What You Did

by Claire McGowan

No one ever tells you that this is the downside of giving your kids everything you never had – they turn into spoiled little brats.

True statement

‘I never disclosed this to you, but there’s a reason I do this job. I was raped at university. A friend of a friend spiked my drink, I think, and when I woke up he was having sex with me.’

So often this happens and no justice is served.

‘Oh my God. Did you report him?’ She shook her head. ‘I knew him. I’d been drinking – not enough to pass out, but some. I tried to talk to a few friends but he was popular, and they didn’t believe me.

Sad we take on the blame

We aren’t meant to know what other people think in this level of detail.’

That’s interesting, I always thought that was a cliché. Turns out that extreme shock really does make you puke. I cried, and retched, and cried some more. Pathetic.

We always think we want to know secrets, but what we forget is that they come with their own weights, heavy as millstones, and if you aren’t careful this weight can crush you.

Yes, you can't take on every one's problems.

And anyway, just because we – I still didn’t want it later on. He still forced me. That’s still – Ali, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You know what rape is.’

‘Martha. I helped you.’

Because how else could she justify sleeping with her best friend’s husband?

No justification for this act

But what we don’t understand is that love can turn on a dime. We don’t know how easy it is to feel it flip over to a dark side, cold and dead, like the moon spinning on its axis.

Wow

Mike avoid becoming a statistic. In the wrong place. No alibi. Last seen with her. Had I in reality helped cover up his cheating?

‘Hey.’ He was there already. All in black, the hood of his raincoat pulled up even though it was the driest and most scorching night of the year.

‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

More than three years later, Martha Rasby would lie dead behind the same walls. And now I was here again, finally, to try and find out why.

Always our responsibility to keep ourselves safe, never the men’s not to hurt us.

Although I knew it didn’t work that way, that the picture had already spread from phone to phone like cold sores, that it was maybe even on one of those websites I’d written a piece about.

I had the feeling that the next few moments were going to be very important. That maybe they’d even determine the rest of my life.

That was it, the moment everything was decided between us. Almost twenty years of marriage, two kids, a ridiculous house. My whole life. His whole life. Turning on a small lie. Barely even a lie. Mike said nothing. I was asking so much that I should have felt sick and shaky, but I didn’t at all. I felt strong. ‘I’ll talk to Cal,’ he said. ‘I guess it would be good to split the rent.’

You aren’t allowed to say it but your wedding is perilously close to a licence to let out the selfish little diva inside all of us. It says to girls – you won’t matter any more, not after this, so for today you get to matter the most.

All this time I’d been waiting for someone to take charge, and it seemed now that someone was me.

But Mike was in bare arms when I confronted him right after, on the swing seat. Someone else could have put the jumper on. Someone else could have done this to Karen.

I think that was the moment I fully believed it. Callum had raped Karen.

A man was attacking my friend, so I hit him with a plant pot. He’s bleeding.

Because if anyone knew the truth, it would all come tumbling down, the life she’d spent almost twenty-five years building and perfecting.