Chapter 25
AMBER
Two Months Before
I should have left then. I should have pushed past Rob, yanked open the door and fled up the stairs to the safety of our office. I still don’t know why I didn’t. Was it out of fear? Naivety? Stupidity? You tell me.
Instead, I pressed the release catch and lifted the top panel of that bloody photocopier. Feeling his eyes boring into my back, I peered down at the rollers and trays looking for a scrunched-up piece of paper.
‘Can’t see anything wrong.’ I snapped the panel back down and hit the reset button, mentally crossing my fingers that it would work and I could get the hell out of that claustrophobic room.
The machine whirred back to life and I stepped away, jumping out of my skin when I almost collided with Rob. ‘Sorry,’ I said automatically.
‘No need to apologise.’ That cold smile again. It made my skin crawl.
I sucked in a breath. ‘We probably need to wait a couple of minutes.’
‘Fine by me. I’m not going anywhere.’
I rocked back on my heels, one eye on the door as I willed the red warning light to disappear.
Rob broke the awkward silence. ‘D’you have any plans for the weekend?’
‘Um, my boyfriend’s taking me to the new exhibition at the V&A tonight. And on Sunday we talked about driving down to Whitstable. There’s a fish restaurant he’s been wanting to try for ages.’
‘Whitstable, eh?’ Rob’s piggy eyes narrowed.
‘How terribly middle class.’ He took a step closer to me, under the pretence of checking the display screen.
A blast of beery breath hit me. He was so close I could see the specks of dandruff on his black lambswool sweater.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘The error light’s come back on again. ’
I had a bolt of inspiration. ‘Tell you what, why don’t you give me what needs copying and I’ll bring it up when it’s done?’
My gaze slid down to Rob’s empty hands and my stomach flipped. Of course. He didn’t need anything copying. Who photocopied anything anyway these days, when it was so much easier to send an email?
He’d seen I’d noticed. ‘Try it again,’ he ordered.
‘Sure.’ I bent back over the machine, willing the bloody thing to work.
‘You’re not doing it properly. Here, let me show you.’
Suddenly, he was pressing against me, his arms around me as he fiddled with the control panel.
‘What are you doing?’ I shrieked, pushing him away.
He feigned shock, his eyes wide. ‘Wow, talk about an overreaction. I was just showing you how to fix the error message.’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Come now, Amber. You know you want this as much as I do. I’ve seen the way you look at me.’
I stared at him, bewildered. ‘I don’t look at you like anything.’
He licked his lips. ‘I know what girls like you are like. Always up for it, aren’t you?’ His eyes slid down me and he took a step closer. ‘You’re fucking asking for it, dressed like that.’
My gaze fell first to my fitted tee, black trousers and ballet pumps, then slid to the bulge in his trousers. The contents of my stomach went into freefall.
‘Rob, I—’ I made to move for the door, but he caught my shoulder and spun me around to face him.
‘Not so fast, you dirty little tease.’ His voice was low, rasping.
‘Please, Rob, I—’
His strength took me by surprise. He pushed me against the stationery cupboard, holding my wrists above my head with one hand while fumbling with his flies with the other.
‘No. No, I don’t want this!’ I cried.
‘Course you do, you little bitch.’
I could feel his breath in my face, his tongue pushing, probing, until I was gagging, fat tears rolling down my cheeks, fear coursing through me at what might happen next.
Rob drew back at the sound of a chair scraping across the floor above our heads. I could have run then. I could have wriggled out of his grasp and fled the room, but I was paralysed. Frozen to the spot like an ice sculpture.
‘Where were we?’ Rob growled. His hands were everywhere. In my hair, circling my buttocks, squeezing my breasts. I was breathing in sobbing gasps, my head whipping this way and that, trying to avoid his lips, his stale, beery breath. My armpits were slick with sweat, my legs as weak as spaghetti.
A memory bloomed in my mind, like a glass of spilt milk on the kitchen counter.
My mother, lying on the sofa, comatose, her jeans round her ankles.
The guy called Steve, one of a long line of dropouts and losers she’d met at the pub, on top of her, grunting and thrusting like a hairy pig.
Me, standing frozen in the doorway, both repulsed and unable to tear my eyes away.
The sight hadn’t made much sense at the time.
My six-year-old brain just couldn’t compute.
It was only years later I realised what I’d seen, and I’d wondered if consent had played any part in the coupling, or was Steve just another man who thought he could take what he wanted, without a shred of regard for the woman whose life he was wrecking.
Rob simultaneously reached for the zipper on my trousers and clasped a hand over my mouth. At that moment there was a rap on the door and Denise’s voice carried through.
‘Rob, the MD’s on the phone. He wants to speak to you pronto.’
Rob sprang back, smoothed his hair and straightened his tie. Then he leant forwards and whispered in my ear.
‘Don’t even think about reporting this, because it’ll be your word against mine, and who d’you think they’re going to believe: you, some two-bit slag who’s only been here five minutes, or me?
’ He paused at the door and looked back, his face an ugly sneer.
‘And that’s a rhetorical question, darlin’.
So keep your mouth shut and fix the fucking photocopier, or I’ll have to find a reason to let you go. It’s your choice.’