Butterfly (12 page)

Comforting me.

Protecting me.

He throws a few kicks to it,
landing high on the bag. It swings under the force, and he steadies
it before going again, pummelling it with a series of punches,
jabs, and kicks. Hard and fast strikes.

I glance around the gym and
notice other women checking him out. Apart from being incredibly
good-looking, he has something else. A quiet confidence in the way
he moves that’s neither arrogant nor cocky. No wonder women look at
him with hunger. In another lifetime, maybe I would, too.

Why are you even thinking
about him like that?
He’s just a friend you barely
know
.

I shake my head to clear my
thoughts, trying to ignore the physical reaction I’m having to him
that has come from nowhere.

But he only cares about helping
me because it’s his job. It’s what he does. And I can never see
myself in a relationship again.

Ever.

It’s just too painful.

So what’s wrong with me? Why
can’t I tear my eyes off him? Why am I experiencing such weird
feelings around him?

‘I’m going to hit the showers.’
I get to my feet, wanting to escape the sight of him.

My arms feel sore and tight now.
It’s the most exercise I’ve done in years, and I’ve got a feeling
it will be even worse tomorrow. At the same time, I feel stronger
and elated, like I’m high on happy pills.

His fists stop flying, and he
bounces from one foot to the other like a boxer. For someone so
big, he’s light on his feet and agile. I guess that’s from all his
MMA training.

‘OK. I’ll be another few
minutes, then I’ll do the same.’ He stops bouncing and with the
back of his gloves wipes away the hair stuck to his sweaty
forehead. ‘Do you want to get something to eat after?’

I hesitate for a moment. ‘OK,
but I don’t want to go into town.’ I don’t want even the slightest
chance of seeing Theo anywhere.

He nods knowingly. ‘If you like,
we can walk along the river. Bring a picnic and sit on the banks
for a while.’

‘Sounds good, but let me bring
the food. You’ve been making me lunch all week.’

He gives me a warm smile and
shrugs. ‘OK, if you insist.’

‘I’ll stop at the supermarket on
the way back. Do you want to meet at my flat in about an hour and a
half?’

‘Great. I’ll see you then.’ His
eyes linger on mine for a few seconds before he turns back to the
punch bag.

I take a long, hot shower and
dress in black leggings and a baggy sweatshirt before blasting my
hair with a hairdryer attached to the wall. With all the sweat, my
make up has still held firm. Thank God for waterproof mascara. A
miraculous invention. It’s sweat-proof, even if it’s not always
tear-proof. I reapply lipstick then head off to the
supermarket.

The car park is packed, and the
high I’m on since the gym deflates as I sit in the car and scan
faces in the crowd. I doubt if he’s going to be here, but you never
know, do you? That’s the trouble with life; you just never know
what horror’s waiting for you round the next corner.

My heart rate rises. My palms
sweat. My breath’s the wrong side of easy. Maybe it’s too soon to
do this. What if he
is
here? What if he corners me
somewhere? Even the sight of him would send me over the edge.

I start the engine, drive back
to the little shop at the corner of my road, and park outside. I
want to do something nice for lunch, but the choice isn’t nearly as
good as the supermarket’s deli. I manage to find some fresh French
bread, olives, salami, cheese, and vine ripened tomatoes. That will
have to do. I pick up some other supplies for me while I’m there. I
must make more of an effort to eat properly again.

By the time I’ve got the food
prepared and wrapped things in foil, I have half an hour before
he’s due. I pick up my journal and start writing.

Positive thought of the day: I
am only a victim as long as I blame myself and remain ashamed.

Today, I went to the gym. Ben
told me to try and get rid of anger in healthy ways, so the punch
bag got it big time! It gave me a rich sense of exhilaration as I
pretended I was hitting Theo, punching the shit out of him,
screaming in my head at him and calling him every name I could
think of. Every smack against the leather bag felt like the
emotional pain locked deep inside was pouring out, turning into
pleasure—the pleasure of his pain with every strike.

