Zara had finished shooting just before they went to Bisley House for Christmas, and in the new year they’d moved on to edits. It was the end of January when at last she got in touch with Kate, asking if she wanted to meet. She’d given herself the afternoon off because she needed to recuperate, she said. It was a cold, bright day, and they met at the Sun Gate of Battersea Park. “Equally inconvenient for us both,” Zara had said when she’d suggested it. She was wearing a knee-length fur coat and sunglasses with a baseball cap.
“It’s secondhand,” she said, brushing the coat, “I couldn’t buy fur new. Titus would never forgive me.” Kate was not sure what she’d been expecting, but Zara did not offer an apology for having fallen out of contact, but rather an explanation. To Kate, this was a relief. The thought of the message she’d left, and the fact that she had assumed some kind of right to work on the film just because of the charity Zara had already shown her, made her feel embarrassed.
“We were terribly behind,” she said. “We’ve had to work like dogs to catch up, which is why you haven’t heard from me in rather a long time. I’m sure I’m overestimating my own importance, but I wonder if you were at a very vulnerable stage when all of this started. The film.”
“You know how it goes,” Kate said. “Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes it isn’t.”
“I do know. I don’t mind telling you I went into the worst depression I’ve had for years when I first started trying to map it out. I don’t know whether Max told you, but there’s a rape scene. Right at the beginning. Very graphic, very violent. It brought me right back to the day it happened, I thought I’d never find my way out.”
“He didn’t tell me,” Kate said, surprised. Zara, though, was not.
“He probably chooses to believe it doesn’t exist,” she said. They were walking toward the river, along the gravel path that crossed the park, and by the fountains Zara stopped to buy coffee for them both.
“It’s made me very angry,” Zara went on, “which I think is good. It’s healthy. It’s made me think of you rather a lot, which is why I suppose I don’t feel that we’ve been out of touch for very long. You’ve been in my thoughts.”
They were walking side by side, up the steps toward the river. In the flower beds the crocuses had forced themselves through the cold, winter soil, and were just beginning to bud, white and light purple.
“I wonder if you mind me asking,” Zara said, “do you feel angry?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said carefully, “which means probably I don’t.”
Zara nodded. “Fear is far easier to live with. And if there is anger, it’s safer turned inward. It’s taken me years to realize that. Too many years.”
“Better late than never,” Kate said, because she couldn’t think of anything less trite.
“You see, I’m not sure that’s true,” Zara said. She looked sidelong at Kate. “Did I tell you that mine is dead? The one who raped me. And I never confronted him. So it really is too late; I have no outlet, no living cause. It’s all buried, and now that I’m here to excavate it, it’s too late to really matter.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe that’s why you’re making the film.”
“Maybe,” said Zara. “But I can’t help but wonder, what if I’d spoken up at the time, before it was too late? Who might I have helped? Who else suffered because of me?”
Kate did not answer. She had no answer. They walked in silence a little longer, to the edge of the park and along the riverfront. Zara took Kate’s empty coffee cup from her and threw it in the bin. Kate pulled her scarf up around her face. They were a long way from the entrance to the park.
“What about your boyfriend, are you still with him?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “You’ve never met him, have you? It’s been about six months now.”
“You’ll have to come for dinner soon.”
Andrew hadn’t even met Alison yet. She imagined him now, sitting down for dinner at Latimer Crescent, elbows on the table and playing with his wristwatch, taking in the posters and the awards, wearing a half smile behind his hands that only Kate could see. She flushed, warmth flooding her stomach at the thought of him.
“I’d like that,” she said, before saying, dumbly: “He likes food.”
“Sensible boy,” said Zara.
Thinking of Andrew made Kate want to know more about the film. She wanted to be able to tell him about it, when they saw each other later that night. He would be interested, impressed by what Zara had divulged to Kate.
“What’s the film called?”
“Late Surfacing,” said Zara.
“I like it.”
“I didn’t come up with it,” Zara said. The film seemed no longer to be at the forefront of her mind. “Have you thought about whether you would confront him?”
“Who?”
“Your rapist,” Zara said. “Hypothetically. If you saw him again.”
“I don’t think I would,” Kate said. “I don’t see how I could.”
Zara’s silence widened the distance between them: she walking at a serene pace, wrapped in her vintage furs, her arms crossed at her chest and leather gloves holding the edges of the coat around her; Kate, her hands thrust deep into her pockets, drew her shoulders up around her ears.
“I can see why you’re thinking about it,” Kate went on, “now that you’ve been forced to. But I’ve been trying all this time to escape what happened. Or at least to find a way to live with it so that it doesn’t dominate me. And I don’t see how making myself lose more than I already have is going to help.”
“Why would you be losing more?”
Kate had led them to the other side of the park, now, the side that was closer to her bus stop.
“Just emotionally,” Kate said. “It’s exposing. Makes you so vulnerable.”
“Particularly if you know him.”
Kate tensed but kept on walking. She only ever remembered giving the impression that her attacker was a stranger, but perhaps she had said something to make Zara think otherwise. Or perhaps Zara was talking about her own rapist. She felt a little queasy, the taste of foamed milk and coffee coating her tongue, caffeine in her system.
“I don’t know,” Zara was saying now, “it’s just that I regret never saying anything, that’s all. There could have been countless others.”
“That’s his responsibility, not yours.” Kate was only repeating what she’d been told, but in fact it was far easier to believe it when she wasn’t talking about herself.
“Did you know that you can report to the police anonymously?” Zara went on. “I didn’t know that. I found it out while I was doing research for the film. They keep it on file, but they don’t even need to take your name, a friend can do it for you, just over the phone, and leave their details. They just need a way of getting hold of you if there are any other reports, and they want to use your evidence.” She paused. “If you wanted to, you know, I would be happy to do it for you,” she said.
Kate had been watching her shoelace loosen as Zara spoke. She stopped, now, and knelt down to retie it. Zara stopped too, stood by and waited as Kate slowly wound the lace back into its bow. Kate glanced up at Zara’s black leather boots, the thick heels, looked down at her own muddied trainers. There were so many worlds between them. She stood up.
“I didn’t know that,” Kate said. “But the principle is the same. It’s his responsibility to stop, not mine.” Her voice, now, was louder than she meant it to be. “It’s not my problem.”
Zara bit her lip, then nodded. “If that’s how you feel,” she said.