The word rape hung in the air, ugly and stark. He said it several times, in stunned disbelief. Laura was amazed by how comprehensive his understanding of the word was.
‘Rape is some poor girl getting hijacked by an Uber driver and taken into the woods and having a knife held to her throat. Rape is some shithead thinking he can do whatever he wants cos a girl is out of it. Rape is having sex with someone who says no. Whether that person is your wife or your girlfriend or some randomer. Whether you’ve had sex with them before or not. Whether you’re drunk or not. I get it. It’s 2019. You’ve banged on about it often enough. I know about “no”, for fuck’s sake. That’s not what this was. How can he say that? How dare he say that?’
That was the bit she didn’t understand. ‘Could she … I mean might she –’
His voice crescendoed: ‘No. No.’ He was horrified. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’
New and terrifying information spilt out of him. She couldn’t believe she had been ignorant of it. She should have realized. Most of his mates were sixteen. Why hadn’t she realized – been ahead of it? She was instantly afraid she knew the answer. She’d been consumed by her own pain. She’d stopped parenting. Not the practical stuff. She’d cleaved to domesticity – his socks were washed, the fridge was full, school forms were signed. But for the real stuff, the stuff that matters, she’d been sleepwalking. Apparently all his mates had done it. If not all, then most, he promised. At parties, in the back of cars, in tents at festivals. Some with girlfriends, more with relative strangers whose names they might not even have bothered to learn. Boys he knew – hell, boys she knew, boys she’d watched grow up, boys whose mothers she spent time with – were treating girls like dirt. ‘Stats don’t have faces,’ Ethan said. That was what one of them had said. A frightening number seemed to be off their heads on those ghastly alcopop VKs or, worse, on weed or MDMA while they were doing it. At least one had caught something and had had to take antibiotics.
Five minutes ago those boys were playing Minecraft and watching football. Their mothers believed they were raising them with morality, with respect for women. Every generation pushed the envelope, she knew. Social mores changed. Kids were almost obliged to do things that perplexed and, yes, horrified their parents. But this – this was bewilderingly out of sync with what she had thought. Had she just been colossally naïve? Did everyone else’s mother know this stuff was going on? Did they think it was okay?
He was incandescent at the injustice of it. He’d done it right. And he was the one who was going to get into serious trouble. It made no sense to him at all. And she couldn’t tell him it did to her.
Concern for their son defused Laura. Alex smiled easily enough when he opened the door. Genevieve wasn’t there. She might have been curious about the flat, some other time, might have taken in the fashionable glass furniture and statement cushions that Alex would probably have dismissed had she suggested they buy them for their house. In the clinically clean and white kitchen, he made mugs of coffee in his fancy machine.
‘So what’s this all about?’
Ethan looked at Laura.
‘Do you want me to explain?’
He nodded.
She’d been tempted to ring Alex and give him the basic facts before they came, a heads-up, but something had stopped her. She’d needed to see his face. ‘I’m not sure whether you’re aware that Ethan and his girlfriend Saskia were sleeping together.’
Alex gave a rather sharp intake of breath. ‘I –’
‘Here.’ She tried to keep the blame out of her voice. Tried very hard.
He looked down at the table. ‘I see.’
Laura shook her head. ‘Anyway. They were. They are. They’ve been going out for a while. It’s all been consensual, exclusive, all that …’
Alex nodded, clearly uncomfortable.
‘But Saskia isn’t sixteen. Not for a few weeks. She’s fifteen.’ She waited for the penny to drop, but Alex still didn’t say anything.
She sighed. ‘And it seems, and we’re not sure yet how, but it seems her parents have found out about the two of them. And they’re furious. The other night they came to the house and started shouting the odds. Well, her father was, at least.’
Ethan made a small strangled sound. This time he let her put her hand on his arm. He couldn’t meet his father’s eye.
‘That seems a bit OTT.’ Alex wasn’t grasping the seriousness of the situation.
‘He’s saying it’s statutory rape because Saskia is under age. He’s saying he’s going to the police.’
‘They won’t want to know, surely?’
‘They have to take it seriously. If Saskia’s parents make an accusation.’
‘And?’
Why didn’t he know any of this? He hadn’t sat through the excruciating sex chat at school. He hadn’t thought about it. He’d been too busy with his own selfish sex life. It wasn’t a kind thought, and maybe it wasn’t fair, but the yoga mantra wasn’t working right now, and her mind entertained it.
‘And if it goes like it could, that’s a conviction on his record. That’s the sex offenders’ register. For years.’ She spoke slowly and deliberately.
At last the seriousness of it was beginning to dawn on him. ‘But that’s ridiculous. He’s barely sixteen himself.’
She couldn’t protect Ethan from knowing the full implications of Saskia’s father’s thoughts. He knew already.
‘They’re both kids.’
‘Not in the eyes of the law. Not about this. One is capable of informed consent. One isn’t.’
He was opening and closing his mouth, like a guppy, searching for the right thing to say, the most important question to ask. ‘What does Saskia have to say about that?’
‘We don’t know. They must have taken her phone. Ethan and Saskia’s year isn’t at school at the moment. They’re on study leave. So he hasn’t spoken to her. And there’s no way they’ll let him see her. Saskia’s father just came around, shouted the place down, made his threats and left.’
‘So you don’t know if he’s been to the police?’
‘No. You know what we know now.’
‘Christ.’ Alex ran his hands through his hair, and held his breath, then blew it out through his mouth.
‘I’m sorry, Dad.’
Laura turned to him, and heard her voice, fierce. ‘Don’t do that. You don’t need to be sorry.’ She looked at Alex.
For the first time in a long time, he didn’t disappoint her. The colour had drained from his face. He shuffled his chair awkwardly around the table, and put his arm around Ethan’s shoulders. ‘Oh, my poor boy. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Ethan laid his head on the table, and Alex laid his beside his son’s and they stayed like that for a short while. Ethan was crying quietly. Laura squeezed his knee.
When Alex raised his head, he looked at her across their son’s prone, stricken form, and gave a grim, tight-lipped smile. ‘We’re going to sort this out, I promise you. I’m so glad you’ve both told me. And we’re going to sort it out. Okay.’