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Why won’t she let me?

Why won’t you?

In the end, we settle for Rosario’s. Mum orders lasagne, and I order a salad and try to chew slowly, focusing on simple thoughts. A simple life is what everyone says I should hope for now, but simple is the only thing more impossible than having you.

‘Are you still seeing Rhiannon?’ Mum leans in closer, after checking the whereabouts of the waiter.

Rhiannon’s specialty is trauma. Mum can’t afford her, but puts a monthly ‘allowance’ into my account so I can pay.

‘When I can,’ I lie.

I’m retreating, I feel it. It’s how these visits usually go, at some point. I often wonder why she only ever focuses on you and me as the great relationship tragedy of my existence when there’s another right here at this table. I dig my fork into an oiled-up tomato, and it shoots across the table. Mum glances at the waiter again.

You were the one who took her from me. Took Dad, too. And my friends. You took all of them, although you’d argue the opposite, I’m sure. And you know the cruellest thing? After you’d made me love you more than any of them, you went away anyway. Or they took you away. But you know, Ty, on that final day, I was coming around to what you wanted. I might’ve even stayed with you forever, like you asked for. Does it kill you to know that? That on the day you finally took me to a town and left me at those hospital doors, I felt like an orphan for adoption. A nobody. You were covered in sand and smiling, and I left you to be arrested. Now I don’t have you, or anyone. Only Sal, my parents, my plants, and Nick, sometimes. I don’t know if that’s enough. Mum would throw her lasagne at me if she knew what I was thinking, but she needn’t worry. I’m meek again, handcuffed to her Ted Baker tailcoats, fork diligently going back for more salad. A good girl. I’m so expert at playing this part.

We order more wine, talk about Mum’s latest gallery acquisitions. I hear my phone beeping in my bag and know it must be Nick. All of a sudden I do want to see him; I could forget all this with Nick, perhaps erase your release date numbers completely.

‘Next week then?’ Mum says afterwards, as if nothing unusual happened tonight and I didn’t make a gaping hole of everything again. She’s already reaching for her diary. ‘There’s New Year’s Eve, of course. Are you busy?’

I nod. ‘Anna invited me out. I’ll be with her.’ My lie feels as oily as the tomatoes.

‘Oh, that’s good, darling, great! Then let’s go with Jan the sixth. It was nice here too, wasn’t it? So, here again? You free?’

There is nothing in my diary, apart from my shifts, for as far into the future as I can imagine. I don’t even own a diary.

‘Sure,’ I say.

As I walk away from the restaurant, I remember how people wanted to fuck me, in pubs, and parks, and in supermarket aisles, back when they recognised me, when they realised I wasthat girl.ProperIt Girlme. A celebrity, but dirtier. Sand under my nails. It didn’t matter that I was a teenager, barely legal.

You’re the one from TV.

The one with him.

As if I was hewn from you. As if they only saw mebecause.

They asked if I was damaged. They asked what you’d been like, as if I was a sexpert at seventeen. I didn’t tell them I was a virgin. They wouldn’t believe it. Besides, I didn’t know. Women tried too. Someone called Mary said she wanted toright mefrom you, fix me from my misguided desires, whatever that meant. Others wanted details, always more details. We were a story that sold, and they all wanted more of it.

Then there were the ones who didn’t believe. They said I wanted to be taken, that I was gagging for it. They said I wanted attention and had created the whole thing. They said I was fair game, that they could ask me anything.

They did.

Finally, there were the real perverts, men more than twice my age who bought me drinks. I took them because I’d lost most of my friends by then anyway, and they seemed concerned about me, as they slipped arms around my shoulders instead of drugs into my wine. Perhaps they wanted toright me, too, perhaps they wanted to be you.

It started then, the mindlessness. I can’t remember who I first fucked in the end, but I do know I was getting away, finding a different part of me, finding someone new from you.

Maybe if we’d done it beneath the stars like they all thought, then that question inside me might’ve had an answer. Or maybe I’d be worse. How would I know?

I found Nick on some dating app. I swiped and swiped until I found you. Only he isn’t you, is he? He’s a banker who has kept a job down for years, someone with a normal upbringing, who isn’t obsessed with living in a desert. Nick hasn’t stalked me or kidnapped me either. Not yet. But, like you, he does have dirty-blond hair and bright blue eyes. And he seems to like me. Really, he does. Tonight, maybe this could be enough. Nick knows nothing about my life before. I like it that way. A person can know too much about another before they get together, don’t you think?

I check my phone as I’m walking. Sure enough, it was Nick pinging.

So tonight? x

The first time we hooked up was after a couple of bottles of wine in the scabby pub near my place. We fucked in the alley behind the pub because I didn’t want to bring him back to my flat. I remembered the slightly hurt look in his eyes when I said goodnight, but not much else.

I can’t remember the first time you and I were together either, after you drugged me at the airport. You said it was just a kiss. It’s what you told the court months later, too. You swore you hadn’t touched me without me being aware of it, not that night or any night. But, thinking now about that first night, those first nights, when you’d drugged me to amnesia, howcould anyone prove anything different? The medical examinations I had in Perth were months after you took me. The only person who knows what happened is you.

And how do you remember things now? Do the memories get messed up? Have I twisted in your mind? Has a psychiatrist asked you to draw me, the way Rhiannon asks me to draw you? And do I look like a dark, jagged shadow, like you look in my pictures?