Free The Book of You: A Novel by Claire Kendal

my eardrums.
    By ten I cannot endure another minute. I grab the intercom phone. You win again. It is impossible to stay silent.
    “I will never let you in. I don’t want to go out with you; I never asked for that ticket; I’d never have shown up at that restaurant last night if I’d known you’d be there.”
    You say, “I don’t want to upset you, Clarissa.” You say, “I’m just trying to make you happy, Clarissa.” You say, “That’s all I want. But you’ve hurt me, Clarissa.” You say, “I know you’re lonely, Clarissa. I’m lonely, too.” You say, “I’m just trying to help us both, Clarissa.” You say, “I know your heart’s been broken, Clarissa. Mine’s been broken, too. Again and again by you.” You say, “I’m going now, Clarissa.”
    I jerk the handset onto its cradle in such distress it falls off and dangles and I have to put it back. The new noiselessness is so quiet it makes a low hum in my ears. But I can’t get rid of my anxiety that you are still standing there.

Friday
    I T WAS DIFFICULT to focus on Azarola’s barrister after barely sleeping the night before.
    “Please confirm your description of the man you said they picked up en route to London.” Mr. Williams made Clarissa think of an actor in a legal drama who’d mastered his lines and moves. “You said, ‘About five foot nine, mixed race, slight build, with long plaits.’ ”
    Azarola leaned forward. He was well over six feet. His skin was golden, his eyes were hazel, and his hair was straight and short and thick and medium brown. His shoulders and chest were broad, like Robert’s, beneath his fitted black sweater, which she thought looked expensive and fine, and was probably cashmere. He made her think of a Spanish pop star.
    “Yes. That was my description,” Miss Lockyer said.
    There was no way that description matched. Could Clarissa herself make such a mistake, if she were in too much fear to look? Or had the police got the wrong man?
     
    T OMLINSON’S BARRISTER LOOKED like a seasoned Shakespearean actor. “Mr. Tomlinson had consensual sex with you. It was not the violent encounter you portrayed. It was a cold-blooded commercial transaction for drugs. You are a professional, Miss Lockyer. You even gave Mr. Tomlinson a condom.”
    Clarissa shuddered. She hadn’t been able to remember enough of that November night to know if Rafe had worn a condom. Knowing him, he probably hadn’t. She’d been inexpressibly relieved when her period had started a week later, as expected: a novel experience for her to wish not to be pregnant. What would Mr. Belford make of her, if she were sitting in that witness chair?
     
    C LARISSA SPOKE QUIETLY to Annie as they got their coats and slowly made their way out of the building. “That’s what happens when you press charges, when you complain. They just rape you up there all over again and say you’re a prostitute.”
    “But she was a prostitute, Clarissa,” Annie said. “Nobody could possibly believe her when she says she wasn’t.”
     
    C LARISSA STUFFED HER tattered copy of Keats’s Collected Poems into her bag. The book was a relic of her abandoned PhD, and something she always reached for when the world around her seemed especially dark and uncivilized. She glanced out the train window. Robert strode assuredly along the platform and disappeared down the stairs. She hadn’t realized he’d been on the train; it hadn’t occurred to her that he might live in Bath, too. Somehow he’d climbed off and got himself almost out of the station before the other passengers had even begun to alight.
    She surveyed the platform for Rafe, peering into the crowd that was pressing her toward the stairs. Her body was aching from sitting all day. She wanted fresh air. She wanted to move. She’d already had to give up her morning walks. She didn’t want to lose the walk home, too. The fact that the taxi queue was so impossibly long helped her to make up her mind, but she was glad