The Warrior’s Princess. Barbara Erskine

raised an eyebrow. ‘Why? Are you leaving?’

      He laughed. ‘You wish! No, but I promise I shall avoid you next term like the plague itself.’

      She fought the urge to smile back. That smile of his had always been her downfall. It was too charming; too persuasive; too attractive by far. She had to fight it. ‘Let’s go on avoiding each other now, Will, shall we? Excuse me. I need to say hello to Ash.’ Not letting him see the longing inside her, the temptation which was still so strong, she gave him a strained, apologetic shrug and turned away. Taking a last breath of fresh air she plunged into the seething mass of dancing bodies, leaving Will staring after her.

      As soon as he saw her Ashley stood back from his music mixing, nodded to his younger brother Max, on stage beside him, to take over and leaped down from the stage. ‘Come and dance, Jess!’ He was laughing, his handsome face running with perspiration, his bright shirt soaked, his hands reaching for hers, pulling her fists up into the air, then releasing her, positioned and ready for the dance as he gyrated, hips swivelling in front of her. She shouldn’t laugh. She should reprimand him for calling her Jess, but what was the point? School was over in every real sense. Exams were finished. The night was hot and enticing and all these young people were enjoying themselves. Surely she could let her hair down too. She danced with Ashley, she danced with several other pupils, and she danced with Brian Barker, the Head of the college, and finally, she was at last unbent enough to dance with Will – it had seemed too much effort to refuse. She drank Dan’s fruit punch. Then some more with a shot of staff-only extra-bite! She danced with Dan again and then with Ashley one last time. It was in the early hours that the disco broke up at last after a second visit from the police.

      Ashley had been waiting for her outside the hall.

      After that she remembered nothing. Making herself a cup of coffee with shaking hands, she sipped it slowly. Who would she have asked in to share a glass of wine so late at night? There had been no other relationship after Will. She fancied no one, especially not any of her colleagues at school. Not now. She was not the type to ask a casual acquaintance to come back with her and fall into bed with him. And no one, absolutely no one she knew would have hurt her and left her in this state.

      Cudgelling her brain as she sipped more coffee, she remembered Ash leaping from the bonnet of a car onto its roof and declaiming, his fists raised to the stars. Shakespeare. He was quoting Shakespeare, this boy she had so carefully nurtured in her class, this boy who led his own team of street actors and who had a secret dream to go to RADA, a dream to be an actor on a West End stage, to defy his background, his absent father, his drug-taking brothers, to confirm his mother’s quiet determination to believe in him. He had yelled the speech to the world and then, laughing, had jumped down and swept a courtly bow in front of her. ‘Let me walk you home, Jess!’ She could hear his voice now, resounding in her ears.

      Then nothing.

      Her memories from that point were gone. Her flat was a half-hour walk from the school but she didn’t remember crossing the main road still with its heavy traffic long after midnight; nor walking down the busy street, half the shops still open to the hot July night air. Nor turning down into the terraced square with its tiny precious oasis of dusty bushes and trees in the centre behind the protective spiked railings with a raft of tossed litter inside them. Nor opening the front door, nor climbing the stairs, and unlocking the door into her flat and going in and presumably offering her escort another drink.

      No, not Ashley. Please let it not have been Ashley.

      It had to have been Ashley. People had warned her. They had said he could be violent. They had said he had become too familiar, too physical around her. But she had ignored them. She knew best. She had seen his potential and nothing was going to stand in the way of her ambition for him.

      If it was Ashley, was it her fault? Had she encouraged him to make love to her? ‘No!’ The word came out as an agonised whisper. ‘No, I wouldn’t have. I couldn’t have.’ Gingerly she fingered the bruises on her arms. Whoever had done this to her had forced himself on her and had held her down. That wasn’t love, it was rape.

      She stood for a long time under the shower, aware that she should not be doing this; that if she had been raped, she should call the police; that she should preserve whatever evidence lurked inside her body, but knowing at the same time, as she scrubbed herself raw, that she could never bring herself to go through the awfulness of the police process. One of her students had had to do it once and she had gone with the girl to the cold impersonal room where the teenager had been questioned and examined and eventually disbelieved. Jess shuddered at the memory. She would never put herself through that. Never. She could feel herself slowly beginning to burn with anger. However much she had been made to drink, even if she had been drugged to make her acquiesce and then forget, she would find out who had done this to her and she would make sure he paid for it.

      Sitting on the edge of the sofa, huddled in her bathrobe, she could feel herself starting to shake again as in her head she went over and over the facts that she could remember. Had she asked Ash in? She had danced with him several times, after all. She had had another drink. Then another. Who had given them to her? She couldn’t remember. Obviously she had drunk too much but had they been laced with something? Had she, in whatever state she was in, agreed to sex? Enjoyed it? Her hands were clammy. She could feel a wave of nausea building somewhere under her ribcage. The room was starting to spin again.

      She became aware suddenly of the sound of steps on the staircase outside running up towards her flat. Scrambling to her feet she ran to the front door, rammed the bolt across and slotted the chain into its keep then slowly, shaking with the kind of fear she had never in her life experienced before, she slid to the floor, tears pouring down her face as she leaned backwards against the wall, hugging the white towelling robe around her. Outside, the footsteps ran on up past her door without stopping and the sound disappeared somewhere on the upper floors.

      In the end she fell asleep where she was, on the floor, her back against the wall.

      When she woke it was to the sound of knocking. The door handle turned. Holding her breath she looked up at it, her stomach churning.

      ‘Jess, are you there?’ It was Will’s voice. ‘Jess, are you OK? Look, I wanted to apologise for last night. I behaved like an idiot. I’m sorry.’ There was a long pause, then she heard a deep sigh. ‘Jess? Are you there? What’s wrong?’ There was another pause. Then an angry exclamation. ‘I’ll see you on Monday for clearing up, OK, Jess?’ She heard him turn away from the door, then his footsteps as he ran down the stairs and the bang of the street door behind him. Then silence.

      He had behaved like an idiot.

      How had he behaved like an idiot?

      Surely it could not have been Will. They had quarrelled in the past, even before that last break up. They had done more than quarrel. They had fought. But he wouldn’t force her against her wishes. Would he?

      Could he have followed her and Ash home? If he had he could have let himself in. She was certain he still had a key in spite of his insistence that he had returned it to her. They had danced last night in the end. More than once. She could remember that. She’d felt his arms around her for a moment with such loving familiarity, felt herself relax into them. It was Will who, after a few minutes, had drawn away and moved alone to the music leaving her to dance by herself.

      With a weary sigh she closed her eyes.

      Much later she heard Mrs Lal from the ground floor flat open her door and go out, her slippers slapping on the steps. She was going to the corner shop; no need for proper shoes then. In spite of her misery Jess gave a fond smile. Sometimes the old lady would call up and see if Jess would like her to fetch a Sunday paper or some milk, but not today. Today there was silence; perhaps she had heard Will rattling her door and thought Jess must be out.

      Climbing stiffly to her feet, she went over to the window and looked down. Mrs Lal was walking slowly down the road, a blue cardigan pulled over her sari, her grey hair clamped into an untidy bun. As Jess watched she saw the old lady hesitate and slow down suddenly and cross over the road. Jess frowned, wondering why. Then she saw