31. Lavender
“What are you doing?”
Pausing at my sister’s voice, I turn her way, my left cheek aching from the movement. It’s still tender to the touch and will probably bruise, but hey-ho.
“The rhumba,” I answer a little too aggressively, pressing my hand to the mattress. My breakfast tray dips precariously, the slim vase holding a rose bumping into my glass of juice.
“Then I might do the cha-cha.” And then, because I’m sorry for being a bitch and also bored of being treated like a Victorian damsel prone to swooning, I do the twist along the side of the bed. I even break out into the sprinkler partway.
“Mental case,” Primrose says with a beleaguered shake of her head. Crossing the room, she puts down two massive mugs of tea on the nightstand.
“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.”
“And a stupid dance as a bonus.”
“I was looking for my slippers,” I say. “I’m going downstairs.”
“Please yourself,” Prim says, flopping to the velvet bench at the end of the bed. “But the cleaners are in. It’s a hive of noisy activity down there. They’re really getting stuck in.”
“Where’s Raif gone?”
“Dunno. He just said he wouldn’t be long.”
After he’d brought me home last night—Prim, too—I’d just wanted to shower and sleep. Perchance to forget all that preceding shit. But it’s not every day your (fake) husband from your (real) marriage looks at you like you’re the sole reason for his heart bleeding. I gave him the bare bones of the tale—who Julian is and why I thought he turned up—when all I wanted to do was shove those facts into the spare bedroom of my brain, stuffed in a box wrapped tight with tape, and thrust to the back of a cupboard behind other detritus. Never to find or examine again.
But I will because I promised him I’d fill in the blanks later.
Last night, he’d undressed me like I was made from glass, then turned on the shower and ushered me in. He’d gotten in behind me without speaking a word and washed my skin with such care and tenderness. His kindest act of all was to pretend he didn’t notice my tears.
I was exhausted by the time I’d crawled into bed, and I was grateful for his strong arms as I drifted off to sleep. He wasn’t there when I woke, but Primrose was. With such warming words of comfort.
“Do you know you snore?” she’d asked as I’d pulled myself upright against the pillows. “You never used to. Not when we shared a bedroom.”
“Thanks.” The words had sounded a thousand years old.
“Also, just so you know. You farted in your sleep, and Raif was still in the room.”
“Everyone farts.” Farts. Snorts. Drools. Wakes with their hair looking like a bird’s nest. Why on earth is he with me?
“Yeah, but you’ve only been married a couple of weeks. Is the honeymoon period truly over?”
I bit my tongue from saying it hadn’t begun, that pretend love doesn’t earn one of those. Then I realized I was wrong. I might’ve married a stranger for no other reason than cold, hard cash, but he’s treated me so well. He hasn’t once upcasted my role. Never suggested I’d sold myself or called me a whore. Conversely, the boy I imagined myself in love with five years ago thought I owed him my body in exchange for the title of girlfriend.
He took. And I let him. And I think that might be the worst feeling in the world. The shame, the indignity, that I did nothing to stop him.
I blow out a breath and plonk myself down next to Prim. My little sister shuffles closer and rests her head against my shoulder.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Here lies Lavender. Still playing pretend.
“That you had a really shitty boyfriend.” Her voice sounds so small. “That he hurt you.” She twists her head. “He did hurt you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.” Just a breath.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper, taking her hand. I’d prefer to give comfort than have her smother me in the same.
“It’s not your fault either.”
But I think that’s entirely a matter of perspective.
“Lavender.”
“Mngh?”
“Lavender, sweetheart. Wake up.”
I open my eyes. Well, one of them. I appear to be lying face down on the bed, my face smooshed against the pillows, mouth open, and my lips stuck to the high thread count.
“Time is it?” I think I ask as I push up onto my palms, my knees, then flop backward to sit against the pillows.
“It’s a little after three.” Raif perches on the edge of the bed in jeans and a black fine-knit sweater. Weekend wear on a workday. For both of us.
“Urgh, I’ve been asleep for hours. Where’s Primrose?”
“On her way home with Luis. She said she’ll be back tomorrow and not to worry about the gallery.”
I nod, too tired to answer. Why am I so tired?
“It’s a trauma response.” Raif tenderly slides my hair from my face.
“I’m not traumatized,” I quickly say. Scoff, even, almost knocking his hand away.
“You were attacked.” His jaw tautens as though he’s biting back angry words. Yet all I can think is how his reaction contours his face.
Charlotte Tilbury contour wand, eat your heart out.
“No fair,” I say, reaching out to poke his cheek.
“No, it wasn’t fair. I’m having difficulty making out exactly what it was because it wasn’t just a visit from an old boyfriend, was it?”
