He dug out his wallet and handed it over. The policeman took out his driver’s licence, wrote down the details and handed the wallet back. Ryan tucked it back in his pocket, and the paramedics helped him onto the gurney.

  Panic stirred again. “Where are you taking him?”

  I directed my question at the paramedics, but it was the younger policeman who replied. “To hospital. Those injuries need to be looked at. I’ll be accompanying him.” He gathered up the rest of Ryan’s clothes and placed them on the foot of the gurney.

  “Can I come?”

  The policeman hesitated, and then shook his head firmly. “He’ll be fine. Make your statement, go home and get some rest. You can come and see him in the morning.”

  I stepped back to let the paramedics wheel the gurney out, and something snapped under my foot. As they trundled out the door, Ryan lifted his swollen face and tried to make it smile. “I’ll be OK, Sage.”

  The rasp in his voice tore my heart. As the gurney receded down the corridor, I looked down and saw I’d trodden on my paua shell glasses. They were broken in two places on the spreading dark stain where Ryan had been lying on the carpet.

  19

  Making a statement

  The ceiling of the police station foyer was lined with fluorescent tubes. As I waited to give my statement, one of them malfunctioned and buzzed above my head like a wasp. Everything was the color of concrete, from the grille on the front of the empty reception desk to the two benches bolted to the floor.

  The door to my left swung open with a thunk that jolted my bones. Andrea emerged, her face closed and grim, still pulling her black wheelie suitcase. I braced myself for battle, but she stalked past my bench to a rack of community pamphlets.

  The older policeman nodded at me from the doorway. “Miss Rampion? Come on through.”

  He led me to a small, shabby interview room, where we sat on plastic chairs at a desk. Not opposite each other, as I would have expected, but side by side in front of a computer. Next to the mouse pad was a little sign that read Officer Ross Murray.

  “Now,” he said, opening a new document headed Witness Statement, “let’s begin with you telling me what happened.”

  In the clinical cool of the police station, the events of the night seemed barely plausible. Like a story that had happened to someone else. The only memory that felt like mine was that of Ryan’s battered, oozing face, lodged in me like a hot coal.

  “I don’t know where to start.”

  Officer Murray tapped a finger on the desk, looking thoughtful. “How about you start with the older lady, Professor Rampion.”

  My jaw tightened. “She’s my grandmother.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  My feelings about Andrea were so warped by anger that I struggled to frame a response. After several false starts, I gave him an account of Andrea’s role in my life until the day I began my PhD. Not the naked, weepy account I’d given Ryan, but a stilted summary of the facts.

  Officer Murray nodded solemnly, typing a series of bullet points on his computer. “What about the young man?” He consulted his notebook. “Ryan Prince.”

  Image of his body receding on the gurney filled my mind, so vivid I could almost smell the Mace in his eyes. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I met him at a drawing class.”

  I’d never told anyone about Ryan before, but once I’d begun, the story poured from me, faltering only when I reached the point where I’d let him into Andrea’s office to break into her computer and filing cabinet.

  My gaze dropped to the desk. “That’s illegal, isn’t it? Hacking. Violation of privacy.”

  Officer Murray hesitated. “Look,” he said at length, “just tell me what happened. Don’t stress about those things now.”

  I nodded, but his expression told me that the time to stress about those things would come.

  When I finished my story, he scrolled back to the top of his document. “OK. Let’s convert this into a statement.”

  About ten minutes later, he printed off three pages and laid them on the desk in front of me.

  “My name is Sage Rampion, and I am 22 years old. I have been in a sexual relationship with Ryan Prince for two and a half months. I was raised from the age of six months by my grandmother, Professor Andrea Rampion. She has been hiding mail sent to me by my mother, Emmeline Rampion. This is why Ryan and I decided to search the filing cabinet and computer in Andrea’s office…”

  The last few months of my life, boiled down into short, bald sentences, on paper still warm from the laser printer. I read through the statement a couple of times and looked up at Officer Murray.

  “Anything you want to change?” he said.

