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Praise

Further praise for The Cheek Perforation Dance:

‘Compelling and disturbing. Pre held ideas about male and female sexuality are turned on their head. Intrigued? You should be. This is a very intriguing novel.’

Irish Independent

‘If you’re searching for a gentle holiday read then allow us not to recommend this. The skill of this courtroom drama is in the construction: Thomas intercuts the court case with flashbacks to their love affair suggesting several disquieting notions of what constitutes modern love.’

Arena

‘Distressingly believable.’

Front

Praise for Kissing England:

‘To say this is elegantly written would be an understatement; the unique essence of England, and being English, is captured perfectly. Imbued with a delicate blend of humour and irony, Kissing England evokes as many personal memories as the ones it creates.’

Time Out

‘Wry, dry, it’s White City Blue meets Brideshead Revisited. Cracking stuff.’

Daily Mirror

‘Thomas balances unremitting explicitness with acutely observed set pieces.’

The Times

Dedication

For us, then

The fourteenth Veintana, Quecholli, was dedicated to Mixcoatl. The feast was celebrated by one or two days of hunting and feasting in the countryside during which the hunters adorned themselves like Mixcoatl himself and kindled new fire to roast the game. Subsequently, a man and a woman were sacrificed to Mixcoatl in his temple. The female victim was slain like a wild animal: her head was struck four times against a rock until she was half-conscious; then her throat was slit and her head decapitated. The male victim displayed the head to the assembled crowds before he himself was sacrificed by heart extrusion.

An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods andSymbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, by Mary Miller and Karl Taube

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Praise

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading

About the Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

1

— Patch, slow down

Says Joe. Patrick turns, and looks back down the sunny London street. Patrick’s friend Joe is wearing a green and yellow martial arts tee shirt, and notably scuffed indigo jeans. Comparing this choice of attire to his own suit and tie, Patrick wonders how he and Joe must appear: like a banker and his drug dealer, discussing prices; like two guests en route to a mildly bohemian wedding; like the accused and his friend, walking to court.

— Don’t want to be early, do you?

Patrick nods, assessing the truth of this. Then Patrick says:

— Guess not … – Thinking, considering – How about a pint?

Joe lifts his hands:

— It’s nine in the morning

Patrick:

— But they’re open. The pubs are open round here, because of the meat market

— I know they’re open – A sigh, a smile – I was just wondering whether you really want to get lashed half an hour before …

Joe stops; shrugs. Patrick turns on his polished black shoes, walks briskly and authoritatively up a side street, and presses a pub door.

Inside the pub the atmosphere is already noisy, and yeasty. The Smithfield pub is full of office lads beering up before work, and meat-market porters winding down after work. Finding two stools by the sticky bar, Patrick pulls, and sits, and says to the barwoman:

— Pint of Guinness … – Looking sidelong – Joe?

Joe does another vague shrug. Patrick persists:

— Joseph?

— … 6X. Half

— Pint of 6X please

The barwoman nods and takes two glasses from the shelf above; Patrick gazes around the bar. In the corner he can see a platoon of nervy, wide-eyed student kids. The students are giggling and nudging each other as they order beers with their breakfasts.

—Takes me back

Says Patrick. Joe, a bit vague, says:

— Sorry?

— Those kids – Says Patrick – Look at them. That was us once. We used to come here after tripping – Patrick widens his eyes – Remember?

Joe grins, and nods. Patrick returns his gaze to the students. Feeling a small ache inside, Patrick marvels at the youth displayed: the impeccable complexions, the innocent cheekbones, the naively exuberant gestures; the gold Saxon hair of the girls.

—You’re only twenty-nine Patch

— I feel ninety-seven, right now

Joe sighs:

— Well. What do you expect? This morning of mornings?

Hmming, Patrick tips the beer to his lips. The Guinness is cold and very bitter. Patrick remembers how he never liked drinking this early.

— God, it’s too early to drink

Joe looks at him blankly. Then says:

— Shall we go?

Manfully struggling with his pride, and with his desire to get drunk despite, Patrick nods, and rises. Together the two old college friends walk out of the pub into London: into the sweetly polluted summer air. They take a right. Then another. Their route takes them past the meat market, past the place where John Betjeman lived, past the church where they filmed Four Weddings and a Funeral, past the hospital ward where Mozart had his tonsils out; and past the ad agency car park where Patrick got his one and only blow job from a Muslim girl.

At the last they make a left, and find themselves staring down the boulevards of capitalism at the noble dome of great St Paul’s. Joe starts walking towards the cathedral, but Patrick says he knows a short cut. Joe nods acquiescently. Patrick steps right and guides them into a garden, then into a courtyard, then through the pink granite undercroft of a Malaysian bank; here they turn and find themselves facing a huge great building site.

— Jesus – Says Joe – I thought they’d finished London

Patrick tries to smile but fails. Patrick does not feel like smiling. He feels like turning, like going back to the pub. Patrick is thinking about what is to happen: what is awaiting him, in ten, twenty, thirty minutes. How many minutes?

Pulling back his stiff left shirtcuff, the cuff so diligently ironed by his mother last night, Patrick checks his watch. Its white face stares back at his white face.

9.20 a.m.

Patrick looks across the thundering street. Pensively he surveys the chaotic building site: the raw new girders and gleaming steel fire escapes; the piles of creamy new bricks.

Joe:

— OK?

With a nod Patrick says:

— OK …

But Patrick feels far from OK. Patrick feels so far from OK he wonders if he might be about to start trembling, or worse. Patrick desperately does not want this: he does not want to look scared in front of Joe.

—Joe …

— Uh?

— I think maybe I …

A knowing expression:

—You want to go in on your own?

—Well …

— Don’t worry mate – Joe claps Patrick on the shoulder, and starts skipping left, into the traffic, calling out as he goes – I’ll see you inside

And so Joe goes.

Alone, now, in the middle of the city hubbub, Patrick swallows and fights himself. His nerves once again quelled, he stares across at the building beyond the building site: his destination. On the top of the building, bright against the cloudless blue sky, is a statue of a woman, holding scales in her golden hand.

