Overlapping Lives Read online

  At closing time he said to Morag, ‘Why not come and keep me warm tonight?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’ll buy you a drink on Friday if you’re in the pub.’ She kissed him briefly on the cheek and left.

  It was nearly midnight as Morag approached her flat. She became aware of someone following her. Turning, she instantly recognises the man from the pub. He is running at her, his hand is in her hair; she is pulled violently to the ground. She feels his weight on her and cannot move. He smashes her face against the pavement. She is half-conscious. He flips her onto her back like a rag doll. She feels her face gripped by his hand and tries to scream but cannot make her voice work. Her skirt is torn off, then her pants. She feels his knee forced between her legs; there is a hideous tearing sensation and then her senses stop working. The kind face of a woman dressed in green is looking closely at her: ‘Take some deep breaths, love,’ she says. Morag slowly regains consciousness and realises she is on a stretcher under an orange blanket. A mask is against her face into which she breathes obediently. She is naked from the waist down.

  At the hospital they poked and prodded and swabbed and told her repeatedly that it was not her fault. Later, the police arrived and made her tell them what she could remember. She had to repeat the story and with each retelling the policemen checked every discrepancy in the detail until she thought they did not believe her. She doubted that his name was Paul but that was all she knew about him. The more she was questioned, the more she began to feel a sense of guilt and eventually could only weep. They left her alone.

  The following weeks were a nightmare. The trauma of being raped evoked all sorts of past abusive events. Morag was plagued with unwanted memories of all the brutal things which had happened to her during her childhood and persecution at school. Counsellors and psychologists made themselves available, but for days she was too anxious to leave her flat. At night, sleep was elusive or transient and she had a pervasive self-disgust which felt like an illness. Some part of her brain convinced her that she smelled of the dirt on the pavement in which her face had been thrust by her assailant. Her disquiet in the presence of men felt like fear. The idea of intimacy with anyone was absurd. Slowly, she resurrected herself and returned to work but could not bring herself to re-join the cheerful, raucous, after-work boozing. The man from the pub had not been arrested.

  Morag’s carefree life with Jack seemed a distant memory. She was consumed by malevolence towards the succession of people who had abused her during her short life; they crowded into her regular nightmares. The counsellors wanted her to reflect on ways to forgive, but the prospect seemed implausible. Her recovery from the physical assault was the easy part, but the rapist had deprived her of her confidence and self-esteem. She ruminated on all the bad things which had happened in her childhood, the misery and beating at school and finally being evicted by her father. Guilt became a constant presence as if everything bad which had befallen her was her own fault. If the police were incapable of apprehending the man who had raped her, she knew that unless she harmed him in some way, she would never be free of the demonic things which threatened to stop her from returning to her hedonistic life. The fearlessness of consequences, which had once been the cornerstone of her youthful wildness, made her resolute. She started to research ways of killing people. Then she set about finding her assailant whom she was certain still haunted the pubs on the fringe of the city.

  The winter provided an excuse to shroud herself in scarves to avoid recognition. She wandered from pub to pub on wet, freezing evenings, occasionally stopping for a drink, but constantly scanning the drinkers for the face, etched in her memory, of the man who had raped her. Winter had turned to spring by the time she encountered him. The weather was warming, and groups of people drank on the evening pavements as the sun set. There was a pattern to his movements from pub to pub, always in the company of one or two young women. Morag realised he was selecting his next victim. On weekend afternoons he frequented the same few pubs. Morag decided she would kill him towards the end of May on a Sunday afternoon. She had gleaned as much as she could from the internet about how to stab someone. Surprise, speed and force were essential. The anatomy of the blood vessels in the neck was available from text books intended for medical students. She bought a filleting knife with a seven inch blade and a solid handle.

