“Still no?” He lifted his hands.

His eyes turned hard. Except maybe they’d been hard all along.

“Please don’t. Please don’t do that again.”

“You’re a boring little bitch, aren’t you? Just want to be f**ked. That’s what you came here for, hey?”

He positioned her underneath him and shoved himself inside her as if he were operating some sort of basic machinery, and as he moved, he put his mouth close to her ear and he said things: an endless stream of casual cruelty that slid straight into her head and curled up, wormlike, in her brain.

“You’re just a fat ugly little girl, aren’t you? With your cheap jewelry and your trashy dress. Your breath is disgusting, by the way. Need to learn some dental hygiene. Jesus. Never had an original thought in your life, have you? Want a tip? You’ve got to respect yourself a bit more. Lose that weight. Join a gym, for f**k’s sake. Stop the junk food. You’ll never be beautiful, but at least you won’t be fat.”

She did not resist in any way. She stared at the downlight in the ceiling, blinking at her like a hateful eye, observing everything, seeing it all, agreeing with everything that he said. When he rolled off her, she didn’t move. It was as though her body didn’t belong to her anymore, as though she’d been anesthetized.

“Shall we watch TV?” he said, and he picked up the remote control and the television at the end of the bed came to life. It was one of the Die Hard movies. He flicked through channels while she put back on the dress that she’d loved. (She’d never spent that much money on a dress before.) She moved slowly and stiffly. It wouldn’t be until days later that she would find bruises on her arms, her legs, her stomach and her neck. As she dressed, she didn’t try to hide her body from him, because he was like a doctor who had operated on her and removed something appalling. Why try to hide her body when he already knew just how abhorrent it was?

“You off, then?” he said when she was dressed.

“Yes. Bye,” she said. She sounded like a thick-witted twelve-year-old.

She could never understand why she felt the need to say “bye.” Sometimes she thought she hated herself mostly for that. For her dopey, bovine “bye.” Why? Why did she say that? It was a wonder she didn’t say “thanks.”

“See you!” It was like he was trying not to laugh. He found her laughable. Disgusting and laughable. She was disgusting and laughable.

She went back downstairs in the glass bubble elevator.

“Would you like a taxi?” said the concierge, and she knew he could barely contain his disgust: disheveled, fat, drunk, slutty girl on her way home.

After that, nothing ever seemed quite the same.

32.

Oh, Jane.”

Madeline wanted to sweep Jane into her arms and onto her lap and rock her back and forth as if she were Chloe. She wanted to find that man and hit him, kick him, yell obscenities at him.

“I guess I should have taken the morning-after pill,” said Jane. “But I never even thought about it. I had bad endometriosis when I was younger, and a doctor told me I’d have a lot of trouble getting pregnant. I can go for months without a period. When I finally realized I was pregnant, it was . . .”

She’d told her story in a low voice that Madeline had had to strain to hear, but now she lowered it even further to almost a whisper, her eyes on the hallway leading to Ziggy’s bedroom. “Much too late for an abortion. And then my grandfather died, and that was a big shock to us all. And then I went a bit strange. Depressed, maybe. I don’t know. I left uni and moved back home, and I just slept. For hours and hours. It was like I was sedated or really jet-lagged. I couldn’t bear to be awake.”

“You were probably still in shock. Oh, Jane. I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

Jane shook her head as if she’d been given something she didn’t deserve. “Well. It’s not like I got raped in an alleyway. I have to take responsibility. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“He assaulted you! He—”

Jane lifted a hand. “Lots of women have bad sexual experiences. That was mine. The lesson is: Don’t go off with strange men you meet in bars.”

“I can assure you I went off with my share of men I met in bars,” said Madeline. She’d done it once or twice. It had never been like that. She would have poked his eyes out. “Do not for a moment think that you’re in any way to blame, Jane.”

Jane shook her head. “I know. But I do try to keep it in perspective. Some people do really like that erotic asphyxiation stuff.” Madeline saw her put a hand unconsciously to her neck. “You might be into it, for all I know.”

“Ed and I think it’s erotic if we find ourselves in bed without a wriggling child in between us,” said Madeline. “Jane, my darling girl, that wasn’t sexual experimentation. What that man did to you was not—”

“Well, don’t forget you heard the story from my perspective,” interrupted Jane. “He might remember it differently.” She shrugged. “He probably doesn’t even remember it.”

“And that was verbal abuse. Those things he said to you.” Madeline felt the fury rise again. How could she fight this creep? How could she make him pay? “Those vile things.”

When Jane had told her the story, she hadn’t needed to try to think back to remember the exact words. She’d recited his insults in a dull monotone, as if she were reciting a poem or a prayer.