  I shook my head and he handed me a pen. “What about Ryan?” I said after I’d signed the statement.

  “Depends on the doctors,” he said, adding his own signature. “He was in a bad way. They might keep him in hospital overnight.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “I’ll have to check. Probably the William Wilde.”

  He led me down the corridor and paused by the door to the foyer, looking at me kindly. “He’ll be fine. Go home and get some rest.”

  Andrea was sitting on one of the benches. She was writing on a pamphlet called Women and Safety, with the expression she wore when marking a really bad essay. The sight of her twisted my stomach with a mix of mutiny and fear.

  “Let’s go,” she snapped, voice tight. She shoved the pamphlet in her suitcase, and stood. Our eyes locked for the first time since we’d left her office.

  “What,” I said, in a quiet voice, “did you tell the police?”

  “Police statements are confidential.” Her words were cold, but she averted her eyes as she said them.

  Fury simmered. “Did you lay charges against Ryan?”

  She strode out the door without answering and I marched after her. It was dark outside, and the rain had stopped, leaving dripping windowsills and rushing gutters that sprayed and splashed under the wheels of passing cars.

  Andrea reached the corner and lifted her hand. A taxi pulled over, sluicing dirty water onto the footpath. The driver jumped out and reached for her suitcase, but she waved him away and heaved it into the boot by herself. She banged it shut and yanked open the back door.

  “Get in,” she said, in the caustic tones she reserved for traitors to feminism.

  A day ago, I would have hung my head and hopped in obediently. Tonight I stood on the pavement and stared her down. “Did you charge Ryan with sexual assault?”

  “Get in.”

  I pulled out my keyring, yanked off the keys to her office and house, and held them out.

  Andrea stared at them as if I was offering her a dead body. “What are you doing?” Her tone was shrill now, balanced on the edge between anger and panic.

  “Going.” I turned my hand over. The keys made a tinny metallic ring as they bounced and came to rest on the pavement.

  Andrea stared at them for a moment, then she grabbed my wrist and tried to haul me towards the door. “Get in the fucking cab.”

  I twisted free with a self-defense move she’d taught me herself, and stepped back, hands up to fend her off if she tried to grab me again.

  Her arms fell to her sides, a patchy flush rising in her cheeks. “So where are you going, Sage? To Ryan?” She uttered his name with a savagery that would have raised blisters on steel.

  “Ryan’s in hospital.” I hitched my backpack onto my shoulder.

  “So what’ll he do when he gets out? Give you a diamond ring, make you his little princess?”

  Her voice was trembling, but I felt disconnected, as if I was listening through glass. “That’s our business,” I said, looking out into the rain.

  “And what if he doesn’t?”

  I turned and saw with a shock that Andrea’s face was streaked with tears.

  “How long have you known this man?” she demanded. “Two months?”

  “I—”

  “You haven’t learned anything, have you?” She was shouting now, the muscles of her face contorted into a rigid, blotchy mask that disturbed me more deeply than her anger. “Twenty-two years of feminist education and you’re learned nothing! What happens after the fairytale, Sage? What happens then? How are you going support yourself? Sell your body?”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’ll tell you what happens.” She seized my arm again with an urgent, paralysing grip, and this time I didn’t pull away. “He’ll run off with someone younger, leaving you to be the mother and the maid and the breadwinner all by yourself. And people will sympathize with him. Because you nagged him, or didn’t fuck him enough, or let yourself go. He’ll shaft you, Sage. That’s men. That’s what they do.” Her grip tightened. “Now get in the cab, Sage. Please.”

  Her voice was hushed, desperate. It wasn’t only Andrea’s husband who’d left her. Her daughter left too, twelve years later. And now me. I was the third person in Andrea’s life to walk out.

  Something broke in me. I looked into Andrea’s wild eyes and took a half-step toward her. For a brief, awful moment, a flicker of hope crossed her features. Then I noticed the taxi driver, thumb on his meter, using the sudden silence to catch my eye.