Oh, sure, right. Trust a woman?

Dismissing the irony of this, Patrick threads through. The pavement by the Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, is a tumult of chatting journalists, sweating handicam men, and young foreign sightseers knocking into people with their enormous blue rucksacks. Ignoring the crowds, hoping they are all similarly ignoring him, Patrick makes for the lowslung main door of the courts. But Patrick’s boldness is holed. By the sound of a familiar car door, and by the even more familiar sound of a young woman’s voice. The girl is saying:

— Yes Dad I’ll call you

Jesus. Can it be? Can it be? Patrick stops still on the pavement, staring blankly at the side of a big red bus, dumbed. It sounds like her; it certainly sounds like her. Like her. Like his ex; like his accuser; like the truelove he hasn’t seen for a year.

But. Patrick thinks again: no, no, it can’t be; doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t just be … here, standing right by him, would she?

— I think I’ve got to give evidence first thing Daddy

Unable to resist, Patrick turns, and looks. A recognisably big BMW is parked hard by the pavement. Climbing out of the back of the car is a striking blonde girl with a shortish checked dress showing long suntanned legs. The sight makes Patrick’s knees infirm. Because. It is. It’s her.

And now the memories engulf him. As Patrick stands and tries not to react at the sight of his ex-girlfriend, his tormentor, the principal witness for the prosecution, the best friend he allegedly raped twelve months ago, he reacts by remembering. He sees it all. The whole tableau of love. He sees: a bugle on a windowsill; a pair of handcuffs in a fridge; an Aztec history book stained with claret; a sunny Torrington Square, nearly two and a half years ago.

Two and a half years ago?

Silent, and still, Patrick stares. At Rebecca.

2

— He’s still staring

— That’s nice, Rebecca

— No, he is

— OK … – Murphy sighs – OK …

Rolling on her back, Murphy shuts her sarcastic eyes. Slightly frustrated, Rebecca gazes away from the man, and looks around the square. The late May sun is shining but the place is empty: Torrington Square is nearly deserted. Apart from a few Indian girls in flared jeans chatting by the Brunei Centre, and a small group of Japanese girls with miniskirts and superpale legs, sitting demurely on the steps of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Murphy and Rebecca are alone on the mangy bit of central London lawn between Birkbeck College and the Institute of Education. Torrington Square. Musing again on the man, Rebecca says:

— It’s definitely him

— Uh-huh …

— I wonder what he does

— Indeed

Murphy is lying flat out with her skirt hitched up: tanning; ignoring her friend; her head pillowed by her folded pink cardigan. Murphy is using a textbook to shield her eyes from the glare. Rebecca’s textbook. Opting not to mention this, Rebecca says:

— He’s the guy I was telling you about. The one who always sits over there – Brightly – He must work round here, he’s rather young for a lecturer tho, maybe he’s a postgrad or …

Murphy opens her mouth:

— Rebecca … shut the fuck up

Narrowing the space between them Rebecca snatches her textbook from its cowboy-hat role on Murphy’s face. For a second, Murphy seems to scowl; then Murphy breaks into a profile of a smile. Rebecca smiles, too.

Using a grass-stained elbow, Murphy is levering herself onto her front, and visoring her eyes with a flat unwedding-ringed hand so as to look over at him.

A sharp, Murphyish breath.

Rebecca says:

— So? What do you think?

Murphy sets her lips; considers the question. Then:

— He looks a bit …

— What?

— … You know … Brutal … Stone Age – Another look, through the telescope of her squinting eyes – Hasn’t shaved for a while

Rebecca mulls this; Murphy says:

— Just your sort. Another puppy drowner

Staring down at her painted toenails half hidden by her sandals, Rebecca demurs:

— Well

— Why don’t you just wait outside Wormwood Scrubs and have done with it?

Rebecca, chuckling:

— Can’t help it if I’m partial to … a bit of rough …

A Murphyish snort:

— Bit of rough? That guy’s on parole

Rebecca slaps Murphy’s suntanned thigh; Murphy does a laconic ‘ouch’ and then says:

— Anyway, what about Neil? Forgotten him already?

— Neil Schmeal

—Wagon Wheel

Silence. For a moment the two of them observe a Japanese girl protecting her face from the sun with an angled A to Z. Tucking some of her brown hair behind a thrice-pierced ear, Murphy says:

— Still hungry!

Rebecca hands over the second lunch bag:

— Here

— Ta …

Reaching into the shared brown paper bag Murphy takes out the last sandwich. Plastic sandwich podule open, she extracts the coronation chicken sandwich and lays it flat on the bag. Then she lifts a flap of the bread so as to examine the contents.

— Hm

Picking up the sandwich she sniffs the curry-scented, yellowish paste. Nose wrinkling, she puts the sandwich down again, plucks something from the sandwich filling, and then holds this up, in front of Rebecca’s face, like a priest presenting the communion wafer.

—What’s this?

Murphy is holding up an almond. Rebecca says:

— It’s an almond

— Almond? ALMOND?? – Murphy’s voice is almost a yelp – Why do they do this? Why do they put fucking almonds in a bloody chicken sandwich? Why can’t they leave well alone? What’s happening to the world?

Rebecca smiles, says nothing; plucks grass.

Consideringly, Murphy begins removing the bits of almond, diligently extracting them from the gunk, then smearing them with a wince of repugnance on a convenient bit of lawn. This done, Murphy re-examines. Pointing to another suspicious constituent of the curry-sauce-yellow sandwich filling she looks over at Rebecca, reproachfully.

Rebecca sighs:

— Raisins …

Murphy:

— Raisins? Really? Oh, for God’s sake. Did I ask for raisins? Did I say please can you put some fucking dried fruit in my fucking chicken sandwich?

Rebecca’s friend is making an I’ve-had-enough face. Rebecca notices Murphy’s ankle chain. Sighing, exhaling, Murphy squints at the sandwich, looks at Rebecca, squints at the sandwich. With a decided air Murphy bags the sandwich, leans back, takes aim, and expertly lobs the sandwich bag into the nearest bin.

