Once she was dressed, she sat on the floor, leaning back against Daphne’s bed. ‘Just going for a pee,’ he said and disappeared. That was when her feelings of guilt began. There was no doubting that this was betrayal. On his return, he looked businesslike and crouched down to sit by her, not quite touching.
‘What will happen now?’ Her voice emerged squeaky with anxiety. The act of putting his body inside hers surely tied them in some way or had repercussions. There were unfamiliar, corporeal smells and the room was hot and stuffy.
‘Nothing!’ came his cheery baritone. ‘We’re friends, aren’t we? Friends can do nice things together if they like.’ He paused. ‘And that was very nice.’ He was trying to disguise his worry but it was so clear, it was almost written in letters across his face. ‘Nobody needs to know. If Daphne…’ The sentence wasn’t finished. ‘We’ll keep this as our secret, eh Janey?’ He shot her a radiant smile and locked his eyes on to hers – his golden bullet for a difficult situation that she’d seen used on other people. It worked perfectly. Before getting up, he rested his hand on her arm like a kindly vicar offering condolences.
She went home on the 93. From the top floor, she looked out at the places she’d been to with Ralph only hours earlier, but the excitement and intrigue were evaporating, leaving her sore and miserably guilty. It would be hard to see Daphne ever again, she thought. There was blood on her pants and, walking home through the dull streets, the wodge of toilet paper she’d placed there chafed. She banged her bag against dusty hedges in frustrated anger and scuffed her shoes. Wrong. Bad. Disloyal. Ugly. The words in her head were so strong she almost spoke them.
Her mother was in the kitchen like an advert for cleaning products – hair sprayed, a pretty apron and the floor shining with germlessness.
‘Hello, poppet! I thought you were staying with Daphne tonight.’
Jane tried to answer and knew tears would betray her.
‘Everything all right? Is something the matter?’
‘No, nothing.’ She started crying. ‘I felt unwell. That’s why I came home.’
Her mother came over and felt Jane’s forehead with a hand that was damp and cool and smelled of raw potatoes. ‘Yes, you are a bit warm. Why don’t you go and lie down and I’ll make you some tea?’
Upstairs in her room, Jane removed the purple shorts from her bag, sniffed the dry, translucent snail trails, and flung them into the darkness of her wardrobe. She changed into pyjamas and got into bed and, when Daphne rang later that evening, she told her mum to say she was feverish and could not come down to the phone. The next day, when her mother returned from shopping, Jane took a greengrocer’s paper bag, recently emptied of apples, and placed the stolen shorts inside it. She locked the package in a tatty ladies’ suitcase her parents had given her when it was no longer fit for travel and that was now filled with secrets and souvenirs. By the afternoon, she actually was ill with a throat infection that kept her off school all the following week. Old Dr Wittingham came to see her and prescribed antibiotics and bed rest.
Unable to face seeing Daphne, she spun out her convalescence for the last few days of term and stayed at home, claiming dizziness. By this time, she was also terrified. Her periods always came with precise regularity, usually falling on the same days as her mother’s. They didn’t discuss the matter, but her mother bought the ‘STs’ and it was quite clear when the large packet in the bathroom was being used. By the time she was a week late, she was beside herself with worry. She gripped her belly, squeezing the pale flesh, panicked that her body might betray her. Punishment for her betrayal. Her pinching got more violent, leaving weals and scratches from her nails – the pain a welcome distraction. It seemed fair.
For a few days, she removed some sanitary towels from the bathroom and threw them in a litterbin in some public toilets. She could not face being questioned by her mother. After another two weeks, there was still no blood and she went to the doctor. Horrified by the prospect of this disaster being discovered, she begged him not to tell her parents and he agreed that he would keep her secret unless she was pregnant. ‘In that case, they would have to be informed,’ he said. She longed to laugh and shriek with Daphne about the awfulness of being poked and prodded up the vagina by Dr Wittingham’s hairy old fingers. ‘Palpated,’ he said. But she couldn’t tell anyone. He demanded a sample of her urine for a pregnancy test and said the results would take up to two weeks. He would send a letter or she could phone.
Theo had once told her and Daphne that pregnancy tests were done by injecting a woman’s pee into a frog. If she was up the duff, the frog started laying eggs. It sounded like a surreal nightmare. Jane pictured an enormous toad oozing quantities of spawn, slimy as the vats of tapioca at school lunches that were eaten with a spoonful of red jam.
The long-planned family holiday in Newquay was an ideal excuse not to see Daphne, but ten days imprisoned in a small hotel with her parents and brother was almost unbearable. She infuriated them by staying in bed till midday, picking fussily at her food and giving monosyllabic answers to their questions. The beach was lacerated by wind and she lay on the damp, grey sand, covered in goosebumps and feeling nauseous. For a change of scenery, she took solitary walks by the port and ate ice lollies sitting on a wall. Once, she bought a strawberry Mivvi, but it made her feel sick and she threw it away. Almost paralysed by fear, she had no one to confide in – Daphne least of all. Her parents? Ralph? None of the options were appealing. Abortion sounded like sharp surgical instruments, blood on metal, masked doctors, sleeping gas. She’d heard of hot baths with gin and clothes hangers in back streets, but she couldn’t imagine how you did any of these things. Adoption? She pictured a chubby, pink-cheeked baby being carried off by a nurse in starched headgear.
On the return drive to London, her period started – a wonderful red oval on her pants. At home, a letter was waiting for her from Dr Wittingham and she snatched it from the pile of mail on the doormat before anyone noticed. Negative, it said. The frog was not laying human-fuelled eggs this time.
Daphne went to Greece and the rest of the summer holidays dragged by in a depressing desert of emptiness. Jane got a part-time job waitressing in a café near Wimbledon station, but mostly she hung about in her bedroom, listening to records and ranting in her diary about boredom and misery. She didn’t consider getting in touch with Ralph. Nor did she blame him for what occurred. Their hurried coupling was something that just happened, like getting caught in a storm. That it had been a mistake was clear, but she had no sense that he had done anything worse than she had. Disgust with herself and her body eclipsed even the germ of anger, which took many years to grow. Much more powerful were her feelings of guilt towards Daphne. They hurt like a physical injury, as if she’d sliced off her toes and could hardly walk.
As an adult, Jane admitted the guilt of the innocent; she had wanted Ralph. She could confess to that. Not that she had engineered it, but she had been complicit. She was equally clear that she had been raped.
On Monday, she went to see Gareth at Fulham police station as arranged. A plastic food bag tied with a twist contained the purple shorts. DNA could be extracted from samples that were decades old and she was optimistic. She also had her diary, with its long and detailed description of Ralph’s crimes and her subsequent summer of misery. Tucked inside it was the letter from Dr Wittingham like the perfect cross-check. Even if Daphne had dropped charges, they still had this new collection of evidence.
Gareth was rather overexcited, she thought. Almost breathless. He had been furious about Daphne’s withdrawal, but now there were ‘developments’. Two men had been to see him, he announced. They claimed Ralph had sexually abused them as teenagers. They had been playing in an orchestra he was conducting. ‘This case is looking good again,’ Gareth said.