‘Everyone’s fucked off then?’ Johnny said, pouring Rose a gin and tonic.
‘Yeah, they’re probably all huddled up around a bathtub somewhere,’ Rose sighed.
‘Why aren’t you there?’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘You’re different?’
Rose scoffed. ‘Yeah. I’m not like other girls,’ she said, mockingly.
‘Is that so?’ Johnny replied, evidently immune to sarcasm as he moved his body closer to hers, wrapping his arms around her waist.
For a split second, Rose considered sleeping with this man. It might help, she thought. It could be a way of shaking off the cobwebs of Milo, like Tessa said, even if it was just sex. A sexual palette cleanser. As Tessa pointed out, she hadn’t had enough sexual experiences for a twenty-six-year-old woman anyway. Why not just fuck the butler in the buff? It would be a good story, something she could share over breakfast the next day while everyone hunched over the dining table with bagels and bacon. But before Rose had the chance to make a final decision, she felt Johnny’s fingers already inside her.
‘Fuck!’ Rose shouted, pushing him off her.
‘What?!’ Johnny looked genuinely confused. ‘Fucking hell, you lot are so frigid.’
Rose tried to say something but couldn’t. She turned and walked as calmly as she could towards her bedroom, listening anxiously for footsteps behind her and grateful not to hear any. But as she got further away, it became harder to put one foot in front of the other, like there were sacks of flour beneath her feet she wasn’t strong enough to lift. She collapsed onto something soft.
When Rose opened her eyes, she was lying on a bathroom floor, with a cold flannel on her forehead. The first thing she noticed was that it was light outside.
‘You fainted,’ said Fran, sitting in the empty bathtub opposite her, fully clothed and smoking. ‘I found you on a rug in the corridor.’
‘God,’ Rose replied. ‘I’m so sorry, Fran. I—’
‘Don’t apologise.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How do you feel now?’ Fran still wasn’t looking at her. She was gazing up at the ceiling, hand dangling out over the side of the bath, ash falling onto the wooden floor.
‘A bit dizzy. But I think I’m okay. Do you have any water?’
‘Yeah, here,’ she said, passing her a half-empty bottle of water from Pret.
‘What time is it?’ she asked Fran.
‘Just gone 6.30 a.m.,’ she replied, biting her fingernails.
‘God. How long have we been in here for?’
‘A few hours,’ she said.
‘You’ve been in here the whole time?’
‘Yes, Rose.’
Slowly, flashes of the hen started to come back to her.
‘Are you okay?’ Rose asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The butler. The game. It just felt, like …’
‘Oh, right. Yeah, it was just a bit of banter.’
‘Banter?’
‘These things happen all the time, Rose.’
‘What things?’
‘Men like that using women as props. We’re just sexual playthings to them. Cyborgs with vaginas ready to be fucked and discarded. It’s fine. It really doesn’t bother me. They’re idiots.’
Rose stayed silent.
‘Do you want to know the part that gets me?’ Fran went on. ‘It’s that when they do these things, not one person says a fucking thing. When that bastard was pushing his semi-erect dick against me, I couldn’t move. But no one, in a group full of women, no one tried to stop him. You know what you all did instead?’
Rose wanted to tell her that she had been desperate to do something. But that to do anything going against the grain in that group of girls was above her social capabilities. Still, she should have stopped him. Someone should have.
‘You fucking laughed. All of you. You just laughed.’
‘Fran, I’m so—’
‘Go and get some sleep,’ Fran replied, tapping the butt of her cigarette into the plughole.
