‘A bit. Whether it’s a bit or a lot, it’s still rape,’ I say, keeping my voice low. ‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘Roma and Daddy came home. Daddy was putting the car away and Roma came into the house first. She must have heard me crying. I had given up struggling at this point. Anyway, the next thing I knew, she was pulling Nathaniel off me and bundling him into his room. She came back and told me that I was never to speak a word about it. That if I did, I would get more than just a beating.’
‘Oh my darling. Oh, that is awful.’ Mum’s tears begin again. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘The next day I told Roma that if she or her son ever laid another finger on me, then I would file a police report.’
‘Did you go to the doctor? Did you have evidence?’ I don’t want to ask Alice in front of Mum if she kept her underwear or bed sheet for DNA from Nathaniel. Alice, however, seems to have no qualms.
‘I figured if Monica Lewinsky could keep Bill Clinton’s sp …, well, you know …’ She screws up her nose and scrunches her shoulders, not needing to elaborate further. ‘Anyway, if she can keep Clinton’s stuff all those years, then I sure as hell could keep Nathaniel’s. In theory, anyway. You should have seen the look on Roma’s face when I told her that.’
‘Did you have your underwear?’ I ask.
‘Oh, Clare, you are such a lawyer,’ Alice says and grins at me. ‘No, but I wasn’t gonna let her know that. Anyway, it worked, as neither of them laid a finger on me again. And when Daddy died, she gave me your address. Said she found it in his things, but I think she had kept it all that time and only gave it to me once she realised she wasn’t getting her hands on the rest of Daddy’s money.’
‘You’ve been through so much. You’re so brave. Are you okay? I mean, really okay?’ asks Mum.
‘Sure. I mean, nothing that a bit of therapy won’t sort out. Well, that’s what I’ve been told but, if you wanna know the truth, I think you and Clare and Clare’s family are the only therapy I need. Your love is enough to heal all the wounds.’
It’s uncharitable of me to think this sounds a bit OTT and clichéd, but then I remind myself that, to all intents and purposes, Alice is American and therapy is far more widely spoken about and accepted over there.
‘Anyway, enough of all that,’ says Alice. ‘It’s in the past. This is a new beginning for me. For all of us.’ She gives Mum’s hand a squeeze and looks at me with a smile, which I return.
I have to admit to being impressed by her resilience. Her ability to push the negativity away so easily is quite outstanding. I’ve seen it with some clients who have sat in my office or in a police rape suite and had to recount an awful attack they’ve been subjected to and sometimes there can be a certain amount of detachment. However, I’ve never seen detachment quite like this. It’s almost as if Alice is talking about something much more trivial. I can’t help but think if she was one of my clients and this was a courtroom, I would be urging her to show more emotion.
I want to quiz her further, as if I were preparing one of my clients for court and how the defence might try to discredit her, but Mum moves the conversation on far too quickly, asking Alice about school and education, which Alice skims over. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to talk about her past too much and, I suppose, who can blame her after everything she’s been through? I end up telling Alice more about my childhood and my friends, how I met Luke at school, and so on.
‘You must have lots of friends if you’ve always lived here,’ says Alice.
‘Maybe not as many as you’d think. Most of the people I went to school with have spread their wings a bit further afield than Little Dray. I’m good friends with one of the mums from Hannah’s school, Pippa Stent. Her daughter, Daisy, is friends with Hannah. We’re both on the board of governors. I’ve never really done the whole mums-playground-coffee-circuit thing, mainly because I’m hardly ever there. What with work and everything, Luke knows the other parents better than I do.’
‘Don’t you miss being a mum?’ asks Alice.
Instantly, my hackles rise and I can feel a surge of defensive anger shift inside me. I look Alice straight in the eye when I answer. ‘I am a mum. Just because I don’t do the school run, it doesn’t make me any less of a mother.’ I’m not sure whose face I want to slap. Alice’s for questioning me as a mother or my own for getting so angry about it. Jesus, Alice is only young, she doesn’t have any children and it sounds as though she had a shit role model. What does she know about motherhood?
‘I’m sure Alice didn’t mean you weren’t a good mother,’ says Mum. ‘She probably just meant the school run, didn’t you Alice?’