“Things are so much worse than people think,” I continue, staring right at him. “When you do the job I do, you see how widespread it is and it’s hard, and therefore it makes it impossible to listen when someone tries to diminish it in any way.”

  “He wasn’t trying to diminish it, he was just saying some things are worse than other things—”

  “You can’t quantify damage!” I throw my hands up, almost losing my towel. “Do you have any idea of the privilege you must have to be able to debate sexual violence from a place of emotional detachment?”

  Joshua goes quiet because I’ve said the word “privilege.” They always go quiet when you bring that one out of its box. Not in a respectful way, but in a quiet, fists-slowly-curled, face-getting-red, feeling-like-it’s-not-fair way. I let him bathe in feeling silenced. I think, That’s how we feel every day, mister.

  “I’ve never seen you like this,” he says eventually, gaze determinedly on his hands.

  “Like what?”

  “This. All...angry.”

  “And let me guess? You don’t like it?”

  “I’m not saying that...”

  I’m not Gretel right now, that’s for sure. I’m too fired up to be her. I think of the years of my life where I’ve doubted what happened to me and doubted the pain it has caused. That night, with the white wall, if I was asked to mark it on this “rape spectrum,” well, it would’ve been a two out of ten, I reckon. An SPF 15 kind of rape. A 12A kind of rape. A Nando’s lemon and fucking herb sauce rape. I wouldn’t be able to win rape top trumps with it, that’s for bloody sure. I wasn’t held down. I didn’t try to run and get caught and dragged backward on my stomach while I dug my fingernails into the ground. There wasn’t more than one of them. I wasn’t too drugged to move. I wasn’t in a dark alleyway, crying for home, wishing I’d not taken that shortcut. I didn’t even bleed afterward. I didn’t even cry. In fact, I lay next to him and stroked his hair after he fell asleep. I didn’t even think it was rape until a year or so later, after he left me for that other girl, when my body clamped shut and I couldn’t get tampons in, and the specialist at the hospital asked in the kindest voice if I’d ever experienced any sexual violence. Then the memories of that time with the white wall, and the other time, came screaming out of me, hitting me full force, delighted and dancing in the wind that they had finally been allowed out of their container. Months of dabbing lidocaine on my vagina and sitting with my legs apart with a trainer shoved up it, mourning the loss of everything I was before. Thousands of tears. Hundreds of mini-breakdowns. Sex ruined, potentially forever. The fear, every single time, that my body wouldn’t let me have this part of my life again. All of it so awful, and yet the worst bit being the doubt that you deserve this trauma. Have I overexaggerated what happened? Was it really that bad? Isn’t it much worse for other women? Why am I so fucked-up about something so minor? Am I just weak? Am I one of “those” women who overdramatize for attention? The doubt is sometimes worse than what actually happened. I’ve sometimes wished for a fucking rape certificate. I wish I could’ve invited some independent rape adjudicator to join me on a jolly jaunt back in time to watch what happened and verify that it was what my trauma is telling me it is. So much pain and doubt and fear and confusion and shame...and then men, around a table, happy and glowing from alcohol, never worrying that this could happen to them, saying your worst thoughts out loud, debating the validity of your pain, then wondering why you cry or get angry. How unreasonable you are.

  “What are you saying?” I put both hands on my hips. He looks up at me, mouth wide, ready for all kinds of comebacks and defenses and arguments, but his mouth closes again. It’s like he’s seeing me for the very first time.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Sorry why?”

  “Because you’re right. What Neil said wasn’t OK. I’m just trying to defend him because... OK, I’ll admit it, I’m embarrassed all right?” Joshua runs his hands through his wet hair. “I mean, it’s the first time you’ve met my friends and Neil bloody starts talking about that? He knows about your job. I’ve told him. He’s always arguing about that kind of thing. He gets off on playing devil’s advocate. I worried he’d bring it up and then he did...” He rests his face in cupped hands, shakes his head with them still there. “I’m really sorry, Gretel, it wasn’t cool.”

