Free Woman of the Hour by Jane Lythell Page B

Folkestone Central. Fenton has red hair, hazel eyes and a wicked smile. I think of her as a Restoration woman, warm, passionate and brave. She hugged me and took my overnight bag. She lives in a fisherman’s cottage down near the harbour. It’s a two-up two-down and Fenton has made it into such a welcoming little house with its floorboards painted a different colour in every room. I sat in her kitchen as she made us a large pot of tea and slices of buttered toast and Marmite. Later, we walked along by the edge of the sea. Fenton is a great listener and her presence has a calming influence on me.
    ‘I think you need to report him, love,’ she said finally.
    ‘I don’t think I can. I must have been giving off mixed signals. I mean I asked him to dance with me!’
    ‘You’re allowed to ask a man for a dance.’
    ‘And when we first started kissing I responded. I did. I was enjoying it, but then he got too rough, way too rough. It was horrible but he didn’t rape me.’
    ‘He didn’t rape you because you pushed him away.’
    ‘I feel so stupid and so ashamed.’
    ‘Why are you taking all the guilt onto yourself?’
    She had stopped walking to look at me.
    ‘Come on, let’s sit down,’ she said.
    We sat on the pebbles and watched the seagulls wheeling through the December sky. The sea was as grey as the sky and the foam was yellowish-white and scummy like dirty soapsuds as it smashed onto the pebbles. I shivered and Fenton put her arm around me.
    ‘I don’t know how I’m going to face him on Monday.’
    ‘I wish you’d report him. But if you’re not going to report him then you need to take the power back. Tell him he was way too rough and he frightened you.’
    ‘The thought of saying that, of saying anything about it, makes me shrivel inside.’
    ‘You know a lot of men go on being bullies because they get away with it,’ she said.
    She stood up and helped me to my feet.
    ‘Come on, it’s cold. Time for those fish and chips I promised you.’
    They do the best fish and chips down there. We bought haddock and chips and a giant gherkin each, added lashings of salt and vinegar and walked back to the beach to eat them. You’re not supposed to but Fenton throws her leftover chips to the seagulls and braves the disapproving glances from other people. She says seagulls are wild and beautiful and she doesn’t understand why they get such a bad press.
    When I returned to work on Monday I was a little stronger after my two days with Fenton. There was no sign of Julius and his PA told me he’d gone off early for the Christmas break. I had to get through three more days at work and I was so relieved he wasn’t around. Then I too locked up my office and travelled on the train for five hours to Glasgow to join my mum and Flo. It was always going to be difficult, our first Christmas without Ben, but I was obsessing the whole time about what had happened between Julius and me. Should I report him? And if I didn’t, how would I be able to behave normally around him? I couldn’t afford to give up my job. My mum is a serious person and I hadn’t been able to confide any of this to her. How could I tell her I’d had a near-rape experience with my boss at the staff Christmas party two months after separating from Ben?
    Enough! I didn’t want to think about that horrible time in my life any more. The flapjack mixture was ready and I spooned it into the baking tin and flattened it with a wooden spoon. I put the tin into the oven to bake.
    I fed the girls pizza and warm flapjacks, as promised, and they took the plates from me without comment as if they couldn’t drag their eyes from the vampire drama on Flo’s tablet. Around eleven p.m. Paige decided to stay the night with us and she texted her mum to tell her this, so her mum and dad must still have been out and I wondered how often they left her alone in that big house.
    Saturday
    I indulged myself with a long lie-in and then carried a mug of tea back into my