHT, I couldn’t sleep. I kept creeping into Ben’s room, checking his breathing as I used to check Emily’s when I first brought her home and I worried she would never wake. Ben slept on and on, but there was nothing to be afraid of. He was sleeping like a baby.
Richard rang about two. He was in Brussels pitching for a Euro grant for a northern arts center and had only just got my message. He asked me if I was OK and I said no. He said we needed to talk and I said yes.
At 5:30, I rang Candy, who I knew was being woken early by the baby kicking her in the ribs. Told her about the pictures of Momo on the system. I had no idea what we could do about it, but I thought she might, with her background in Internet companies. Between 5:50 and 6:30, she wrote a program that would seek and destroy all files containing references to Momo Gumeratne.
“It’ll be hard tracking down any stuff that’s gone out of the building,” she said, “but I can nix anything still held in the EMF system.” We agreed that she should keep one copy of the pictures for evidence.
At 6:00, Momo came into the kitchen and held something up. “I found this in my bed. Does it belong to anybody?”
I went across and hugged her. “That’s Roo. He’s a member of the family.”
Giving her a cup of tea to take back to bed, I walked up with her and went into Ben’s room. Still fast asleep. I tucked Roo next to his cheek. In a very short time one little boy was going to be happier than Christmas.