Summer 2010, Hobart
Nina had locked herself in her room at the university and refused to answer the door when Jude came knocking and calling. He’d become increasingly frustrated. Her phone had blown up with messages, pleading at first, then confused, and finally angry. She didn’t have the strength to answer any of them.
She should go to the police, she knew that. And yet she felt paralysed with pain. Not physical pain, that had soon dissipated, but heart and soul pain. Betrayal, disbelief, shock. The memories circled around and around in her head until she could neither sleep nor bear to be awake.
Sometime afterwards, a key turned in her lock and the door swung open. At first she thought it was Jude, that he had talked the supervisor into handing over her key, but then she recognised Colin. He switched on the light and she flinched, and then he came over to where she was sitting huddled in her one good armchair and stood staring down at her. As usual, he stank of cigarettes. He was twisting the door key in his fingers, flipping it back and forth.
‘I know what happened,’ he said. ‘Murray confessed to his mother. Have you been to the police?’
She didn’t know what she was expecting, but his face showed no sympathy or anger on her behalf, no commiseration for the traumatic experience she had undergone. When she shook her head, she saw Colin’s shoulders relax and his hand tighten on the key, his knuckles white. He was relieved.
‘Angela wants to talk to you,’ he said. ‘Come with me to the hospital. We’ll sort this out. Come on, Nina, get dressed. It’ll be all right.’ For a moment he looked at her with distaste, and she realised she was still in her dressing gown, hair a mess, face pale and swollen with crying.
She did as he said. He even helped her tie up her shoes. She didn’t seem to have any will of her own, as if the strong and decisive girl she knew had been taken from her, and this other pitiful creature stood in her place.
Once they got to the hospital, Colin took her arm and led her into Angela’s private room. Until then, Nina had forgotten that one of her children might be in there with her. Jude, or worse, Murray. But there was no one else. Of course not. Colin would have made certain of it.
Angela was sitting up in her bed, her face white and drawn, while her eyes, dark eyes like Jude’s and Murray’s, were red with weeping.
‘Nina,’ was all she said.
Colin pulled out a chair and Nina heard his low voice say, ‘She hasn’t been to the police.’
Angela burst into tears, hands covering her face. Nina didn’t know what to say, what to do, so she waited.
‘We need to talk to you, Nina,’ Colin said at last.
What was there to talk about? Surely the facts spoke for themselves, and they had to see that Murray couldn’t expect to get away with what he had done. That wouldn’t be fair, would it?
Colin leaned against the wall beside the bed in the small room. Outside, staff and trolleys moved up and down the corridor, machines beeped, the air filled with business. Angela was attached to a monitor, Nina noticed belatedly. The line on it was moving in steep curves and she wondered how far it could go before an alarm sounded. Colin must have wondered too, because he was the one who began the conversation, his voice unruffled. Composed. His courtroom voice.
‘Murray wants you to know how sorry he is. He never meant to hurt you. He can’t even remember how it started, whose fault it was. I hope you will be generous and agree that to take this further, to apportion blame, would be cruel and unnecessary.’
Nina blinked. She tried to laugh but couldn’t get the sound past the lump in her throat. ‘Whose fault it was?’ she forced the words out. ‘Whose fault? He raped me.’
Angela gave a wail which Colin ignored.
‘He says you encouraged him to think—’
Nina wasn’t having this, she wasn’t. ‘He raped me,’ she said furiously. Almost immediately, her anger gave way and she was weeping again, her head in her arms on the hospital bed.
There was movement, and then she felt Angela’s hand close on her arm. Her fingers were cold and damp. ‘Don’t send my son to jail,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Please, please, Nina.’
The alarm on the monitor went off then. In no time, there were nurses with worried faces in the room, and Nina was asked to leave. Colin took her arm and led her out.
There was a waiting room just down the corridor, and after checking that it was empty, he showed her in and closed the door. Nina could still hear the alarm sounding, but then it stopped. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but Colin didn’t seem to be too worried. Angela must have been stabilised.
‘If Murray goes to jail she’ll die.’
Nina stared up at him. ‘Then Murray should have thought of that.’
Her flash of spirit seemed to surprise him. ‘Yes, I suppose he should have. You can go to the police, Nina, I’m not stopping you. Have him charged, taken to court. I’ll defend him. We can go through the whole process. Though to be honest, I’m not sure Angela will survive to hear the verdict.’
She knew it was true. Weak, ailing Angela would have another episode and that would be it. Nina already knew what he was going to say next.
‘What do you think her family will say when she dies? When it was your actions that killed her?’
‘He should be punished,’ she said.
‘Well, I will argue otherwise, but let’s just suppose you win and Murray goes to prison. What will happen then, do you think? Angela might survive, that is possible, but she’ll need care. Mandy is still at school. Jude is still at university with all his dreams, and I’m willing to pay for him to finish his course. But he’ll have to take Murray’s place in the firm, that’s only fair. What do you think he will feel about that? You know him as well as I do. He’ll be bitter and unhappy, and he’ll be looking for someone to blame. You, Nina, he’ll blame you.’
‘How can it be my fault?’ she croaked. ‘Murray—’
‘Can’t you see that’s how he will view it? Especially when I tell him what Murray said. That you led him on. That you have been leading him on for months now. Sitting on the beach in that skimpy bikini, smiling at him, reeling him in like a fish on a line. Who do you think Jude will believe? His family or you?’
Nina blinked. Was this really happening? She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I have never felt like that about Murray,’ she said. ‘I love Jude.’
‘Then prove it.’
She tried to use reason against him, stand strong, refuse his ridiculous demands. In response, he pummelled her with words, drawing pictures of her day in court, the worst kind of scenarios. The family shattered, Angela dead or dying, the blame laid squarely at her door. Jude walking away from her in disgust. Nina didn’t even remember agreeing, but she must have.
Later, she would see how thoroughly he had worked her using a combination of moral blackmail and her love for Jude. He’d played on her weaknesses, browbeating her into agreeing to something she never should have agreed to, but by then it was too late. It was done and there was no going back.
Colin drove her home.
‘You’re doing the right thing,’ he assured her, giving her shoulder a fatherly pat. ‘Now, I’m going to offer you some advice, Nina. Forget about Murray. I’ll tell Jude you’ve decided you need some time to think about your future. He won’t be happy at first, but he’ll get over you and move on. You’ve given him the best chance he’ll ever have to make his dreams come true. And you’re a clever, beautiful girl. I have every confidence you will make a success of your life.’
And that was it.
Even if Colin hadn’t cut her loose, she knew she could never see Jude or any of the Rawlins family again. She could not be in the same room with him or Murray, with any of them. She had agreed to lie for the man she loved and her reward was that she could never be with him again.
So she withdrew. No explanation, no excuses. She withdrew and gradually Jude stopped calling her phone or knocking on her door, or asking to see her. Perhaps Angela or Colin made up some story, but by then Nina was just glad that he had stopped and she did not have to pretend anymore to an indifference she did not feel. Her life was shattered, over, and she would never truly recover.
She hadn’t known that then, of course. She’d thought that, someday, she would be herself again. That as Colin had said, she would be able to move on and make a new life. A better one.
But she never had, and lately it had got worse. The past overwhelmed her sometimes, sucking her down into its maw. Medication, alcohol, working all the hours she could, none of it seemed to help. With a sense of despair, she knew that the only thing that would make it stop was to tell the truth.