“I don’t.” I stop. Take a breath. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You were assaulted violently in your place of work. But you didn’t want to involve the police. Why is that?”
“I’m sure you didn’t want to involve them either,” I retort. “Not after you choked him and Luis kicked his head in.”
“That’s the least that piece of shit deserves. But I’m sure the police would’ve agreed we were restrained in our reactions. Tod, too.”
“What about Tod?”
“He was worried about you. He offered to make a statement to the police. Why didn’t you want to call them?”
I wiggle my bum backward, sitting straighter. “So it looks like we’re doing this,” I murmur.
“I would appreciate you taking me into your confidence.”
“That’s quite a courtly way to demand.” I draw my heels to my bum, and pulling my sweater arms over my hands, I hook them around my knees.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not like I owe you an explanation, is it? Unless this will be another one of those carrot and the stick things.”
“You don’t have to tell me anything. Not if you don’t want to. But I hope you’ll trust me. Let me carry a little of your load.”
Shame swamps my anger. Kindness is something I can’t afford. It’s not something I’m looking for.
“Lavender, please.”
“Julian was my first boyfriend.”
“I see.”
“He was my first and only boyfriend, technically.”
“Wait, what does that mean?”
“It means after him, I thought twice about dating anyone else. Don’t look at me like that,” I demand in the face of his compassion. “I knew this was going to be a mistake,” I mutter as my gaze slides away.
“No.” The bedding rustles as he draws nearer, his large hands wrapping around my calves. “Please, Lavender.” His hold tightens as though to strengthen his words. “Let me in.”
“I thought I was head over heels in love with him.” My head whips around, my words like bullets seeking to harm. But they only ricochet.
“First loves can be a whirlwind.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“Tell me.”
“I was at uni when we met, still in London and still living at home. Jules had a flat that he shared with a couple of mates. One of my friends was one of their girlfriends. We used to party.” My eyes dart his way, expecting judgment, I suppose. “Vodka. Pills.”
“Like most kids.”
“It was just weekends.” I swallow over the thoughts of those days. My first taste of freedom and the places it took me. Techno in warehouses. House parties on the rough edges of London. Breakfasts in the roughest of greasy spoons. It’s a wonder I didn’t come to harm before… that.
“So he was your first?”
“He was my only.” The glance I slide Raif’s way is unkind. And unfair. How was he supposed to know when no one else does?
“Lavender.” My name is rough as he pitches forward, pressing his head to my knees.
“That’s not on you,” I murmur, my tone still cool. Yet I can’t stop my fingers from touching his thick hair. When I apply a slight pressure, he sits up again but doesn’t move his hands from my legs, his expression turns impassive.
This man and his poker face.
“I was nineteen, a late starter already. I was mouthy and bolshy, but I think I came out of the womb like that. I was obviously much less sophisticated than I let on.”
Sounds like me now.
“I told him I wasn’t ready. That I didn’t want to rush into things. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t do anything, until… one night, we’d been partying pretty hard. I crashed, and when I woke up, I didn’t know where I was.” I shiver, suddenly feeling cold as I try to detach myself from the memory I never examine.
“I felt sick, disorientated, and out of it. It wasn’t like a normal come down, and I wasn’t sure what was happening. And then…” I inhale sharply. Force it out in a long breath. “I realized he was on top of me.”
Sweat. Sticky skin. A sharp pinch. His horrible grin.
I screw my eyes as I press my forehead to my knees. My chest seems to calcify, the only movement in it my heart, hammering away. “I pushed at him, but it was already too late. Too late, and I was too stupid.”
“No.” His fingers slide between mine and grip. “It’s not your fault.”
“But it is.” I bite the inside of my trembling lip. “I tried to get him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He said he’d waited long enough. I felt so out of it. He said I was making excuses, that I was supposed to be his girlfriend. So I just stopped. Stopped trying to stop him. I just lay there. But I didn’t leave my body, like some people say.” Because I felt every hard, hideous minute of it. “And afterward, I smiled when he told me how good it had been. How good I’d been. That’s fucked up, right?”
“It’s not your fault. None of this was your fault.”
“He was my boyfriend.” Another swallow. “I decided that meant something—that it had to mean something, or else what was it?”
Probably a word I wasn’t ready to face.
“I thought I needed to hang onto him after I’d given—”
“No.” One low, adamant word. “Fuck that, he took what you weren’t ready to give.”
“I know.” I nod. Hindsight. Time. Maturity. They all brought a new perspective. I couldn’t be sure, but maybe I was drugged? “But then, I followed him around, like a loser, like that was what I was supposed to do. I don’t know, maybe I thought I could somehow get back a little of what he’d taken. But I let him do it again. I was his girlfriend, right?” I glance up, the motion making tears spill. “It’s not like I was attacked in some seedy back alley.”
