The punch knocked the mobile out of Rose’s hand and out of reach.
Using all her strength, she managed to put some distance between her and her pursuers. The sound of trainers on soft earth pounded in her ears. The rhythm of her heart went into an even higher gear, and her pulse followed.
‘Come on, then, you Danish whore!’
The words struck her in the back of the neck. She had almost no energy left to run any more, could hardly feel her legs, could only hear the rhythm. Ker-dunk. Ker-dunk. If only she hadn’t gone to the student film club. If only she‘d walked with someone through the University Park.
‘Fucking slut!’
Thoughts exploded in her head and merged into an incomprehensible mush whose sole message was survival.
She could feel them getting quite close now. She zigzagged on the path and sensed an arm make a grab for her. It’s here now, it flashed through her mind. The reckoning. The moment has come now. As she was thinking this, she knew she had been expecting it, that they would strike at him through her.
‘Come on. You want it. They all do.’
Greedy hands tore at her clothing, and she was sent flying. The world tumbled around her. She tried to pull out her tear gas, but they didn’t give her a chance. The grass smelled wet and strong.
Survive, her head sang. Survive.
She lay still, only her chest was heaving. Everything she had learned was forgotten instantly as she met their eyes. They were so young, it struck her. Fifteen or sixteen probably. Maybe younger. Young enough for them to have been sent.
‘Kill me,’ she goaded. ‘If you dare. Do you really want to rot in jail with Eihan?’
Don’t provoke, the teacher had said. Don’t look them in the eye. But she couldn’t stop herself committing their faces to her memory. Crooked noses; brows meeting in the middle; black shadows above the top lip and hair clinging to their skin, dripping with sweat. She collected a mouthful of saliva and spat it out against a cheek.
The anger boiled up in both of their faces as though she had slapped them. But their hesitation was clear to see, and in the meantime her brain sparked her body into life and she coiled up before delivering a kick which hit one of them in the groin.
He howled like a wounded animal. She screamed for help, but no one came, even though she knew other people were in the park. Then she was pressed down into the soft earth by body number two. She saw the knife glint in the twilight as it sliced her clothes. The earth swallowed her up; the sky bore down on her. Blindly, she fumbled to her side, grabbed some material and pulled it closer. She didn’t know how much time had passed and strangely she couldn’t feel if she was being raped or not. She felt nothing and yet sensed everything as her hand struck something hard and cold and heavy.
By a miracle she managed to push herself away. Enough for her to point in the dark with trembling hands. The canister went off with a bang, and the impact sent her backwards, even further away. The two youths let out a scream as the tear gas got into their eyes. She heard their curses and their rage, and the sound of them running away as the police siren approached.