Lisa braked hard in the playschool car park, her car straddling two spaces. She shouldn’t have mentioned to Shay about that night, she told herself. But now that she had, the memories of it consumed her.
She’d pulled the bins out for collection as Shay went upstairs to have a shower.
Maybe the boys were just showing off to each other, she thought. Boys were like that, all macho bravado. There was no real malice in them. Anyway, she liked her job, even if it could be difficult. She was good at it. And she did good. She wasn’t going to let Jamie McCabe, or his brother, ruin it.
She heard the noise of the shower upstairs. Shay had said he needed to cool down.
The sensation of the wool against her cheek baffled her at first, until it gripped around her mouth. A finger and thumb pressed against her cheekbones. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled. Her attacker responded by shoving her against the wall and smacking her head against it. Pain ripped across her forehead. She momentarily lost balance and felt sick. She could feel the man pressed behind her, his penis bulging into her.
‘Make a sound, bitch,’ he said, clasping her mouth even tighter, ‘and I’ll drive your head through the fucking wall.’
The voice was familiar.
The shower droned away upstairs.
She froze for those brief seconds, waiting for some horror to unfold. Another hand slid down onto her bum, rubbing it, squeezing it.
Lisa’s mind roared.
Shay, help me, please help me.
But no words came.
‘Tight jeans, high heels. Always does it for me,’ the voice spat into one of her ears.
Her eyes pulled back in horror. It was Jamie McCabe.
‘What I don’t understand,’ he said, rubbing his groin against her, ‘is why ye strut into the centre in those heels and that ass, knowing I be looking at ye. But ye ignore my looks. You’re a community worker like, but ye kind of look down on us. The community. That’s not fucking right, is it?’
He yanked her back by the hair. He opened the button of her jeans and pulled at the zip. He heaved on the jeans with his free hand, forcing them down.
God. Please. No.
Just go, Jamie. Leave me alone. I’ll tell no one. This never happened.
His left hand went down her underwear, grabbing her bum again. He grunted against her. He pressed his thumb against her bum and pushed it in. Lisa felt part of her brain shut down. He pulled his thumb around roughly, took it out. She heard his zip. His gasping became frenzied.
No, this can’t happen, won’t happen. No.
She pulled her eyes up and to the right. The light from the narrow window at the top of the stairs shone out.
‘Shay,’ she tried to roar, but he just pressed his hand harder against her mouth.
He licked her neck and reefed her back by the hair again.
‘You won’t ignore this, you snotty bitch. Not this nasty bastard up your tight ass.’
The shower turned off. Lisa sensed him distracted. He had slightly eased his clasp on her. Her brain sparked.
Now, it screamed. Now.
She lashed wildly back with her elbows. He let out a shout and pulled his hand from her mouth. She heaved away. He grabbed her neck, catching her right earring, ripping it down and through her lobe. She screamed and half fell against the wall.
‘Bitch,’ he shouted, his teeth clenched.
He drove his foot into her stomach, catapulting her forward.
Lisa jolted hard as the flashback snapped shut.
She was clasping the steering wheel. Her knuckles were white. Her heart hammered against her chest bone.
She roared out and banged the wheel with her head, elbowing the door with her right arm and the air with her left. Tears poured down.
After the rage expired, she desperately looked out the windows in case anyone could see her.
She shook as she recalled the rest from that night.
She’d told Shay to bring her to the garda station. She wouldn’t say any more until they got there. If she’d told him back at the house, he could have gone and done something stupid. By telling him at the station, he couldn’t.
Soon after that, she went on the sleeping tablets and the anti-anxiety medication. The nightmares and the screaming were exhausting. She couldn’t go around the side of the house any more, not on her own. She had panic attacks and they sucked the confidence out of her.
One day she summoned up the willpower to ring the manager of the centre. She offered her sympathies, but explained that the centre couldn’t ban Jamie. He was innocent in the eyes of the law, she said. But Lisa suspected it was more because of Jamie’s family. They had everyone intimidated in the area. Even still, Lisa couldn’t accept that the centre wouldn’t stand up for her. She felt victimised a second time. And betrayed. She had spent years in that community, doing her best to help people, working all hours, earning buttons. The bitterness of that dug deep.
Months later, detectives called her and Shay in for a meeting. They explained that the DPP had directed no prosecution against Jamie McCabe. Although the DPP wouldn’t say why, the detectives said that the forensics and DNA had come back inconclusive. There were no eyewitnesses. And Jamie’s family, including his mother, made sworn statements that both he and his brother had come straight home from the cinema and stayed with them all night.
Lisa felt like she had entered a thick, cold fog and night had descended.
She recalled how Shay remained unruffled during that meeting, as if he knew what the detectives were going to say.
Soon after, she realised she was pregnant, something that must have happened shortly before the attack. No matter how much she told herself that the attack and her pregnancy were unconnected, she couldn’t get rid of a feeling, crawling inside her skin, that the purity of the pregnancy had been sullied, invaded in some way.
Before the year was out, she had given birth to a baby girl. Coping with Molly took over her life. Shay was working a lot, away from the house almost every day. She didn’t feel she was bonding with Molly. She didn’t love her as she should have, as she expected she would.
She convinced herself that having another child would change things: that by loving the second child properly she could learn to love Molly better. And things would be as they should be for her as a mother. She convinced Shay of it too.
But he often seemed distracted. Shortly after Charlie was born, she discovered why.
She had seen news reports of a violent feud that had reignited between the McCabes and another family. That’s when he did something stupid. Shay had just been biding his time all along, Lisa realised. That, after all, was what he was trained to do.
He did it for her. Not that he said it in words. He was too careful for that. But she could see it in his eyes. No you didn’t, she screamed back with her eyes. You did it for yourself. You didn’t think of the consequences for us, our family.
Because of his actions, they had ended up here, with this life.
After all the shit, she was, at first, glad at the prospect of leaving Cork. She wouldn’t have to see Jamie McCabe on the street, which she had done once. That had catapulted her into a full panic attack. She was terrified of being seen, of the kids coming face to face with her attacker. She pushed the buggy, hunched over, across the road, oblivious to traffic. She flagged down a taxi and bundled the kids in. She would have left the buggy on the path, had the driver not got out and folded it up and put it in. She cowered in the back until they were on their way.
The move to Dublin would be a fresh start, Shay had reassured her. She didn’t ask too much about where they were going or what Shay would be doing. She just needed to get away.
She soon realised it was a lot different working in a community with problems and living in one with problems. And this community had fractures far deeper and wider than the one she had worked in.
Having Charlie didn’t improve things. In fact, her son seemed to make things worse, as if he confirmed some flaw in her, one she never knew existed, a fissure that the assault had prised open. When that black realisation sunk in, her outlook darkened. She leaned on the pills more, and as soon as she could, got a job as a care assistant. They needed the money, but, more than that, she needed to get out of the house.
Shay kept saying they would only be there short term; they would move soon enough. But there was no time period, no plan. After a while, she felt they were stuck. At the same time, she couldn’t just leave. She owed him that much. And, where would she go? Back to her parents, like a child? Move out and get a place on her own? With the kids? She didn’t have enough money. And she knew she wouldn’t be able to cope. Not yet anyway.
She twiddled at her wedding band as she looked around the car park. She did still love Shay. But some bone deep inside her had snapped – maybe in Shay, too – and had never healed. Having the children didn’t bolt it back together.
She didn’t blame Shay for their life. More, she just held it against him.
The way she saw it, there was one thing he loved more than her, than the kids. That was his life as a garda.
And, though he wouldn’t admit it, even to himself, she knew her husband would do anything to get that life back.