Chapter 19 #2
The next contains a link to testimonies from women coerced into prostitution, men paying their traffickers to rape them.
You exploit these women’s desperation so you can abuse their bodies. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen to your own daughters, you disgusting man.
The next is a porn clip, the photo of Seb from the school website grinning, stuck on top of the male actor’s face as he has sex from behind with a bored-looking woman filing her nails.
There’s one from a group called Men Stand Strong! telling him he should be proud of himself, that wives should provide sex for their husbands– isn’t ‘with my body I thee worship’ in the marriage vows after all?
There are a few from email accounts Seb doesn’t recognize, each one progressively worse than the last.
Do your kids a favour, Mr Kent, get rid of yourself. Sooner the better.
I hope you never see your own children again, you sick fuck.
Me and my mates are coming to arse rape you until you die. Ha, ha, ha!
He reads them all and when he’s done, he puts his phone screen-down on the desk and sits back in his chair.
He should, he thinks, feel something. Rage, perhaps, horror or fear.
But he’s strangely empty where feeling should be.
It’s peculiar: these furious strangers– people in general– suddenly mean nothing to him.
Like he’s unclipped himself from everyone else apart from a very few.
He just wants to go home. He wants to go home very, very badly.
He looks out of the window and decides it’s just about dark enough to leave, and he hurries down the little path that leads to the car park.
He studies the ground as he walks close to the wall, avoiding the lights, and as soon as he’s out of the school grounds and on to the pavement he feels something solid and too close.
Out of nowhere he sees an arm reaching out for him, trying to shake his hand, and hears a voice saying, ‘Seb, Mr Kent, hi, I’m Mark!
So glad I caught you. I was about to give up. ’
Seb keeps walking. He doesn’t owe this man anything.
But the man keeps talking. ‘I’m a producer for The Talk Show – you know, on BBC Radio Sussex.’
Seb shakes his head. ‘No, no, I’m not interested.’
Seb starts walking away but he’s not quick enough as Mark trots like a companionable dog beside him.
He should tell him to go, to leave him alone, but up ahead there’s a group of kids dressed in cheap synthetic black and lurid greens, comparing the sweets in their little pails.
They could have siblings at Seb’s school; a couple might even be old enough to be at the secondary school already.
Seb can’t risk someone recognizing him, especially if there’s a bit of commotion getting Mark to leave him alone; besides, with Mark gesticulating by his side, Seb thinks people are less likely to recognize him.
If he keeps his eyes on the pavement, they’ll seem like a couple of commuters on their way home.
Seb moves himself to the inside of the pavement, away from the road, and keeps his head down, nodding occasionally as Mark blabs away.
‘What I’m saying is that obviously our website has blown up with comments after the I Heart Sussex show about you and your…
umm… situation and, well, we want to give you the chance to respond, especially as some of them mention your dad, so… ’
Seb stops walking. It’s worked. Mark has his full attention now. ‘What, what do they say about my dad?’
‘Have a look yourself, mate.’ Mark’s come prepared; he hands Seb his phone with the BBC Radio Sussex page already loaded.
The screen shines in the darkness as Seb automatically scrolls through the words before him:
‘The late Prof. Benjamin Kent was a colleague of mine and I have to say he would be appalled at his son’s humiliating and shameful behaviour.’
The next reads, ‘Agreed. I’m glad he doesn’t have to live through this. Benjamin always led by example and it’s such a pity his son has failed to do the same.’
Shame, not blood, throbs through Seb. The posts are anonymous, but still, they knew Seb’s dad’s name– they’re legitimate.
The thought that what he’s done and this whole spiralling mess is tainting his dad’s memory pushes Seb somewhere beyond shame, beyond feeling.
Like all his emotional receptors have short-circuited and switched off.
He looks up, briefly, at Mark, who is looking back at him, eyes wide, half his mouth raised, his expression a reluctant ‘told you so’.
Seb scrolls down a bit on the phone to get away from those comments about his dad. He reads, ‘Why are you so surprised? Privileged arseholes like Mr Kent have been screwing over hard-working people like this poor woman since time immemorial…’
Again, his thumb automatically scrolls down and down and down; the words, the endless, endless words, blur on the screen. He stops at random: ‘It’s time the Head Cunt is taught a lesson, time for him to know what it feels like to be desperate…’
‘See what I mean?’ Mark asks, taking his phone gently back from Seb.