  There’s a crack of thunder. The rain drums even harder on the pavement outside. I don’t know what to do with this. This honesty, pure and white, spilling from his mouth. This genuine apology. It undoes everything I think I know.

  “Why would he deliberately bring it up?” I sit next to Joshua on the sofa and the sinking cushion makes our knees fold in together.

  “Like I said, he’s antagonistic like that, always has been. You know what it’s like, with uni friends. You’re in these weird preset social dynamics that are hard to change. I’m really sorry he upset you.” He takes my hand, laces my fingers. For the first time since I started this, my body craves him back, enjoys his touch.

  “I didn’t mean to make it awkward, I just couldn’t stay.” I’m so proud of myself for not apologizing back to Joshua. For not automatically replying to an “I’m sorry” with an “I’m sorry too.” Though it takes considerable effort to override the urge.

  “I get that.” He groans. “God, that could’ve gone better, couldn’t it? You don’t think I’m one of those old-fashioned men’s rights mentalists, do you?”

  “I don’t think that,” I say. In fact, I’m thinking, Maybe you are different.

  “You never talk about your job,” he says. “I think it’s really cool what you do yet you don’t talk about it much.”

  I shrug. “It bums people out. Makes them uncomfortable. I’ve learned not to.”

  He begins to stroke my thumb. “But I want to know.”

  “Know what? How many rape victims I deal with every day? How awful it is? How relentless? How we never have enough money to help properly? How sometimes I feel like we’re just shoving novelty plasters onto a giant seeping wound?”

  “I’m interested. I want to know.”

  “You think you want to know,” I tell him, “but then you’ll get all defensive and want to pick holes in the things I tell you. Like Neil.”

  “That’s not fair. I’m not like him. I really am sorry.” He leans his head toward mine until our foreheads are kissing, needing to make it OK. He cups my face, and grazes his lips against mine. They instinctively kiss back before I turn my head.

  “Do you really want to know all the awful parts of my job?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, I literally deal with terrible sexual violence every day.”

  “And that makes me sad but it’s something I need to know more about. For Christ’s sake, I work in coding, Gretel. I just don’t know about this stuff. I’m woefully ill-informed.”

  “I don’t feel like talking about it right now,” I say. I just want him to kiss me again. I want it so badly that it throws me.

  “Well then, we don’t have to. But some other time. Talk to me. Tell me more about what it’s like to be you...” He kisses me again and I kiss him back in surprised relief. The way he’s looking at me, the way he sounds like he means it. Gretel sheds her skin to the floor. April is left, kissing him, running her hand through his hair. I can feel his goodness; it radiates like central heating. I want to get closer to it, closer to him.

  “My towel’s falling off,” I say, because it is. We both look down to see one exposed breast hanging out, my nipple grazing the toweling. We both laugh quietly.

  “What a shame. Mine too.”

  We fall backward onto the sofa, dislodging the remnants of our towels and kiss slowly, heavily, like we mean each and every part of it. Joshua’s hands run down my back. I find myself clutching him tightly. It all falls away. The night. The anger. The embarrassment. Even the angry thrashing of the storm fades to white noise. We kiss and kiss. He doesn’t try to turn it into anything more than kissing. He doesn’t assume it will lead anywhere. It feels so good just to kiss, to feel like the man is just enjoying the kiss rather than wondering how long he can use it to segue into something else. My muscles relax. I lose sense of time, logic, the lies I’ve told. I find myself whispering into his ear. “You’ve not seen my bedroom yet.”

  “I’ve not.”

  “I didn’t know you were coming round. I haven’t tidied up.”

  “I couldn’t give a flying fuck.” He picks me up like he’s rescuing me from a plane wreck, both of us completely naked, and carries me toward it.

  “Not that door, the other door.”

  “OK, right.”

  “Hang on, you have to turn the handle. I’ll try to do it with my foot. Hang on. No. Put me down a second.”

