18
“You bitch!” I yelled at Adele as she served a +4 card just before I was about to call Uno.
“Shut up and collect.” Adele laughed and took a swig from the gin bottle.
I had come home from my parents’ on Boxing Day, the same day Kit flew to the Pyrenees with Leo and Ollie. The Christmas gooch drifted aimlessly, all sense of time and structure lost. Kit said the internet was patchy in the mountains but that he would try to text. I emailed my landlord, giving my month’s notice on my tenancy. There was no turning back. Why would I want to turn back? This is exciting. This is exciting!
It was surprisingly easy to drive headfirst into self-destruction. Doing so was a means to an end. The end being total numbness. It was reflected everywhere. I let my hair get greasy, wore dirty sweats for days. I checked to see if Kit had texted. I stopped wiping down the counters and let them get covered in crumbs and coffee granules. I starved myself for two days, then gorged myself on a feast. Two burgers that dripped sauce, fries that were still sizzling, nuggets and churros and a milkshake. I saw my bloated stomach after the glut, then calmly took myself to the bathroom and shoved two fingers down my throat.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. I was not a withering romantic beauty in depression, poetically languishing in my misery. White-headed spots sprouted along my cheeks like tiny mountain ranges. My lips flaked. My cheeks sagged into my face. Violet half-moons under my eyes. How did Josh even want someone as disgusting as me. I draped sheets over my mirrors after that. I checked to see if Kit had texted. I stopped taking the rubbish out, leaving takeaway boxes strewn over the flat. Spindly spiders scurried out of the hills of dirty clothes. Spongy plasters wrapped around my bloodied thumbs to prevent the pointless ripping at myself. The plants didn’t get watered any more or receive any sunlight, for I never opened the curtains. I monitored the locks thirty times a day, so I eventually ordered and drilled a bolt into the door, ensuring no one could come in or out. I checked to see if Kit had texted. I used my body weight to maneuver the sofa against the back wall of my flat, and slept there instead of my bed so that I didn’t wake thinking there was a shadow waiting for me at its foot. With the kitchen light on so that I had a full view of the flat all throughout the night. I woke with my joints crunching with stiffness. Eventually I ran out of toilet paper. There I drew the line and left the house for the first time in five days. I walked in the cycle lane, so that I could hurl myself into the road if someone tried to attack me.
I read an article about Richter’s rats. The doctor put rats in water to see how long they swam before they drowned. No more than a few minutes before they sank underwater. The second time round, he rescued his rats just before they started to sink, let them rest, then plunged them back in the water. They carried on swimming for nearly three days straight. I kept swimming, paddling through constant high alert into exhaustion and emotional burnout, hoping hoping hoping that someone would pull me out soon.
I invited Adele over on New Year’s Eve, desperately needing to see someone. We FaceTimed countless toothy Yanks, all huddled around an iPhone. We played Uno and worked our way through bottle after bottle.
“What’s Kit up to tonight?” Adele asked.
“Skiing!” I said sloppily, rearranging my hand of cards. “Whoosh! Whoosh!” I mimed ski poles in each hand and began to giggle hysterically, throwing my head back on the sofa.
“Everything okay?” Adele’s face was humorless.
“Ugh, yes.” I waved my finger about Adele’s face. “Did you know we’re moving in together in January? He says it’s time.”
“Right.”
I’d lapped Del on a few drinks, perhaps she was a lot less drunk than I was.
“Anyway, I don’t want to talk about my stoopid boyfriend. Tell me about youuu, Del! And drink up!” I held the gin bottle upside down and pulled a maniacal clown smile when nothing came out. “Ooops, all gone!”
“I think you’ve had enough to drink, Jadey,” Del said carefully. The TV in the background showed crowds in Trafalgar Square, huddled penguins in the cold. The camera panned across children in pink puffa jackets holding sparklers, two front teeth missing in their wonderful smiles.
“NO! No no no no noooo!” I rolled onto my back like an upturned turtle and kicked my legs in the air. “You know I used to go out boozing SO much more than I do now? I miss it.” I leaned forward so my head was in Adele’s chest. “Do you know what always made the night so special?”
