The Facts

Content warning: contains description of sexual assault. Please take care.

Hana always sat at the bar at the back of The Cambridge, where she could watch who came in. A huge mirror ran the length of the pub, so you could sometimes watch people without them knowing. The mirror made the place seem a lot bigger than it really was. There were always people she recognised even if she didn’t know the names that went with them. Nobody knew her name either, but she'd always get a few nods and that was enough. There were the old men in their corners or at the bar alone, then the younger ones. Sometimes one of them would ask if she was okay and if there was anything he could do for her and she would smile and nod, although she was never sure which question she was responding to. Today was Friday and in an hour or so the place would be rammed. The girl behind the bar noticed her and raised her eyebrows in a friendly way but there was also something else in her look. Hana pulled at the sleeves of Mattie’s cashmere cardigan that she’d been wearing everywhere. She still hadn’t washed it.

Hana didn’t actually know what she would say when Mattie arrived, or how she might begin. Mattie was two years older and Hana was used to her sister talking first, but she had some questions. She hadn’t seen Mattie since they’d taken that flight back from the Gold Coast, in separate seats.  Mattie hadn’t even waited for her at the baggage claim. Hana thought she’d spotted her getting into a taxi outside the airport in Wellington but she couldn’t be sure. It had been just a glimpse of red shorts and what looked like Mattie’s suitcase. 

A man was sitting at the end of the bar. She’d noticed him before, probably because he was the right age. The old ones were usually too deaf or too far gone or both. She couldn’t be sure she hadn’t talked to this one before, not that it mattered. He wore a suit and he had that dense stubble that stayed on your face even after shaving. He ordered a drink. 

Mattie was late now, as predicted. She always suggested a place in town, nearer her work, but Hana’d made up a story so they could meet here. It was here or the flat and the flat was a tip. There was a musty smell in the bedroom,  like mouldy fruit. Even with the window open onto the weirdly warm air, it hadn’t gone away. Also people kept coming to the flat. ‘How are you?’ they asked. ‘How are you? Do you need anything? Asking questions. On and on where there were no answers. And so she came here, where she didn’t know anyone and the men didn’t ask anything of her. That wasn’t nothing. Some could even be generous after a few drinks. Work was still paying Hana but she wasn't sure for how much longer.

She tried not to look at the man sitting along from her, but looked anyway. He had taken off his jacket and was scrolling through his phone. His stubble was greying, but his hair was dark. She cleared her throat.

‘I’m Hana.’

He flinched slightly but waved.

He introduced himself but she forgot his name straight away. He had long fingers, no wedding ring. She bought them both a drink and moved along and climbed onto the stool next to his. She raised her glass in a toast, and he did the same but didn’t clink her glass. Listen, she wanted to say. Listen to me.  

It was getting harder to hold onto the facts. Hana was uncertain now if she believed herself, or had accidentally made up something that wasn’t true. She hadn't seen Mattie for a few weeks before the Gold Coast trip. Maybe that was why she kept swinging back and forth between things that happened before the trip and the events that happened after. She tried to make herself stop thinking about it. Then she ran into Mattie’s colleague Ruth from the radio station at the bus stop. Hana had gone to the bus stop with the intention of going into work. But she’d ended up just staring into the road. 

‘How are you?’ Hana wasn’t sure what Mattie might have said to Ruth. They’d worked together for five years; shouldn’t she know Mattie well enough by now? If you know someone, you should be able to read the signs, you should be paying attention. Hana had spent years expecting Mattie to understand her. Was she unknowable? Was it her or Mattie? 

‘I have to go’ said Ruth, then got on the bus. Hana at least, had sort of figured it out. First she wondered why Mattie hadn’t talked to her but then, immediately, she wondered how Mattie could do such a thing. 

Mattie had been in one of her moods but she looked beautiful that night when she came out of the hotel bathroom in a bathrobe, her hair slicked back in a bun, her lips streaked red. 

‘Hanie!’ She held up her hands, palms together. ‘Sorry. I’m thinking we should go out, get drunk. Let’s pretend to be each other for the night. Here, put this on.’ 

