Chapter Ten
“Oh, hell.”
I look up from scrolling through Instagram on my phone. My mother is standing in the middle of the kitchen holding a stack of large stoneware mixing bowls when I wander in. Every surface is covered in china and glassware and all the cupboard doors are open.
“Mum, what are you doing?”
“I thought I’d clean out the cupboards before the first house inspection. Can you clear somewhere for me to put these down? They’re heavy.”
I put my phone on the bench and begin to stack dinner plates together to make room. “Mum, they’re not going look inside the cupboards,” I point out. “Besides, the house isn’t even on the market yet.”
“Yes, darling, I know, but it helps to be prepared. Could you start wiping down the pantry shelves if you’re not busy?”
Dammit. I’m not busy. I grab a cloth and get to work. My mum is telling me about the village her and my father want to visit in Hampshire when I hear the buzz of a text message coming through and reach for my pocket. But my phone isn’t in my pocket, it’s on the bench. Next to where my mother is standing. I see her glance at it, absently, and then her face freezes and she turns white.
I snatch up my phone and read the message. Oh, god. It’s from Rufus. Daddy.
How’s daddy’s little fucktoy?
Oh, crap. I look from my phone to my mother. She’s staring at me, but then looks over my shoulder for some reason. And then her face clears a little, like she’s mentally shaking herself, though she still looks like she’s seen a ghost.
“It’s just—” I start. But what do I say? “Rufus—” He likes it when I call him daddy. Oh, god, oh, Christ, I can’t say that.
She holds up a hand. “No, no.” And then she turns away, shaking her head, and goes back to what she what she was doing. Her shoulders are up round her ears and her hands are fluttering from one stack of crockery to another. Then she stops what she’s doing and walks out of the kitchen without looking back.
I try to keep tidying up the kitchen, hoping my mother just went to the bathroom. My hands are shaking and there’s a sick feeling in the pit of my belly, and after ten minutes I realize she’s not coming back.
I have to make this better. This isn’t supposed to be how things turn out, not when I’m so happy. I go upstairs and find her in their room, at the window. She’s staring out the window, one hand over her mouth. She hears me behind her but doesn’t turn round.
“I’m trying to imagine the Rufus I have met saying those things to you. Calling himself your... He seemed like a decent young man. How he had us fooled.”
“He is a decent young man. He’s a wonderful person.”
She turns. “Does he talk to you like that all the time?”
“Of course not.”
She holds out her hand for my phone. “Show me.”
I quickly catalogue our text conversations.
You look so pretty with daddy’s cock in your ass.
Daddy wants to give you a good hiding. I haven’t heard you squeal and beg for mercy in too long.
Daddy’s going to choke you as you come.
And then there are the photographs that he’s sent me. Arty, black-and-white shots of women tied up in elaborate bondage. Women with large, veiny male hands wrapped around their throats. Behinds pink from spankings.
Mixed in with all the depraved missives are sweet ones, but even they are kinky.
Have you been a good girl for me, princess?
Daddy loves his babygirl.
I clutch my phone tightly. My mother drops her hand. “I thought so.”
“They’re just text messages. You can’t know what he’s like from text messages. He’s sweet and kind—you saw that for yourself. That wasn’t an act. That’s him.”
Her lip curls like I’ve said something disgusting. “How can a man talk to his girlfriend like that? I was worried from the start that he would take advantage of you and I was right.”
I grit my teeth. Once my mother gets on the “I was right all along” train it’s hard to get her off it.
“You were always vulnerable, Abby. You’ve always been like a little girl, oblivious of the real world. He’s seen that in you and he’s...using it. He’s a pervert. He must be a sociopath as well to hide it all so well.”
“Mum, he’s not. Don’t say that about him.”
She looks me hard in the eye. “Has he ever hit you, Abby?”
I must look like a deer in headlights. Her face crumples. “Oh, Abby.”
There’s a buzzing in my ears and I’m chasing words and phrases all over my brain, struggling for the right thing to say.
“How many times has he hit you?”
“He doesn’t—not—He—”
“Oh, Abby. Why does he want you to call him...that word? Was it your idea?”
“No.” I say it quickly, defensively, and it feels like a betrayal. I’m the one that put him in my phone as Daddy. I agreed to call him that. I like to call him that.
“I thought so. Why, then?”