  On a sunny Sunday afternoon she found her quarry outside a pub, sitting at a pavement table with his habitual female company. She approached him from behind and with a swift, arcing movement of her right arm stabbed the man in the right side of his neck. A pulsating gush of blood spread down his front. Morag had hit her target: the carotid artery. She pulled his head back and buried the knife a second time in his neck and left it there. The man slumped sideways to the pavement in a pool of blood. Morag was vaguely aware of shouting as she was surrounded by people pouring from the pub, all with their phones ready to capture the lurid images on the pavement. A growing sense of triumph filled her as the crowd grew. She felt like a heroine. Escape was not possible as the crowd pressed in; sirens and blue flashing lights filled the street. She was aware of being handcuffed, shoved in a car and driven away at speed, crushed between two enormous policemen. On the same sunny Sunday afternoon Julie had murdered her assailant, Trevor, in the garden of a pub in North London.

  Jack found her in the police cells. They were allowed a few minutes together:

  ‘What have you done?’ Jack was incredulous.

  ‘I’m happy. I don’t care what happens now. I feel like I’ve got a life again.’ She explained rapidly how things had been. He promised to deal with the flat and her possessions; she would not need them for a long time. They hugged and Jack was asked to leave; that was the last time they met until Jack visited her in prison a few weeks later.

  Morag was processed through the courts with surprising speed. There were plenty of witnesses to the murder. She offered no defence and expressed no remorse. A judge sentenced her to twenty-five years in prison. The journey to prison was a depersonalising process; she was questioned repeatedly, stripped, searched, eventually allowed back to her flat with an escort to collect a minimum of possessions, mainly underwear, supplied with drab prison clothes, handcuffed again and driven to a prison in Surrey.

  When the cell door clanged shut behind Morag her eyes fell on a dark-haired woman with bright blue eyes, sitting on one of the narrow beds.

  ‘Hello, I’m Julie. They told me you would be arriving today. I’ve only been here a few hours.’ She smiled and patted the bed beside her. Morag sat down next to her. There was no point in being reticent with each other. They exchanged their stories and found they shared a remarkable narrative. Their affinity for each other was instant. During the following weeks Julie and Morag fell in love. Their love was enduring and saw them through the long, monotonous years they spent together in prison. Twelve years later they were both granted parole and life resumed.

  Sally’s Story

  On Sunday morning Sally woke slowly, lying on her right side. She opened her left eye. Trevor was awake, lying on his left side, looking at her with his right eye. He reached across to Sally and rolled her onto her back, moving his hand lightly across her stomach, upwards to her left breast and gently squeezed her nipple. It sent an instant message to her pelvis, reminding her she was feeling sore and bruised.

  ‘Let’s fuck once more,’ whispered Trevor. Sally said nothing but moved her thighs apart to let him in. Trevor entered her slowly as far as he could go. He pulled the duvet over their heads, found her lips with his and pushed his tongue into her mouth. The erotic smell of their secretions became pungent under the duvet. Trevor stopped kissing her and raised himself on his elbows.

  ‘You’re a wonderful lover, Sally. When can we do this again?’ Sally felt the question did not accurately reflect the reality. What Trevor meant was more like, when can I do this to you again? Sally had been the passive recipient of Trevor’s se
xual preferences for the past twenty-four hours.

  ‘Don’t move. I’m too sore,’ she said. Since Saturday afternoon Trevor’s cock had been everywhere: in her mouth; her anus; her vagina, where it was again. She tilted her pelvis and squeezed his cock with her pelvic muscles.

  ‘You’ll have to stop. It’s too uncomfortable.’ Trevor rolled off and smiled at her.

  Later in the morning Julie had telephoned and suggested they meet in the afternoon at a pub. Sally knew this was an olive branch after the awkward encounter at Julie’s party the Sunday before. She had realised that Trevor’s presence had upset her hostess and had left swiftly without saying anything. It had not been clear why Julie had reacted as she had, but she agreed that it would be okay if Trevor came with Sally in the afternoon.

