There were others too, including more explicit emails requesting my ‘services’ that made me double-bolt my front door even when my housemates were home. When one man mentioned a visit to Durham in January, I vomited into the wastepaper basket next to my desk. Matthew was constantly in contact, of course. I wondered if all of it was an elaborate plan to get me to need his help. I wondered if he was trying to scare me. He knew about Rob because my mother had turned around at a dinner party and said, ‘My daughter’s in love’. He told me Rob was too old for me. He told me after the ‘Nadiyya incident’ I obviously had no ability to judge people and I must be in danger. He told me he wanted closure. He told me he wanted to meet in December.
I wanted closure too. I agreed to meet Matthew to talk. And I agreed when he offered to help with the sex scandal. He said he had found my picture online: my name, my body. He blamed Nadiyya. He said he had ‘dealt’ with the guys in the emails.
Then he screamed at me for being ungrateful. He said I owed him. Big time. He said I must do something nice for him every day until I reached twenty-one and, for every day I didn’t do something nice, he would add another day. He said he would be at my house every morning in January to tell Rob what a slut I was. He kept threatening to sue. He said he would bankrupt and ruin me. He said I must meet him in December in a hotel and give him forty-eight hours. He said he still loved me.
I broke. I finally felt my flesh tear in half, splitting right down the middle, separating lung from lung, left from right; my heart beating furiously for all to see and my limbs shrivelling up and dying. I saw white. That was all. No more red anger, no more black fear or blue tears. I simply could not go on, so this was it. I told Matthew to do his worst. I told him to destroy me. Then the threats would have to stop. That was his ammunition. What was the worst he could do? Bankrupt me? Take away my family? My friends? Rob? My degree? Okay. Do it. Then I would pick up the pieces of my shattered self and find a way to go on. Then at least I would be free of his shadow.
A barrage of emails and letters followed. Threats from solicitors. Psychobabble and warnings from the private investigator. Attempts to worm into my head, to question my every belief. Accusations against Rob, assumptions about me, promises that I was in danger. Not just from Matthew either. From the rest of them. From Rose’s manager Damien. From her psychiatrist, whom I’d never heard of until I received an eight-page email assessing my need for psychiatric confinement. From Matthew’s friends in the ‘industry’. All woven together with the investigator and Meg and Mandy Perrett, whoever she was: a Mafioso family from the porn world; a mob with money and supposed links to Ealing Studios. All of them telling me how incredibly wrong I was. How immature and naive I was being. How pig-headed and self-destructive, cruel and ego-maniacal, stone-cold inconsiderate, thoughtless, senseless, unkind, uncaring, uncharitable, unfeeling, unreasonable, irrational, hurtful, spiteful, vengeful, deceitful, blameful, distrustful, frightfully self-centred, insane, deranged, psychopathic, sociopathic, and just plain old pathetic.
I refused to respond. I determined to see Matthew in court. If he came to my house, I would call the police.
My resolve lasted a day. Within twenty-four hours I was back in contact with Matthew, ping-ponging insults and pleas, wailing mercilessly into my pillow and trying desperately to see a way out of my miserable hole.
‘How are the spiders?’ I asked Tim, burying my head in my cupboard and pretending to root for tins.
‘Not bad, not bad. I think I’m going to write my dissertation on this one species that’s only found in certain parts of the world.’ I could sense Tim leaning against the counter, waiting for me to emerge and face him.
‘Cool. Do you think your department will pay for you to travel to see it?’ I said to a packet of spaghetti.
‘Doubt it, but worth a try. You want a cup of tea?’ I heard him step towards the kettle.
‘Uh, sure,’ I replied, wondering how to extricate myself from the cupboard and get back to my room without Tim noticing my wet lashes. Buying time, I twisted a tin of tomatoes to make the label face front. I heard water gush into the plastic kettle. I reached for a jar of honey at the back and contemplated it as Tim flicked the switch.
‘Do you need to borrow something?’ Tim said in my ear as the buzz of the kettle grew louder.
‘Uh, no,’ I breathed, afraid he would touch me.
‘Nat,’ Tim began softly, ‘what’s up?’
‘Nothing, I’m fine,’ I replied to a box of Nutri-Grain.
There was silence while the water boiled furiously against the sides of its container. I held my breath, willing Tim to move away. Finally, the kettle clicked and the water calmed, but instead of moving away to pour the tea, Tim wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his chin on my shoulder.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered as I crumpled into him and, losing control of my actions, suddenly entered the period Jess had termed the ‘honesty phase’.
‘Do you hate me?’
