It’s typical of her. All through university, people would underestimate her. She was softly spoken, small-boned, would sit, almost huddled, with her arms folded right across her middle, so people thought she was meek. But she wasn’t, not at all.
She wordlessly picks up her drink and we walk across the makeshift dance floor, squeezing against bodies that jolt unpredictably. The only place available is right next to the speaker, which is pumping out a dance hit I would have loved five years ago. It’s thrumming in my ear, the bass reverberating in my sternum. Opposite me, I can see a couple standing close to each other. The woman has an Afro, a slim waist exposed between a black top and trousers. His hand is on the wall behind her. He’s talking softly in her ear. I wonder what their evenings look like. I bet they listen to indie music on the radio while cooking from scratch. Or maybe they paint together, every Sunday: a weekend ritual. Abstract art. It would get all over their clothes, their walls, but they wouldn’t care.
She catches me looking, and for the millionth time in my life, I am pleased that nobody can read my mind. She draws a hand up to her hair, embarrassed. I look away, but not before noticing that her nails are painted a jewel-toned plum; glossy and perfectly even. Ah. She is one of those. A Proper Person, I call them in my head. Proper People have well-fitting clothes and neat hair and glowing skin. You can break it all down into its component parts, but the thing is – they just look … groomed. They are doing something right. Something intangible. I wonder if they’ve all been told, like some rite of passage, and I haven’t.
‘What?’ Laura says, following my gaze.
‘Oh, look,’ I say, as the couple embrace again.
‘Oh to be young and in love,’ she says.
I look curiously at her. I realize that I no longer see Jonty kiss her. Their relationship seems pally, somehow; more about teamwork than romance. No doubt she thinks the same of Reuben and me. Reuben seems reserved, remote, dismissive. Until the door closes behind us, that is.
‘He was a weird one,’ Laura shouts, pointing with her drink over to the bar. ‘Sadiq.’
‘I know.’
‘Pushy.’
‘Oh, he’ll leave us alone now.’
Laura raises her eyebrows but says nothing. ‘Jonty is acting strangely,’ she says after a moment.
I look up in surprise. ‘Really?’
‘He said he didn’t like my latest project. He’s never said that. He’s never cared.’
‘No?’
She rakes her fringe back. It snarls, sticking up slightly before drifting down. She puffs air into her cheeks.
Lovely Jonty; he’s been sacked from every office job he’s ever had because of lateness. He often forgets he’s going on holiday and has to be ushered to the airport in surprise. Posh and affable and a bit hopeless: what he wants more than anything is a quiet life, a G&T in his hand. I like to consider what everybody I meet truly wants. I started doing it when I was a teenager, and I haven’t been able to stop.
‘What’s going on with him?’ I say, frowning.
He has been temping, recently, painting perfume bottles with glitter for the Christmas season. He says it’s quite meditative.
‘I have no idea. Do you?’
I am often asked for advice about people. Nothing else, of course. Nothing highbrow. I am never asked for my opinion on medicine or law or planning permission or transfer deadline day or the war in Syria. Just people, and the things they do.
‘What’s he saying to you?’
‘Nothing. Just – talking about the future more, maybe.’ She shrugs.
She doesn’t want to discuss it any further, I can see.
‘How’s that master’s?’ she adds.
‘What master’s?’ I ask absent-mindedly.
‘The cultural theory one.’
I frown. It does ring a bell. ‘Oh, still pending,’ I say vaguely.
I am forever applying for master’s courses and grants and pitching articles to the Guardian and thinking maybe I would like to be a coffee-shop owner. Maybe I will farm cocoa beans in South America? I will WhatsApp Laura. You burn too easily, though, she will send back. Maybe wheat in England instead? And even though it’s endless, my career pondering, and must be tedious, she takes each and every whim as seriously as the first.
‘Good luck,’ she says with a smile. She looks like she’s going to add something else, but then her gaze drifts to just behind me, and she never starts her sentence. Or rather, she starts a different one. ‘Okay, leaving time,’ she says.
I look behind me, and there’s Sadiq. I shrug, irritated, and move away a few feet, but he follows, an arm reaching out.
‘Leave us alone,’ Laura says.
‘You don’t want to be talking to me like that,’ he says.
My head turns, and the song stops, leaving a beat before a new one starts, during which time I can hear blood pulsing in my ears.
And suddenly, it’s not funny any more. A frisson of fear moves through me. Images pop into my mind. Images of women followed down alleyways, coaxed into passenger seats, dismembered in car boots.
I move further away from him, towards the wall, away from Laura. I think of the couple I saw earlier, and how happy they looked, and I wish Reuben were here. He wouldn’t say anything; he wouldn’t have to. He has a presence like that. People seem to behave for him, like naughty children.
Sadiq follows me, blocking me in. Behind him, Laura’s eyes are narrowing so they are almost entirely closed. And now he is squaring up to me, right in front of me. I walk away from him, dodging around him, but he grabs me, pulls me back, and grinds into the back of me, his hands either side of my hips – either side of my bum – like we are in a sex scene.
I stand completely still for a second or two. Shock, is it? Whatever it is, it’s two seconds during which I can not only feel his hands, his breath on the back of my neck, but his erection, too. Hard against the back of my thigh. I can’t help but imagine how it looks. The thought intrudes in my mind like an unwanted Internet pop-up, and I wince. I haven’t felt another man’s penis in over seven years. Until now. What would Reuben say? He’d call him a fucking dickhead, that’s what he’d say. The thought comforts me.
I move slowly away from him, smiling awkwardly because I don’t know what else to do, the shock of being touched against my will like jumping off a pier and into the sea. I can still feel him. The warmth and hardness of him. My teeth start chattering. I don’t say anything. I should, but I don’t. I just want to be gone.
Laura is taking the drink out of my hand and trying to find a surface to put it on. In the end, she places it on top of the speaker – she can only just reach – and she grabs my coat, and my arm, and we turn to leave.
He grabs for me again. A catlike swipe. He catches just my finger, as I’m leaving. I try to pull it away from him, but he’s stronger than me. I could shout, but what would I say? A man grabbing a woman’s hand in a bar hardly feels like a crime, though maybe it is. Instead, I am complicit, almost holding his hand. Nobody knows it is against my will. Nobody knows what’s going on in my head. His hand is momentarily like a manacle around mine.
He squeezes hard, enclosing my hand in the whole of his palm. He releases, and squeezes again; a kind of sexual threat. And then he lets go of me entirely.
Outside, the winter air puffing out of my mouth like chalk dust, I can still feel his body against mine. I am imagining it, but my thigh feels wet. I reach a hand down to check. It isn’t.
Laura hands me my coat. ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘I’ve not had to leave a bar because of a nutter for a while. Are we twenty again?’
She’s making light of it, and I’m thankful for that. I can still feel him between my legs; that pressure, the feeling of fullness. Was that a sexual assault? I guess it was. But maybe I am somehow to blame. I shudder, wrapping my coat around me to try and keep the rain out.
‘You alright?’ Laura asks.
I nod, not lifting my head again, looking at my cream-ribboned shoes. I don’t want to discuss it. Like the congestion zone charge I ignored until it was too late, and we had to pay double, and Reuben got cross, I sweep it away into a back room in my mind.