Clapping her hands Murphy sits up straight, cross-legged again, triumphantly laughing; Rebecca laughs, too: feeling happy in the sun. Making a cunning face Murphy does a blatant grab for the last of Rebecca’s lunch; successfully filching from the other paper bag a chocolate bar. With a shrug Rebecca watches as her best friend eats the bar; Murphy is talking with a mouth full of chocolate:

— Anyway. What about the boyf?

— Him …?

— Yeah. Neil. Supergeek. You gonna give him another chance?

Rebecca moues, as if to say: enough said. Sat back on straight arms Rebecca turns and glances over at the guy who hasn’t shaved for a few days. He isn’t glancing at her. He is busy with his own sandwiches, washing them down with a can of cola, idly flicking through his big newspaper. Occasionally he seems to look up and stare vacantly at the Fifties brickwork of Birkbeck. Trying her hardest Rebecca wills him to look at her: look at me, look at me, look at me … please?

As if commanded, he turns his face … and looks at the bike sheds behind Birkbeck College. Offended, rolling over, Rebecca says to Murphy, who is examining her stomach for a tan mark:

— I’ve seen him here a few times now

—Who invented cellulite?

— That guy …

— I mean you never hear Jane Austen banging on about it, do you? Did Elizabeth Bennett freak out in case Darcy saw her orange peel?

— He often eats his lunch here

— So when did cellulite start? The Sixties? I blame feminists. I reckon lesbian feminists must have invented it. To put us off getting naked with guys. Woman-hating bastards. Chop their tits off I say

— How old do you reckon he is?

— Are you still banging on about that … thug? He’s gross, Becs, he looks like he’d mug your mum

— He’s quite … sexy …

— You’re such a slapper, Jessel

— He looks … interesting …

— Psychotic

Rebecca shakes her head and goes to answer but Murphy is checking her ironically big plastic watch. The watch with the knowingly naff boy-band motif. Looking up, tongue clicking, Murphy says:

— Gotta go

— But … it’s not even two

— It’s called work, girl

— … Stay …?

A certain pause. Murphy looks over; Rebecca looks back. Rebecca notes that Murphy’s face is nicely tan, her eyes green, her nose stud silver in the early summer sun. Murphy is laughing, as she makes a spastic voice, as she lodges her tongue behind her bottom lip:

— Derrr … Werrrk

— Unfair!

— What’s it like being a Hampstead heiress with nothing to do but check your bikini line?

— I do do the occasional PhD

— Yeah?

With a somehow sarcastic expression, Murphy reaches and lifts another of the books that have slipped from Rebecca’s Prada bag. Slow, ironic, Murphy recites the title:

— The Broken Spears. The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico

Rebecca is shrugging; Murphy:

— … Call me a stupid cow with skates on, but I thought you were doing the Crusades?

— Well

— Too easy was it? Thought you’d tackle a few more subjects? Brainiac

Murphy looks like she’s thinking of another insult; to stop her Rebecca picks up the paperback that Murphy was reading. Slowly Rebecca recites the title, in a similarly stilted way:

— Veiled Voices, an anthology of Arab women’s poetry

Murphy looks vaguely abashed; and a tiny bit proud. Rebecca says:

— Not exactly the lightest of reading … – Checking the title again – Any good?

Murphy shrugs and says:

— Actually, it is … it’s very good, kinda horny

— Kind of horny?

Murphy laughs:

— Well it’s … interestingly confessional – A glance between them; then Murphy shrugs again – OK so I’m easily aroused …

Before Rebecca can ask her next question, her usual question about Murphy’s love life, Murphy has barked

— Fuck, Becs, I have to go. My boss’ll be chewing her arm off. Conceptual dustbin lids don’t sell themselves y’know …

Rebecca smiles:

— No. Hold on. I’ll come with you, I’ve got to buy something from Waterstone’s

— K

Preparing to go, they look around.

— Er …

— Golly …

Hands on hips they assess the mess they have somehow made. Surrounding their lunch spot is a fairy ring of mobile phone cards, choc-bar wrappers, doodled-on diary pages, and bits of cigarette packet. And Aztec history books, scrunched-up tissues, hay-fever nasal sprays, empty mocha coffee cups, Hello! magazine, OK! magazine, Arab women’s poetry paperbacks, and splinters of smeared almond. Murphy laughs; Rebecca laughs. Laughing as one, they stoop to it: with a burst of zeal and energy they bend to collect the rubbish, bag the books, collate the other stuff, and spend a minute mutually grooming grass stalks. Then and only then do they start walking. As they leave Rebecca checks the corner of the lawn where he was; he isn’t.

Ah well …

But he is already just a memory, a memory almost forgotten as they stroll happily across the grass and down the steps that lead under Birkbeck College. This is their normal short cut: today the two old college friends’ route is blocked by crowds of weird people. By bearded blokes in bad Hawaiian shirts, by hairy-legged women with Marxism For The Twenty-First Century laminate badges. Walking past a parade of temporary bookstalls set out in the sun with an array of yellowing Workers Power titles, Murphy finally stops, wrinkles her nose, blurts:

— God, they ming

Rebecca:

— Murf, please

— But they do. They smell. Yuk

— Murphy

— But why? Why do they have to pong? Does it say that in Das Kapital?

The two college friends push through one particularly gamey cell of would-be Irish Republicans from Guildford as Rebecca explains:

— It’s a Marxist Weekend, they take over the Union every spring for a weekend and have … I don’t know … conferences … I suppose …

Evidently unsatisfied by this Murphy stops short on a pavement and starts loudly reading out the signs installed everywhere: the Luton Comrades For A United Ireland poster, the Kidderminster Spartacists Meet In The Marlborough Arms flyer. Then:

— Correct me if I’m wrong, Becs, but didn’t, like, these people lose? Weren’t they like … totally wrong?

