Read Without Consent for Free Online Page A

it?’
    â€˜No, not long. Probably the weather.’
    On a day like this, even the most conscientious juror would want to be gone. Back to a flat, a house, a bus ride,away from sordid tales of bodily fluids, out of the gloom and the security checks, into the warm sunlight.
    â€˜Half an hour.’ Rose tugged at the ends of her hair, found one longer lock, stuck it in her mouth and chewed. ‘Half an hour to brand that girl a cheap little liar.’
    Helen protested, mildly.
    â€˜No. He only had to show that his belief in her consent was reasonable at the time, even if he accepted in retrospect that it was wrong. The clever part was that he was careful to avoid calling her a liar.’
    â€˜Won’t make any difference to the way she feels.’
    â€˜She’ll probably recover,’ Helen said. She looked cool in the heat. Her right foot steadied a box of paper at her feet.
    â€˜What a cold-hearted bitch you are, Aunty West, honestly.’
    Helen did not reply. There was clearly a better occasion to mention that the deepest and most terrifying of humiliations, rape included, did not always send a life into an inevitable downward spiral. Rose herself was a fine example of recovery. Rose, who was still so young, but had never been allowed innocence. A father from hell, a history of abuse and promiscuity, from which she had risen, like the phoenix from the ashes, frightened of nothing. Proud of her, Helen also envied that huge capacity for life which had made the transformation possible, and, while trying to ignore Rose’s comments on the frozen state of her own soul, wondered if the remarks were true and whether it really was a cop-out to make yourself indifferent to the things you could not change.
    â€˜You were saying something earlier on about a favour,’ she said. The taxi bowled out into Ludgate Hill. The vastspectre of St Paul’s rose before them in majesty, the steps littered with brightly coloured people. They looked normal; they had decent lives, wore their best and most garish clothes, each with his own history. Helen wanted to go inside, feel the cool, mingle with gawping visitors and pretend superiority. Rose was fingering her hair into sharper spikes, a sure sign of determination. Hers was a life which made religion, even religious buildings, anathema. Her father had always carried a Bible, even on his way to abuse little girls. Rose now believed in a different set of gods.
    â€˜Yeah. I want you to talk to this friend. Well, I don’t know. You might bite her head off and tell her to go and get a life or something.’
    â€˜Oh, for Christ’s sake stop talking in riddles. What do you want me to do?’
    Rose took a deep breath of exasperation, then enunciated her words as carefully as any real lawyer on a pedestal.
    â€˜Michael’s cousin. She’s doing my flowers. I like her a lot, as it happens. Eight years younger than you; nine years older than me. Work that out for yourself. Only, she’s been attacked, by a man. She told Mike’s mum, but she won’t say much and Mike’s mum says it’s been like watching someone shrivel up, but she won’t do anything about it. You met her at my engagement party, remember? You two got on like a house on fire.’
    â€˜And you want me to talk to her? Forget it. There’s social services, Rape Crisis, Victim Support, all that…’
    â€˜And none of it would do. Don’t ask me why, it won’t. You’re the right age, you know what it’s like to be attacked, you can pull words out of people. Will you do it?’
    â€˜No. I haven’t got the skill.’
    Nor the time and certainly not the inclination. She was trying to recall the woman she had met, remembered a large girl, a midwife by profession. The taxi turned sharply, diving through a dark narrow street, throwing them together. Helen could feel the heat of Rose’s skin. Papers littered the floor, ignored.