Without Consent Read Online Free PDF Page A

in a passable mimicry of Redwood’s whine.
    â€˜Only if you’re good.’
    â€˜What does that mean?’
    â€˜You should know by now. Don’t taunt Redwood so early in the morning. It’s bad for his digestion.’
    â€˜Is it OK in the afternoon?’
    â€˜Yes, especially in the afternoons. Especially during policy meetings.’
    Helen was passing down the first line of files, kicking them into symmetry before she pounced, hauled the burden to the clearish desk and struggled with the tape. Rose pointed at it.
    â€˜Is this one going to work? I mean, to coin a legal phrase not yet found in the Latin, will it work?’
    â€˜Doubt it.’
    â€˜Why? That poor cow was raped, good and proper.’
    â€˜Nothing proper about it. Date rape. He says she consented; she says she didn’t. It all depends on which of them makes the more impressive witness. She wasn’t very good at giving evidence in chief yesterday, was she?’
    Rose shrugged. ‘I believed her, but then I s’pose I’m nearer her age. There’s a couple of girls on the jury listening hard, but then there’s a couple of mothers who’ve probably got sons just like him. Testosterone tits.’ Rose clasped her hands between her knees, an automatic reaction which was nothing to do with the subject matter of the trial. It was all in the air they breathed: the pollen of rape.
    â€˜What beats me,’ she continued, ‘is why even girls don’t believe other girls. It’s not as though every female over the age of sixteen knows much about sex. Oh, I mean, she may have done the business, but that’s not the same thing as knowing anything about men. You want them to like you. You can’t believe they’d actually hurt you. You think they can stop and you think they can read your signals. Girls are romantic. That’s why it’s so horrible. It can’t behalf as bad being raped when you’re older. You’ve got less belief to shatter.’
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Helen said drily, checking the papers, looking at her watch. She had clearly stopped listening and Rose was annoyed.
    â€˜The problem with you, Aunty, is too much respectability. I think maybe you’ve got it in for youth, you. The number of rape cases you personally have turned down over the last three months … well, speaks for itself. You’re positively encouraging testosterone to tread all over timidity. I mean, why did you bother to run this one?’
    â€˜Bruises.’
    â€˜You turned down the husband and wife one, too. What a pig he was.’
    â€˜There wasn’t any choice about that. Those kind are virtually impossible to prove unless the couple have separated. One person’s word against another.’
    â€˜And you turned down the one with the man in the basement flat,’ Rose went on, hotly.
    â€˜Oh, come on, Rose. You know that gave me sleepless nights. She picked him out on parade, but he was nothing like her description of him and there was no forensic and he had a sort of an alibi…’
    â€˜And he’s done it again. And he’ll do it again …’
    â€˜Probably. Keep your door locked when Mike’s not around, won’t you?’
    The concern in her voice broke Rose’s antagonistic mood. She smiled, the grin lighting up her bright eyes, creating dimples in her cheeks and even softening the spikes of her hair.
    â€˜Naa,’ she said. ‘If I get any intruders, they won’t beafter my body; they’ll be after his, or the wedding presents. Time to go, is it?’
    â€˜Yup.’
    Rose stood in front of the small mirror to the left of Helen’s desk. A policy statement on dress code for court was expected daily. She ran her fingers through her hair.
    â€˜Mike wants me to stop being punk and go curly. Only for the wedding. What d’ye think, Aunty Helen?’
    Together they considered the most