It’s amazing how the anger sits
under the surface most of the time, coming out when you least
expect it. You don’t know how great it felt to finally let go of
that. It’s been inside me for too long, and now I’ve found an
outlet, it’s liberating. It was far more constructive in easing the
frustration inside than spending my time just trying to forget. It
gave me a sense of empowerment, a feeling of being in control for
the first time in what feels like forever.

I’ve only been talking to Ben
about things for a little while, but already I feel
different—freer, lighter, somehow. It’s as if he’s walking through
this nightmare with me, holding my hand and sharing my pain. I
don’t know if this will help, but I’m desperate. I’ve been
desperate for a long time, and I think talking might be the thing
that saves my life.

I know I’ve got a long way to
go, and change doesn’t happen overnight, but this is the start, and
it’s so good to be here. I’m finally facing up to the demons I’ve
tried to bury deep inside me, and I have to be honest with myself
now. Hiding the truth isn’t an option anymore. So I’m going to
write down in here what happened, the whole story, and every little
step I take in the healing process…

My words and feelings spill out
onto the pages, all the frustration and pain that I’ve been too
afraid to face. It’s therapeutic to get them out, like I’ve been
blindfolded for a year and now I can finally see.

Today is a good day.

By the time I check my watch,
I’ve already been writing for twenty-five minutes. I have five
minutes left before he arrives, but I don’t want to have a man in
my flat alone with me, so I pick up the carrier bag with food and
drinks, lock the door, and wait for him just inside the entrance to
the car park. On the path outside, couples walk past, hand in hand.
Families laden with shopping bags. People going about their normal
lives.

I’m staring at a mum with her
toddler when Ben suddenly rounds the corner of the building into
the car park. If he’s surprised to find me waiting outside, he
doesn’t say anything.

‘You OK?’ He smiles.

‘Yep.’

‘Good. Arms hurting yet?’

I grin. ‘Yes, but in a good
way.’

We walk away from the shop
towards the path along the River Cam that runs through Cambridge.
It’s busy but not too busy. The sun’s shining for once, and
everyone’s making the most of the spring weather that probably
won’t last long. Tomorrow it will be back to grey clouds and
drizzle. It’s strange to have the sun on my face. Strange but good.
And it hits me just how much time I spend at work or cooped up in
my flat, only venturing out for essentials. Locked inside my home
with the emptiness inside my heart, and the engulfing ache of
loneliness squeezing me until I can’t breathe. It’s not like a
home. It’s a prison cell.

We chat about nothing
important—the weather, music we like, the last film we saw. It’s
easy. Safe.

We find a bench to sit at that’s
set a way back from the river but with a beautiful view.

‘Are you hungry?’ I peer into
the bag.

‘Starving,’ he says.

‘Cheese and olive or salami and
tomato?’ I pull out two sticks of filled French bread and wiggle
them in my hands.

‘I’m easy. I don’t mind.’

I hand his over and carefully
unwrap mine on my lap. We eat in silence, watching people punting
on the calm expanse of water and ducks swimming along looking for
food. It’s quiet. Peaceful.

‘What about your parents? Are
they still in London?’ I glance at him.

He stiffens beside me. He chews
the last of his baguette for a few minutes. Swallows slowly. ‘Yes,
they’re still in London, but they moved house after Mia died. They
didn’t want to be surrounded by memories of her.’ His expression
twists into something sad and defeated. ‘We haven’t spoken for
years.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mia didn’t want me to tell them
about the rape, so I didn’t. I made her a promise, and I couldn’t
betray her, even when she was gone. She thought they’d think it was
all her fault. She was ashamed about it all.’

As he speaks, he could be
talking about me. I know about it all. The shame. The vile, dirty
feeling. The guilt.

‘What you said to me about it
not being my fault…’ I pause. ‘It’s not your fault, either.’

I reach my hand along the gap
between us on the bench and leave it there, palm facing up to the
sky, just as he did to me the first time I spoke. I’m offering what
little comfort I can to him to convey that I understand. Feeling an
overwhelming compassion for the pain he’s trying so hard to
hide.

He looks down at it for a second
before lacing his fingers through mine, and a subtle warm jolt
passes through me.

