Do Her No Harm by Naomi Joy

Author:Naomi Joy [Joy, Naomi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781789543773
Publisher: Head of Zeus

Rick

Fourteen Years Ago – 2006

I pushed my way into Tabby’s bedroom and pressed my finger to her lips. I shouldn’t be here, I was breaking all the rules, but I was desperate.

‘Ssh,’ I whispered, touching her arms. ‘I just want to talk to you.’

She looked frightened, but let me in, the pink of her bedroom grotesquely childlike given what we were about to discuss.

‘Listen,’ I said, pulling the door shut behind me. ‘You have to stop this, Tabby. It’s not right.’

I watched her eyes fall to the floor.

‘You have to retract your allegation.’

I touched her again, fixed her with a meaningful stare. ‘I’ve been suspended from college, but my parents won’t let me come home. They’re getting threats. They think I’m a pervert, my brother’s spreading rumours that I’m into little girls. The things I’m hearing about myself, reading about myself, they’re bad, they’re really bad. Only you can stop them.’

I couldn’t figure out what to do with my limbs, or with the tears that were raging at my eyes. I turned to the right, away from her, then to the left, then sat down on the edge of her bed, flowery duvet flattening beneath me.

‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ she told me.

‘I believe you,’ I said, meaning it. ‘You have to make it right. Take back what you said.’

‘It’s not as simple as that,’ she told me, shuffling back, out of my reach. ‘I didn’t say yes, Rick.’

‘I don’t get it, since when have you ever said yes before we’ve had sex? Why this time? Why is it different? Because you were angry. Because I didn’t lie to you afterwards and tell you everything was going to go back to normal.’

I could smell her confusion. Her foster parents and the police had a lot to answer for. Was it best to lie? Would that make this all go away?

‘Practically the first name out of your mouth after it happened was hers.’

‘Saskia’s?’

Tabby looked at me, her anger palpable, and I could tell she wanted to scream at me for saying her name again, for acting as though I didn’t know exactly who she was talking about.

I shuffled towards her again, tried to make her understand. ‘You know I’m crazy about you, don’t you?’

She didn’t nod, but didn’t move away, let me cover her hands in mine.

‘I want you to know that hasn’t changed. But you have to understand, Oxford has been such a lonely place for me. Being with Saskia changed that… for a while.’ I paused, held her baby-blue stare in mine. ‘But it’s always been you, Tabby.’

She shook her head. She was in an impossible situation. ‘I don’t know if I can even take it back,’ she said. ‘What would happen to me?’

‘They’d understand, Tabbs,’ I assured her. ‘They’d understand you were just doing the right thing. Do you really want to see me chucked out of university, sent to prison, even, for this? For what?’

She shook out an agreement and my tears came all at once, my cheeks suddenly wet, relief running through me like a river.

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