The man’s yelp, coupled no doubt with the expression on my face, made Kit realise how serious the situation was. ‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
I took a step forward and put myself between the men and the girl. ‘There’s a girl, I think she’s been . . .’ The word fell apart on my lips, the letters in a domino topple. ‘I think she’s been attacked.’
The man rolled his eyes in my direction. ‘It’s fine.’ He threw Kit a smile of all-boys-together conspiracy. ‘We just weren’t expecting company. Were we?’ The girl wiped her nose on the back of her hand, looking without expression at the smear of mucus on her sleeve. ‘She’s just embarrassed to be caught with her knickers down, aren’t you?’ His voice was light but his jaw flexed between sentences. ‘I’m not exactly delighted about it myself. But that’s all there is to it. Your missus has jumped to the wrong conclusion.’
‘Oh,’ said Kit uncertainly.
‘I know what I saw,’ I said.
The man began to back away. With the girl mute and Kit confused, I realised it was up to me.
‘I think we need to get the police involved.’ It came out firmly, my voice betraying none of the roaring terror inside.
‘You need to calm down,’ said the man, but he was losing his own cool.
I stood my ground. ‘If you haven’t done anything wrong, you haven’t got anything to worry about.’
He rounded on the girl. ‘Would you fucking say something so we can all get on with our lives?’ There was violence in his voice. To me, it was as good as a confession and Kit’s face at last registered the seriousness of what was happening. The man realised he’d lost his ally.
‘Fuck this.’ He walked briskly away, past the fairground junk and into the trees.
‘Kit, don’t let him get away!’ I said. ‘Go after him!’
‘What?’ He looked absolutely horrified but he did it. My shy, gentle Kit ran after a violent man because I asked him to and because he took me at my word that something terrible had happened.
I crouched next to the girl. ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it all right.’ My arm brushed against hers; soft skin over softer flesh. I got a proper look at her; green irises were almost eclipsed by flared pupils. Inside the cloud of black hair was a heart-shaped face, pinched but pretty. She looked a bit like Disney’s Snow White if she had grown out her bob and loosened her corset.
‘Who is he?’ I asked her. ‘D’you know him?’
She opened her mouth to speak but only a strangled croak came out. Long black hair was all over her clothes. She picked up a strand, put her hand up to one of her temples, then took her fingers away like she was expecting blood.
‘Did he pull your hair out?’ She didn’t answer, just let the strands float down to the ground. ‘Christ. Ok. We need to go and find some police,’ I said. ‘There’s a little Portakabin at the gate. Can you get there?’
This time she managed to shake her head.
‘Can you tell me your name?’
‘Beth.’ She nodded, as though glad she’d remembered it.
‘All right Beth, I’m going to call them for you.’ My phone was in my bag, but I’d turned it off on arrival. I held down the power button and waited for the little dot matrix screen to glow green. It took so long that I was resigned to waiting for Kit to return then sending him off to get help, or even hoping that he would somehow manage to get the man to the police on his own, but I couldn’t see that happening. For the first time I felt a chill of fear on Kit’s behalf. Would he hit Kit? At last, the phone lit up. I pressed the rubbery nine key three times, but nothing happened. I checked the screen; the bars were all empty. I waved it around in the air to summon a signal.
‘I need to step just a few feet away, so that I can get reception,’ I said. ‘I won’t go far.’ I had to walk a good twenty paces, to the broken bumper car, before the connection was made; all I could see of Beth was a silver Chipie trainer poking from the doorway of the caravan.
‘999, what’s your emergency?’ The voice was female: West Country; young. There was all the usual office hubbub in the background, and it was strange to imagine that this was all in a day’s work for the woman on the other end of the line; that she might be drinking tea while I talked.
‘I’m at the Lizard Point festival, near Helston, and I need to report . . .’ I choked on the word, then gathered myself. ‘I need to report a rape. Not me, not me. I found a girl, and he was . . . we need the police.’
I picked at the foam stuffing spilling out of the bumper car’s torn seat.
‘Is the victim conscious?’
‘God yeah, she can walk, she hasn’t got any cuts or anything, but I think she’s . . . she’s traumatised, she’s not really talking properly. I’d say she needs an ambulance. Can it be a WPC? Can it be a female paramedic?’
I craned my neck through the trees, to get a sense of what might be happening on the other side. I thought I could hear the murmur of a moving crowd, but no individual voices.
‘We’ll send the first available officers,’ said the operator. ‘Just stay with her.’
‘The man who did it, I saw him, but he’s run off.’ The wad of foam in my hand looked like candy floss. I let it float away.
‘Would you be able to give a description?’
‘She’s called Beth; she’s got black hair and—’
‘Of the attacker.’
‘Oh. Yes.’ I could still see him with photographic clarity. ‘He’s got short brown hair in spikes, navy Diesel jacket, Levi’s twist jeans, white Adidas shell-toes.’ It was surreal, ridiculous, like I was reading aloud a fashion spread from Loaded magazine. A sweaty hand on my arm nearly made me drop the phone. It was Kit, his breath ragged.
‘Hang on,’ I said to the operator, and covered the receiver while Kit mouthed words at me.
‘He just disappeared into the crowd,’ he said.
I repeated, then confirmed our location using a tall Water Aid flag as a marker, then ended the call.