Why did you go there?

Trigger warning: sexual harassment

We are sitting in David’s kitchen drinking tea. We do this every workday morning between 8.05 and 8.45. I rinse out the dregs and smooth away the tannin stains before I put the tea bag and boiling water in his cup.

When I put David’s drink down for him, it knocks against the table top, and a tide of light brown liquid slops over the edge of the cup. I want to go and get a napkin to clear it up, but that will annoy him.

“Why did you go there? Why did you agree to have a cup of tea with him?” The tea that David’s talking about has got nothing to do with the tea we’re drinking now.

Because I like tea. Because he’s an important client and I wanted to work with him. Because why not?

All of those are true. But I know David well enough now not to give any of these answers. He is unusual in that he’s consistent: I can often tell how he’ll react.

“I didn’t think anything of it.” I say.

“But why go to his house? I don’t get it.” He puts one arm around me and the other hand up to touch my forehead. His finger traces a parenthesis across the skin, except it’s not really a parenthesis because it’s turned at 90 degrees: so like the mouth on a sad face. “Are you okay?” His eyes go funny; a bit glazed and unfocused, and he sniffs.

“I’m fine. He tried to kiss me. That’s all. So I left.” I nod, to try and reassure him. It seems to have worked because he takes his arm away. I gather up my things quickly and leave. David’s house is just over the road from my work.

It was more than that. Ray stood over me, pushed down on my shoulders and tried to put his slug of a tongue into my mouth. I shoved him away. For a minute he looked like he was going to stop me leaving, but then it was okay. I left the building plans there though, and I don’t know how I’m going to get them back.

Now it makes me think of the times at school with Mr James. Whenever he came over to me, he leaned into me, letting out a curdled puff of stale coffee breath. Then he touched my shoulder, always underneath the colour of my school blouse. I can still feel the branding of his hand; it still feels like there are flames reaching down from my shoulder towards my chest.

***

I start work right away while my colleagues pace out the triangle between their desks, the bathroom and the kitchen, fetching coffee and porridge. I’m straight into my diagrams; I look at the floating cubes on my computer screen, and double-check calculations to make sure that the supporting walls will do what they’re supposed to.

I can hear conversations drifting between the colleagues. This time they are talking about a club night they went to at the weekend. They invited me, but it would have been too much; the music and lights would have ensnared me, whipped me around until I felt dizzy and sick. This is okay though; the conversation is gentle, lapping away at the quiet in the office. Usually they leave me to it, but sometimes they talk to me, like today.

“How are the plans going?” Oliver says, ‘I hope you didn’t work on them over the weekend.’ He fiddles with the new fluff that has grown on his chin over the last week or so; apparently he’s growing a beard.

The rules of communication are difficult. I tried to develop my own manual by observing different people: like algebra:

IF a and b are odd THEN a + b is even.

IF you are talking to someone and they laugh THEN you should laugh back

It doesn’t work with people though. They are inconsistent. Smiles and laughs can mean different things even when it’s the same person doing the smiling or laughing but at different times. So instead, Mum and I developed a strategy and she gave me some bullet points. I imagine the list she wrote in her neat squat letters: make eye contact, nod at the person talking to you, and don’t ask too many personal questions. And the most difficult one: don’t bang on about one subject for too long.

“Here I’ve used structural analysis to make sure that the intersecting bridges in the hotel can safely support their loads.” I point at my screen, then carry on talking about my big project.

Oliver is nodding and smiling; looking directly at me so I make eye contact with him. I hope I haven’t overdone it.

“Interesting,” he says. “I don’t know how you do it. You must have a brain the size of England.”

“Oh no, it’s not difficult. This program helps a lot.” I am about to show him some of the calculations when I realise I’m breaking the cardinal rule that I told Mum I would follow: Don’t bang on.

I pull it back just in time, and stop talking. Mum said everyone is doing the same thing, making it up as they go along, except it’s a bit more challenging for me. That’s all. According to her, I think a bit differently to other people. Not better, not worse, just different. That’s all.

***

As it’s Monday, we have our team meeting. The four of us from my office file into the meeting room, the other three clasping cups of coffee to their chests.

I sit in my usual place opposite the clock. Daniel, our boss, comes in with two cups of coffee, one for him, and the other he puts in front of me. He does this every week, and he always says the same thing to the colleagues: “Tanya always has her head down working; not like you lazy fucks.” Then he and the others laugh, and I smile.

In the meeting we go round the room to give updates on our projects. I get ready to invoke the strategy Mum and I put together, making sure my update lasts five minutes and no more. I use the second hand on the clock opposite to time myself: another tool in the battle not to bang on. Today I do it with around ten seconds to spare.

Now I just have to ask the questions I’ve prepared on my colleagues’ updates to show I’m interested: a member of the team. They’re not the questions that I want to ask which would be about steel girders and weight bearing walls. I’m like an archaeologist scratching at the earth looking for ruins, except I scrape through graphics and measurements to find the perfect design. Even though my colleagues are, like me, structural engineers, they don’t have the same urge to dig into every detail. So I’ll ask them about the timetable for the work and what the client is like.