Raif says something low and in Spanish, or Llanito, and his thumb brushes away the tears. His heart seems to pour from his eyes, and when he takes my hand again, I crawl into his arms.
“But I didn’t tell anyone. I kept it all inside. Even when I found out he’d been fucking another girl. She was supposed to be my friend. He put his hands on me and shook me like a dog, said I was frigid. A crap fuck.”
Raif’s arms tighten on me as though to say, that’s enough of that.
“I got drunk and went to his flat, off my face. I banged against the door, hammered on the window. Yelled obscenities up at his flat and screamed and screamed. I was so angry. So hurt. And there was a brick loose in the wall, and in a fit of rage, I threw it through his window. The neighbors called the police, and I was arrested.” Taken away in a police car in handcuffs. I didn’t feel like a woman scorned. More like a kid who needed her mum.
Raif presses a kiss to my head. “What happened then?”
“I called Whit.” I was ashamed. “He went to see Julian, then later I found out he’d paid him off.”
His arms tighten—just a tiny bit—as though he wants to squeeze me but worries I might be too fragile to take it.
“It wasn’t Whit’s fault,” I say, looking up at him. “He didn’t know. He was just trying to make sure I didn’t get a police record.”
“He didn’t ask why you’d done it?”
“Of course he did. I told him my boyfriend shagged my mate. The police told him I was under the influence and, well, I guess he just thought that was me all over. I was a stroppy bitch.”
“I’m sure most nineteen-year-olds are difficult.”
“I’ve been difficult my whole life,” I whisper. “It was just another inexplicable day in Lavender’s life, as far as Whit was concerned. You have to understand, I’ve always been that problematic middle child. Sullen and angry. He only took me at my word. Then after, when things started to unravel and fall apart, it all just played into the same narrative. Which suited me because I was so ashamed.”
“I’m sorry.” He presses his lips to the top of my head. “There’s a special place in hell for men who force themselves on women.”
“Some would argue he didn’t. I wasn’t hurt. Not much, anyway.”
“That’s a slippery slope of reasoning, Lavender. Men like that…” He inhales so deeply that I move with the breath. “I yelled at her, but I didn’t hit her. I hit her, but it’s not like I really hurt her. I hurt her, but not so hard that I put her in the hospital. I put her in the hospital, but it’s not like I murdered her. She brought it on herself.”
“Yeah, okay. Point taken,” I say uncomfortably. I feel like I’ve cracked open my chest for a full autopsy of feelings. It’s unpleasant.
“He is the lowest of the low, and that makes me want to—” His words stop abruptly as he catches himself from answering.
“What did you do to him?”
“Don’t you worry yourself. He won’t hurt you ever again.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I don’t care what happens to him, but I won’t let you—”
“The world wouldn’t miss him.”
Anger seems to leap up my throat. “That’s not your choice to make,” I say, pulling back to stare at him. “I won’t have his death on my conscience. Or yours or Luis’s, for that matter. That was Luis kicking him in the head, wasn’t it?”
It was all such a blur—I can only see it in flashes. Fragments. The look on his face, his thigh wedged hard between mine. Black spots and white as he’d backhanded me. Then Raif, the hard set of his face and his softly delivered words. My body shaking so violently, I thought my insides might revolt. Then dull thuds and grunts of exertion as I screwed my eyes tight, shock and adrenaline crashing my system.
“What do you want me to say, Lavender?”
“That you won’t harm him.”
“Not even like he harmed you?”
“Don’t say that.” One abhorrent violence does not deserve another.
“It’s not that he didn’t understand,” Raif says softly. “He wasn’t confused. He didn’t think you owed him your virginity. It was simply that he didn’t care for your answer, for your feelings, your distress, for your pain. Ask yourself why you should care what happens to him now.”
“I don’t care, but that doesn’t mean I want him dead. I want him away, somewhere else. I want to never set eyes on him again.”
“And what if this is a pattern?”
I put my hands over my ears. “Don’t. I can’t do this.”
“I’m sorry.” Raif pulls me to him again. “Ah, Lavender.”
“Promise me you’re listening. That you won’t…”
His chest rises and falls deeply with his answer. “Okay.”
“Promise me that you won’t tell anyone else about what happened. Then or now.”
“What about Primrose?”
“She doesn’t know about before, but she’s not stupid. Anyway, she’s promised not to talk about it.”
“And Tod?”
“I’ll speak to him.”
“No. Let me. But this is not your shame, Lavender.”
“I know that, but I won’t hurt them. My family. And that’s what telling them would do. Bring recriminations and regret, and I’ve had enough of those for a lifetime.”