Chapter 12 Fliss #3
They got into a black cab. She didn’t ask where they were going until they pulled up outside a tall grey building by the river.
‘It’s my London flat,’ Jarvis said.
He paid for the taxi, then bundled her through the glass doors and into the lift, pressing the button for the fifth floor.
The flat had windows overlooking the Thames.
The furniture was clearly a selection of cast-offs from other houses.
There was a threadbare red sofa and a baggy leather armchair situated at right angles on a Moroccan rug.
‘It’s not much, but it’s home,’ Jarvis said, laughing. ‘Well, when I’m in town anyway.’
Fliss flopped into the armchair.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Can I charge my phone?’
‘Of course.’
She handed over her charging cable and her Nokia, the battery now dead and the screen blank. Jarvis took both from her and placed them on the kitchen counter. But he didn’t plug them into the socket.
‘Now, can I get you something to drink?’
‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Oh fuck, no, God, I meant water or tea or … I think there’s some Coke? Coca-Cola, I mean. I wouldn’t offer the other kind to someone in your, uh, predicament.’
She asked for water and drank it down gratefully when he brought her a glass.
‘Good,’ he said, looking down at her. ‘Good.’
He stayed standing and, after a while, she wasn’t sure what to do. The atmosphere shifted into something sharp and uneasy. Fliss realised she had rarely been alone with Jarvis and that she hadn’t thought to question where he was taking her.
‘You can stay as long as you like,’ he said.
She nodded, digging her fingernails into the palm of each hand.
‘Maybe I should call Ben?’ she said, staring at her phone on the counter.
‘Wait until you’ve sobered up a bit, yeah?’
She stared at her knees. Her jeans were dirty and she crossed her legs in an attempt to hide a brown patch on her right thigh.
‘Why don’t you have a lie-down in the bedroom? I’ll bring you a cup of tea.’
Fliss hated tea. It reminded her of all the things she disliked about England: it was weak and smug and bland.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’
He showed her to the bedroom, which was small, with one high window. The bed took up most of the floor space. A clothes rack was squashed into the corner, hung with an array of blue and white shirts. A pair of crumpled underpants lay on the floor. Jarvis kicked them aside.
‘Bit of a bachelor pad here, sorry!’
He bent down and opened a drawer under the bed, fishing out a pair of striped pyjamas.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘You can put these on. Bit more comfortable.’
She took them and waited for him to leave. Jarvis stayed put until it became obvious she wasn’t going to undress in front of him and then he smirked, his piggy eyes almost disappearing into the folds of his face, and went to put the kettle on.
She changed quickly into the pyjamas, which were several sizes too big, and folded back the duvet.
It had been a long time since she’d been in a real bed.
She lay down and was immediately worried about messing up the pillowcases with her matted hair.
She arranged her limbs in a way that would take up the least possible amount of space.
She heard the kettle whistle and click and then felt the weight of Jarvis sitting on the edge of the mattress.
‘Here you go,’ he said, offering her the mug. ‘I put milk and sugar in it.’
She took the tea and set it on the bedside table. The mug had ‘Better together’ written across it in blue block capitals. She remembered the phrase from somewhere. Jarvis looked at her expectantly.
‘Just waiting for it to cool,’ she said, but he seemed offended and so she took a sip and it burned her tongue.
‘Lovely,’ she said, although in truth it tasted odd. Perhaps the milk was off?
Fliss drank the mug down under Jarvis’s watchful eye. He seemed satisfied when she handed it back, empty.
‘Good girl,’ he said.
She was suddenly extremely tired. A wooziness settled in the pit of her stomach.
She thought it must be the after-effects of the vodka.
As she rested her head on the pillow, she remembered where she knew the phrase from.
Better Together: it had been the Conservative Party’s general election campaign slogan.
She passed out.
When she came to, she didn’t know where she was.
Her vision was filmy, her mouth dry. The buttons on the pyjama top had come undone.
The mattress was moving and a grunting sound was coming from behind her.
She tried to say something but found she couldn’t speak.
Her tongue was swollen. A hand cupped her right breast, kneading it like dough, twisting her nipple.
The fingers were chubby. A signet ring. In the fuzziness of her head, recognition came briskly into focus.