I can’t think beyond the questions she’s asking me. I have a vague sense that I shouldn’t be just standing here answering them, that I should take control of the conversation and tell her something reassuring—the truth, but something to make her see what Rufus and I mean to each other, and that it’s something beautiful, not depraved. It’s what Rufus would do if he were here. But he’s not here, and my mother is looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before. Something between horror and disgust and anger and sadness, and I’m too paralyzed to do anything else but answer.
“He...likes it,” I fumble. I like it, too. SAY it. But I can’t because she looks like she’s about to be sick. My blood is thick with shame.
She drops her eyes. “For a moment when I saw that message...” she begins, and then she swallows.
“What?”
“I thought it was from—”
With mounting horror I realize what she can’t say. I remember that her eyes flicked over my shoulder when she read it. To the back garden. Where my father was. “Oh, mama, no.” She thought we’d been... I start to cry, and so does she, but they’re not tears we can share. We’re standing alone with them.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She just shakes her head, and I run to my bedroom and slam the door. I’m heaving sobs into my duvet when my phone buzzes.
Abby?
I pick it up and type quickly. She saw my phone. She saw the message and what I call you.
My phone rings and I answer it. He must hear me crying because he says, “Abby. Calm down, babygirl. Breathe.” His voice is steady but it’s not calming me like it usually does.
“She saw the m-message and she thought it was from my father. She thought we—”
He cuts across me and his voice is tight and urgent. “She knows it was from me though, doesn’t she? You did tell her that?”
“Yes, but she can’t look at me, Rufus. She called you a pervert and asked if you ever hit me. I—I couldn’t say anything.”
“Okay. It will be all right, babygirl. Stay where you are, I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” He hangs up.
A few minutes later I can’t bear to be in the house so I go downstairs and start pacing up and down on the sidewalk. Rufus’s car finally turns into the street. When he pulls up he opens the back door, helps me into the back seat and gets in after me. He holds me while I cry, and I can’t seem to stop. I’m so ashamed. He doesn’t try to stop me crying but he does talk to me, telling me that everything’s going to be all right, that he loves me, that my parents love me, and we are going to get through this together. Eventually I do stop crying but it’s because I am exhausted, not because I feel any better.
“She thinks you’re a monster,” I say, my voice thick.
He kisses my sweaty forehead. “It doesn’t matter what she thinks about me right now. I’m worried about you. I’m so sorry. I knew how much you were afraid of this happening and I didn’t consider how we could prevent it.”
“I’m the one who put you in my phone as Daddy,” I point out.
“Yes, but there’s a setting on your phone that stops text messages showing on your home screen when your phone is locked. I should have told you about it. I didn’t think.”
“Oh.”
We’re silent for several minutes.
“Abby, how would you feel about explaining to your parents about our relationship?”
I stare at him in horror. “No!”
“Your mother thinks I abuse you physically and emotionally. They are not going to be okay with us, ever, unless you explain.”
“How can I explain why I call you daddy?”
He brushes my hair out of my face. “Sweetheart, you need to stop fixating on that. It’s just a name and it’s the least of it. Your mother is going to be more upset right now over the fact that I hit you and call you my fucktoy.”
“I told her that you are good and kind and that you love me,” I offer.
His mouth twists. “Yes. Well, unfortunately that’s what battered wives say, as well. The more you defend me the more you’re going to sound like you have Stockholm syndrome.”
“Isn’t that what makes you rob banks or something?”
“Sometimes. You’re thinking of Patty Hearst. It’s what makes victims identify with their abusers. It’s a survival instinct and it’s got nothing to do with our relationship.”
We lapse into silence. I desperately try and think of ways around this without telling my mother anything about my relationship with Rufus. I come up with nothing.
“I know it’s hard, babygirl,” he says finally. “You have to be strong.”
I look at him, because he sounds like he really does know how hard this is. “I never asked you how you felt about yourself when you realized what you were into.”
He grimaces. “Oh. Yes. I thought I was a pervert. That I liked little girls and I was wrong in the head. I went through some of what you’re going through now, though my parents never found out about it. I used to wake up in cold sweats that I was going to be arrested.”
Of course. Calling your boyfriend daddy sounds weird to other people. Appearing to like little girls is dangerous.
“I asked my first girlfriend to do some things, wear some things... It didn’t go well. She called me a nonce and broke up with me. I begged her not to tell anyone. I was sixteen. I didn’t handle it well. I was too terrified even to acknowledge that part of myself for another five years.”
“What happened?”