My knees were curled to my chest and I was holding my teacup in front of my face. We had shuffled to the living room, my body buzzing with relief and trepidation as I told Tim what I could manage. Now, though, fear was overtaking and I kept glancing at the door, wondering if any of our housemates were in their bedrooms, if they might come down in search of a TV break and find me half-melted into the sofa.
‘Why would I hate you?’ Tim replied, refusing to sever eye contact.
‘Because I lied to you from the moment we met.’ I twisted a tissue between my fingers.
‘No you didn’t.’ He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and spoke into my hair. ‘And that wouldn’t matter.’
‘But I’m not who you thought,’ I said, pulling away to look in his face.
‘I still know who you are,’ Tim said, and poked my arm. ‘You’re Nat. You’re my friend.’
‘Aren’t you disgusted by me?’ I asked.
‘No.’ He placed his palm on my knee and sighed. ‘I’m disgusted by that guy. If he ever comes here, I’ll rip his head off.’
I tried to laugh, but it came out as a sob.
‘Seriously, Nat, you don’t need to deal with this alone.’
‘That’s not how it feels.’ I closed my eyes, feeling drained yet somehow calm. ‘I still can’t risk my parents finding out, and if all of the internet stuff’s true, I could get kicked out of uni.’
‘Look,’ he wrapped me back up in his arms. ‘I’m going to take you to the counselling centre tomorrow.’
‘I don’t know,’ I mumbled into his shirt.
‘Well I do. They might not be able to do anything, but it’s a good place to start. And it’s totally confidential.’
‘Do you think I have to tell Rob?’ I asked, my head still hidden.
‘Um, yes, you probably do. When is he coming?’
‘Four weeks.’
‘And do you think any of it could be true?’ Tim whispered. ‘About him I mean.’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to think.’
‘You need to talk to him.’ Tim squeezed me into him more tightly.
‘I suppose,’ I breathed into his chest as another wave of sobs caught up with me.
I still didn’t quite believe Tim when he wrapped his arms around me and said, ‘It’s okay. I’m here for you.’
Regardless of the law, Tim said, this guy was sick in the head and there are no circumstances where a sixty-year-old man should touch a sixteen-year-old girl. I heard what he said. I cried and thanked him. I loved him even more. For the first time in months, I felt safe and incredibly lucky.
But I still shook in bed that night. I still couldn’t believe Tim had forgiven me. Not when I couldn’t forgive myself. He must be judging me, I told myself repeatedly. And over the coming months I’d find with every retelling I’d judge myself a little more. Sure, Matthew was older and it should never have happened, but the fact remained that it had. That, regardless of anything else, I had lied to everyone in my life for four whole years and that made me – in the simple equations of primary-school morality – a bad person. I’d constructed a false life; I’d risked relationships and other people’s happiness in order to conduct an affair with a wholly unsuitable man. I may have been seduced, I may have been manipulated, but I had also lied in cold blood for more than a thousand consecutive days and those lies still wrapped themselves around me. How could anyone reconcile that?
‘We have a four-month waiting list. You’ll have an assessment interview today, but probably not with the counsellor you’ll eventually see. Fill in this form and bring it back when you’re ready. There are seats just through there.’
The receptionist gestured towards a room across the hall.
Two other people were waiting in silence, reading posters about anorexia and mental health and avoiding eye contact. I took a seat as far away from both as I could and removed my gloves. With the biro I’d been given I made gentle crosses next to statements like: ‘I wake in the middle of the night: Never, Sometimes, A lot, Every night’; ‘I feel sad: Never, Sometimes, A lot, All the time’; and ‘I think about taking my life: Never, Sometimes, A lot, All the time’.
When I was done, I handed the form back to the receptionist, worrying I’d selected too many middling answers to truly deserve counselling.
‘Excellent, Trish will collect you in a moment.’
A few minutes after I’d returned to the silent waiting room, a small, round woman with a floaty black skirt and thick dark hair stood in the doorway and smiled as she said my name. I followed her into an office at the end of the hall. Two armchairs faced each other by the window, a plant and a coffee table within reach of both. A bowl of sand sat on the table next to a cup of colouring pencils. There was no paper.
Trish gestured towards the chair on the right and eased herself into the one on the left.
I perched on the edge of the seat, wondering whether or not to take my coat off. This was just an introductory interview, it probably wouldn’t take long. I shouldn’t look too comfortable.
‘Hi,’ Trish said, smiling and bobbing her head to catch my eye.
‘Hi,’ I replied, noticing she had my form in front of her.
‘So, today we’re just going to briefly discuss how you’re feeling and what we can and can’t offer you in terms of counselling.’ She smiled again.
‘Okay.’ I thrust my hands under my thighs.