— I’m going to Waterstone’s

— Yeah? Try that poetry collection, you might like it …

Rebecca nods. The two of them are on the corner of Malet Place. In the sun Murphy smiles and reaches over and holds Rebecca’s face and kisses her on the cheek.

— And take care, ducks

With that done Murphy twists on a heel, and walks away down the road.

Still stood still, Rebecca watches her friend depart. From this vantage, the slight overfatness of Murphy’s bottom is obvious, despite the pink cardigan tied around. The sight of this tugs at Rebecca. Flushed by something, Rebecca realises that it is actually this, the pathos of Murphy’s self-consciousness, the pathos of Murphy’s awareness of her own physical imperfections, that constitutes a large part of why Rebecca loves Murphy. Considering this, this odd fact, Rebecca gazes, half in reverie, as Murphy suddenly turns, brightly smiles, and does a sarcastically soppy wave back at Rebecca.

Observing her friend’s cheery wave, Rebecca feels overwhelmed. From nowhere, she now feels an engulfing sadness, as if something soon, something looming and near, something awful is about to happen to her dearest friend that should forever change …

Dismissing it from her thoughts Rebecca goes over to Waterstone’s the Bookshop. Pressing glass she enters. Immediately inside she pauses in the welcome cool downdraught from the doorway aircon. Where to? Travel, Cookery, or Magazines? Or Medieval History, as is proper and right? By her self-imposed schedule Rebecca is all too aware that at this moment she shouldn’t even be here: she should be back at the London Uni library reading up Frankish chronicles. Disregarding her postgraduate conscience Rebecca instead makes her way slowly round Fiction, Crime and New Titles, before climbing the black metal stairs, and the second flight of stairs, at the top of which she turns and makes that guilty but familiar, wicked but much loved right turn: into Literature, and Drama, and Poetry, and Art. Her trueloves …

Hours pass, maybe minutes. Rebecca moves from Braque to Brancusi, from Hockney to Biedermeier. Finally she finds a book about French eighteenth-century court portraiture. The engrossing book makes Rebecca wonder how she can relate the sensuality of rococo portraiture to her thesis; she knows she can’t, but hey.

Then Rebecca starts. Something has made her pull her head from the book: some subconscious foreshadowing, some creak in the floorboards. Some noise. Turning, Rebecca sees: him. It is him. The thug. The puppy drowner. The very real subject of her very recent lunchtime daydreams is standing in the doorway pretending to look at the book he is holding. The book is an anthology of love poetry, Rebecca notes: but the way he is not truly reading it makes Rebecca realise, with a surge, that quite possibly his real intention is to talk to her; it seems as if he really wants to be talking to her, to be looking at her.

So this is it; my pounding heart surcease, Rebecca thinks. For the moment he, the thug, does nothing. He appears to be about to say something, he is surely struggling for the right words, but nothing yet. Closing her eyes Rebecca starts on wondering what he will eventually enunciate when he works up the courage; with a pole vault in her heart she considers what cliché’d but lovely line of poetry he’ll choose, how he’ll opt to mark this wonderful, enchanted, never-to-be-forgotten moment in their now forever twinned and linked-together lives by saying thou unravished bride of quietness, or maybe carentan o carentan or just possibly I have desired to go, Where springs not fail, to fields where flies no sharp and sided hail, and a few lilies blow.

— Great arse!

He says.

3

Fleeing the sunshine and the sight of Rebecca, Patrick steps inside a low metal doorway into a tiny badly carpeted lobby, where he is scrutinised by three policemen standing half visible behind big panes of scratched, thickened glass. Patrick leans and explains, through the grille at the bottom of one pane of glass, that he is up for trial. The policeman looks blank, then mutters, then reads from a big book to his side; with a final, diffident glance at Patrick the policeman nods and buzzes a button which slides open the door of a cylindrical plastic airlock to Patrick’s right. Unsure, Patrick turns and steps inside the vertical clear plastic coffin. The circular door behind slides shut; Patrick wonders why the Old Bailey gets its furniture from cheap Seventies BBC space dramas; the arc of transparent plastic that is the door in front jerks open.

Clear of the door Patrick is beckoned through a metal detector arch by the same policeman who gave him the funny look. The policeman then directs him up some steps and turns away as if he does not want to look at Patrick any more.

Patrick approaches some more steps. These are big steps, bigger steps. This is more like it, thinks Patrick. His shoes tap-dancing on the large marble steps Patrick feels a tiny frisson of aesthetic pleasure as he is guided by the dead architect’s unseen hand up and out into the cool marble spaces of the Central Criminal Court proper.

— Patrick

It is his lawyer; and his lawyer’s junior.

— Hello Mister Stefan

— About time!

— Yes er sorry

— You do remember your bail conditions?

Patrick grimaces inwardly, then outwardly. He does not feel like being ticked off, not now, not here. His lawyer seems to notice this. With a lofty chuckle Stefan places a squeezing hand on Patrick’s shoulder. At the same time, Charlie Juson, his lawyer’s junior, slaps Patrick’s other shoulder. Patrick smiles weakly at this display of slightly awkward mateyness, and stares wonderingly ahead. The last time Patrick saw his brief Robert Stefan QC, Robert Stefan QC was in an open-necked shirt leaning back in a relaxed leather chair in his panelled chambers in the blossomy, vernal, High Middle Ages loveliness of a Maytime Inner Temple, discoursing whisky-in-hand-ishly on his wide knowledge of various sex crimes. Here Stefan is in black with a white horsehair wig on his head: looking very serious.

Back then, two months previously, when Patrick had gone to discuss his hopes, his fears, his case, his evidence, his chances of getting jail, cricket, rugby, the precise meaning of the word ‘consent’ as regards rape trials, Stefan had seemed to Patrick rather young to be a top lawyer, a silk, a Queen’s Counsel: which was both worrying and reassuring. Now, here, in the Old Bailey, Stefan seems older and infinitely more serious; which both reassures and frightens Patrick. So Patrick stands here feeling confused; Stefan talks quickly:

— Don’t worry, we haven’t been called yet

— Right

— Ten thirty I think

— Yes

— But I rather think we’re going to be in Court Eighteen are you feeling alright?

