The Book of You. Claire Kendal

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      When they were done I said I needed the toilet and Tomlinson said fine, go. Tomlinson had come in my face. I wiped it on my jeans and on my T-shirt – they hadn’t taken the shirt off me. It burned when I peed. There weren’t any hot water or soap or towel. I washed my vagina in cold water and dried it on my jeans.

      My knickers got sticky and wet as soon as I put them on. It was too dark to see but I was scared it was blood and if they made me strip again and saw it they’d take the piss out of me. There was a freestanding cupboard, so I hid my knickers behind it. I put on my jeans and hoped there’d be no more blood for them to see.

      Miss Lockyer covered her face with her hands. Her shoulders were shaking. Not a sound came out of her.

      The judge sent them home for the rest of the day. ‘Please remove the defendants from the dock so this witness can leave,’ he said.

      Clarissa’s heart was beating very fast, as if she’d just watched an unbearably tense scene in a horror film. She knew her face must be red. Tears had been welling in her eyes but she’d resisted wiping them, not wanting anyone to notice.

      She went straight to the cloakroom to blow her nose, grabbed her coat from the locker, and hurried down the stairs and out of the revolving doors, holding her face up to the blast of freezing air. She’d only walked a few feet before a car slowly drove out from beneath the court building. It paused, blocking the pavement as the driver waited until it was clear to turn left into the street.

      Something made Clarissa peer inside. Slumped against the window in the rear passenger seat was Carlotta Lockyer, weeping. She met Clarissa’s eyes with her own, seemed, briefly, to register a kind of puzzled recognition, and the car smoothly moved on.

       Wednesday, 4 February, 8.00 p.m.

      When I hug Rowena just inside the restaurant’s entrance her breasts bounce against me without squishing at all. They are improbably high and seem to have grown two cup sizes.

      Her first words to me are an answer to my unvoiced question. ‘Yes. I had a boob job.’ Her chest is shimmering, dusted with sparkling powder. ‘You wear your body every day. You’ve got to be happy in it.’

      Rowena runs her own one-woman company. She is a Discourse Analyst. She looks at every mission statement, advertisement, and logo a business produces. Then she tells them what messages they’re really giving out. Maybe Rowena worked for a plastic surgeon and got seduced by the brochures she was supposed to critique.

      ‘Just because we are thirty-eight doesn’t mean we have to look thirty-eight.’ She is examining her face in her compact mirror, looking so worried it makes me think of the queen in ‘Snow White’ with her terrible looking glass. Rowena’s forehead is shiny smooth. It is out of synch with her jaw and cheeks.

      I want Rowena to look less sad and strained, so I ask how she gets that dewy fresh glow; a little teasingly, but affectionately too.

      ‘I have a strong will not to raise my eyebrows at all, and to limit my expressions. Movement gives you lines.’

      She’s not intelligent, Henry said.

      There are different kinds of intelligence, I said.

      Henry haunts me too, but not as much as you. You’re fast overtaking him.

      Despite the freezing night and slippery pavements, Rowena is wearing a plunging sleeveless dress of deep purple velvet, and high heels. I think it’s a little odd, because it’s not like Rowena to make so much effort just for me. I tell her that her dress is beautiful.

      ‘So many women get stuck in their look,’ she says, and I’m pretty sure she means me.

      Is this the Rowena who used to sneak her favourite clothes to me whenever I wanted to wear something my mother hadn’t sewn?

      I glimpse my reflection in the window. My hair is piled on top of my head and held with silvery geometric clasps, though a few blonde wisps have escaped around my face and neck. The bodice and sleeves of my charcoal dress are tightly fitted, the skirt like the upside-down bowl of a wine glass, the hemline just above my knees.

      Rowena looks down at her chest. ‘It’s not just to attract men.’ The emotion behind the last sentence is too strong; her mouth trembles as she struggles not to frown. ‘It’s for me. I owe it to myself. And these new boobs don’t move at all. They’re so pert and perky I don’t even need a bra.’

      I think of the defendants jeering at Miss Lockyer. Look at her tits wobble.

      Pert and perky are not Rowena words. When did they become so?

      Rowena goes on, seeming to need to convince herself more than me. ‘The women at my gym are always asking, “Who did your face? Who did your boobs?”’ She speaks as if her body parts can be purchased by anyone, like a new gown or bag.

      The defendants say tits. Rowena says boobs. I say breasts. I don’t know what you say. I don’t want to know. What I do know is that these differences matter.

      ‘It’s a huge compliment. You should try Botox, Clarissa. At the very least. If you don’t do something soon you’ll wake up one morning looking like a deflated balloon.’

      She’s not even nice to you, Henry said.

      She’s comfortable being honest with me, I said.

      You have nothing in common, he said.

      I blink hard several times, as if this will clear my vision so that the Rowena I thought I knew will come back to me. This version of her would probably advise Henry to get a hair transplant. I can picture his response if she dared: the scornful, incredulous eyebrow he’d raise, wordlessly. I think Henry is beautiful as he is, even if he’s no longer mine to think this about.

      ‘I’ll give it some thought. Are you well, though? Recovered from the operations?’

      ‘The only downside is that I can’t feel my nipples any more.’ Rowena says this mockingly, like a dieter who has given up chocolate but never liked it much anyway. I work hard to disguise my sadness for her, and my horror that she has mutilated herself and her own pleasure in this way. ‘The scarring’s rather shocking. But the surgeon’s hopeful it will improve.’

      Is this the Rowena who used to float in the sea with her eyes closed, humming to herself and pretending to be a mermaid as she let the currents rock her?

      I picture Rowena’s areolas sewn on like buttons, a dark ring circling each one. For a few seconds my own nipples seem to burn and tingle. ‘I’m sure it will. I’d imagine it just takes time.’

      She studies my face. ‘You’ve got circles under your eyes. You should cover them up. You should consider an eyelid lift. It’s very rejuvenating. You’d feel so much better about yourself. If the people you work with see you looking tired, they’ll believe you are tired. They’ll believe you’re not effective at your job, that you’re unprofessional.’

       Many women are disinclined to tell others about what is happening to them.

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