  Andrea glanced at him, and the wildness vanished from her face. She released my arm and smeared a hand across her cheeks, as though her tears offended her. “Yes, turn it on,” she snapped. She swiped the keys from the ground, and climbed into the taxi. “So are you coming?”

  She waited for my answer, her face still and tense, but her tears had beaten all the words out of me. My arm was still hanging mid-air, palm open, but the rest of me didn’t budge. I had to look away before I shook my head.

  “Fine, then,” she sneered. “Run away. Try living in a world ruled by men. And when you’re weeping on my doorstep in a month’s time, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The door slammed, trapping the corner of her coat and leaving a dangling gray flag that fluttered as the engine rumbled to life. I watched it jerk and flap as the taxi pulled away through a puddle, splintering the air with drops like the fragments of a shattering glass jar.

  PART II: The Golden Tower

  20

  Cutting Edge

  The exhaust fumes from the taxi took a long time to fade. The rain had stopped, but an icy wind fluttered the sleeves of my thin linen shirt. I shivered and folded my arms across my chest, wondering what to do next. Go home and get some rest, the policeman had said, but the place I’d known as home belonged to Andrea, and I’d just handed back my key. My stomach grumbled loudly, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since midday. Down the road was a lighted retail strip, so I headed there in search of somewhere to eat.

  The cafes and shops were starting to close, and people dressed for dinner were spilling out and heading for their cars. I saw a small cafe still half-full of people, and ducked inside, relishing the sudden sense of warmth.

  A ponytailed girl of about sixteen leaped up, pen poised. “Table for one?”

  “Yes, thanks.”

  I followed her swishing ponytail among tables of emptying plates to a glass case full of cakes.

  “Our kitchen’s just closed,” she said, “but you’re welcome to anything in our dessert cabinet. Pay at the counter, and I’ll bring it straight over.”

  I thanked her again and selected a random dessert.

  “The apple cake? Ooh, good choice,” she said, with perky conviction. “That’ll be eight dollars, please.”

  I reached into my bag for my wallet and my fingers hit bottom. Pulse rising, I peered inside, wormed my hand through the maze of books and papers, and then upended my bag onto a table, producing two journal articles, my mother’s letter, a textbook on feminist art and a battered copy of my optical prescription.

  With sudden, sickening clarity I remembered the last time I’d seen my wallet. I’d opened it to get out my student ID a second or two before the paramedics disinfected Ryan’s face. When I ran to him, I must have left my wallet on the desk, or dropped it on the floor.

  My pulse pounded until I felt it in my eardrums. “I’m really sorry,” I said, “but I think I’ve left my wallet in the office.”

  The girl’s dimples faded. “Oh.” She glanced nervously at the man behind the till, but he was serving a customer. “How close is your office? Could you go back and get it?”

  It wasn’t far, maybe fifteen minutes’ walk. But to enter the Humanities building at this hour I’d need the swipe card in my wallet. And the key I’d given back to Andrea.

  My mouth went dry. “Um, not really,” I said, cramming my things back into my bag. “Thanks anyway.” I hoisted my bag on my shoulder and fled, crashing into two tables on my way out.

  I sank onto the doorstep of the shop next door and rested my forehead on the window. A patch of fog grew and shrank on the glass, growing larger as my problem unfolded. Semester break had started, which meant swipe card-only access to the building for the next two weeks. With ID, university security might let me in, but all my ID was in my wallet, as was the card I needed to access my bank account.

  A bubble of panic formed under my ribs. Trying to swallow it, I closed my eyes. Andrea’s tearstained cheeks filled my head like a terrible ghost. By now she’d be home, organizing another flight. With her own swipe card safe in her wallet, and the key to her office on her big jingly keyring. When you’re weeping on my doorstep in a month’s time, don’t say I didn’t warn you. If I went to her now, my bid for independence would have lasted barely an hour.