She knew this hand. She remembered it holding an unlit cigar, opening the door to the taxi, pressing the button in the lift, handing her a mug of tea that had tasted odd.
Jarvis.
Why was he—
She arched her back, trying to wriggle away from him, but he held her down.
What was he—
He gripped her arm with great force. She could imagine it bruising, the blood vessels coalescing purple against her skin.
How could she—
She thrashed and twisted. But it was hopeless. She was too weak and he was bigger than her. Then her muscles went slack and she lay very still. She imagined disappearing.
‘Good girl,’ Jarvis said. His voice was muffled, the words reaching her from far away.
He released his grip on her and she heard him spit into his palm.
He spread her buttocks and jammed his fingers into her.
She gasped. Her stomach cramped. She thought she might be sick again.
She swallowed, trying to relieve the nausea.
She knew, from a place deep within, that the only way to survive this was to allow it to happen.
She was crying. She tried not to make a noise.
Tears dampened the sheets. She tried not to be herself.
She tried to leave her body, to hollow it out.
She tried to become a void in which she ceased to exist; an emptiness where nothing could harm her because she was no longer there.
He pushed into her, then. The pain was celestial in its enormity. Fliss twisted her face into the pillow. She imagined her soul floating high up above, disconnected and free from the war being waged on her body. Jarvis slammed into her again, pushing himself in and out.
‘Stop,’ she croaked. ‘Please stop.’
He didn’t stop.
She willed the moments to pass. He thrust into her one final time. She gulped down her scream. He groaned then rolled to one side, releasing her. His sperm leaked down her thighs. His sweat coated her back.
Fliss trained her gaze on the patch of wrinkled sheet in front of her. She saw a single curled ginger hair. She thought of her grandfather, the monstrous weight of him. Bile rose in her gullet. She dashed out of the room and threw up in the kitchen sink.
It was here that Jarvis found her, minutes or perhaps hours later, hunched over, naked on the floor, curled up into a corner with her back against a cupboard door.
She didn’t want to go back into the bedroom.
But she couldn’t leave without her clothes.
She cowered as she heard his footsteps, raising her arms reflexively to protect her head.
She heard him come to a standstill, breathing heavily.
‘You can let yourself out.’
She listened to the jangle of keys and to the sound of him putting on his coat and then, finally, to the relief-inducing sibilance of the door sliding shut behind him as he left.
She had plugged her phone in to charge and then she had called Ben from Jarvis’s flat, the words tumbling out of her in a savage flurry.
He told her to breathe, to stay calm, not to worry, they’d sort it out.
He sent a car to pick her up and bring her to Tipworth.
But the thing that struck her the most, the thing that she would keep thinking about over the following weeks and months, was that he didn’t sound surprised.
Her brother was waiting for her in the driveway in front of the house.
He drew her close and hugged her. She felt grateful for this and worried she smelled.
He took her inside and made her a cup of coffee in the kitchen.
The housekeeper was fussing around, trying to offer biscuits, and Ben told her to leave them alone and close the door after herself.
He asked Fliss to tell him again what had happened, just so he could get it ‘clear in my mind’.
She managed to get the words out. By the end she was sobbing.
‘He raped me, Ben,’ she said, allowing the coffee mug to cool in her hands. It was the first time she had used the word.
Ben didn’t reply. The pause was everything Fliss had been fearing. She knew then that he didn’t believe her.
‘I’m so sorry, Fliss,’ he said, putting his hand on her knee. ‘But you’ll forgive me if I sound a note of … caution.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You said you’d been drinking. You’d taken drugs.’
‘Only weed.’
‘So you were pretty out of it, yes?’
She shook her head. The tears clung to her cheeks.
‘Can you really be sure of what you remember?’ Ben continued. ‘And, I don’t know how to put this, Fliss, but you don’t exactly have an unblemished sexual history when it comes to my friends.’
She thought she might throw up again. She couldn’t bear hearing him say it. It was the worst thing he could wound her with and she also knew it was true.
How can one thing be true and another, seemingly contradictory thing be equally so?
It just can.
‘But Ben …’ She put her mug down on the table, more forcefully than she’d intended. Coffee spilled over the rim. ‘I promise you … I’m telling you what actually happened. What he did to me. You have to believe me.’