A: Yes.

Q: Did you start seeing one another regularly?

A: Yes. We went out together a few times for dinner, to the pictures or for a drink. Sometimes he took me out for a ride in the country in his car, and we’d find a little village pub somewhere.

Q: How soon did you become lovers?

A: Very soon after we first went out.

Q: Weeks? Days?

A: Days.

Q: And the relationship went well after you moved in with him?

A: At first it did, yes. Look, I mean, you have to realize, I was very young. A bit of a misfit, too, I suppose. I wasn’t very happy at home, and I didn’t really have any close friends. I found most people my own age immature. I was also very shy and Owen was nice to me. I suppose I was flattered, too, by the attention. When I talked about leaving home, he asked if I’d like to move in with him, and it seemed like a good idea. I felt safe with him.

Q: Were you still his student when you moved in with him?

A: I was in his business communications class, yes.

Q: Did you continue to do well in that course?

A: Very well.

Q: Deservedly?

A: I think so. Look, I’m not stupid, but I also admit it may have helped, sleeping with my teacher.

Q: Do you think there was a price to pay for your success?

A: What do you mean?

Q: Did Owen ever suggest or attempt to commit any unnatural acts?

A: Do you mean was he kinky?

Q: Something like that.

A: No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, he liked me to wear certain underclothes. You know, black silky things, thigh stockings, skimpy things. He liked me to keep them on when we…you know.

Q: During intercourse?

A: Yes.

Q: Was that all?

A: All? Was what all?

Q: The skimpy clothes. Did he ever make you do anything you didn’t want to?

A: He wanted to do it to me from behind, like dogs. I didn’t like that.

Q: But did you do as he wished?

A: Well, I…yes, at first I did. I wanted to please him.

Q: Because you were worried about your marks?

A: A bit, I suppose.

Q: Did he show any interest in pornography?

A: We watched a dirty video once. You know the sort of thing. I didn’t really enjoy it. In fact, I thought it was dead gross, but it seemed to turn him on.

Q: How did he behave when you were watching the video?

A: Well, he was, you know, maybe a bit more ardent than usual. He wanted to try out things they were doing, you know, on the video.

Q: Against your will?

A: No, but I thought it was a bit weird.

Q: Did he ever resort to violence for the purpose of sexual stimulation?

A: He used to like to tie me up sometimes.

Q: How did you react to this?

A: What could I do? He was stronger than me. I wanted to please him. It was uncomfortable and it frightened me a bit, but it didn’t really hurt. It was just a game, really. It was something he’d seen in that silly film and it turned him on.

Q: Did he beat you at all? Flagellation?

A: No.

Q: So apart from the tying up he wasn’t violent?

A: No…not until the end. Then living with him became sort of like being in prison. Every time I went out I had to account for my movements. Some nights he wouldn’t even let me go out.

Q: How did he keep you in?

A: He just made such a fuss it wasn’t worth it. I felt shut in, always under observation. I couldn’t breathe. I was frightened of his temper. I started rebelling in small ways, like seeing other friends and stuff, and it made him more and more possessive.

Q: Is that why you left him? Fear of violence?

A: Partly…it was frightening, especially the last night, but…

Q: Can you tell us about that last night, Michelle?

Michelle went on to tell about the night she claimed Owen had raped and tried to strangle her. Pale, Owen shoved the papers aside and looked at Shirley Castle.

“Well?” she asked. “What do you think of it?”

Owen shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s not true, then?”

“Some of it, maybe. But she even makes the truth sound different, sound bad for me, the way she slants it.”

“In what way?”

“Every way. The sex, for example. She makes me sound like a pervert, but most of it was her idea. She loved it, the tying up, the talking dirty. It really got her going. And she liked the video.”

“Did you hit her that last night?”

“I pushed her. I was protecting myself. She was berserk, out of control. She’d have killed me if I hadn’t pushed her away.”

“And she hit her head as she fell?”

“Yes.”

“Knocking her unconscious?”

“Yes, but…Oh, God.” Owen held his head in his hands. “I know how it sounds, but I’ve never hurt anyone in my life, never on purpose.”

“Did you have sex with her after she’d knocked herself out?”

“No, I didn’t. That’s a lie. What do you take me for?”

“I’m just trying to get at the truth, Owen. Did you try to force her to have sex at any time that evening?”

“No. I mean, yes. No, I didn’t try to force her, but I suggested it. I just wanted to see how she would react. It was a test. I didn’t force her.”

Shirley frowned. “You made advances? I’m afraid I don’t understand you, Owen. You’ll have to explain it to me.”

How could he tell her about that night? Still vivid in his mind, it was like watching a cartoon play, the gaudy colors, the exaggerated violence, the sense of being a spectator, unable to stop the film, unable even to walk out of the cinema.

“How did it start, Owen?”

Owen tried to explain. He had grown suspicious of Michelle over the last year or so, he said, suspected that she was seeing another man, or other men. That night, when she said she was going to meet a girlfriend, he followed her into Eastvale town center and watched her meet someone in a pub. As they talked and drank, rubbing close together, Owen sat, shielded by a frosted-glass partition and watched the shadows. At closing time, he followed them to a house not far from his own and watched outside as the bedroom light went on, then the curtains closed, and someone turned out the light.

He went home and paced and drank whisky until Michelle got in after two-thirty in the morning. Instead of challenging her immediately with what he’d found out, he made sexual advances to see how she would react.

She pushed him away and told him she was too tired, listening to her girlfriend’s tales of woe till so late. He could smell the other man on her, the stale beer and smoke on her clothes, in her hair, mingled with the reek of sex. She hadn’t even had the decency to take a shower afterwards.

Then he told her what he’d seen, what he had watched. She went wild, flew at him, screamed that he didn’t own her and if he was no good in bed she had every damn right to find someone who was. It was like watching another person emerge from the shell of someone you thought you knew.

He called her a bitch, a whore, told her he knew she’d been at it all the time they’d been together, that she had just used him, had never really loved him. For a moment, she paused in her attack and a different look came into her eyes: hard, cold hatred. She picked up a pair of scissors from the table and lunged at him. He grabbed her hand and twisted until she dropped them.

Then she renewed the attack, kicking, scratching, flailing out wildly. He held his hands in front of his face to ward off the blows and tried to talk her down. But she wouldn’t stop. Finally, out of desperation, he pushed her away, just to give himself some space to maneuver, and she fell over and hit her head on the chair leg.

He tried to tell Shirley Castle all this, as calmly as he could. He knew it sounded thin without the whole background of the relationship, from the early innocence to the bitter knowledge that it had all been a lie.

What he couldn’t tell her, though, what he hardly dare even admit to himself, was that after Michelle had fallen on the floor, arms spread out, one leg crooked over the other, he had wanted her. Hating her even then, he had torn at her clothing, then, half-mad with jealousy and hatred, had put his hands around her throat and wanted to choke the life out of her for what she had done to him, for ruining, for defiling what he had thought was the love of a lifetime. He hated himself for wanting her, and he hated her for making him.