He gives me a rueful smile. “I ran into a woman who used to babysit my brother and sister. We had a drink, she told me she always thought I was cute... I ended up at her place with a dizzying array of her paddles and canes laid out on the bed and her begging me to discipline her. I, um, obliged.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “Duck to water?” I ask.
“More or less. But the point is, Abby, I had five years of feeling so disgusted with myself that I could barely talk to women, and I was so unhappy. I just worked, and ignored everything else. I can’t bear that happening to you if we don’t face this.”
So it wasn’t just his mother’s illness and death that made him want to work so hard. He hated himself, so he devoted himself to the theater. It’s heartbreaking, thinking of him dealing with grief and self-loathing at the same time, but when my mind turns to my own situation, all I feel is panic.
I bury my face in his shirt. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”
He murmurs into my hair, “You’re going to have to be a big girl about this. I know she’s in there.”
“Not when I’m stressed or upset.”
“She’s there all the time. I love her, too.”
I can’t say anything. My mind is frozen with terror at the thought of the conversation with my parents.
“Babygirl,” he whispers, his arms tight around me, “if we don’t face this I’m going to lose you, and it will break me.”
I start to cry again. It will break me, too, if I lose him. “I’ll try.”
“Thank you, kitten. Please don’t cry. It makes daddy so sad.”
Hearing him talk this way should probably make me feel dirty after what’s just happened, but it makes me feel how I always do. Loved. Cherished. “Can we go to your flat?” I ask.
“I would love that, but I think for your mother’s sake it would be better if you stayed at home, don’t you think?”
He’s right. She’ll go spare if I just disappear with him, but I don’t want him to be right. I want cuddles and stuffies and his lap and cartoons. I just want to hide. “Then can I just sit here with you for a little while longer?”
“Of course you can, babygirl. Close your eyes for a bit and just relax.”
* * *
I hide in my room as I can’t face coming down for dinner. I suppose my mother tells my father I’m not feeling well. I crawl under my duvet, hoping that’s all she’s telling him.
In the back garden the next morning my mother corners me, armed with a morning’s research about how to talk to victims of domestic abuse. No matter how many ways I try to tell her that I’m not abused, she comes back with a soundbite about acknowledgment being the first step on the road to recovery. She finally leaves me alone and my head drops onto my arms. The one consolation is that she hasn’t said anything about this to my father yet, as it would “break his heart.” If you can call that a consolation.
My phone buzzes.
How are you babygirl?
She wants me to go to a shrink.
It’s a good idea. A shrink will be able to tell the difference between you and an abuse victim right away. Take your mother with you.
She also wants me to go to the police.
Less helpful, but the same end result.
Aren’t you worried about being reported to the police?
No.
An hour later I get another text.
Has your mother seen Secretary? He sends me a link to the IMDb page and I read the summary. It’s about a lawyer and his submissive secretary who have an unconventional, BDSM relationship and eventually fall in love.
Are you kidding? My mother thinks When Harry Met Sally is too racy. She won’t understand a film like that.
Do you need a few days off?
No, but thank you. I’ll be okay to dance.
That wasn’t what I meant. I’m thinking about you, not the show.
I’ll be okay.
When I come offstage later that night I know he expects me to come up to his office like I usually do, but my body is a deadweight. I don’t want to think anymore, or talk anymore about what’s happened. I wait till I am heading out the stage door and then text him that I don’t feel well and I’m going home.
A few minutes pass, and then my phone buzzes.
I love you.
I squeeze my eyes shut so that I don’t cry. I know in the intervening minutes he’s gone down to the dressing room to see if I am there. I don’t know how to reply, so I don’t.
* * *
Rufus gives me space over the next few days by an unspoken agreement. I know he doesn’t like it and I can feel him watching me whenever we pass each other in the corridors or backstage. He sends me good-morning and good-night messages every day, and sometimes I reply. I’m existing in a sort of limbo. If I do nothing, nothing else bad can happen. It’s an unhappy place but at least I don’t have to make any decisions.
Nearly a week passes like this and then Gregory tells me Mr. Kingsolver wants to see me in his office. It’s a low blow, pulling rank like that.
He sits on the edge of his desk, watching me.
“Abby. You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“Have you been eating?”
“A bit.”
“Please come back to my flat tonight so that I can take care of you. We don’t need to talk about anything.”
“I can’t. I promised my mother I would come home every night.”
He’s silent for a while. Then he clears his throat and continues in a false-bright tone, “I have bought another theater. The sale went through yesterday.”
