4

‘That was superb.’ Finch sat back in his chair and gave her a grin of satisfaction.

‘It’s all you’re getting, I’m afraid,’ she said, smiling at his compliment – it had only been a modest pasta: spinach and mascarpone fusilli. ‘There’s Brighton Blue and grapes. I don’t do puddings.’

It was liberating not to feel the need to wade through complicated recipes for Finch and just do something she could cook with her eyes closed. Not because he wasn’t worth it. The evening had been so comfortable – really lovely, in fact – and Finch so appreciative of her efforts. But she remembered all those formal dinner parties she’d thrown for Michael, how they’d taken her all day to organize and cook and left her exhausted, with little appetite for being sparkling and witty with his clever colleagues from the judiciary.

Finch’s eyes widened in horror. ‘What? No chocolate and hazelnut roulade? No tarte Tatin? What will the village say when I spread the word?’

Romy started to laugh. ‘Probably confirm their worst suspicions that Michael left me because there weren’t three puddings on the table every night.’ Her face fell, his name casting a shadow. ‘Although it was me who left him,’ she added softly.

‘Cheese is perfect,’ Finch said diplomatically, as she reached across to clear his bowl. ‘Is it all right to ask why?’ he said after a minute, his tone cautious.

Romy didn’t answer until she had placed the cheese and fruit on the table and sat down again. She knew she had to give him some kind of response, but she found she couldn’t meet his eye as she eventually spoke. ‘We were married such a long time. I think we just ran out of steam. Michael is a barrister. His first love has always been his work.’ She didn’t want to lie to Finch, but her deliberately evasive reply was playing with the truth.

Finch nodded, but she could tell he had noticed her equivocation from the puzzlement she saw flash across his eyes. ‘Must have been a difficult decision.’

‘I didn’t feel I had a choice,’ she said, contradicting her previous statement, but realizing, for the first time, that this was probably true. The actual moment of leaving had been almost an anticlimax, as if she’d just wandered off to the cottage and could, at any time, wander straight back to Michael. It was certainly how her husband saw it – or, at least, he had, until he’d requested a divorce the other day. But it was, in truth, more defined than that: she had reached a tipping point, the letter changing everything.

‘How about you? It can’t have been easy since you lost your wife,’ she asked, hoping her question wouldn’t feel too intrusive. Finch’s wife had died before Romy was living full-time in the village. She vaguely remembered a pretty, gamine blonde – sort of Mia Farrow-ish, with a wide, slightly crazy smile.

‘Not easy at all. You’re right. It’s quite hard to describe it,’ Finch began, looking away. Romy saw his mouth working. Then he turned to her, the gaze from his expressive brown eyes seeming to hold hers with almost fierce determination. She guessed he didn’t talk about Nell’s death to many people and she felt honoured that he should trust her. ‘Nothing is what you expect. It’s like you’re standing on the edge of a deep, dark pit and constantly having to stop yourself falling in. But gradually you get better and better at negotiating the edge.’ He gave her a self-conscious smile. ‘I’m sure that makes no sense to you.’

Romy smiled her understanding, because oddly, although it wasn’t a death for her, Finch’s analogy rang a powerful bell. She dared not show this too readily, though, for fear he would ask more questions. But it pained her that she couldn’t be equally open with this sensitive, empathic man.

‘At first I kept judging myself for not recovering quickly enough. A pull-yourself-together type of thing,’ Finch was saying. ‘Now I just feel what I feel.’ He smiled. ‘But I’m getting there. I think I can see ahead in a way that was impossible till recently.’

Like me, Romy thought. But she wondered whether, also like her, Finch was ready for anything more than friendship.

It was almost dark when they went through to the sitting room, where Romy had lit the wood-burner. Finch had to duck to avoid the lintel above the door.

She had tidied up earlier, and the clutter littering the surfaces had been shoved unceremoniously into the cupboard under the stairs. All that remained were three framed photos of Leo and Rex as children – the one of her and Michael, windswept and laughing on a friend’s boat, she had moved to the spare room, unwilling, as yet, to hide it away in a drawer.

The room – which had been extended into the garden – contained a faded rose-linen sofa piled with cushions and a small wingback chair in oatmeal tweed, two slim bookcases on either side of the fireplace and a coffee table made from reclaimed barn boards.

Finch had settled on the sofa when Romy came back with coffee and the box of chocolates he’d brought with the Merlot. She wondered whether she should sit in the armchair across from him, or be bold and choose the sofa, too. After a moment’s hesitation, she followed her instincts and opted for the latter.

The atmosphere in the room was warm and intimate, the flames from the wood-burner hypnotic. Glancing at the clock Romy realized it was nearly eleven – she and Finch had been talking non-stop for hours. The evening had gone in a flash.

With Michael, Romy had often got the feeling that he was busy forming his next sentence while she was talking – keen to get his views across instead of really listening to what she said – so at first she’d been almost reticent with Finch. But as the evening had worn on, she’d felt as if they were old friends who had known each other all their lives – at the same time as being exciting new ones.

Romy was acutely aware of Finch so close, the clean, orangey smell of soap, the strong hands with the long fingers curled around the stoneware mug, his thigh – clad in charcoal chinos – only inches from her own. It was as if she had been gathered up into a softly vibrating lacuna, where there was no need to go forward or to look back: she could just bask in that single moment. A log cracked loudly against the glass door of the stove and she jumped.

Finch smiled at her. ‘What a lovely evening,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Thanks for the delicious supper.’ After a pause, he added, ‘I suppose I should get going.’ Although he did not immediately make a move.