  They had been sitting together congenially for a few minutes in the sunny pub garden when Sally became aware of Julie moving very quickly opposite her. Before she realised what was happening a bright red plume of blood had soaked the table as Julie impaled Trevor’s neck with a long blade. Sally had screamed. She looked at Julie who had sat down again opposite her with a faint smile on her face. Sally got to her feet, walked behind her friend, draped her arms around her neck, whispered: ‘What have you done?’ and held on to her. That was how the paramedics and police found them, by which time Trevor was dead.

  The police had threatened Sally with accusations of colluding with Trevor’s murder unless she agreed to be a witness in court before Julie was sentenced. She had no choice and testified against her friend. Later, she had tracked down Julie in the prison in Surrey and started to visit for one hour every week. Julie knew that she owed her friend an explanation. It took three visits to explain in detail how Trevor had exploited Julie when she was most vulnerable at university, how the sight of him troubled her and made her suicidal after the party. Her resolve to kill Trevor had been unshakeable. She regretted nothing; she was as happy as circumstances permitted, she had said, and went on to talk about Morag, her cell mate. Julie insisted that Sally must meet her.

  Julie’s story unsettled Sally. Trevor was gone, but the recollection of her intimacy with him was disquieting, particularly the way he had used her body for his own gratification. She realised that she had been more than a good lover for Trevor; during their short affair the only thing they had done together was spend time in bed. Sally liked sex, but the more she thought about it, the more it seemed that whatever had happened while they were in bed was done to her, not with her. She began to understand how Julie had been made to feel.

  When Sally met Morag it was inevitable that they would talk about how Morag had been raped. She had met a man in a bar on the edge of the city, where she had worked as a trader. He was good-looking and muscular. Morag remembered that he had said his name was Paul. They had spent the evening drinking, and predictably the man asked her to come home with him. Morag had told him not to be daft but she might agree to meet him again. She had left and gone home.

  ‘I was nearly at my flat in Clapham,’ she continued, ‘when I realised there was someone following me. I looked round and before I could get away the man from the pub grabbed me. He wound his hand in my hair and pulled me down. My face was bashed on the pavement. I think I was half-conscious. He flipped me onto my back and I felt him force his knee between my legs. I remember his hand covering my face when I screamed. He tore off my skirt like tissue paper, then my knickers. It was horrible. Suddenly, it was over and he was gone. The next thing I remember were two women in green asking me to breathe into a mask which covered my face. They were the ambulance crew. They took me to hospital and poked and prodded and swabbed and told me over and over again, “It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault.’’ ’

  Apart from his appearance, all Morag knew about her attacker was that his name was Paul. The police had arrived and questioned her endlessly.

  ‘They made me repeat the story several times, checking each small discrepancy. Every time I repeated it I felt more and more guilty, like it was my fault. After a while all I could do was cry. They never caught him.’

  Morag had been traumatised physically and emotionally by the experience and had despaired of ever feeling that she would recover. She explained how she came to understand that the only way to regain her self-esteem and confidence was to get rid of Paul. Tracking him down near the pub where they met had taken a while. Then she watched him from a safe distance, learning the pattern of his movements. On the same Sunday afternoon that Julie had killed Trevor, she stuck a knife in his neck and ended his life.

  ‘It was a cathartic experience. I started to respect myself again. Like Julie, I had lost the capacity to be intimate with people. Trusting men seemed impossible. Prison’s not great, but I’m really happy with Julie.’ Their parallel lives and indomitable courage made Sally admire and love the murderers. She resolved to visit them both as often as she could until they were released. In the meantime she moved into Julie’s flat at her suggestion.

  It took the prison an inordinately long time to release the keys to the flat from Julie’s possessions, which she had surrendered when she was imprisoned, so it had been several weeks since the flat had been occupied. When Sally unlocked the basement front door she was met by a stench of rotting food. The remains of the party food were in the fridge which had been switched off. Sally opened the door to the garden to allow air to circulate. The flowerbeds were overgrown. The black cat with yellow eyes stalked out of the undergrowth, walked confidently into the kitchen and sat down in the middle of the floor. Julie had told Sally about the cat and she wondered if the cat knew what carnage she had inspired. Sally opened the fridge and deposited the contents in a black bag rather than poison the cat with it. She spent a weekend carefully storing Julie’s clothes and other possessions in boxes to make space for her own things. The fridge needed to be restocked and she bought cat food as the cat clearly intended to stay.

