‘Keep your voice down, Shelley.’
‘Sorry … we shouldn’t be talking about this in a bar anyway.’
‘Well, we are, and if we speak in normal voices nobody will hear. There wasn’t any need to screech at me. All I said was –’
‘I heard what you said.’
‘If you let me finish … that he’s apologised, he’s said you’d both had too much to drink.’
Shelley set her glass down and looked across at the man she had discovered she hardly knew, after seventeen years.
‘Who do you believe, Tim? I need to hear you say it.’
Tim sighed. He looked wretched, she saw that, looked as if he wished he were a million miles away.
‘I wish none of it had happened,’ he said.
‘You wish? And stop telling me not to raise my voice because if you do it once more I’ll stand on this table and shout. I was not drunk that night. I’d had one glass of champagne and two of white wine by the time I went down to that ladies’ cloakroom and no way would that quantity make me drunk, just pleasantly relaxed. If Richard Serrailler told you I was drunk –’
‘No, he didn’t, not in so many words.’
‘What, she’d had a few? Had a bit of a skinful? Had enough to say yes? Whatever he said he’s lying. I was not drunk. I did not say yes. I did not indicate yes. I did not say, do, imply anything which would have led anyone to believe I was happy to let them … that I was up for it … however he put it … you put it … I hate it that he had the gall to ring you and try and fix it between you – get the little woman to see sense: Tim, apologise from me but I can assure you … Ach.’ She finished off her glass of wine – the first she had had that evening. ‘How bloody dare he.’
‘Shelley …’
‘And what did you say? Reassure him you believed him and not your wife?’
‘No, on the contrary. The one thing I did say was that I knew you’d think better of pressing charges against him.’
‘You did? And what made you sure of that?’
‘Come on, you must see that now the dust has settled …’
‘It hasn’t.’
‘I honestly want you to think about this hard, which I’m not sure you have. Maybe you don’t understand the full implications of going ahead with a case that could come to court. Do you want your name dragged through the dirt?’
‘No, but I want his.’
‘Now you’re being stupid. You’re not thinking it through. Your name would be everywhere … and everything that happened, every detail … how do you think friends and colleagues and neighbours will find that?’
‘To be honest, I don’t give a toss. How they find it is their problem, not mine.’
‘But it will be yours and you know perfectly well what people will say.’
‘No, tell me.’
Tim shook his head wearily and drank his pint.
‘Do you mean they’ll say there’s no smoke without fire?’
‘Look … let’s leave it. Try and enjoy an evening without going back over this again, can’t we?’
‘So long as you accept that I’m not giving up on it and I am pressing charges. No way is that man going to walk off into the sunset and think a friendly word in the ear of another Freemason –’
‘This has nothing to do with Freemasonry.’
‘The “word in your ear, old boy” thing? I think it has.’
‘I’m not arguing with you any more.’
‘Fine. I’d like another glass please.’
Tim got up. ‘They do hot roast beef sandwiches. Fancy one?’
‘No thanks, but you go for it.’
‘I don’t want to eat on my own.’
They looked at one another. Shelley felt her eyes filling. As well as everything else it had done, the rape had brought them to this hostility and coldness and endless bickering. She loved Tim. He loved her. They were happy – had been happy, until Richard had destroyed that too.
‘All right … two hot roast beef.’
Tim smiled.
She wouldn’t change her mind. The support she had been given, the advice, the understanding, the determination to be with her all the way, the expertise, all of it, had made her quite sure that she was right and would go through with it. And win. If there was any justice, surely to God the truth was all she need stick to. Whatever Tim had agreed to, however Richard Serrailler had made him see it, made no difference at all. The worst was just that she wanted it over and done with, and it wouldn’t be … the law was nothing if not protracted.
Tim came back with their drinks.
‘Feel better?’
He looked so anxious, so desperate for her to say yes, she did, and yes, she had been wrong, and yes, of course she would drop the case.
‘Yes. Thank you, darling.’