  And we fall, giggling, onto my unmade bed.

  Maybe he is different

  Maybe he is different

  Maybe he is different

  Maybe he is different

  Maybe, he is...different?

  The first tickles of morning light hit the crack in my ceiling as I wonder how to arrange my jumbled thoughts into coherency.

  Something peculiar happened last night you see.

  Joshua made me orgasm. Not just a regular one, but an earth-shattering, lost-all-sense-of-myself, made-noises-without-embarrassment, one.

  That’s not happened to me since It happened.

  I still can’t stop smiling when I think about it. How the sex was long, and slow. I didn’t orgasm through sex, because I never have, even before Ryan. But he stopped halfway and went down on me until I did and...and... God I want to have sex again just thinking about it.

  I watch his sleeping face crumpled into the pillow. Fondness stirs in my guts. I want to reach over and stroke his cheek. I cannot help but smile when I look at him.

  After we finished, and were lying there and listening to the storm outside, he asked me more about my job. How I got into it. What the day is like. How I cope with all those hard questions. I told him about starting as a volunteer manager, about being asked to take on some shifts, about how much joy I get when I hear that I’ve helped someone, about Matt and how close we are, about clinical supervision and identifying triggers and how terribly hard it is some days.

  He listened while stroking my hair. “I wish my job was important like yours.”

  “Coding is important.”

  He laughed.

  “You could code for a charity. They have websites. They need coders.”

  “You know what? I could actually, couldn’t I? Sorry again, about Neil.”

  “Oh God. Your friends are going to hate me now.” A pinch of anxiety rippled through our post-coital bubble. I suddenly cared about it, the awkwardness I’d caused, how I would face them in the future.

  “Don’t be daft, they won’t hate you. They all said how much they liked you.”

  “Yeah right.” I buried my face into his armpit. It smelt of sour sweat mingled with new sweat, and yet I could not get enough of his scent. Would bury my face further in if I could. Snort a line of him.

  His voice was heavy with sleep, but he still made an effort to be reassuring. “It could’ve gone better, for sure. But you’ll meet them again. And it was Neil who kicked it all off anyway. It’s about time he was told, to be honest.”

  “Are you sure?”

  He tilted his chin down and planted a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m sure.”

  The next peculiar thing is that I slept after that. Wrapped up in Joshua’s arms. A deep, heavy, dreamless sleep. The sort of great sleep you get when you accidentally nap in the afternoon. I only regained consciousness fifteen minutes ago, when the heat between our bodies got too much. The fresh air cleared by the storm is already forgotten—the heat wave well and truly back in action. But, when I woke, I was still in his arms, wrapped up in him, totally naked and comfortable, like we were a pack of wolves but without the rest of the pack. I’ve not been able to sleep next to a man since It happened either. I force myself to look away from Joshua and back at the ceiling crack.

  I don’t know what any of this means.

  I’m very confused right now, it has to be said.

  He’s not behaving how I know men to behave. Intellectually, I’m certain this is only because I’ve been Gretel. That his lack of game playing and mind-fuckery and not-really-knowing-what-he-wants and emotional whiplashing is only a non-event because Gretel is a non-event. A safe, make-believe woman for him to be infatuated with. I mean, I’ve never met someone that it’s got so serious with so quickly, so it must be the Gretel effect, right?

  But a tiny part of me is starting to believe. In him. In men. Maybe he really is a good guy. Maybe they do exist. Maybe I’ve been lucky enough to stumble across one because, for once, I wasn’t looking. They always tell you it happens when you’re not looking. The mattress shifts. Joshua stirs. I turn toward him and watch him wake up to this morning and my face.

  “Hello.” His voice is gruff, sexy.

  “Hello.”

  He pulls me into his naked body. I can feel what he wants pressing into my thigh. But he’s also staring at me in wonder. He leans in to kiss me on the lips. “Come here,” he whispers. “I want a cuddle.”