— Patch!

Patrick turns.

— I just saw her mother she was staring at me like

— Anderson!

— Chin up you old twat

— Was that her outside? In the school dress?

— First there’ll be jury selection

— Then evidence in chief

— Talk about hooters!

— Joe

Surrounded by gaggles of over-sarcastic friends and an anxious-looking sister Patrick wonders, slowly. For a moment he feels comforted by this mob-handedness: after all, how can anything go wrong, with all his friends and his sister and probably his mother here and … and …

And then he remembers that if this were his funeral they would still be here, all of them, his friends and family, behaving precisely the same way, being chatty yet sad, feeling guilty but laughing, greeting each other merrily and youthfully and then stopping as soon as they remember where they are. And so now Patrick swoons at the thought that this is indeed his funeral, here, stood in the middle of the marble lobby of the Central Criminal Court of Old Newgate Jail he will be gone and never seen again; will be despatched with due ceremony; and with this thought Patrick feels himself transcend, go out-of-body, feels himself levitate above the vortex of buzzing besuited friends and black-cassocked priests-cum-lawyers … he is ascending … ascending to somewhere, to somewhere where his experience is so beyond what they shall ever experience he is beyond the reach of mutual understanding and they shall none of them ever be friends again.

— Patch you nutter I told you not to rape her

— As I’ve said, with previous convictions, the recommended sentence can …

— Tapir!

Crackling through the noise of his friends and lawyers like someone shouting his name at a party Patrick hears a voice come over the court loudspeakers

—All parties in Skivington please go to Court Number Eighteen

— That’s us

Says Stefan.

Patrick breathes in, breathes out. He sweeps a gaze across the faces in front of him: his lawyer, his friends, his sister. His sister Emily. Emily looks back at him. Her Skivington-blue eyes are slightly moist, her hair slightly dishevelled; her caring for him is evidenced in the lack of care for herself. Holding her brother by his besuited shoulder Emily says:

— Good luck, Patrick

— Yeah mate

Says Joe. Someone else says:

— Give ’em hell, y’wanker

A couple of Joe’s friends have slapped Patrick on the back; Joe has done the same. With his shoulder still smarting, Patrick is then man-handled by his lawyers, by Robert Stefan and Charlie Juson, up some more expensively shallow, lavishly marble steps, unto a marble cool corridor. Escorted by his legal bouncers, Patrick walks past other lawyers in wigs and kit, past his solicitor Gareth Jenkins who gives Patrick a thumbs-up, past a girl who seems to be crying, past three nasty-looking blokes with tattoos who are staring at the crying girl. Then they stop before a padded door which is all velvet and wood and dignified weight.

The door opens, they step through; the door closes quietly and slowly behind. Patrick lets himself be led into a wooden-railed dock. The dock. Patrick sits down on a crap plastic chair and gazes around Court Number Eighteen. It is a long high soft-lit soft-white light-brown-wood-panelled courtroom. A clock ticks on one wall. The other wall is taken up by a jutting gallery; the public gallery? Patrick presumes it is. Patrick leans to try and see who is seeing him from the gallery; he can’t quite see. So instead Patrick looks at the royal crest, the Lion and Unicorn above the judge’s big wooden throne at the end.

The judge isn’t on his throne, isn’t in the courtroom, but lots of other people are: a clerk of the court; what Patrick assumes is a stenographer, though he isn’t sure what a stenographer is; his own lawyer, now opening his briefcase; another lawyer-type, but older, (older? wiser?? the prosecution???) opening his own briefcase; his solicitor, doing nothing (nothing?); some security musclemen who are standing ominously nearby; a yawning policewoman; another policewoman chewing gum; another clerk of the court; and a couple of seedy-looking guys in cheapish suits who are staring him out from some of the side galleries ranked beside the dock. Journalists? Patrick shakes his head and stares at the royal crest above the judge’s seat. Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense.

Something about this agitates him. In his dock, in his seat, Patrick swallows. Although Patrick knows it is a trick, a stunt, a sleight of the psychosocial hand, he feels his pulse race, his heart go fast: the Majesty of the Law. He might have been in courts before, but they were nothing like this.

Patrick is, now, suddenly, again, scared. He feels like a small boy sent to the headmaster’s study. Like a schoolkid walking down the corridor, heading for detention … Except this time his detention will result in his spending fourteen years in a cold northern jail before having three broken lightbulbs shoved up his arse by his gay psychotic car-jacking Kurdish cellm …

— All Rise

Everybody in the court who wasn’t standing now stands; at the back of the court beside the judge’s throne a clerk opens a door and a small oldish man walks in wearing a larger wig. The man ascends to the throne and sits down and gazes around and says:

— Good morning, everybody

A good morning is mumbled back by everybody. Everybody sits down who seems to be allowed to sit down; Patrick does the same. At once people start chatting, opening folders, relaxing, moving about the courtroom confusingly but confidently: just people doing what they normally do, on a normal day. Normal day! Patrick sits there, marvelling. Then Patrick’s lawyer leans across to chat to the man whom Patrick presumes is the prosecution lawyer, Alan Gregory QC. The prosecutor nods, nods again, and then laughs.

!

The spittle of outrage fills Patrick’s mouth as he sees this open collaboration, this evidence of conspiracy. How can they be chatting? Laughing? Chatting? Jesusfuck! Patrick is outraged, helpless, stuck in his blue plastic chair in the wooden dock, palsied by impotent anger. Colluding! Conspiring! Chatting! Patrick wants to shout out at them: Wankers! Jobsworths! Toffeewombles!

But Patrick does not shout this; shouting out swearwords isn’t going to do anything. He realises this. The judge might be a pantsucking fuckbat but …

The judge!?!

Patrick eyes up the judge. A good man, surely, hopefully, pleaseGod, yes. Yesyes, a good man. Yes. And so Patrick calms down, and so Patrick calms down. And so he calms down … until he has another spasm of panic when he realises that he can’t see his friends. Where? Where! Scandal! Before it has fully dawned on Patrick that they are in the public gallery and the public gallery is virtually directly above him, overhanging him, and therefore invisible to him, some official stands up and says:

— Stand up!