Mark doesn’t seem to notice that Seb hardly hears a word as he keeps talking.
‘It’s bigger than you think, this thing.
Not quite viral but heading in that direction.
Bacterial, maybe?’ Mark snorts at his own stupid joke before he appeals to Seb again.
‘Look, everyone has something to say about your story– everyone, that is, apart from you. Which is where I come in.’
It’s time for Mark to go.
‘I’ll think about it,’ Seb mutters.
‘The show is on tomorrow afternoon; it would literally be perfect timing in terms of—’
‘I said I need to think about it, OK, Mark?’
Mark pulls back, slightly chastened. Seb notices how young he really is, guesses Mark was probably the kind of kid at school to always try his best but never quite make it on to that podium.
The kind of kid Seb adores, so he adds, more gently, ‘Look, why don’t you give me your details and I’ll be in touch. ’
Mark brightens and flicks a card into Seb’s hand. They say goodbye and even though Seb is desperate to get into the safety of his childhood home, he forces himself to stay still as Mark leaves, so he can’t clock which number Seb’s mum’s house is, before walking away himself.
Only a few houses on St John’s Terrace have gone big on the decorations this year.
There’s the house at the end of the terrace which projects the same video every year on to the side of the building– a group of cartoon skeletons dancing in top hats, holding canes.
Last year Seb’s kids sat on the wall opposite, eating sweets and watching until Greer said she was going to be sick.
Another couple of houses have jack-o’-lanterns lit, sticky-looking fake webs dangling from their doors.
Eva’s stuck the spiders she cut out with the kids on to the inside windows, but other than a plastic pumpkin that’s about to run out of battery, that’s it for decorations.
As he puts his key in the lock, someone calls his name behind him. He turns towards a man in a black waterproof and beanie, who holds up his phone– snap, snap, snap– before he says, jarringly cheerful, ‘Fucking prick,’ and, chuckling, walks away.
Seb scrambles to get inside and only starts to breathe again once he’s heard the click of the door behind him.
He holds on to the handle for a moment. Presses his cheek against the cool metal.
He’s still sinking, falling away inside himself, knowing that now when the name Benjamin Kent is mentioned, in lecture halls or among his dad’s old students, the first thing people will say is, ‘You heard about his son?’
‘Sebastian?’ Eva calls from somewhere inside.
He stands upright slowly and finds her in the kitchen, stirring the stew that has become a Halloween tradition.
For the last two years Eva has gone out with them trick-or-treating, everyone going back to her house for stew before bed.
Last year, Greer– a tiny, exhausted skeleton– had fallen asleep next to her bowl on the table.
It is one of Seb’s favourite photos of her.
Eva turns and smiles when she sees him but keeps stirring.
She looks small in the black witch’s outfit she’s worn every Halloween since Seb was a boy.
‘How was your day?’ Eva asks, moving towards him, holding his forearms as she kisses her son’s cheek.
Seb lifts his shoulders, shakes his head. How can he answer? He can’t. She knows. He clears his throat. It doesn’t work. He tries again. ‘What can I do?’
He means can he set the table or steam some vegetables, but Eva doesn’t take it like that. Instead she points to one of the armchairs– the one that used to be his dad’s– positioned in front of the wood burner.
‘You can sit down,’ she says firmly, and Seb feels himself liquefy as he does as he’s told.
Picturing his dad’s head leaning back against the headrest, he has the shocking thought that he actually agrees with that post. He’s glad that quiet, dignified Benjamin isn’t here. That he’ll never know the truth.
‘Tell me, what are you thinking about?’ Eva sits opposite him. She’s never asked him that before.
He looks at her, surprised, and lies easily: ‘I was thinking about an email I need to send.’
‘Tsk. What were you really thinking, Sebastian?’
Seb looks away from her, stunned. The lies, even innocuous ones, have lost their power. He has no choice. He’ll have to try the truth.
‘I was thinking about Dad.’
Eva nods slightly, asking him silently to expand.
‘I was thinking how disappointed he’d be in me.’
The space between her eyes pleats and she looks away, towards the fire.
‘True, perhaps, in a way,’ she says sadly before adding, ‘but also true that your dad suffered from the same thing as you. He was always trying to do the right thing as well. Trying, perhaps too much.’