‘The police have worked so hard to find you over the last few days,’ Maggie said, hoping she would talk, tell her what had happened. Instead, she just gave a small nod, her face turned down to her chest. Her shoulders were shaking. ‘Oh, Rain,’ Maggie said, glancing at the officer with an apologetic look. ‘Maybe talking about it will help?’
Rain twisted the sheet, her thin fingers working the fabric. ‘I told them some stuff already. But you won’t understand everything. No one will. Ever.’
‘It’s OK, love,’ Maggie replied, knowing that forcing anything out of her was usually counter-productive. ‘All in good time.’ But she couldn’t get Callum’s arrest out of her head.
‘When you’re feeling more up to it, Rain, we’ll need to take a statement from you,’ PC Wyndham said, pausing, hoping to elicit something. But all she managed was a small nod.
‘A statement?’ Maggie looked between the two of them.
‘I want you both to know that we’re taking what happened extremely seriously. We’ll do everything we can to help you.’
‘Just tell me what’s going on,’ Maggie said, gripping the officer’s arm. ‘No one’s told me anything.’ Her voice wavered.
Rain’s head jerked up. ‘But I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she half-sobbed, burning crimson. ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘I know you haven’t, Rain. You’ve suffered a terrible ordeal and we’ll do everything in our power to get justice. But we do need to get the facts from you. You won’t have to see him.’
‘See who?’ Maggie said, on the verge of tears. She didn’t understand – or rather, was it that she didn’t want to understand?
‘As you know, Maggie, we arrested Callum Rodway on suspicion of…’
Maggie suddenly felt dizzy, her chest tightening when she heard his name, hardly able to take in what she was being told. She’d tried to block out the implications of his arrest, but hearing the words direct from PC Wyndham made it painfully real. As she listened, she couldn’t stand to think of that bastard – someone they’d all known and trusted for years – doing such a vile thing to her daughter. She knew he’d been arrested, and now her worst suspicions had been confirmed. She needed to stay calm for Rain, but the anger was boiling up inside her. All she wanted to do was find him and punch his disgusting face.
‘I shouldn’t have gone into his room, Mum, I know that, but I was drunk. I thought it was Marcus’s room,’ Rain said, curling up even more. ‘Then, when I saw him, it was just like a part of me, you know…’ She pulled a pained expression, struggling to find the right words. ‘It was like I wanted to prove I’m attractive, that I’m worth something. He’d already hugged me in the cellar. I guess I wanted him to do that again. It was just nice to be noticed for once.’
‘Oh, Rain,’ Maggie said, holding her. ‘None of this is your fault.’ Though, as a mother, she couldn’t help feeling it was hers.
‘Rain, please trust me when I say we’re going to do everything we can to help you,’ PC Wyndham said. ‘What he did is against the law, and however you felt, whatever you thought the situation was, it was never OK for him to have done this to you. Do you hear me?’
Rain nodded, sniffing. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘You can throw the bastard in jail to rot, as far as I’m concerned,’ Maggie said, unable to control herself any longer. She gripped the bar on the side of the bed, her knuckles flashing white. ‘No one does this to my daughter and gets away with it,’ she spat out. ‘No one!’
Then Rain started crying – hot, powerful tears bubbling out of her, purging the pain. ‘Oh, Mum, I c-c-couldn’t stop him.’ She buried her face in the sheet, her knees tucked up under her chin. ‘After… after he did it, he wouldn’t let me go. I was terrified. I just lay there, trying to pretend it never happened. I was trying to act normal the next day, but all I wanted was to die of shame. I hated myself more than ever. I felt disgusting.’ Maggie handed Rain some tissues from a box on the side table. She blew her nose. ‘I didn’t know what to do or where to go, just that I had to get away. I knew no one would believe me anyway. I’d got some spare clothes in my beach bag, so I ran. It was like a switch flicked inside me.’ She wiped her face with a fresh tissue. ‘I couldn’t face anyone, let alone him.’
‘It’s OK, I understand, darling. I’m here for you. And I totally believe you.’ Maggie forced herself to calm down for Rain’s sake, even though inside she felt far from it.
‘I admit, a part of me wanted to scare you, Mum. To show you how I felt, to show you all my pain. I wanted you to give a shit about me for once and come find me.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘But it’s not just about that now…’ she whispered, shaking her head, covering her face. ‘When I ran away, things got so much worse.’ Rain broke down again.
As she listened, Maggie felt her own tears pouring down her cheeks. Part of her wanted to smash up the room – take her hatred of Callum out on whatever was close – while the other part wanted to wrap up Rain in her arms and never let her go. ‘Love… oh God, love, I’m so sorry…I do care about you. So much.’ She hugged Rain again. Imagining what she would do to that bastard when she saw him would have to suffice for now.
‘Rain, I just need to have a word with your mum for a moment, if that’s OK,’ PC Wyndham said with a kind look. She gestured towards the door. ‘Do you want to come out here a moment, Maggie?’
But Maggie couldn’t let go of Rain. She rocked her back and forth, promising everything would be OK, that they would get through this together.
‘Maggie?’ PC Wyndham repeated, touching her shoulder. ‘Please, just a quick word if you wouldn’t mind?’
‘Sorry,’ Maggie replied, prising herself away. She held her daughter’s gaze until she left the room, mouthing I won’t be long at her. She was lightheaded from adrenalin, anger and shock. Minutes ago, she hadn’t even known if her daughter was dead or alive.
‘Let’s go down here,’ the officer suggested, leading her down the corridor past Claire, Shona and Nick. They all fussed over her as she walked by, asking so many questions she thought her head was going to explode. She put up her hands to stall them, following PC Wyndham into a quiet doorway alcove.
‘Rain will have a thorough medical examination and further checks, which will form part of the case,’ the officer said quietly. ‘She’s the victim of a terrible crime and I just want to reiterate how seriously we’re taking this.’
Maggie nodded, sniffing back another round of tears, swallowing down her anger.
‘But I do feel there’s more to this, as if she’s holding something back. I thought I should mention it in case you can throw any light on it.’ PC Wyndham paused, but when Maggie remained silent, looking puzzled, she continued. ‘Rain had a very brief initial chat with a psychologist earlier. The clinician suspected there was something else that Rain wanted to talk about, something she wasn’t ready to let out. While she seems willing to make a statement concerning the sexual assault, I’m wondering if there’s more to this.’
Maggie remembered the look Rain had given her – a lonely, terrified look that had cut her to the core. And what had she meant by things got so much worse. ‘Yeah, me too,’ she said, nodding. ‘But I have no idea what.’
‘A woman from the village brought Rain to hospital. She came across her down on the beach near Trevellin. Apparently, she was on her knees, hysterical and trying to wash herself in the sea. The woman asked her if she was OK and, when she clearly wasn’t, she persuaded her to come here.’
‘Oh Christ,’ Maggie said. ‘Thank God she helped her. Rain must feel so dirty…’
‘Before you arrived, I tried to ascertain where she’d been these past few days. At first, she told me that she’d hitched a lift out of Cornwall and gone to her best friend Katie’s house, that she’d not been in the area at all. It might explain the van sighting. But then she switched her story and said that she’d hit her head and lost her memory, that she had no idea what had happened. Finally, she told me that she’d been sleeping rough not far away, though she wouldn’t tell us where exactly. Like I said, her story kept changing.’