Patrick looks around the court to see which idiot is being bossed in this way. Then he realises it is him: Patrick Skivington. Obediently Patrick stands, and steadies his knees. The clerk, or whoever it is, says:

— You are Patrick Skivington of flat two, number thirty-five, Leominster Place, London WC1, correct?

Patrick nods and croaks a quiet yes. The clerk says:

— You are charged that on the night of August twenty-eight, two thousand and – Patrick jibes; was it that long ago? The clerk completes the date; then pauses, slightly, before saying – raped Rebecca Jessel, contrary to section one of the Sexual Offences Act of nineteen fifty-six – Another significant pause; another glance up – How do you plead?

OK, OK, OK. Patrick takes a grip of his thigh. OK. Ready. Ready-ready. Firm voice. Big voice. This is your chance. For months Patrick has waited for this moment, this moment when he shall express all his outraged innocence, all his innocent hurt, all his unjustly tormented truly-suffering-selfness, in two words. He has only two words, two words to say it all, all he’s felt over these last months, this last year, all he felt in prison, all he felt in his cell, all he felt on remand: and so Patrick stands, and lifts his chin and looks directly at the judge, at the Queen, at God, and asseverates, with all the self-righteous self-justification he can adduce in a tone of voice:

— NOT GUILTY

Half a second passes while this sinks in. Then, nothing. Contrary to Patrick’s quondam daydreams of the last year, the tone of outraged innocence in his voice fails to instantly convince. The proceedings are not summarily dismissed. The court is not in uproar. The public gallery is not full of hat-waving citizens demanding his immediate release. Nor does the judge glance sharply across at the clerk and say what is this obviously innocent young man doing here, let him go at once.

Instead the judge clears his throat and says:

— OK I think we’ll have the jury in

— Call the jury!

— The jury …

Patrick sits down. Around him notepapers have been unfoldered, pens clicked on, wigs taken up. Then the main door opens, and a procession of people are led in, Indian file, one by one. Two of them are indeed Indian: a youngish fanciable girl, and a middle-aged woman in a horrible, oversized jumper. Urgent, Patrick scans these two, and the rest of the jury. Patrick tries to remember Stefan’s advice not to eyeball the jurors for fear of frightening them, but he can’t help himself. These people are going to be holding his bollocks in their hands, and he wants to assess their bollock-holding fitness-for-purpose.

Eight of the jury are women; only one (a man in a battered brown-leather jacket, with a wry intelligent smile) is the sort of person Patrick would consider even sharing a couple of beers with. Apart from the cute Indian girl. One of the men, a darkish, shortish, possibly foreign man, has an eggshell-blue nylon shirt on. With a glossy green leather tie.

Patrick shudders.

He is doomed.

One by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one by one the jury is sworn in, each taking a bible in hand:

— I swear by Almighty God to do my best to try the defendant according to the evidence presented …

As the jury is sworn in, Patrick weighs up the irony of the fact that he is about to be tried by a man wearing a green leather tie. His fate is about to be decided by a man who buys his clothes second hand in … Azerbaijan. This pleasurably snobbish line of thought exhausted, Patrick finds that after this he is actually growing very very very slightly … bored. Bored? Patrick’s sense of doom, of pointlessness, of almost-being-extraneous-to-proceedings has metamorphosed into a kind of numb dull indifference which is barely a whit away from … boredom. From his dock seat Patrick idly gazes at the female stenographer, wondering what her nipples are like; until he is shaken out of his maudlin torpor by the annoyingly pompous voice of the prosecutor, Mister Alan Gregory QC.

Gregory has stood up, and is saying to the jury:

— Members of the jury, the case you are about to hear is distressing in the extreme. It involves the savage sexual brutalisation of a young girl by the defendant, Patrick Skivington – Gregory does the faintest of gestures towards Patrick; Patrick thinks how much he wants to staple train timetables to Gregory’s head; Gregory goes on – It is my duty as prosecution lawyer to present to you the evidence in a dispassionate and logical light, but also to convince you beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was responsible for the truly appalling crime you are about to try – A second actorly handwave, then – The burden of proof, as we call it, rests with me. My colleague who is appearing for the defence – He wafts the same manicured hand at Stefan, who nods, smiles briefly – Has nothing to prove, as such. His job is more to sow doubt, as it were. However I restate that it is my belief that the evidence in this case is overwhelming and conclusive, besides being … ah – Looking at the ceiling; looking down – … Very upsetting, and that you should encounter no difficulty in finding the defendant guilty – A glance, a glance at Patrick – At this stage in proceedings it is usual for the prosecution counsel to present a kind of résumé of the indictment, a summation, but as we shall be going over all the evidence in some detail more than once I shall restrict myself to a brief precis of the alleged crime – Gregory pauses, gazes down at his papers in a somehow Oxbridge way; Patrick feels his teeth grinding; he tries not to listen to his own teeth, or to Gregory; but can’t help – The allegation is simply put: that the defendant, on the night of August twenty-eighth, last year, raped his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Jessel. But, members of the jury, that bald statement barely begins to describe the true horror of the crime that, the prosecution posits, the defendant perpetrated that night. You all, I hope, have some photos in your files, these photos – Gregory suddenly and unexpectedly holds up a big photo and wafts it at the jury. Even from this distance Patrick can see a picture of his and Rebecca’s bedroom. Eyes left, Patrick sees the jurors reaching in folders and looking at the same photo and nodding back at the prosecutor, who smiles so ingratiatingly and says some more stuff that Patrick succeeds in blocking out. For a few moments Patrick is successful in not hearing anything, but then the prosecutor gets a little louder, as if approaching his peroration, and the loudness forces Patrick to listen, to hear Gregory say – Nor was this just a simple case of non-consensual vaginal penetration, the technical definition of rape. No, the prosecution holds that this man, the defendant, also subjected this terrified girl to a number of other degrading acts, to coercive anal penetration, to forced oral sex, to various other sadistic sexual crimes, some of which are dealt with in the ancillary indictments – Adjusting his wig Gregory stands back a touch, as if thinking; then he looks up and goes on – I shall be bringing medical evidence to support this claim. A deal of evidence that will require a … strong stomach – Patrick feels his own jaw chewing, jaw-going, his jaw, jawing, hurting – And now, with the court’s permission, I should like to call the alleged victim, Rebecca Jessel, to the stand

Patrick lifts and shakes his head and tries to stare bravely at the wall, at the neutral wall above the judge’s head. A faint tiny prickling behind his eyes indicates to Patrick Skivington that he would probably be crying if he were ten years old and being picked on like this in the school yard.

