Transgressions by Dunant Sarah

Author:Dunant, Sarah [Dunant, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-06-14T06:00:00+00:00

She waited, rooted to the spot, until she heard his steps go down the stairs and out through the front door. As she heard it slam behind him, she raced out the door to the landing window in time to see him turn and look up at the house, then move off quickly down the road.

She was downstairs in seconds, through the kitchen door and standing in the darkness by the French windows looking out over the night garden. The silence was total.

Now that it was over she discovered she was trembling, her legs shaking so violently she could hardly stand, but still she wouldn’t let herself rest, still she stayed there watching, waiting. And eventually she was rewarded. Across the expanse of the night to the left of center of the semicircle of houses, she saw a first-floor light go on, a white hole burned into the blackness. And as the position of it imprinted into her brain the trembling won out and she slumped onto the floor, allowing herself to feel it all again, the touch of his hands on her flesh, the stickiness of his come inside her, and the river of his saliva in her mouth.

She spat the taste of him onto the floor and in that moment of revulsion she had a clear knowledge that there was a choice to be made. She could either allow this night to become the rest of her life, to warp and corrupt everything that came after, or she could let it go and find its natural place.

If she was going to get him, now would be the time. She imagined picking up the phone and dialing the police. She saw her plump young constable sitting across the table, notebook in hand scribbling frantically, eyes as big as saucers in wonder at her tale. Except it wouldn’t be him. No. They would send a woman instead, female sensitivity to comfort her in her distress. She saw the trained sympathy in the woman’s eyes and tried to imagine how she would tell it to her. And she knew then that she couldn’t do it. That in some unfathomable way what had passed between them was more intimate than violence and that she would never be able to tell it. Certainly not to the police.

Did he know that also? Did he know that she would keep his secret? His and theirs. What was he doing now? Washing her off him in preparation for starting a new life or staring at those shiny CDs on his windowsill, remembering, reliving? Had he thrown them in the bin yet?

Listen to what you told him, she thought. Believe that. You did it and now it’s over. You looked into the eye of the nightmare and survived. And having done it, this should indeed be the end of it and both of them would be forgiven and redeemed, even if that redemption may have to grow out of a landscape of humiliation and fear.

And so she got up and very slowly started to get on with the rest of her life.

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