was only going to deny attacking their son, and did the Buckleys really want to be involved in a drawn-out court case with someone who lived so close to them? Now Bob Oswald continued towards the two policemen. A huge man, shaven-headed, he yelled, ‘I want to report a rape.’
It was his third eldest daughter who had been raped.
She was a skinny slip of a girl with lank blonde hair and an underfed gymnast's body. She never wore many clothes - hot pants, bra tops, stilettos. Her favourite expression was fucker, as in, that fucker over there's giving me the evils, or, that fucker down the road wants to watch herself or I'll do her.
Now that fucker Rick Buckley had raped her.
She told her father this just a few minutes before the fight in the square, though she never said it was rape, she only said it was sex, and she only said it was sex because he refused to believe the real reason she had contraceptives under her bed.
He said, Susan, you're thirteen years old, what the fuck do you want the pill for?
She said, I dunno.
He said, Yes, you do, you want them for having sex.
And then he got very angry.
Which made Susan very scared.
So she said that she'd nicked them.
For once, she was telling the truth. She'd nicked them off Mrs McCluskey, who'd made the fatal mistake of leaving an open handbag within reaching range of an Oswald. Mrs McCluskey never did realise they'd been stolen. She just assumed she'd lost them and got another prescription. As teachers go, she was sensible like that. As for Susan Oswald, once she'd nicked them, she didn't know what to do with them. They tasted of nothing and didn't get her going the way her old man's vodka did. What good were contraceptives? She chucked them under her bed and forgot they even existed. Bob Oswald found them six months later when he was looking for a new place to hide his drugs. He yelled, ‘Susan. Get up here.’
Susan Oswald sighed. Her old man. He could be a right fucker.
‘What?’
‘Get your arse up here,’ Bob yelled. ‘Now.’
Susan climbed the stairs. ‘What?’
Bob Oswald threw the contraceptives at her. ‘What are these?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Yes, you do. They're contraceptives.’
A pregnant pause.
‘Your contraceptives. I found them under your bed. Susan. You're thirteen years old. What the fuck do you want the pill for?’
‘I dunno.’
‘Yes, you do. You want them for having sex. Who the fuck are you having sex with?’
Susan Oswald didn't answer. She couldn't. She hadn't been having sex with anyone. Bob Oswald leaned into her face.
‘Susan. Tell me. And don't try to give me no bullshit. I know you've been at it with someone. It's written all over your face.’
‘Dad, it isn't, I haven't.’
‘Then what are you on the pill for?’
‘I'm not. Those tablets ain't mine.’
‘Yeah. Right. Whose are they? Saskia's? Saraya's?’
‘Nobody's.’
‘Nobody's?’
‘Nobody's. I nicked them. I swear.’
Bob Oswald drew a fist back. ‘Nobody nicks the pill, Susan. You get it for free off the state.’
Susan stared open-mouthed at her father's fist.
‘Tell me,’ he told her. ‘Who are you having sex with?’
‘Dad –’
‘Don't “Dad” me, Susan. Give me a name.’
‘But, Dad –’
Bob Oswald punched the wall beside Susan's head. She screamed and fell down on the floor. Bob leaned down above her and pressed his bleeding fist into her face.
‘I want a name, Susan. You're gonna give me a name. If you don't give me a name, I'm gonna count to ten, and if I've not got a name by the time I've counted to ten, I'll be punching you, not the fucking wall. You get me? I don't want to. You're my daughter. I love you. I'm out to protect you. But if you don't help me protect you, I'll break every bone in your body. Now give me the dumb fucker's name.’
Susan Oswald had never been punched by her father before. Staring into his knuckles, she didn't want to be either. They were huge. His onyx rings would slice through her flesh. She sobbed and screamed that the tablets weren't hers, but Bob drew his fist back and started to count. One, he said, two, he said, three. Susan screamed for someone to help her, but her sisters were cowering on the stairs and there was nobody else who could hear. Bob's voice rose with each number, so it was four, tell me, five, tell me, six, you'd better fucking tell me, SEVEN, right into her face. Then he screamed EIGHT, I'm gonna kill you, I'll break every bone in your body. Give me the dumb fucker's name. NINE. He tensed his fist even tighter. The knuckles were dripping with blood. Seeing it before her, Susan gave up trying to reason. She had to come up with a name. But there was no name she could think of, because there was no one she had shagged. She did know, however, that Saskia, her second eldest sister, had recently shagged Rick Buckley, the weird kid from the other side of the square. Susan knew this because she'd heard Saskia talking about the size of Rick's penis. Saraya, the eldest, had yelled, ‘How small? You're like totally kidding me,’ then the two sisters had laughed hysterically. Now, just before Bob could scream TEN and start punching, Susan shouted up into his face:
‘Rick Buckley.’
‘Rick Buckley?’ Bob Oswald stared, wide-eyed. ‘He's – what ȓ seven years older than you are?’
Rick was six years older. Bob didn't care much for maths.
Susan tried to make the lie convincing: ‘We've been doing it in his car.’
‘Fucking hell.’
Fucking hell, the two policemen thought. Rape?
They looked back at the house they'd just come from. The Buckleys seemed a nice enough family. The old man was a bit wet and the mum was a bit dull. In keeping with the parents, the boy had seemed a little bit flaky when Mrs Buckley had finally got him to come out of his bedroom and tell them who'd beaten him up for no apparent reason. But rape? He didn't look capable of sex, let alone rape.
Still. An allegation was an allegation.
They radioed it through to the Child Protection Unit, then went for a chat with Bob Oswald. As he filled them in on the details, they looked through the grimy kitchen window at a beaming Susan Oswald. She was doing dance steps with her two younger sisters in a scruffy wasteland of a garden full of swings and beaten-up toys. When one of her younger sisters got her steps wrong, Susan's beam was shattered. You stupid fucking bitch, Sunrise. You do it like this, not that. Sunset, the youngest of Bob's daughters at two years old, looked from one sister to the other, then threw her arms around both. The policemen turned away. Bob Oswald told them Susan's version of how it had happened: Rick Buckley – always a bit of a weirdo, very quiet, very, very creepy – had offered to take her for a drive in the brand-new car his old man had just bought him as a present for passing his test. He had driven her onto the nearby Oak Tree Place development that was currently just a wasteland of unfinished houses and mudflats, held her down, and raped her.
Both of the policemen took notes.
Just over eleven miles away, in Winchester, seven officers of various rank climbed into an assortment of cars and made their way out to Hedge End. Within fifty-six minutes of the allegation being made Rick Buckley was arrested under suspicion of raping Susan Oswald. In the back of a squad car that smelled of burgers and cigarettes, a constable twice Rick's age leaned in close against him and whispered, very thickly, I hope for