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I’m the one who should be coming to see you, instead of Becky.’
    Frieda shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I should be seeing Becky either. I told you I would assess her and decide whether she needed to see someone. She does need that, and I can find someone for her, someone good. But I’d like to see her again first.’
    Maddie looked suspicious. ‘What for? Are you going to persuade her to go to the police?’
    ‘No. Not that. I had the feeling that Becky started to say something, but she didn’t quite finish. Once she has said it, she should move on to someone else.’
    Maddie turned away from Frieda and looked out of the window again. It was already starting to get dark. ‘I thought it was going to be simple,’ she said, almost to herself.



6
     
    ‘She doesn’t believe me.’
    ‘She doesn’t know whether to believe you.’
    ‘Do you really think that makes it any better? That she doesn’t
know
whether to believe me?’ Becky leaned forward in the chair, grasping its arms with both hands. Her face was screwed up in a grimace of anger and distress. She had a cold sore at the corner of her mouth and her hair was lank and unwashed. ‘Because it doesn’t. It fucking doesn’t. She’s my mother. She’s supposed to be on my side. Now she looks at me as if I smell rank or something. I embarrass her. She speaks to me in this high, careful voice and can’t look me in the eye. I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never told you anything.’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I was doing OK and you made me drag everything out in the open and now it’s there
and I can’t hide it away again.’
    ‘Your mother –’
    ‘My mother thinks I made it up.’ Becky gave a sharp sob. ‘That it’s a fantasy. What kind of person would have a fantasy like that?’
    ‘People make things up all the time. All sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.’
    ‘Don’t you believe me either? Now that you’ve made me ruin my life?’
    ‘I do believe you,’ Frieda said steadily.
    ‘Why? You don’t know me. Maybe my mother’s right and you’re wrong. Maybe you’re just too trusting and gullible.’
    ‘I don’t think many people would agree with that.’
    ‘So why?’
    Frieda paused, considering. ‘You rang true,’ she said.
    ‘So you don’t think I’m just trying to draw attention to myself.’
    ‘I know you’re telling me the truth. It must have felt terrible, Becky.’
    Becky wrapped her thin arms around her thin body and stood in the centre of the room as if she was trying to protect herself or hide herself.
    ‘Yes,’ was all she managed. ‘Yes, it did. It does.’
    ‘Do you want to sit down?’
    Becky sat, but on the edge of her chair, as if she was about to jump up again.
    ‘She said I shouldn’t talk about it to other people, that it would all die down.’
    ‘What did you actually say?’
    ‘Not much. I couldn’t. It took all my courage to get the words out. I was sick – literally sick – before I went downstairs and told her. I just blurted it out.’
    ‘So, no details of any kind?’
    ‘No details.’
    ‘You didn’t tell her the circumstances?’
    ‘I said it was at home, in my bedroom.’
    ‘Do you remember it?’
    ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to.’
    ‘So you’re trying to push it away into the darkness and bury it.’
    ‘Yes. I have been since it happened. Until you came along.’
    ‘You were raped.’ Frieda paused, watched Becky intently. ‘A terrible thing was done to you, and now you feel polluted and ashamed, as if it was your fault.’
    ‘Maybe it was.’ Becky’s voice was a whisper.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Like, I’d been asking for it.’
    ‘Asking for it in what way?’
    Becky was staring down at her knotted hands. Her face looked grey; old and babyish at the same time.
    ‘I was in with a crowd of guys and I slept with one of them. Just a couple of times. But it was a bit out of control, really.’
    ‘Was it one of them who raped you?’
    ‘No. I mean I don’t know, but