  Though inevitably we do more than cuddle.

  * * *

  “You don’t have a coffee machine.” Joshua’s wearing only yesterday’s boxers and looking around, offended, at our tiny kitchen. “You don’t even have a cafetière. I can’t cope under such conditions.”

  “I’ve got Nescafé.”

  “That’s it. I’m out. I’m leaving.” He smiles to check I know it’s a joke. I smile back. We’ve been doing this all morning. Talking. Kissing. Grinning. Kissing. Grinning. Every sentence the other utters is worthy of a joyful smile and a congratulatory peck on the lips.

  “I have tea? Lots and lots of tea?”

  “I suppose it will have to do.”

  I get out two mugs and the special Teapigs bags that I always get from my mother for my birthday—alongside the obligatory Richard and Judy Book Club novel, a small vial of Jo Malone Pear and Freesia, and the yearly lecture about how men are all shits and she can’t believe Dad just left her to bring me up alone. I boil the kettle, splash water onto the teabags, tip on some milk, and hand a mug to Joshua who says thank you. We return with them to my mangled sheets and sit up against the wall, legs twirled around one another, sipping even though the drinks are still too hot.

  “I like your bedroom,” he comments.

  It’s very much April’s bedroom, not Gretel’s. I’m not sure what Gretel’s bedroom would look like. I guess she’d have framed photos of all her travels. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s someone who “doesn’t need to take photos because the memory is enough.” She’d probably have a vinyl record player, not because she’s a hipster, but because she genuinely understands music and genuinely knows it sounds better on vinyl. There’d be a glass filled with wildflowers that she’d somehow managed to pick herself in inner-city London. Her bookcase would contain The Catcher in the Rye and Catch 22 and all the other books men love women to read because they’re all about men and written by men.

  But Joshua gets only April’s bedroom.

  I try to see it through his eyes afresh. There are quite a lot of clothes on the floor, and a big pile on my chair, which never gets sat in, what with the constant pile of clothes. The top of my wardrobe has a nice framed photo of Megan and me on it, from that one good holiday we managed to take together in Greece. But it’s somewhat obscured by the scattered bottles of all the things I apply to my face and body each day in order to pass as a functional woman. Deodorant. Moisturizer. Night cream. Day cream that I’m still not sure is different from moisturizer. Makeup remover. Cotton pads. Eye makeup remover. Vitamin C that stings my face and I don’t understand why I need it, just that I do. E45 anti-itch cream for whenever I shave my legs or bikini line. Tweezers to pluck out my nipple hairs. There are piles of makeup-blackened cotton pads I haven’t been arsed to transfer the whole meter to the bin yet.

  “I really like that poster,” Joshua comments, pointing to the one by the door. It’s a framed Harry Potter print I got as a leaving present from my last job. A quote about finding light in the darkness.

  “You like Harry Potter?”

  “Yeah, of course. Doesn’t everyone? I even dressed up as Dumbledore once at a uni party.”

  “And, there I was, thinking people in IT are all geeks.”

  “Oi!” He tickles me in protest and I shriek and spill tea down my chest and then shriek louder. He takes my mug from me, puts it on the side, and pulls me into him. I nestle in, take another inhale of his scent, ignore all the nagging in my brain.

  “I had a really amazing night last night.” He kisses the top of my head again.

  “Even though I stormed out on your friends?”

  “Especially because of that. In fact, I’m glad that happened. I mean, I’m sorry it made you sad. It was nice to talk to you about...” He picks up my palm, and starts to stroke the inside of it with his thumb. He’s about to say something deep and meaningful.

  “About...?” I prompt, hungry for it, even though I know how deliciously dangerous such moments are.

  “Just about...”

  There’s the crash of our front door. A wail like a dying animal has been trodden on. We jump comedically. I pull up my sheet to cover myself.

  “Are you here?” Megan howls.

  “It’s my flatmate,” I whisper. “Shit.”

  “ARE YOU INNNNNN?”