‘I’ll start with your form.’ She shuffled the papers in her lap. ‘You say you have nightmares every night and you feel upset a lot, but that you don’t have trouble concentrating on your studies.’
‘No. I mean yes. I mean, my classes are fine.’ My cheeks burnt.
‘Okay.’ Trish scribbled something in a notebook. ‘And what about social interactions?’
‘Uh, I don’t know.’ I glanced at the synthetic blinds shielding us from the world outside.
‘It’s okay, there are no right or wrong answers.’ She pushed a box of tissues towards me.
‘Let’s try something else.’ Trish leant forward. ‘Why don’t you just tell me, in your own words, what made you come here today?’
I sniffed and looked at the grey carpet.
‘Take your time.’
‘When I was sixteen,’ I began in a monotone, applying ‘the Band-Aid principle’ and speaking as fast as I could, ‘I had an affair with a much older married neighbour and I didn’t tell anyone about it.’
‘How much older?’ Trish interrupted.
‘Uh, a lot older,’ I swallowed and, for only the second time ever, admitted aloud: ‘Forty-four years older.’
I kept my eyes on the floor, not wanting to see her reaction.
‘Anyway,’ I continued after a pause, ‘it went on for three years, until I studied abroad last year and ended it. But he hasn’t left me alone and now he’s trying to sue me and claiming my current boyfriend, who lives in California, has a child and a wife who wants to kill me and that there are naked pictures of me on the web and that he’s the only one who can help and that Durham will kick me out if they find out.’ I took a shallow breath and ploughed on: ‘And I rang my boyfriend last night and told him all this and he said he still loved me but he was really hurt and started crying, but he never denied any of it and I don’t know what to think or do and my housemate told me to come here.’
I looked up and tried to smile, but choked out more tears instead. ‘Ridiculous, huh?’ I squeaked.
‘Not at all.’ Trish was still sat forward in her chair, her forehead now creased with confusion and concern. ‘I can see this is painful for you, but I need you to give me some more details.’
‘Isn’t my time up?’ I asked, looking at the clock on the wall.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Trish didn’t break her gaze.
‘But there are other people in the waiting room.’ I pushed myself to the edge of the seat, ready to dart, hoping never to see this kind-eyed woman again. ‘There’s nothing special about me. I’m happy to go on the waiting list.’
I emerged from that session with an appointment to see Trish the following week and again the one after that. Bypassing the waiting list made me feel at once relieved and petrified. On the one hand, I wasn’t crazy: the situation was important and impossible, and it was okay for me to ask for help. But, on the other hand, someone had told me I was more in need of support than anyone else, that my situation really was that bad.
Through the coming weeks, I continued to question myself and, at times, I’m ashamed to say, I also questioned Rob. Who could I believe? People that I’d never met but who came with references from someone who claimed to care for me – someone I’d known almost my entire life and whom my family trusted? Or the man I felt absolutely in love with – the man who’d proved he’d forgive me everything, but who was twice my age and 5,000 miles away? Was I in danger? Who from?
Despite these confusions, I wrote my essays, directed the play David and I had been chosen to put on at the local theatre, and, thinking of how happy I’d felt over the summer, began applying for Masters programmes in America. Tackling the absurdity that had become my life with remarkable efficiency, I’d wake, read the emails, cry for a while, take a shower and get on with my day. If nothing else, having an affair had left me with an amazing ability to compartmentalise.
After Tim, I told a few others. I tried to live honestly for once. When a girl asked me about the boyfriend I’d had in my first year, I said it was a messy situation and now I was dating a guy from America. She asked if the current boyfriend was older and I told her thirty-nine, then she asked about the first boyfriend and I said older still. In an instant, she flipped: she freaked out with high-pitched shrieks and asked me if I was lying to her. I had no idea what to do and realised with horror that this girl would be the first of many to turn on me if the whole truth was ever known.
My close friends reacted more sensitively. I related bits of my sorry story to the producers of my play because I thought they had a right to know if there was potential for my life to blow up in January, just when we’d have to be seriously rehearsing. They hugged me and told me people do much worse. I emailed Jess, finally telling her Matthew’s age, and wrote Greg a soppy letter about how he didn’t even know what he’d done to help me.
And, of course, there was Trish. As much as I owe my freedom now to the work of that curly-haired woman who sat in the chair across from me every Wednesday morning for three-quarters of a year, those hour-long sessions held some of the most difficult and traumatic moments of the entire period I spent trying to escape Matthew. Despite the relief of no longer having to deal with everything alone, it was scary to have someone tell me that the things I’d been keeping in my head and losing perspective on, the things I’d previously been able to squash into denial, were actually enormously serious.