Mattie’s dress was expensive looking and made out of black stretchy material. It only just covered Hana’s ass. 

‘You're so thin again.’ Hana would have killed for Mattie’s legs. She hadn’t inherited their mothers thighs and Hana hated her for it. Since the restructure at work, things were different. She worked as a host at the big gallery in town. They didn’t get to move around much. Sometimes she had to concentrate to stay awake. They were only allowed to sit on a stool after they’d worked four and a half hours of a shift. They could read if things were quiet - not on their phone - but you could read a book. A book was useful but sometimes people wanted to talk about the art. The pay was terrible but there weren’t many jobs, and as long as she was careful she could cover everything. The gallery provided uniforms which saved a bit on clothes, usually just a t-shirt printed with the artist's name and name of the exhibition. The current one said ‘How does your body feel?’ on the front. The slogan had attracted a lot of commentary, from men mostly. Hana remembered seeing the man come in because it was near the end of her shift. He'd walked with purpose, stopping to look at one artwork, before stopping in front of her. He asked what was showing in the upstairs galleries.

‘It’s install week unfortunately, only this main space is open.’

He slowly read the words on her t-shirt out loud. ‘How does your body feel?’ She shifted on the stool. If she was someone else she would have said tired, my body feels tired of men like you, but she didn't say anything.

‘I’d like to find out.’ His eyes moved across her tits then up to her face.

‘They're for sale in the gift shop.’ She let her eyes drop from his and whenever she thought about it now, she realised that by doing this she had shown him the power he had and that he could have done whatever he liked.

Didn’t you do anything, Hanie, for god's sake? Fucking predator. It’s our responsibility to call it out.

She should have called it out. But she and Mattie were different. Even though they’d come from the same place they were still different. Mattie had a career and was saving for her Forever Home. There were lots of people who’d be happy to take Hana’s job. That much was made clear by Robert, the new Director when she’d got to work late a couple of times. Robert was from somewhere in Europe.

‘Hanie, are you even listening?’ Mattie had on a silky maroon item of Hana’s, not a dress, or a jumper. It draped off her shoulders and was belted tightly at the waist. ‘Let’s do this.’

‘Are you sure this dress —’ Hana looked down at herself.

‘Is hot enough? It’s way better on you! That booty, though.’ Mattie whistled and laughed and Hana tried to say something else but Mattie’s laughter took over. This is how it was with Mattie, always being pulled forward, up out of how she was feeling into something else.

It was a good night. The barman emerged from a crowd of people at the bar. Mattie and Hana saw him before he saw them. They saw his skin and hair, eyes and teeth. Something was going on with him—hot. Mattie stood behind her, with hands on her shoulders, a voice in her ear, and Hana could not stop staring at him, and Mattie was laughing and drinking and asking the boring questions that got them talking.

‘It’s Hana, actually’

‘Whatever you say, Mattie.’

‘Who told you that? Did my sister tell you that?’

‘You did. So, what do you do, Mattie?’ Hana readied the words in her mouth.

‘I work on the radio, mostly.’ His name was Luca and he was almost finished his shift. She tried to answer his questions in a way she wouldn’t normally. Later, when he told her she looked good and he kissed her, she let him.

Mattie held the room. She told the gallery t-shirts story, recalling what Hana told her, somehow changing it up in her radio voice. Her hair was coming loose from the bun and she was all bone and skin and laughter. 

‘So it turns out he was just a little bit sexist after all.’

Hana got up and leaned over to take the wine bottle from the icebox. She was a bit shaky at hearing Mattie’s words and everyone's faces looking.

‘That is a serious piece of ass.’ Only Mattie could get away with that.

‘Can I’ve a go of this?’ She sat back down and peeled off the foil. 

‘We took him to court and sued the bastard.’ Mattie would have, too. It was hard to know what to think about it. It was hard to make yourself the hero of your stories but Mattie was. 

‘Of course, not everyone saw it that way.’ 

‘What?’ Hana tried to hear the words without feeling them but in that moment, it all seemed more important than any of it really was. 