“What’s that?”
“BRIXTON McDONALD’S! That place is an INSTITUTION!”
“Okay, so go out more, Jade—who says you can’t?”
“No one does. I just get scared…” I trailed off wistfully.
“Scared of what?”
“I think I have wine in the fridge!”
“Right, that’s enough.” Adele grabbed the drink out of my hand and pulled me up into a sitting position. Adele was a storm of a person. Every choice she made was entirely hers. She had total confidence in herself that wasn’t marred by arrogance. She never verbalized a word of opinion about Kit, which was a message itself, because one of Adele’s loveliest qualities was her celebration of others.
“Wha—Why dya take ma drink?”
“I’m cutting to the motherfucking chase,” she borderline yelled at me. “What the hell is going on with you?”
I hung my head like a dog who has just trailed a roll of toilet paper around the house. I’d normally say everything was fine! I’m all good! Just tired! But the alcohol I’d consumed freed my tongue.
“I slept with Josh Parsons.”
“What?” Adele shrieked.
“Well, he told me I slept with him.”
The impetuosity of releasing something I had kept within panicked me. I had relinquished control. And now Adele was reacting in what felt like slow motion. Unrestrained passion and visceral protectiveness. It all terrified me. I saw her face make seemingly a thousand expressions at once before she gripped my shoulders and clicked her fingers in my face.
“Rewind. Start from the beginning. I need more context.”
“The Savoy.”
“I knew something happened that night!”
“You were right to be worried, Del,” I mumbled, rapidly sobering up. “You’re always bloody right.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Suspicion seeped into Adele’s voice.
“I only know what he told me happened, and even then, I can’t be sure.”
“I remember you disappeared that night; is that why?”
“The details are still so fuzzy. I was—”
“You were smashed,” Adele confirmed. It was like she reminded me to breathe.
“Yes.” I paused, trying to find the memory amid the booze. I began softly, “Del, do you remember when you came over and told me that my brightness had been turned down?”
She nodded.
“That’s exactly how I’ve felt,” I realized now. “Something in me has died.”
“Hang on, what did you mean earlier? You said you can’t be sure. Sure of what?”
I could see calculations stacking up in Adele’s mind, her wariness escalating.
“I remember random flashes, but I can’t trust them. I was so drunk, Del,” I cried. “I’m so—so sick and tired of not knowing. There are so many blanks to fill in and all I know is that I can’t fucking sleep anymore without thinking someone is going to climb on me in the night.” I threw my head in my hands, and realized I was shaking.
“Okay okay okay, Jade.” Del pulled me in and cradled the back of my head. “You’re okay.”
“DAMMIT, this is why I HATE GIN!”
“Listen, what Josh did to you—I saw you that night, you were hammered. If he had sex with you in that state,” Adele spoke slowly and deliberately, holding my face, “you couldn’t have consented.”
I stared at the dying potted plant behind her head. I knew it was coming, what she was about to say. It was like looking at life in a lake from above the water, two worlds separated by a clear boundary. Adele clapped her hands to jolt my vision back to her. “Do you hear me? Am I getting through to you?” Her lips were blurring and her words reverberated. “What happened to you—that was rape.”
Seconds passed. This is why I lied whenever my best friend asked me if I was okay. Why I brushed past all her looks of worry. I knew she would make me face the conclusion that had been loitering behind all my denial, look the truth in the eye.
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose it was.”
It felt like a head-on truck collision in my chest. There was no delicate way of putting it. Until now, I’d hidden behind euphemisms and allusions. I spoke of “that night,” “a weird thing,” “a horrible experience,” sometimes as cryptically as “November.” Dancing around the actual word. Too scared, too ashamed, to say it. Before, I was the unraped. Now, I am the raped. The finality of that change struck complete fear in me. There was no in-between. There was no way to trial it before committing to it.
