it off and drape it over the back of the chair.
I open up the kindle app on my phone and am about to start reading my book when a familiar voice carries across the terrace and interrupts my concentration.
‘There are plenty of chalet-girl slags around here to choose from. In all the time I‘ve been here I‘ve never had to sleep with the same girl twice.’
I peek around the corner and then duck back, heart pounding. It‘s Thomas. How did I miss that arrogant tone to his voice when I first met him? I suppose he hid it along with his other less-appealing characteristics, beneath a charming veneer. The confidence I once admired now seems brash and tarnished.
What was I thinking?
I shudder and hunch down into my seat, my previous good mood evaporating on the chill air.
‘What about that redhead you picked up at the party on Saturday?’ Another guy I don‘t know asks.
I stiffen, the air sucked out of my chest.
‘Her? She was a frigid cow.’ Thomas dismisses me in six words.
Six words.
I could think of six hundred to describe what an utter tosspot he is. I start practising in my head. I should walk out there now. Make a scathing comment about his dire foreplay skills. I should say he never sleeps with any woman twice because I can‘t imagine anyone who‘s done it with him would ever want to repeat the experience. But, much as I want to my body is frozen to the chair, utterly incapable of movement. The rage that gave me strength to defend myself is absent now. It‘s best not to engage with him in any way. My teeth are clenched tightly together and the scathing retorts stay trapped in my head.
I‘m frozen rigid.
It‘s just like that time when …
Why does my body do this? It shuts down. I check out. Like I‘m no longer present in the situation. Eva did try to explain that freezing is a perfectly natural response to trauma. They even call it ‘freeze’. Freeze and dissociation. I suppose it makes a change from the usual hyper-vigilance.
Despite the sun, I‘m cold and shivering.
‚He‘ said I was frigid too.
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing, as Eva taught me. In and out. In and out. At this precise moment all I need is oxygen. All I have to do is breathe, and anyone can breathe.
Next I concentrate on the warmth of the mug in my hands, trying to bring myself back to here, to now. Dissociation might be a coping mechanism. But knowing why I act the way I do doesn‘t always help.
I still can‘t manage raising the mug to my lips to drink. There‘s no way I could swallow. For twenty-four hours after I was raped I sat on the kitchen floor, immobile and wanting my mum. But even if she had still been alive, I don‘t know if she could‘ve given me what I wanted.
When Eva came round and rescued me, persuading me to go to the police, staying with me and then taking me into her home, I couldn‘t eat, just drinking was hard enough. At first it was because my throat was sore, but after that my body simply refused. Instead of forcing me, she made smoothies and protein shakes and lots of creamy hot chocolate … I felt no need, no hunger. Eva wouldn‘t let Debbie or Mark comment on the untouched food on my plate. We all pretended it was perfectly normal. Mark never stopped trying to tempt me with chocolate, though. I think that‘s when my crush started. My belief I could survive alone had been dealt a shattering death blow and I was ready to cling to the first potential knight in shining armour to come my way.
I owe Eva so much. Thinking about her gives me a little strength. I want to be the remarkable woman she believes me to be.
I‘m not sure how long I sit there at the cantine, but it‘s long enough for the lunchtime crowd to turn up and my chocolate to go cold.
Something clicks inside me. I‘m past this kind of behaviour. This isn‘t me any more. I‘m not sitting shivering and soaked to the skin on the sticky lino floor of a rented flat I‘m about to get kicked out of. I had a bad experience with Thomas that brought back memories, that‘s all.
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