Chapter 25
Olivia tells Rose everything, and there isn’t a football-shaped gummy or a pint of Kronenbourg in sight – just the sad juggling clown, and some seagulls picking at a bin full of discarded fast-food cartons.
She tells Rose about the time, way back at the beginning of her career, when she had made the mistake of going out for a drink with Stephen and a few other members of his team.
About how humiliated she was by her apparent inability to handle her drink, and the nightclub she found herself in with him, somewhere round the back of a mainline train station.
About the way he pushed her into the disabled loo and up against the wall.
How he had grabbed at her tights and the foul taste of his grotesque, jabbering tongue.
How she had frozen. How the next day, they seemed to have silently agreed to laugh it off, as if he hadn’t tried to force himself on her, as if he hadn’t—
‘He assaulted you,’ says Rose, blinking in almost disbelief.
‘I mean, I wouldn’t go that—’
‘Olivia, babes, he absolutely assaulted you.’
Having waited for so long to speak to Rose again, Olivia now can’t bear to hear her voice any more.
She can’t bear to have someone else tell her what happened that night, because then she might have to say it, and if she says it, somebody might accuse her of being a drama queen, or self-involved, or difficult, or any of the other things she has spent a lifetime trying to avoid being called.
‘Please, you don’t need to say it,’ she says, catching her breath.
‘I know you mean well but I, I just can’t, not yet. ’
‘I get it, but man I hate it.’ Rose gives Olivia the smallest of smiles to let her know she’s not having a go at her. ‘Like, these men, they absolutely count on the fact that we’ll feel somehow responsible.’
‘I know all of this,’ nods Olivia. ‘Like, I know it in my head, but somehow it hasn’t quite dropped to my heart.
Like, women of my generation, women of your mum’s generation, we all had to navigate the wandering hands and the inappropriate comments without anyone there to back us up.
I’m not saying it’s easier for women your age, I know you have your own battles and I know there are still absolute bellends out there …
I threw coffee all over one on the train, but that’s another story.
There wasn’t any social media when it happened.
There weren’t swathes of women talking about what happened to them, no Me Too.
There weren’t groups of people there to hold and support you if you made a complaint.
There were just more fucking men, everywhere you looked. ’
‘And that’s why we’re here, Olivia. That’s why we set up Stop the Press. We’re here to help you call out this kind of shit.’ Rose shuffles a bit closer and takes Olivia’s hand. ‘You don’t have to stomach this kind of behaviour any more.’
‘I’m really sorry about your mum.’ Olivia uses her other hand to wipe away a tear.
‘I’m really sorry that I must seem so lily-livered to you.
Fuck, how is it that I still think that what happened all those years ago was my fault?
I still sort of blame myself for being drunk, when I know that if you told me something like that had happened to you, or if my daughter did, I would be absolutely fucking apoplectic with rage on your behalf.
I’d tell you that you could be drunk and dancing on a table in only your underwear, and it still doesn’t give anyone the right to shove their tongue in your mouth and try and put their hand down your pants.
And yet for the last twenty years or so, I’ve gaslit myself to believe the opposite.
I’ve done Stephen’s bidding for him.’ She shakes her head, squeezes Rose’s hand.
‘But it’s time, isn’t it? It’s time I started to do my own bidding.
I just need to do it on my own terms. It can’t be on yours, because that would be just as disingenuous as the version of me who blamed herself for what happened with Stephen.
’ She leans towards Rose, bumps their shoulders together.
‘I mean, that version of me was having such an intense midlife crisis, I went on a night out with you.’
‘Fair enough, boomer,’ laughs Rose. ‘Fair enough. So are you going to share your terms with me?’