Patrick does not cry. He stares forward.

Wasp-face! Dog-features! Badger-breath!

4

— Great arse?

— … Yes

— Great arse?

— So?

— Ha! This Patrick guy – Murphy picks up a pencil, waggles it – Smooth-talking bastard!

— It was a book …

—Yep OK

— I was looking at a book, of French rococo art

— Sure, Becs

— No you don’t understand he was looking over my shoulder, at that picture by Boucher – Murphy not responding, Rebecca goes on – The painting of that girl with her bottom in the air, so you see it was really quite sharp

Murphy percusses the end of the pencil against her lips:

— It isn’t big and it isn’t clever

— Murf!

— I don’t mind you lying to me, it’s when you lie to yourself

— Ohhh

Amused but frustrated Rebecca says no more. Instead she leans against the edge of Murphy’s desk: the only furniture of note in the pale-blond-wooden-floored, mostly white-matt-walled emptiness of Schubert & Scholes, Murphy’s gallery.

Rebecca:

— How long has it been since you had a shag Murf?

— He just sounds rough. Very rough … – Murphy is twirling the pencil like a tiny baton between her fingers – Tell me about his criminal record again?

— It’s nothing heavy

— Oh, only a tiny little bit of GBH

— He got in a couple of fights when he was at Uni

— A couple of fights. Jesus! – Murphy sticks the pencil into her hair, twists hair around the end — That’s why they threw him out of his college, the University of Tesco’s Car Park, or wherever it was? Right?!

— Yyyess

— Let’s face it, he’s a bloody caveman

Rebecca tilts her head:

— Mmm. Sexy, isn’t it?

— No – Murphy snaps – It’s not. It’s wanky. The guy’s a musclebound fuck-wit and you’re all gooey-eyed. Christ! – Murphy gazes into the eyes of her friend – What about all that feminism stuff we studied at Edinburgh, what about Simone de Beauvoir and … that other French cow?

— You should see him when he’s got a bit of stubble

— Ohhh … – The pencil falls from Murphy’s fingers, bounces off a two-month-old edition of Blueprint magazine, and spins to the pale-blond-wood floor. Murphy looks down, says – I presume you’ve shagged him already?

— He’s such a spunk

— So that makes it OK? You atrocious slut

Surveying a pile of oversized metal film canisters stacked carefully in one corner of the gallery, Rebecca says:

— Actually we haven’t – Looking back at her surprised-looking friend, meaningfully – I only went down on him

A clucking noise from Murphy; Rebecca:

— Which I thought was rather restrained

— Restrained?

— Comparatively

Murphy:

— Fifteen minutes after meeting the bloke you’re on your knees wrestling with his zipper … restrained?

— Nice and big, by the way

— ?

— And thick

Murphy laughs:

— Girth?

— Gerrrrrrtthh!

— We Like Gerrrrrtthhhhh!!

Their chorus done, Murphy shakes her head and says:

— Just don’t come running when he goes and dumps you you hairy old SLAPPER

A pause. Murphy is bending to pick up the pencil from the floor. Watching her friend bend over, Rebecca assesses her friend’s shortish brown hair; her lithe figure; the cuttlefish tattoo she can see above her friend’s new jeans-belt. Rebecca, idly:

— Love the belt

— Yeah?

Saying ‘yeah I do’, Rebecca sits back against the desk again. Looking at a grainy art photo of a power station on the wall, Rebecca says:

— Actually, we’ve only kissed

— Yeah right – Murphy looks sarcastic and uncomprehending and pleased at the same time – Three dates: and you’ve only kissed? Honestly?

— Honestly

— Wow … – Murphy pretends to get up from her chair – Do you want to lie down? I’ll get you a blanket

— I think … he’s a bit … inhibited

— Inhibited?

— Well, I told him

— No!

— Couldn’t help it. He took me to some club he knows … and we started talking about sex and – Rebecca grins self-consciously – I just stupidly came out with it

— Jesus

— I know – Rebecca mumbles a laugh – Maybe it was a slight mistake

— I’ve told you, Becs: it frightens them

— But it’s just the truth

Murphy shakes her head:

— Twenty-eight different lovers is quite a lot for a twenty-two-year-old Rebecca, smiling:

— Rather more than he as it turned out

— Where’d he take you then?

— Thirty-one anyway … sorry?

— Your second date. Where?

— I told you, this club, he knows all these places in Soho cause of

— No, before the club

— Oh, some posh restaurant

— Hope he paid

— Of course. It’s so awfully unfair isn’t it?

A confirming grin, then Murphy says:

— Don’t tell ’em – Murphy cocks a finger to her lips – They’ll figure it out one day, don’t let on …

Rebecca nods, distracted, says ‘uh-huh’. Again, she looks appraisingly at her friend. Rebecca wonders if and when her best friend will get a boyfriend. Then she wonders if her own impending relationship will affect her friendship with Murphy; then Rebecca realises she has no idea what effect her possible love affair with Patrick will have, because she’s never been in love before. In which case, how does she know she is falling in love now? Simply because she’s more anxious than normal, more nervously upbeat? More keen to submit?

As if telepathically, Murphy says:

— I suppose you’re going to go and fall in love with this bozo aren’t you?