But even then. A rape was a news headline. A rape was something unspeakable that happened in dark alleyways at knifepoint. Or something that shadowy men in power did to secretaries. A rape happened when the victim fought back. When they said, clearly and unequivocally, No. Could I claim that label for myself? Was I an imposter for doing so? Do I deserve to hold a space within those who have had it so much worse?
“Oh my God,” I whimpered. “Oh my God, Del.”
Adele held me tighter as I clung to her neck.
“All this time,” I panted through cries, “I kept telling myself it was a horrific, drunken mistake. That I’d had a stupid one-night stand with a colleague. As if I don’t know what rape is! I knew it was wrong, I knew it. But I didn’t let myself think—”
“You were trying to cope, Jadey.”
“And Kit!” I sobbed. “I convinced myself that I cheated on him.”
“Did he say that?” Adele’s voice was louder, harsher.
I shook my head.
“No, no. It’s my fault. I didn’t tell him about Josh for weeks. He was hurt that I didn’t tell him.” The look on Adele’s face made me want to jump to Kit’s defense. “Which is fair enough. It was a massive thing to keep from a partner.”
“Right, but J”—Adele held my hand and her eyes bore into mine—“based on what you’ve told me, you don’t know for sure what happened. I’m not upset you didn’t tell me. I feel honored that you feel safe in sharing this with me, and I’ll be here to help you at your pace.”
I fell into her lap with relief. It was as if I had been carrying a heavy load and Adele had lifted it off me with ease. There was no affected response I had to curate, no pressure to make her comfortable. I didn’t need to ensure her needs were being met over mine.
“Who else knows?” she said softly. “We need to come together to support you.”
“No one,” I sniffed. “Kit. And now you.”
“Your parents? Eve?”
“Just Kit.”
Adele’s lips thinned.
“And he’s gone skiing? Knowing you’re here alone and going through this?”
“It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay!”
“Honestly. I wanted a bit of time to myself,” I lied. I wanted to protect Kit from her hard-line condemnation. Everything was so black-and-white for Del.
She narrowed her eyes.
“He shouldn’t have left you alone,” she finally said.
We could hear neighbors on balconies counting down to the New Year.
Ten! Nine!
“I’m scared about pushing him away,” I admitted.
Eight! Seven!
“He loves you, J. There’s nothing you could do that would push him away.”
I remembered all the times he praised how strong and independent I was, and I knew that wasn’t strictly true. But I didn’t want to test the limits of his love. The idea of being without him made my stomach churn.
Six! Five!
“We’re all here for you, no matter what you need.”
Four! Three!
“I think I’m going to be sick.” I clasped my palm over my mouth and ran to the bathroom.
Two! One! HAPPY NEW YEAR! Fireworks popped and fizzled through the sky. Sparkles scattered the window outside the bathroom. Gold, silver, pink, orange, blue, and green rained outside as couples kissed across the nation. I raised my head out of the toilet bowl, mid-spew, and faced Adele, who had been steadily holding back my hair.
“Happy New Year, Del.”
Adele took me to my bed, which I hadn’t slept in for days, and stroked my hair until I fell asleep. With her next to me, I slept vacuously, the night uninterrupted.
On the first morning of the year, Adele brought me breakfast in bed.
“Jade,” she began, a little while later, “have you considered making a police report?”
“No, I haven’t. I didn’t let myself think there was anything to report until now.” The thought truly hadn’t crossed my mind.
I pulled out my laptop.
“Here, let me help.” Adele pulled her chair up next to me. She gripped my hand so tight, as if she thought that if she didn’t, I might float away.
report rape how to
441 million results
Metropolitan Police: How to Report Rape and Sexual Assault
Report online
If you’d like to report online, rather than speaking to an officer by telephone in the first instance, you can securely and confidentially report rape or sexual assault to us online.
Call 101
If you’d like to talk to someone, our national non-emergency telephone number is staffed 24/7. Call us on 101 and report what happened or just get some advice.
Visit a police station
If you’d like to speak to an officer in person, we can provide a safe and comfortable environment at any of our police stations.
“It’s crazy,” I mumbled. I felt sick at the idea of handing over this parcel of shame to the police.
