THIRTY-SIX
JANUARY 7TH | FFION
Ffion’s heart hurts as much as her head. She’s raw. Exposed. Ripped open before this man she hardly knows and yet who knows more about her than every one of her friends. Her eyes are pressed against Leo’s shoulder, but she can’t shut down the images in her head.
They had gone outside for the champagne Rhys brought especially for you, and for a while it had been fun. Ffion had laughed as the bubbles went to her already light head, and stumbled when they wobbled her legs. She could still hear the voices of the others at the party, still see the light from the school hall windows. She was still safe.
Then Rhys offered his arm – extravagantly, with a little bow, as though they were in a costume drama – and suggested they finish the bottle somewhere more comfortable. Ffion knew what that meant, and she knew, too, she didn’t want to be more comfortable. But, in making a joke of the escort, he had unseated her. A part of every girl is poised to defend herself, long before she knows why she might need to. If Rhys had grabbed her, or dragged her from the hall, Ffion would have known what to do. She would have fought him. Kicked and bitten and screamed her way out.
Instead, she—
‘Curtsied.’ She turns her head to speak, shame falling out of her in choking sobs. ‘I bloody curtsied.’
She had dropped her head and pulled wide an imaginary skirt, grateful for the excuse to stare at the grass and blink away her fear. I want to go home now. She’d stared at the toes of her trainers, at the mud Mam would go mad about. I want to go home, she said silently, as she straightened and heard herself laugh even though nothing was funny.
‘Is Madame ready?’
He was wearing a jacket – smarter than the occasion merited – and the cuffs of his shirt pushed out from beneath the navy sleeves. Ffion stared at a gold cufflink and felt the ground shift beneath her, felt her hand reach out and slip into its expected place, felt her feet move right left right left. She felt her heart pound with fear.
‘I’ve had enough of being with all those kids, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’ They walked through the back streets to the Lloyds’ family home, and each step was heavier and more hopeless. Ffion was so much more mature than the others, he told her – so why did she feel so much younger?
‘We can make our own fun, can’t we?’
‘Yeah.’
Ffion feels Leo’s breath against the top of her head, warm and reassuring, urging her to speak as much of her truth as she feels able to share. What happened that night has existed only in pictures – haunting and terrifying, keeping her awake and driving her to places which scare her, even now. Now she’s trying to shape it with words that hurt to handle.
‘I said yes.’ Ffion clasps her hands together, the tips of her fingers still white with cold. ‘I said yes to everything.’
It had felt impossible to say anything else. This was what she had pretended to want, after all. What she’d thought she wanted, even. She had flirted and pouted, and spoken loudly of clandestine meetings with older boys from out of town. She had asked for this. It was unstoppable.
‘No!’ Fleetingly, Leo tightens his grip on her, only to release her instantly, as though scared she might break. He moves her gently away from him, holding her shoulders so she’s facing him. He wants her to look at him, but her head is heavy and her shame heavier still. She stares into the footwell and wishes she could stop her tears.
‘Ffion, this wasn’t your fault,’ Leo says, insistent yet patient, telling Ffion what she can’t yet believe. ‘You didn’t ask – you couldn’t ask for it. Fourteen, Ffion. Fourteen!’
He takes a breath. He rubs his hands up and down Ffion’s arms, and she isn’t sure if he’s trying to calm her, or himself, but it does both. Slowly, she lifts her head, chin wobbling, and looks at him. She swallows.
‘If you dealt with this at work,’ Leo says gently. ‘A fourteen-year-old who’d been raped—’
‘He didn’t rape me.’ But she remembers the torn button on her jeans; the bruises on her shoulders, her thighs.
‘—what would you say to her?’
Leo waits, keeping his eyes locked on Ffion’s as she shakes her head, remembering how still and quiet she was on Rhys’s sofa, how she didn’t move away, or say no, or fight back.
Rhys had whispered in her ear, hot and damp as the pain tore through her. ‘You’ve wanted this all summer, haven’t you?’