— No

— YES – Murphy is sighing, urbanely – You’re going to sleep with him tonight and by next week you’ll be texting him messages on his phone and by autumn you’ll be wearing his bloody shirts and then – Murphy stops, nods to herself, decides on the rest of her speech – Then by next spring when you both walk home from restaurants you’ll start looking casually in estate agents and then … and then … – Searching for the right part of London, Murphy goes on, emphatically – Then you’ll move in to some stupid stupid flat in Clapham and that’ll be it. Finito. After that you’ll only ever ring me when he’s been horrible to you and then you’ll have a baby and move to Suffolk and spend the weekend wearing Aran jumpers and God it’s so annoying

— You’re jealous. Sweet

— Course I’m fucking jealous – Murphy shakes her head in amazement – Why shouldn’t I be jealous. Just don’t get hurt? K?

— You might be wrong anyway – Rebecca glances at the precious-metal watch, the watch her father bought her for her eighteenth. This makes her feel a pang of something. Some regret – He’s a bit rough in some ways … – She makes a thoughtful face – Anyway I’m meeting him at the pub down the road, in a minute

Murphy, calmer:

— You did say he lives round here, right?

— Ya, it’s convenient for his job – Rebecca looks out of the window, as if expecting Patrick to walk by – S’just down the road

— So that’s why he fetched up every time we had a sarny

— Yes – Rebecca thinks about Patrick’s flat; about the kiss on the sofa, the hand on her nipple – He’s got a nice flatmate, very shaggable

Murphy looks up, helpless:

— Really?

— Really. Joe … something. Cute bod. Bit of a druggie

— Mmmm?

— Wears a good pair of jeans …

— Ooooh …

Rebecca starts laughing at Murphy’s melodramatic ooooh-noise; Murphy has already stopped laughing. Murphy is saying:

— Hello hello

Rebecca:

— I’ll arrange a drink or something. So you can meet him, he’s very sweet and funny, I’m sure you’ll

— sssss!!

Murphy is nodding towards a well-dressed man who has swung through the plate-glass door from the street; Murphy:

— The Christmas rush!!

Obediently Rebecca gazes across the gallery: at the expensively empty space of Schubert & Scholes now filled by a punter, a customer, a man. The man has an air of wealth, and confidence; enough for Murphy to put on her brightest, most insincere gallery-girl smile.

His hands on his knees, the pinstriped man begins examining a collection of enamelled Japanese household rubbish piled alongside one wall of the gallery. Quickly swivelling to her best friend, Murphy makes a ‘sorry I’d better do some work now’ expression; slipping herself off the desk Rebecca puts a fist to her tilted head and makes an ‘OK I’ll ring you tomorrow’ gesture.

In Charlotte Street the blue sunshades are up outside Chez Gérard. A few yards further down the road couples are eating noodles outside the Vietnamese place. And on restaurant tables ranked alongside the entire facade of Pescatori Fish Restaurant big azure-glass ashtrays are glinting expensively in the sun. Walking down this, through this, all this, along her favourite London road, Rebecca feels a head-rush of happiness. She feels a sudden sense of her youngness, her freeness, her possibly-about-to-be-no-longer-singleness. She feels almost ebullient: so ebullient, she finds she is virtually skipping down to the junction of Charlotte and Percy Streets, as she heads for the Marquis of Granby pub.

But before she reaches the Marquis of Granby pub, Rebecca clocks her watch again and realises she has walked so fast, and so ebulliently, and so nearly-skippingly, she is ten minutes early.

So now? Assessing the sun Rebecca sees that it is still slanting brightly enough down Rathbone Place to make it worth working on her tan. Taking a corner seat at one of the wooden pub tables outside the Marquis Rebecca arranges herself: she turns and faces with closed eyes the hot sun, stretching her bare legs out. After a minute of this Rebecca opens her eyes, and sees that her legs are already the subject of some male consternation. One besuited barely-out-of-his-teens drinker is openly pointing at her. For his benefit, without making it too obvious, Rebecca raises her dress an inch or two higher; thinking of Rembrandt’s wife in the painting as she does so.

More heads turn. A tongue actually lolls. Rebecca has never seen a tongue loll before, but there one is, lolling. At her. Not for the first time in her life, Rebecca decides she actually quite enjoys this: the sensation of masculine eyes upon her. It makes her feel like a mid-period Picasso at a glamorous auction; it makes her feel like an attractive woman. Sitting here being sizzled by the heat Rebecca starts to wonder why some art history feminists get so worked up about the male gaze. How so? Why so het up about leers and oeillades? Rebecca does not comprehend it. These staring men make Rebecca feel strong, empowered, aristocratic. To Rebecca right now these men look like so many Catholic French peasants gazing at le Roi Soleil. Dumb, resentful, awestruck serfs …

Thinking of this, primrosing down this intellectual path, Rebecca wonders unwontedly if she can spin a thesis out of this, out of, say, the male gaze as serf-like feudal reflex. Perhaps, she decides, she could; but then, she decides, she shouldn’t. All these thoughts of matters historical, and theoretical, and thesis-esque, are in fact making Rebecca feel a simultaneous twinge of guilt. Because she isn’t working even on her present project, her Crusader thesis, hardly. At all.

Rebecca opens her eyes, worried now. Ever since she and Patrick met, she thinks, she’s done virtually nothing towards her PhD. And this does not make Rebecca feel empowered and royal: right now this makes her feel crap, teenage, girly and feeble. God it’s so crap, Rebecca decides, pulling down her dress to hide her legs: that a mere man can come along and upend her priorities, distort her intellectual life, make nonsense of her ambitions and life goals, by not having shaved for a day or two. How gay is that?

So she must do some work, Rebecca decides, just to show she isn’t just a cheerleading troupe of hormones.

Sighing in the sunshine, putting down her pint of lager, Rebecca takes a textbook out of her bag, the ever-present, hardly-touched Crusades history book, and starts to read up. Flicking pages she comes upon the section she was deconstructing up until … the bit she was studying up and unto the moment Patrick walked casually through the front door of her life, like he’d had a key all along …