Andrew was still asleep when Kate woke the next morning. She didn’t know what time it was. For a while, she watched his chest rising and falling next to her, waiting for whatever it was that was causing the crippling tightness in her own chest to manifest. She could feel that she was still wearing Shona’s trousers, and the wire of her bra was digging into her armpits. When, eventually, she turned onto her front, she saw that there were black mascara marks on the pillow. There had been a great sadness, she knew. But as the recollections began to surface—the darkened cinema, Max’s stricken face, Zara’s silhouette—what came with them was relief. No longer was she her secret’s sole keeper. First Andrew, then Claire. And now Max, Nicole. Soon Zara would know, and William: the knowledge of this crime was now their burden, not hers.
She found Andrew’s charger on the bedside table and plugged in her phone. As she waited for it to wake, she unbuttoned the trousers and took them off, took off her bra. Her phone buzzed, the screen loading with phone calls, a dozen or so, that she’d missed from Max, and messages from him and from Claire. She deleted Max’s texts, considered deleting his number, but didn’t. Instead, she wrote telling him that she was at Andrew’s, that he didn’t need to be worried about her, but that she couldn’t talk to him. She told him she would call when she was ready to. To Claire she wrote only two words: They know, and put her phone back on the table.
Next to her, Andrew had stirred, not quite enough to realize that she was there beside him, and she stayed very still, not wanting to wake him. She didn’t know what Shona had told him, didn’t know what he’d thought of her turning up here, but already the thought of revisiting last night made her feel heavy. She would tell him, but not straightaway. First there would be breakfast. She was hungry, she wanted him to cook eggs for her, wanted to hear about his night, what had they had for dinner, who had come for drinks afterward. She wanted to spend the morning at least in his world, before having to return to her own. This momentary contentment would pass, she knew, because there was nothing that did not pass. What she had felt last night had lifted, and although that did not mean it was gone, for now this was enough.
Her phone began to ring but she didn’t answer it. The sound woke Andrew, who lifted his head blearily from his pillow, saw that she was there, and put his head back down.
“You’re here,” he said, closing his eyes.
Kate had been right not to rush that morning; it would take weeks, and then months, before what had happened would begin to make sense to her. But it would be worth the wait. After a while, there were moments when she felt a levity that she had never before experienced, not even before the rape. The value of contentment grew exponentially. Summer ended, fiery autumn leaves carpeted the ground and then rotted. Kate witnessed the progression of Max’s life without her in the slimmest of segments: when she and Claire drove past Bisley House at Christmas she saw that the “For Sale” sign had been replaced by “Sold,” and in the new year, an automated email arrived to tell her that Embers was now live. It was painful to know that he had, ostensibly at least, continued on much the same trajectory despite what had happened to her. At such times, she had to remind herself that it had been she and not he who had broken off contact that she had told him she would call, and still she had not.
A few weeks after the premiere, Kate had gone home to Randwick, and Andrew had come with her for the first time. Through the summer she started visiting Alison far more frequently than she ever had, sometimes every other weekend. That first time with Andrew, Kate had sat at the kitchen table watching her mother climb up onto the worktop to fix a screw that had come loose at the top of the cabinet, holding a power drill in both hands with a pencil tucked behind her ear. Kate wondered then how she had ever thought that Alison, who never leaned on anybody, who never used people as if they were things, who had only ever turned to herself in times of need, was weak. Alison possessed a rare, self-sufficient strength; she existed, continued to exist, without ever requiring approval or encouragement, she gave everything and she expected nothing in return. It was that evening that Kate found the words she needed. And though her voice cracked as she spoke, though she began to sob when Alison asked her why she had waited until now to tell her, why she had for so long carried her burden alone, Kate felt at last that she was safe.