Hearing the reluctance in his voice, which so exactly mirrored her own, she smiled. When he did get up, she followed him through to the hall, watched as he shrugged his broad shoulders into his navy peacoat and patted his pockets for his phone and keys.

For a moment they were trapped close in the confined space as she reached past him to open the front door. Their eyes met. Neither moved. She held her breath, aware of the quickening of her heartbeat. For what seemed like a lifetime to Romy, they were anchored, only centimetres apart. Then they both drew back, looking at each other with a degree of embarrassed surprise.

Finch raised his eyebrows at her. ‘These narrow hallways …’ he said, with a wide grin. She nodded, unable to suppress her own smile of relief that he’d defused the tension. Finch seemed to shake himself. ‘Night, Romy,’ he said, leaning down to give her a decorous peck on the cheek. Then he ducked his head to accommodate the low doorway and was gone.

For a moment Romy stood at the door and took deep breaths of the cold night air, feeling the sea breeze caress her hot cheeks. She gave a quiet chuckle of disbelief. I think he nearly kissed me.

But, as she went back inside and double-locked the front door, disbelief quickly turned to panic. Suppose he had? It had been such a wonderful evening. Finch had taken her out of herself, beyond the confusion and pain of the recent past. But the near kiss had brought it all back.

Like the demand of a jealous lover, she heard the siren call. Unable to resist, Romy found herself slowly climbing the stairs to her bedroom and unlocking the top drawer of her dressing table. The letter she drew from the envelope was creased and thumbed, but the handwritten words were still as clear as the day it had dropped through the letter box of the Claires’ Chelsea flat two and a half years ago:

12 October 2015

Dear Mrs Claire,

We have never met.

This is a difficult letter to write, and will be difficult for you to read, I’m sure. But watching the news the other night and seeing the triumph on your husband’s face on the steps of the Old Bailey – after successfully defending that creepy TV presenter accused of rape – made me feel physically sick. And furious with myself for keeping silent all these years.

Because Michael Claire sexually assaulted me.

I was sixteen years old.

It happened on Thursday, 13 June 2002. I’d just finished my GCSEs and my mother had arranged for me to do a week’s work experience in your husband’s chambers.

Michael was working late that night. All the others had gone home. He asked me to stay behind to help him sort out a ton of papers he had to read for court the next morning. It was almost my last day, and I’d had such a good week. Everyone had been incredibly kind to me.

When I finished sorting the papers, he gave me a glass of red wine and had one himself. He didn’t have proper wine glasses, I remember, just Duralex tumblers. He was friendly and funny. There was a small button-back leather sofa in the corner of his room and he told me to have a seat. Then a few minutes later he came and sat beside me. I was uncomfortable and really shy; Michael was seen as a bit of a god in the chambers. I saw him as a bit of a god.

He put his hand on my thigh first. I was wearing a red cotton dress, no tights – it was very hot that week. I froze. I didn’t know what to do. Then he moved my dress up and began stroking my bare skin, squeezing my thigh. I pushed him off, but he just laughed and took my glass from me, putting it on the desk. He seemed to think I’d given him some sort of message that this was what I wanted, because he said, ‘You’re such a tease.’

He was trying to banter with me, not threatening me as such, but physically pinning me to the sofa with his arm so I couldn’t move. Then he started kissing me really hard, pushing his tongue into my mouth, squeezing my breasts, forcing me back against the end of the sofa so I was pinned under him.

I started to struggle, but he was so strong and determined. I didn’t scream, I didn’t dare … I couldn’t really believe what was happening. I know I was telling him to stop, but I don’t think he even heard me, he was so intent on his own pleasure – if it could be called ‘pleasure’, forcing someone like that, against their will.

Then the phone rang on his desk – maybe it was you? It caught him off guard. He pulled back just long enough for me to push him away and run.

I didn’t have a coat, because it was so hot. My dress was torn at the shoulder, so I borrowed the beige cardigan Wendy, the office manager, had left on the back of her chair. My mother and I lived in Sussex at the time, and I was staying the week with a school friend. She was out with her boyfriend, and her parents were at the theatre, so I was able to sneak in and never tell a living soul – not my friend, not her parents, not my mother – what had happened. In the morning, I rang Micky, the senior clerk, who’d taken me under his wing, and said I was ill and couldn’t come in.

I have spent so many hours thinking about that night in the thirteen years since it happened. I’ve wondered if I did lead Michael on, if I was giving him mixed messages. I blame myself, of course I do. I shouldn’t have stayed in the first place, shouldn’t have accepted the wine. Was my dress too short? Why didn’t I scream? Why didn’t I get up and leave as soon as he put his hand on my thigh? I still don’t know. I suppose I never believed he would do that to me.

That night still regularly haunts my dreams. Even now, I sometimes have flashbacks that make me tremble and sweat. I probably drink too much and suffer bouts of anxiety. But it didn’t kill me. I cope; no one would ever guess.

I’m not intending to go to the police or the media or anything. There was no way I could have told someone at the time and it’s too late now. I don’t have the courage, anyway. And I won’t sign this letter – it’s much too small a world. I saw red, though, the other night, watching Michael Claire, QC, crowing so smugly about getting a man off who everyone says is as guilty as sin. I just thought you should know who you’re married to, Mrs Claire – assuming you don’t already.

Romy read it from beginning to end – although she pretty much knew the nightmare words by heart, so often had she studied the letter, both in fact and in her mind. For a moment, as she sat on the edge of her bed, she had a strong desire to tear it up, burn it – as Michael had begged her to back then. But even with the future beckoning with such promise, she could not quite bring herself to destroy what she still considered unfinished business. By doing so, she felt she would be abdicating all responsibility – finally and for ever – for the unnamed girl.