Those Whom the Gods Love. Clare Layton

much about them. John had been sure it was a plural ‘you’, addressed to everyone who’d liked Steve. Robert thought it might be Steve’s girlfriend, Virginia Callader. But she hadn’t thought so.

      They’d half expected her or one of her rugger-bugger friends to start telling the court all about the supposed rape, but no one had actually said the word. Even she seemed to have thought better of the whole idiotic story.

      ‘But why didn’t he tell us why he did it?’ Robert burst out. ‘Didn’t he realize how we’d worry? Bloody selfish.’

      They were at the door of The King’s Arms by then, so they went in and Harbinger got four pints. Sasha took her usual healthy swallow and saw that they were all looking at her.

      ‘Just because I’m a medical student, it doesn’t mean I …’

      ‘Not because of that,’ John said impatiently, ‘but because you’re a girl. What d’you think Virginia did to make him kill himself?’

      Sasha shrugged. In her black coat, her shoulders looked almost as broad as Robert’s. Dom’s were puny by comparison.

      ‘At the beginning she said he raped her,’ she started uncertainly, then couldn’t think of anything else.

      ‘Bollocks to that,’ John said. ‘Steve couldn’t have raped anyone. You know that. And he couldn’t have heard the story either. Didn’t you hear the pathologist say he must have died some time in the night? The one good thing is that he can’t ever have heard what she said about him. Where’s Fergus?’

      ‘Couldn’t face talking. He went back to Merton as soon as he’d given his evidence.’

      ‘Poor bugger!’

      John’s cheek muscles began to tighten as he tried not to laugh. Sasha glared at him. He knew why: Steve was dead, Fergus was pretty nearly desperate, but John still couldn’t stop himself seeing the joke. He caught her eye and grinned at her, making her smile back. Suddenly she let go and roared with laughter. Robert and John joined in, but Dom pushed up his specs again, looking like an adult disgusted at children’s antics, and that made it worse.

      Suddenly John coughed, and the black joke stopped being at all funny. He tried to get some more bitter down his throat.

      ‘D’you think maybe Virginia laughed that night?’ he said. ‘At him, I mean. Steve.’

      Sasha’s face reminded him of a hare that’s heard something in the undergrowth. After a moment she nodded.

      ‘You mean that if he couldn’t get it up she might have teased him?’

      ‘Yeah. It was his first time, after all; he wasn’t sure he could do it. I know he was worried. Don’t you think it could’ve been that?’

      ‘But Virginia looked awful in The Goat that day. She wouldn’t have if she’d …’

      ‘I’m not so sure,’ John said soberly. ‘You know what Steve could be like when he was in a state about something. What if he realized he couldn’t screw her, hated her laughing at him, and went silent on her? You know how he got sometimes, Sash.’

      ‘White, silent and shaking,’ she said nodding.

      After a second, she brushed the back of her hand over her eyes. It came away wet and black. She was crying again. Sasha of all people, who never minded anything. The smell of beer and fag ends sickened him.

      ‘With that suggestion of tears making his eyes go pink?’

      ‘Yes,’ John said, staring at the festoons of foam that hung on the inside of his empty tankard. ‘That could be grim.’

      ‘And the more you tried to help, to get him to talk, the whiter he’d get and the bigger his eyes.’

      John wondered why it hadn’t ever occurred to any of them to suggest that Steve shagged Sasha. That would have been infinitely more sensible. Sasha wouldn’t have gone in for all this rape nonsense. And Steve would still be alive. Of course, he hadn’t fancied her. Who could, with that great arse of hers? But she’d have been kind to him, and it would have been a lot better for all of them.

      Robert and Dom were turning from Sasha to John, as though they were at a tennis match. Both looked astonished. Obviously neither of them had ever known the real Steve. Dom got up and fished in his pocket for a handkerchief. When he’d polished his spectacles, he blew his nose. John and Sasha both started to speak at the same time. He deferred to her.