Page 65 of Darling Girls

‘Us talking about you sleeping in,’ Norah said. ‘I feel like I’m in an alternative universe.’

Norah rounded up the dogs and then they all got into the car. As Jessica slipped into the driver’s seat, she threw her phone into the centre console. ‘You’re always telling me to chill out,’ she said, starting the car. ‘Now I do and you both freak out.’

‘We assumed youcouldn’tchill,’ Norah explained. ‘Like a penguin can’t fly. I imagine you’d freak out too if penguins suddenly started flying.’

Jessica frowned, contemplating that as she turned out of the car park onto the highway. Norah was disappointed when Jessica’s phone started to ring. She’d been hoping for a compliment on her clever penguin analogy.

‘Leave it!’ Jessica cried, when Alicia reached for Jessica’s phone. Her voice was so loud and abrupt that even the dogs startled. Alicia raised her hands as if in surrender. ‘I can’t deal with work right now, okay?’ Jessica added. ‘I need coffee first.’

A few beats passed as they listened to the insistent ringtone. Norah and Alicia’s eyes met in the mirror.

‘Are you okay, Jess?’ Alicia asked when the phone was silent.

‘Of course I am. Why?’

‘You’re acting weird,’ Norah said.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ she said, as her phone started to ring again, ‘the circumstances are pretty weird.’

She pressed a button to decline the call. Immediately it rang again. The moment it stopped, Jessica turned off the phone and put it into the glove box.

Norah and Alicia’s eyes met in the mirror again.

‘Shutup!’ Jessica said, even though neither of them had spoken.

As they pulled up in front of the police station, Norah received a message from Kevin.

Nice, but not exactly what I had in mind.

Norah stared at the message. What the actual fuck? She inhaled deeply and wrote:

What did you have in mind?

Three dots appeared immediately.

Norah clenched her teeth as she imagined his delighted weaselly smile, his revolting weaselly hard-on.

I was thinking video.

Perhaps it was the thought of the weaselly hard-on, but Norah gagged. Seriously? This guy, who didn’t even deserve her boob pic, wanted avideo? Every instinct urged Norah to tell him to take his weaselly hard-on and go fuck himself. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t even tell her sisters what was happening. She felt like she was being squeezed. Like she was back in that space under the stairs where Miss Fairchild used to lock her.

What kind of video?

He was clearly prepared for this, because his long response appeared only seconds later. Norah considered herself to be sexually liberated. She understood fetishes and role-play and BDSM. Even so, reading the message, she gasped.

‘What is it?’ Alicia asked from the front seat.

‘Nothing. Just . . . a funny TikTok.’

Norah read the message again. Judging by what he was suggesting, he watched a lot of very intense porn. For the first time in a long time, she felt tears – angry tears – stinging her eyes.

She took a deep breath.

Have you spoken to the police about the assault? Told them I didn’t do it?

His reply was swift.

Not yet.