Kia Abdullah - Take It Back

‘I didn’t say anything.’ He gestured inside. ‘Can I come in?’

She held the door ajar.

Luka set the food on the breakfast bar and started to unpack. ‘So why did my beautiful girlfriend have a bad day?’

She baulked. Six months and she still wasn’t used to ‘girlfriend’. They were meant to be casual. He was meant to be a distraction, a mindless and uncomplicated diversion, and yet here he was buying her comfort food and calling her his girlfriend.

She waved a hand. ‘It’s just something at work.’

Luka stopped. ‘What happened? Are you okay?’ His concern only reminded her that she had told him too much, pulled him too close.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s fine.’

He met her gaze, his eyes a stormy green, frustrated by her caginess. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to somehow soften her sharp edges, but opted instead to do nothing. She moved to the dining table and he followed, sitting next to her instead of opposite. We’re closer this way , he had once said. His hand rested on her knee, a subtle non-sexual gesture. She moved her leg so that he fell away. Don’t forget, it warned. She poured a large glass of wine and offered it to him.

He waved it away. ‘I can’t. I’m training for the climb.’

She set the glass on the table, noting the irony of a white man refusing a drink from a Muslim woman. She pushed it towards him. ‘You’ve still got a few weeks before you leave.’

He reached forward and wiped a crumb off her lip. ‘Yes, I do.’ His fingers rested there a moment too long. ‘I’ll miss you.’ He paused. ‘You know what’s happening between us, don’t you, Zara?’

She looked at him, eyes narrowed ever so slightly. It was her Ralph Lauren stare: part anxious, part vacant, detached but intense. Was she still playing or not? Even she couldn’t tell anymore.

His dark blond brows knotted in a frown. ‘I know what this is and what this isn’t but …’ He watched her stiffen. ‘I know you don’t feel the same but I need you to know.’

‘Luka—’

‘You don’t have to say anything.’ He leaned forward and pulled her into his arms.

Against her instinct, she let him hold her. If she was going to use him as a salve, at least she could let him heal.

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

She swallowed hard, as if rising emotion could be curbed at the throat. She held him tight, knowing full well that it was time to let go.

Zara’s black blazer was stark against the windowless white walls. The fluorescent light reflected off the blue linoleum floor, casting a pallor beneath her eyes. She greeted Detective Constable Mia Scavo, gripping her hand a touch too firmly. In the back of her mind, she tried to remember the writer who said the sight of women greeting each other reminded him of nothing so much as prize fighters shaking hands.

Zara appraised the young detective: the sober manner and formless clothes, the light blonde hair scraped back in a bun. Did she know it only accentuated her cheekbones and brought out her blue eyes?

With greetings safely exchanged, Zara took her seat by the left-hand wall of the interview room: in Jodie’s eyeline but in the background nonetheless. She was here not to interact but to lend support.

Mia began with a short preamble. ‘Jodie, my name is Mia Scavo. I’m a detective constable with the Metropolitan Police. I’ve been a police officer for six years and I work specifically with victims of sexual assault. My job is to support you from today onwards, right to the conclusion of the case.

‘We’re going to start with some formalities and then we will go over your complaint. I don’t know what happened so try to give me as much detail as you can. Our conversation is being recorded on video so it can be used as evidence. It’s important to be as accurate as possible. If you can’t remember something, just tell me. If you want to clarify or correct something at a later date, you can contact me and tell me, okay?’

Jodie nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Good. Then we’ll begin.’ Mia glanced at the two-way mirror. ‘It is Wednesday the third of July 2019. This is DC Scavo interviewing Jodie Wolfe. Also present is Jodie’s independent sexual violence advisor.’ She paused for Zara to confirm her name and began with some basic questions: Jodie’s name, date of birth, address and school. She then eased into the interview, first asking about Jodie’s hobbies and favourite shows on TV, a basic technique to build rapport. After five minutes, she broached the assault and asked her to recount what happened.

Jodie shared the tale of her first real party, of drunken teens and raucous laughter. She spoke of the grinding social embarrassment and how she had fled for air. She described Amir’s footsteps – so evocative they could hear the crunch of gravel. There, frozen in frame by his side, she stopped.

‘What happened next?’ asked Mia.

Jodie hesitated. ‘Amir asked me what I was doing there alone. I said I needed a break.’ She paused. ‘He told me that Nina had left the party and that he could take me to her so I followed him.’

Zara looked up in surprise. This wasn’t the story she had told before. What had happened to Amir’s overtures? ‘ Whenever I see you, I wonder what it would be like to kiss you. ’

Jodie gazed at a burl in the wooden tabletop, not daring to look up at Zara. ‘Amir said that they were having an after-party. He said I wouldn’t normally be allowed to go but since I came with Nina, he’d take me there.’

Zara searched her face for a trace of the lie but she noted nothing.

‘Can you take me through what happened next?’ asked Mia. ‘Take your time and be as detailed as you can.’

Jodie was still for a moment. Her eyes grew narrow and her features creased as if in the midst of a major decision. She took a breath, trembling and thin, and said, ‘He took me to an empty building.’

Jodie’s account segued smoothly to her original. She spoke with a tight discipline but her voice broke in the grooves of the taunts – I ain’t gonna touch ’em if they’re ugly like the rest of you – and she finished in a curtain of tears.

Zara felt a swelling pity. She could see that Jodie was in pain, but also that she was trying so extraordinarily hard to cling onto composure. Perhaps it was no easier for a sixteen-year-old to cry like a child with abandon than it was for someone older.

Mia reached forward and squeezed Jodie’s arm. ‘You’ve been very brave.’

Zara watched the simple act and felt an inexplicable frisson of annoyance.

Mia flipped through her notebook. ‘Jodie, you said the accused were boys from your school. Would you say that you were friends?’

Jodie clutched the cuff of her sleeve. ‘No.’

‘Have you ever been romantically involved with any of them?’

She grimaced. ‘No. Never.’

Mia flipped a page. ‘You said you had one glass of punch with alcohol that night. Had you taken any drugs?’

Jodie shrank into herself, as if she were being blamed. ‘No.’

Mia made a note. ‘Were there drugs at the party?’

‘I think so but I’m not sure.’

‘That’s fine. It’s always right to say you don’t know if you’re unsure.’ Mia continued to flesh out the night in question and then explained what the police would do next: contact witnesses, interview the suspects, visit the scene of the assault, review CCTV footage and examine any DNA. ‘If we can gather enough evidence, we will formally charge the suspects,’ she finished.

The whites of Jodie’s eyes were wide: fear laced perhaps with shock that this was really happening. ‘How long will it take?’ she asked, the words low and timorous.