  During their final year at university Sally and Julie had been best mates. They had done everything together, particularly socialising. At pubs, clubs and parties they made a formidable pair. They were the same lean shape; both had pale blue eyes. Sally was blonde and Julie was dark. After university their lives had diverged, but their university friendship was solid and they stayed in contact. Julie became a psychologist; Sally had a business degree and eventually landed a well-paid job in marketing with a corporate organisation. She spent her days doing presentations to young, competitive business people. Sally was a magnet for the enthusiastic men with whom she worked. Before Trevor had reappeared on the scene she had a succession of unsatisfactory boyfriends. By the time she allowed herself to be beguiled by Trevor, Sally was nearly thirty.

  With Trevor’s death something also died in Sally. The realisation that he had abused her, maybe raped her, created an anxiety about men; she too could no longer face intimacy with the opposite sex. She withdrew from the party atmosphere and flirtation which went on after work and took refuge in the flat with the yellow-eyed cat to reflect on how to restore her capacity for intimacy. The first thing which occurred to her was that she must tell Julie about her brief affair with Trevor. Wanting to tell someone what he had done to her, and how he had made her feel hopeless and anxious in the presence of men, became a priority. She was unsure if it was fair to use her imprisoned friends as counsellors, but they had unusual wisdom as a result of what had happened to them. The murderers had restored their self-esteem by despatching their assailants. There was no one left for Sally to kill. She had a nagging sense that had she not brought Trevor to Julie’s party he might be alive and still abusing her.

  The next time she visited Julie in the prison Sally decided she must broach her anxiety about the way she had felt since her affair with Trevor. She went through the tedious production of ID, although she knew the prison staff by sight, and was subjected to the routine search. Julie sat at a table in her drab prison clothes with one chair opposite her
. The guard indicated to Sally where to go as he had done many times previously. They hugged briefly, kissing each other lightly on the cheek and chatted about the monotony of prison life, Morag, the food, the flat and the yellow-eyed cat.

  ‘Julie, can I tell you about Trevor?’ Sally asked eventually.

  Julie raised her eyebrows interrogatively. ‘Go on,’ she said. Sally explained how Trevor had contacted her on a pretext. He had been working in the North of England and having returned to London, wanted to look up old university friends. In a short space of time they had become lovers. They did not go anywhere together. Trevor wanted sex every time they met so they spent a great deal of time in bed. Sally described how Trevor seemed to have penetrated every orifice she possessed and she began to realise that his carnal enthusiasm was neither loving nor tender. It was more like a fetish and she had become his sex object. It had made Sally feel a sense of self-disgust; she was not sure she would ever be capable of intimacy again.

  ‘I think I know the feeling,’ said Julie, ‘but from the moment I stuck the knife in his neck I knew that I was free from the daemons which threatened to kill me. I was suicidal after the party. I can love again now and Morag has helped to banish all the stuff in the past.’ Sally looked at her friend, wondering if she would ever be capable of the same transformation.

  ‘Did you ever think about trying to forgive him?’ Sally asked quietly.

  Julie hesitated. ‘Yes, I think I did, for a long time – until you brought him to the party. He had taken advantage of me when I was vulnerable. Then he did the worst possible thing he could. He did things to me, not with me. It was all about him. Had I been stronger at the time I wouldn’t have let him near me. He was a predator. He behaved like a parasite. As soon as that yellow-eyed cat appeared I knew what had to happen. Trying to forgive him might have been better for me. I wouldn’t be here. But the cat would never have forgiven me; they don’t forgive; they kill. Anyway, it’s too late now.’ The visiting hall had become restive and the hour was up. As the warders herded the prisoners away and the visitors trailed off, the girls hugged briefly and Sally promised to visit again the following week.