I feel a sharp thrust of hurt, as if I’ve been knifed. Without him I’ve only just been existing, but he’s managed to find the energy to continue with his plans. I want to be pleased for him, but a big, unlovely part of me wishes he was as distraught as I was. “Oh. That’s good. Congratulations.”
“I even told my father about it and asked him to come down to London. Like you suggested.”
Tears come into my eyes. That was the conversation we had the night we first slept together. The night that I realized I was falling in love with him. There had been so much possibility then, like we could overcome anything together. I wondered then if I was helping him as much as he was helping me. I finally have my answer, but it seems like it’s too late.
“Oh,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“There’s going to be a new production. I want you to audition for one of the leads.”
I study his shoes for a moment. With Rufus’s support I’ve felt more like myself than I ever have in my life. I was able to help him, too, by encouraging him to reach out to his father. Doesn’t that mean we’re good for each other? Doesn’t that mean we’re allowed to be happy together?
But every time I think about leaning on him now for the support I so desperately crave, I see my mother’s horrified face. The good things we’ve done for each other have all been tainted.
“Can I think about it?” I can’t say yes, but I’m not ready to admit that I don’t see a way for us to be together, let alone work together.
He sighs. “Of course.”
“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He confronts me the next day outside my dressing room after the show. “Abby. We can’t go on like this. We need to talk.”
I was kidding myself if I thought Rufus was going to allow things to stay up in the air like they are. I know it’s not fair on him but I don’t know what else I can do. “But I’m just so tired.”
“I know you are, babygirl. Please come to my place so I can take care of you.”
There’s something bleak in his eyes and I know how much I’m hurting him by keeping my distance. I don’t think there’s anything he can do to make me feel better, but at least with him I don’t have to pretend I’m okay.
We walk to his apartment in silence and curl up on the couch together. I can feel the pressure of all the things he wants to say. Soon, he can’t seem to bear the silence and he starts talking.
“You’re slipping out of my reach, sweetheart. I can feel it and it’s killing me.”
I watch the blank television, not speaking. There’s dust on the screen. That’s not like him.
“I miss you so much but mostly I’m just worried about you. I’ve never seen you like this and it scares me. I know how much it’s taxing you to go about pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. I don’t know how much longer you can keep this up. You’re going to make yourself ill.”
I look at my hands. I want to chew my nails but I know he will stop me.
“Please say something, Abby. Please.”
“Persephone,” I whisper.
He frowns. “That’s only for when you’re in pain or you’re frightened.”
“I am. I’m both. I can’t do this.” I scoot away from him.
He grips the back of the couch, hard. “Babygirl, all we’ve done is make each other happy. We haven’t done anything wrong.”
I shake my head. He can’t talk me out of feeling the way that I do. He thinks he can but it’s not working. There’s so much disgust and regret blocking all the good feelings I have for him. “It feels like we have and I can’t get past that.”
He reaches for me, but I pull away. “If you say that word it means I’m supposed to comfort you,” he points out.
“It also means you’re supposed to stop.”
He covers his eyes with his hand and I think he’s going to cry. He’s not supposed to be the one to cry. But he takes his hand away and blinks a few times, and he just looks hollow, not tearful. “All right, Abby,” he says quietly. “I’ll leave you alone.”
He watches me collect my things and tells me he’ll drive me home. I try to protest but he cuts me off. “I’m not arguing with you about this. Go down to my car so I can drive you home.”
We ride in silence. There’s a spattering of rain against the windows and I watch the droplets being forced across the glass in the wind.
Before I get out of the car he grabs my hand. “Please try and find a way to tell them who you are. Even if you can’t be with me, I just want to know that you can be happy someday. Please, babygirl.”
I pull out of his grasp and get out of the car, and then I run up the steps to my house.
* * *
The next day I hand my notice in. Gregory gives me a long look as I hold out the envelope to him, like he somehow knows what’s coming. I haven’t got the energy to explain why and I pray he’s not going to ask me to.
It seems I don’t need to, though. “Is this because of you and Mr. Kingsolver?”
I stare at him.
“Don’t worry,” he says. “I don’t think anybody else knew. I just noticed... You both seemed so happy.”
“We were.” My voice is hoarse.
“And now?”
I shake my head.
He sighs. “Well, I’m sorry to lose you. I hope I work with you again in the future. You owe us two weeks, but I might be able to replace you in a couple of days. Would you like that?”
“Yes, that would make things much easier, thank you.”
“I’ll see you’re paid out for the full two weeks no matter what. Take care, Abby.”