I realise Daniel is asking me something. “How did the meeting with Ray go?”

I pause. According to my strategy, personal questions are out of bounds; although what happened at Ray’s house is personal to me so maybe we can talk about it? I’m not sure.

Before I get a chance to speak, Samantha cuts in. “You were brave going there, Tanya. He’s a sleaze.” Samantha is the loudest of my colleagues; we don’t talk to each other that much but she’s always been okay with me. “I’ve heard that, when he gives women a business card, he puts a condom behind it and hands that over as well.”

I try and remember if he has ever given me a business card, but I don’t think he has.

Samantha hasn’t finished, “And Leonie’s been to meet him three times. At his house.” All of the heads in the room turn to look at Leonie, my other quieter colleague.

“I think we should take your points outside the meeting, Samantha. It’s not appropriate to discuss it here.’”Daniel turns towards me. “Was it okay Tanya?” He’s looking at me strangely; I can’t tell what he’s feeling. Everyone else in the room is looking down at their

hands.

“I left the plans for the bridge there. I need them back.”

“I can get them back. Don’t worry about that.”

***

Afterwards, the others go and get lunch but I stay in the office. I need that time to recover from the team meeting. My counsellor once asked me to describe how it felt to be me, which is strange, because does anyone know how it feels to be themselves compared to being someone else? But then she said I could write it down.

It feels like I’m trying to sing a song but my timing is off. When I sing a high note, everyone else has moved on to the next note, which is lower. And no matter how hard I try, I can’t catch up with them. I can’t fall in with their rhythm. It’s frustrating. It’s exhausting.

And that’s why I need this downtime. Everything’s quiet for twenty minutes, and I can feel my nerves calming down and my reserves of patience being replenished, until there’s a tap on the door. It’s Daniel. He comes in and perches on the edge of Samantha’s desk, and looks at me.

“If anything did happen with Ray that made you feel uncomfortable you can let me know, and I can figure out what we should do.”

I don’t say anything.

“And if you don’t feel comfortable telling me, you can always write it down, or type it out. It’s only with your permission that I’ll take any action on it.”

I still don’t say anything.

“Or you can speak to Sue if you would prefer.” Sue is Daniel’s wife.

I nod. He leaves the office, and I go back to studying the diagrams on my screen. I get another ten minutes on my own, then Leonie comes in and sits at her desk. She is quite new; I know she’s been struggling with the work. I smile at her.

“I wasn’t hungry,” she says, “so I came back.”

She stops talking for a few seconds, and I carry on clicking my diagrams and calculations.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” she says, “What happened with Ray? I know I shouldn’t ask but he did some things that made me…….feel uncomfortable.”

I think she’s saying that he did the same thing to her as he did to me.

“I don’t mind you asking. He tried to kiss me. He tried to push his tongue in my mouth. David, my boyfriend, he asked me why I went to his house. He isn’t happy that I went there.” I don’t know why I’m telling her about David.

“And what did you say to David?”

“I said I didn’t think anything of it. But that’s not true. It’s because I wanted to work on the bridge project for Ray.”

She nods, and then rubs her eyes with her fists. “People ask me the same thing, especially because I met him three times. I can’t tell them the truth.”

‘Right.’

“I went there because he made me feel pretty. Then I went back because I thought it would help me with the work here,” she looks down at her desk and shakes her head, “and then because I was too embarrassed to say no to going there. After that it was too late.”

She sighs and looks towards the ceiling with watery light blue eyes that look like they will overflow her eye sockets and run down her face.

People don’t always act rationally. Or at least they don’t do what is in their best interests, even though they may think they are acting in their best interests. And that includes me.

I nod to show I understand, “That’s okay. He shouldn’t have done what he did to you.”

***

That evening after work I go home to the house I used to share with Mum until ten months ago. She had been ill for three years by the time she died. That time went by both slowly and quickly. Some things are the same as when it was her and me together; I still cook the same meals on the same days; Monday is macaroni cheese. And my bath time is still at eight every evening even though I don’t need to have it that early any more; when she was alive, I had it at eight so that she could have a bath at nine. But lots of things are different as well. I didn’t meet David until after she had died.

I go into her old room and sit on the bed. I play the swan theme from Swan Lake on my phone: that was always our soundtrack. When I was much younger, maybe eight or nine, I’d dance to it in elaborate swoops and pirouettes, twisting and diving around the living room. It was one of the few experiences I had of moving to the same rhythm as someone else, even if that someone was contained in a shiny compact disc. Sometimes Mum would join in; she’d sway and occasionally a clumsy leg or arm would come careering out and I’d have to dodge it; she wasn’t a graceful woman. Later on, especially as she became weaker, the two of us would just listen to it together.

Now I listen to the music alone, but I don’t feel alone. I have the notes that she and I worked up; we designed them so that I’d be able to manage better once she wasn’t around. They are contained on a neat patchwork of post-it notes, in different pastel colours, stuck to her bedroom wall. I look at them most evenings.

I think she would have been pleased at how I managed today. I have one more thing that I need to do though. I fetch my laptop from downstairs: I will write down everything that happened with Ray.