  I pushed the image of her face away, but her voice wouldn’t stop. So where are you going, Sage? To Ryan? Ryan was in hospital. Shell might take me in, but I didn’t have the train fare and I didn’t know how to get to his place on foot. And at night, the university and surrounds had the highest rates of assault and rape in the city. Andrea always quoted the statistics in her classes in Women’s Self-Defence.

  The bubble in my chest began to expand, crushing the air from my lungs. A passing man glanced at me, and I shrank further into the doorway, dislodging a stand of business cards. I picked one up. Roy’s Wigs it read, in a flourishing typeface. Quality wigs, extensions and hairpieces in every style and color. We use only real human hair.

  Still holding the card, I rose and peeped through the window of Roy’s Wigs, tapping my bun of waist-length real human hair. Inside, a man in velvet trousers lounged on a stool beside the open cash register, chewing something as he counted the day’s takings. The wall behind him had two rows of shelves, on which sat blank wooden heads wearing wigs. The sign on the door read Open.

  How are you going to support yourself? Andrea had sneered. Sell your body? I pushed the door, and antique bells jangled over my head.

  The man looked up, and I caught a whiff of fennel. “Sorry, darl,” he said in a drawling voice, “I’m closed.” He took a pinch of colorful seeds from a bowl on the counter and popped it in his mouth.

  My stomach somersaulted, but my body didn’t move. “Your sign says you’re still open.”

  With a world-weary sigh, he plonked the sheaf of bills on the counter, swept past me and turned the sign over. “Ten o’clock tomorrow,” he said, pointing out at the street.

  He tried to close the door but I caught it. “I want to sell my hair.” I yanked the hairnet off my bun and shook my head to uncoil it. Thick, silky hair fanned over my back.

  He stalled, and my heart gave a hiccup of hope. He scanned my hair from root to tip, his pupils dilating. Long seconds passed. Then, with a single, lofty gesture, he swiveled the sign back to Open and beckoned me inside.

  “Roy of Roy’s Wigs,” said the man. He issued a limp handshake, returned to his stool and crossed one languid leg over the other. “You sure you want to do this, darl?”

  Was I? Images battered the inside of my skull. Ryan twitching on the carpet, Andrea’s face streaked with tears. The dark streets outside, filled with rapists and muggers.

  I squared my shoulders. “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll ask you some direct questions, if you don’t mind.”

  His fingers delved again into the tiny bowl of seeds. An Indian restaurant I visited with Ryan had a bowl like that on the counter, for cleansing the palate after meals. I turned my attention back to Roy and realized he was waiting, none too patiently, for my response.

  “OK. That’s fine.” I flattened out the creased Roy’s Wigs card in my hand to dodge his eye.

  “Do you take drugs?”

  The card clattered to the floor. “Pardon?”

  “Drugs.” His fingers ran through a series of gestures, indicating smoking, snorting, shooting up and dabbing a tab on his tongue. “Marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine. They leave traces in the hair.”

  “Oh.” Jess had taken ecstasy, and some of Andrea’s friends smoked dope, but I’d never tried anything myself. “Uh, no.”

  Roy looked as though he doubted this, but he let it pass. “How often has it been washed?”

  My scalp tingled. He was speaking about my hair in the past tense, as if it no longer belonged to me. “A couple of times a week.”

  “What products have you used?”

  Andrea bought organic shampoo from the local co-operative, where she decanted it from a vat into recycled bottles. When I explained this to Roy, he stared as if unicorns were sprouting from my head.

  “No other products? Wax, spray, coloring?”

  “No.”

  “How often have you heat-styled it?”

  “Heat styled?”

  “Blow-drying, straightening, hot rollers.”

  “Oh.” I flushed at my ignorance. “I … I’ve never heat-styled it.”

  Roy lifted a long, pale hand. “May I?” Without waiting for an answer, he took a lock and rubbed it between his fingertips as if it were a sample of fine fabric.

  “Looked after it, haven’t you?” His drawling tones were tempered with a faint hint of awe. “Most girls come in split to the ears from straighteners and spray.’ He looked up at me. ‘So what’s the rush?”

 

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