24

BEN

I don’t tell Grace what happened
after Mia’s death. That was definitely my fault, and it’s the real
reason my parents don’t speak to me anymore. They haven’t since the
night it happened, and who can blame them?

Maybe Mia choosing to end her
life wasn’t my fault, but the guilt is there. Burned into my heart
forever.

‘If I’d have done something
different to help her, maybe she would’ve got through it
eventually. Now I don’t know if keeping her secret was the right
thing to do. If I’d told someone else, maybe she wouldn’t have done
it.’

‘How could you know what to do,
though? You were what, twenty?’

I shrug. How could I ever
explain? It’s everything I didn’t do and everything I did do that’s
such a fucking mess.

‘I should’ve persuaded her to
talk to someone. A counsellor, a psychologist. Someone who’s
trained to deal with it. I just thought…’ My voice cracks, and I
clear my throat. ‘I don’t know what I thought. Maybe that she’d be
able to work through it on her own. Eventually get over it without
having to tell anyone so Mum and Dad would never find out. Because
she was so adamant she wasn’t going to seek professional help.’

Grace grips my fingers tighter,
and her tiny hand is warm in mine.

‘You can’t take all the
responsibility of Mia’s death on yourself. In the end, she was the
one who chose to do it.’

‘But she was suffering, and I
just let her.’

‘You tried, Ben. You tried the
best you could. You couldn’t do anything else.’

I sigh deeply.

‘If they didn’t know about the
rape, why don’t they talk to you, then? Do they blame you for her
death somehow?’ she asks.

I think before I speak, trying
to work out the lie. ‘Maybe because I left.’

‘To study in Australia?’

‘Yes,’ I say, swallowing away
the foul taste of yet another lie.

‘But it’s understandable that
you needed to get away, too. They wanted to move house to escape
her memories, and you wanted to move to another country to do the
same.

Except it’s not the same.

It’s not the same at all, but I
can’t tell her that, so I steer the conversation away from me.
‘Have you tried anything I suggested yet? Repeating positive
affirmations and writing in the journal?’

She shifts in her seat so she’s
facing me and gives me a big smile. It makes my heart swell to
think maybe I’ve helped put it on her beautiful face.

‘I’ve got a positive thought of
the day now,’ she says. ‘I repeat it to myself over and over, and
it does actually seem to lift my mood.’

‘Good.’

‘And I’ve written a little in
the journal. I’m trying to make sure I do it every day. It’s going
to be a record of my journey. And I
loved
using the punch
bag.’ Her eyes light up, and excitement flickers there. ‘So, what’s
next? Because now I’ve started this, I just want to carry on with
things.’

I laugh at the eagerness shining
through. ‘What you’ve done so far is just to try and make you feel
stronger so you can face the issues involved here. Maybe you should
think about the specific fears and anxieties you have so you can
work on tackling them.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The panic attacks are because
of anxiety. Are they from flashbacks? Or when you see someone who
looks like him, or something else? What can we work on to help you
get through them?’

Her eyes mist up.

‘You don’t have to talk about
this if you don’t want to. We can just go as fast or slow as you
want.’

She stares out over the river. A
duck is ushering her ducklings onto the banks.

‘I want to talk about it. I want
to get him out of my head.’ She shivers, even though it’s not cold.
‘I worry he’s going to come back and get me. I have nightmares
about the rape. I…’ She trails off and stares at the ground. ‘I
check the locks on my door obsessively and…’

I don’t prompt her to carry on.
She can tell me in her own time.

We sit for a while in silence
until she breaks it. ‘I sleep with a knife under my pillow, and—’
She stops abruptly.

I know there’s more, but she’s
not willing to share it yet.

‘OK. That’s a start,’ I say.
‘All of those things are normal responses to what you’ve
suffered.’

She shakes her head. ‘You’re
saying I’m normal? How can checking the locks loads of times and
sitting in front of the door with a knife in your hand be
normal?’

‘It’s important to understand
why you feel this way, and it is a normal response to the trauma
you’ve been through. The things you’re talking about are because
you don’t feel safe anymore. What we need to do is make you feel
safe, so you can reduce the panic and anxiety. Have you been
keeping up the deep breathing when you have a panic attack?’