Adele glanced at me.
“I’m a lawyer and I know sweet fuck all about any of this.”
“Me neither.”
“What happens after I report? What are the chances of prosecution? Who will I have to speak to? What evidence will I have to give?” I was overwhelmed.
police handle rape reports?
13 million results
“They didn’t really investigate it at all”: Rape Survivors Speak Out in Report
“It felt as if they spent most of their time investigating me,” said one. “They didn’t actually investigate anything other than constantly bullying me. They had access to information from the beginning and just wasted time getting it, asking the wrong questions, recording things incorrectly.”
A survivor from a minority ethnic background whose first language is not English told the report that she struggled to understand the information she was being given.
“I thought it was quite inappropriate because there was information passed on to my mum that I didn’t want her to know. It wasn’t done very sensitively. I understood everything I was told, but sometimes my mum withheld information from me to try to protect me. I only found out about it afterward, but I wish she’d told me at the time because it would have been really useful.”
Explaining why they had decided to withdraw support for a prosecution, some survivors said they were not prepared to wait months or years for their cases to conclude.
“Months? Or years?” Adele breathed. “Surely it should be a priority that these people are off the streets?”
“It took a lot longer than I thought it would,” said one. “It impacted me a lot. I started developing post-traumatic stress disorder. I was very anxious and so unsettled. I was very depressed. I felt as if I couldn’t live my life while waiting for it all to be over.”
Survivors criticized the police for predetermining the outcome of their case from the outset, especially when there was no DNA or physical evidence. Others were disappointed that past allegations against the suspect were not taken into consideration.
“I don’t have any evidence.”
“You sure?”
“I know I don’t.”
Adele’s face was grim.
“DNA evidence isn’t the only thing they’ll go off of.”
“It’ll be pretty important.” I grimaced. “Prosecution rates are already so low.”
rape charges prosecution percentage?
50 million results
“Fuck.” Adele breathed. “These headlines.”
BBC: Why do so few rape cases go to court?
The Guardian: Rape convictions fall to record low in England and Wales
The Independent: Only 1.7% of reported rapes prosecuted
The Telegraph: Rape victims forced to wait five months for suspects to be charged
The Times: Rape cases dropped due to police stereotyping
The New York Times: UK justice system has failed rape victims, government says
There are forty-two muscles in the face. Each and every one of them worked in cooperation to stop me from crying.
“That’s enough.” I snapped the computer shut and pounced up, pacing the length of the living room.
“J—” Adele began. “I know it’s a lot.”
“I don’t think I can do it,” I whispered.
“But there’s a chance—”
“Did we read the same articles? Not even two percent of rape cases result in prosecution, Del. And at least five months to even get a charge? I can barely find time to do my laundry with any regularity, let alone pause my life for half a year, just for him to be charged.”
“I know—”
“And even if he is charged, then what? There’s no guarantee of any outcome.”
Adele nodded.
“I wouldn’t just have to prove that I didn’t consent—that isn’t enough. We both know that I’d need to prove that he reasonably believed that I didn’t consent. He’ll say he didn’t know. That we were both drunk and he thought I was up for it. He’ll say what was I doing in her flat when she had a boyfriend anyway?”
“Jade, I know, if you—”
“I can barely remember it, there’s no evidence. It’s pointless!”
“It’s not pointless—”
“What if they tear me apart?” I gasped. “They’re going to question everything. They’ll say I led him on. They’ll say look at her, she was in a long-term relationship and invited him back. What was he supposed to think?”
“Jade, slow down—”
“And to talk about it all, in front of so many strangers. Who might think God knows what of me, I can’t. And fuck’s sake, what about Reuben? What’s going to happen if I’m the reason police start swarming around another Reuben employee? I’ll be the troublemaker, won’t I?” I remembered Eve’s fear of repercussion if she spoke up about Julian. I practically started hyperventilating. “I can’t face derailing my life like that.”
“It’s completely your decision.” Adele pulled me in. “Just please think about it, Jade.”
“I don’t know.”