We’re at his uncle’s house and I want to leave. As soon as he tells me about Dinah I’m desperate to go home to my parents. I feel betrayed and angry and filled with hate toward him and toward her, even though I’ve never met her. He’s lied to me all along, tricked me into believing things that were never going to come true. It was all pretense and now everything’s spoiled.
“Don’t go like this,” he begs me, catching hold of my hand.
I try to break free, but I can’t. I’m sobbing so hard I can hardly breathe. He pulls me in even closer, pinning my arms to my sides and me to him. I can smell him and it’s the worst and most wonderful smell in the world.
“Let me go,” I cry, struggling to break free. “I hate you. Let me go.”
“Cherie, please calm down,” he whispers in my hair. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that . . .”
I wrench myself away, but he catches me again.
“If you were older,” he says, holding my face in his hands, “it would be different, I swear, but I can’t let you leave school . . .”
“I can do what I like,” I rage, “and I want to come with you. Please, please say I can.”
“It’s not possible. I wish it were . . .”
“Why do you have to go with her? Why didn’t you tell me about her before?”
“She has nothing to do with us. What we have is special, so special I can hardly bear to let you go, but I have to. It’s why I can’t come back next term. We have to stop seeing . . .”
“No we don’t. I’m not going to let you just throw me away. I’ll make sure you can’t. I’ll tell everyone what we’ve been doing . . .”
“Sssh. You know you don’t mean that.”
“Yes I do. I’m going to tell . . .”
He presses his mouth to mine so I can’t shout anymore, and his hands are so strong on my arms that I can’t break free. He pulls me down to the floor and lies on top of me. I’m sobbing and telling him no, but he says he wants to show me one last time how much he loves me. I still say no, but he’s not listening. He’s kissing me, holding me, telling me he doesn’t want to be without me . . .
Then suddenly he stops and as he starts to get up he says he’s sorry, he lost his mind. I can see he’s distraught, shocked, but so am I. I pull him back. I don’t want him to go. I’ll do anything to keep him. He’s mine, we belong to each other.
When it’s over he holds me close and wipes away my tears. “Are you all right?” he asks gently. “Maybe that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Don’t say that,” I whisper and he kisses me again. I like being in his arms, but I’m not sure about what just happened. It felt different and I’m afraid it’s because it really was the last time.
“I’ll drive you home,” he says and pulls me to my feet.
I want to take a train, but I don’t know where the station is and he’s already putting my things in the car. I can’t bear to look at him; it’s upsetting me too much. He’s going to take me to my parents and leave me. I’ll never see him again after that and it makes me wish I was dead.
As he drives us he says, “I’m sorry about just now. It shouldn’t . . . I don’t know what to say . . . Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
“You didn’t,” I assure him, though he did, but not in the way he’s meaning. I start to ask him, beg him, to change his mind, to say that he will come back to school, that his girlfriend means nothing to him, but he only shakes his head.
“I’m sorry,” he says, over and over. “One day you’ll understand. You’ll thank me for letting you go.”
“I never will,” I cry in anger, but he keeps telling me I will.
When we arrive at the end of my street he stops the car and takes my hand. “I’ll send a postcard from Georgia,” he says. “Would you like that?”
He’ll be there with his girlfriend so no, I wouldn’t like it, but I don’t say anything.
He turns my face to his and I can see how upset he is. He says, “You’re not going to tell anyone about us, are you? You know what’ll happen to me if you do.”
I wonder why I should care what happens to him when he doesn’t care what happens to me.
I get out of the car and take my bag from the boot. He’s still sitting in the driver’s seat so I leave him there and walk around the corner to my home. I hear him drive away and I want to run after him screaming for him to come back.
Mummy knows as soon as she sees me that something is wrong. She takes me upstairs to my room and because I’m so unhappy and can’t bear to think of returning to school if he’s not there I end up telling her everything. She’s shocked, but understanding, and she soothes me the best she can.
I don’t realize she’s angry until later when I hear her talking to Daddy and then Daddy is shouting and the next thing I know there are two policemen in our drawing room.
Mummy holds my hand as she tells them everything I told her. They write it down and look at me from time to time seeming sad but also suspicious. I think they might not believe me, but they don’t say that. They ask if he forced me and I answer no.
“You told me he did, sweetheart,” Mummy reminds me. “Is that not true?”
I nod, because it is true, at least he started to. I want to explain that he stopped when I told him to, but I can’t go into that sort of detail in front of Daddy and the police.
“The point is, Linda,” Daddy says sharply, “he took advantage of you in every way, starting with your private lessons, right through to what happened today. He can’t be allowed to get away with it. I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
After the police leave I ask Mummy what will happen next and she says they’re going to talk to Mr. Martin—she’s still calling him that even though I call him David—and then they’ll be in touch with us again.
It’s about a week later that Mummy tells me he’s been arrested and remanded in custody. Daddy says it’s a damned good job he didn’t get bail, we don’t want him trying to come near me again.
“He’s going to prison for a long time,” Daddy growls, “a very long time,” and he leaves the room.
I don’t go back to school at the beginning of the term. I can’t face it and Mummy says it doesn’t matter because they’re making arrangements for me to go somewhere else.
I start receiving letters from girls who used to be my friends, but they hate me now for “telling lies” about Sir. They’re glad I’m not going back because they never want to see me again.
I want to see David, but I’m afraid to ask. I know Mummy will say it’s a bad idea and Daddy will simply forbid it.
Then we hear that David is going to plead guilty so that I don’t have to face the ordeal of going to court.
I cry and cry and cry. I want to tell him I’m sorry, that I wish I could take everything back so he can go to Georgia with Dinah. It would be better than thinking of him locked up in a prison cell for a crime I don’t even feel sure he committed.
“You were underage,” Mummy reminds me. “That makes it a crime even if he hadn’t forced you.”
If only I’d never told anyone.
“At least,” Mummy adds, “he’s done the decent thing by pleading guilty, so it seems there’s some honor in him after all.”
Daddy says, “He pled guilty to try and get a shorter sentence, nothing to do with honor.”
We find out through the lawyer that he receives ten years and will begin to serve the time at Wandsworth Prison. He might be moved later, but Daddy says we don’t need to worry ourselves about that.
I go to my new school—it’s close to home so I’m not boarding anymore—and everyone calls me Marianne now. Every afternoon when I come home I write him a letter. I want him to know how sorry I am, how much I still love him, and that no matter what anyone says I am going to wait for him. I send him poems, some that I’ve written myself, others that I choose specially because I think he’ll like them. I copy out the lyrics to some of Bob Dylan’s songs and know that reading them will help him to hear the music.
When we find out I’m pregnant I want to write to tell him that too, but Mummy persuades me not to. She says it’ll only make things worse for him.
Freda looked up from the laptop her eyes dark with anger. “This isn’t what happened,” she snarled, her cheeks turning puce. “I came here for the truth, and this is what you give me?”
Marianne simply looked at her.
“You’ve spun a tale that’s as false as your heart.”
Knowing Freda would only ever believe what she wanted to, that she’d already set the story in black and white for herself with no shades of gray, Marianne swallowed the tears in her throat and said, “What you have there is exactly what happened. Tell me where Joely is and I’ll change it to whatever you want it to be.”