Mattie reached over and patted her arm.

‘You remember, Sis, someone was too scared to speak up.’ Hana wanted to explain everything. She wanted to tell them she’d had a mind to complain but she’d been worried she’d lose her job. That it was easy for Mattie with her perfect legs and her voice and her Forever Home. She didn’t have the words for that much. She knew it was a mistake before it came but it came anyway.

Mattie had closed the door of the Uber at the exact mo­ment Hana stepped forward and some­thing in the way she closed it told her that this was part of Mattie’s plan.

Hana wished she hadn’t let the Uber door close. Then they would have been together. The more Hana thought back, the more she was sure she was right. In that glimpse she had of her sister, there had been something.

The trip had been Mattie’s idea, of course it had. Mattie had all the ideas. 

‘Come on. It’s been forever, Hanie.‘ You can pay me back. It’s going to be warm! Do you want me to get depressed this winter and kill myself?’

‘All right, yeah, we don’t want that.’ Hana tried to smile. It was easier to be grateful than to refuse. Mattie did this. Made everything the most dramatic version of itself. You loved that about her, Hana reminded herself. 

She didn’t actually remember seeing Mattie on the flight back from the Gold Coast. She didn’t remember Luca’s apartment or how they got there, or when she began to come here to The Cambridge every day or when she grew angry at the men she talked to, or when everything began to remind her of something else. This is what she remembered: Mattie taking off the bathrobe, all ribcage and pelvis in matching underwear. Mattie lazing on the hotel bed, eating sweets and flicking through a magazine. Mattie painting her nails.

Hana looked down at the scratched surface of the bar and she could feel her face flushing but she kept going. She held tightly onto the whiskey glass. The man, whose name she’d forgotten, rested his chin in his hand and his face didn’t move. She told the story. How she’d changed her mind about wanting to fuck Luca the barman.

‘I don’t want to’, she’d said. His friends had come in to watch and when he finished they’d called out to her and had a turn and it was too dark to tell their bodies from everything else. 

The man looked at his glass the whole time and not at Hana’s face. He was hardly there. He hadn’t touched his drink, but when she got to that part he picked it up and drank till it was gone. He said something, but in a voice so low she didn’t hear it. She took Mattie’s cardigan off and put it over her knees like a rug.

When she’d got back to the hotel, Mattie had already left for the airport. There was a note on the bed. It sounded like she was breaking up with Hana. Hana had tried to phone her but she’d ignored the messages. 

The man leaned over the bar to get the bar girl’s attention. 

‘Two tequila shots.’ Hana sucked on the lemon, hungry. She looked up at the blackboard at the day’s specials. Fuck it, she’d have the steak and chips. She’d been vegetarian for two years but lately she’d  been waking up craving meat, imagining blood pooling against the lip of the plate, the taste of metal against her teeth. She worded in her mind the email she would send Mattie. Not tomorrow, but next week, not angry, just disappointed, sad to miss her. No - she would still come. She’d been held up at work. Mattie would phone and apologise soon, explain everything. Hana pulled her blouse down over the slight bit of flesh visible over the top of her jeans. It seemed to be straining over her chest. How had she not noticed that her jeans had a rip in one thigh? It was like her body was overflowing out of itself, refusing to be contained anymore. The bar was packed with people now but the man took their bags to a table nearby and bought them a whiskey each and a pint. He loosened his tie and undid the top two buttons on his shirt. He was a bit too quiet. Mattie would have asked him questions: Where do you live? What do you do for work? Want to come home with me? Perhaps she had been here longer than she meant. The man said something and laughed. The music had been turned up and she had to lean in closer to him to hear him as he repeated it. He was drunk. It showed in his face. He laughed again and she laughed but shook her head because she didn’t want to have sex with him.

The steak arrived. She cut into it and cut little pieces of meat off, eating until it was gone. She laid her knife and fork down, then  mopped up the leftover juice on the plate with the bread roll.  She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. The cold fat had left a coating on the roof of her mouth. He was still talking. Tell me the rest of it, then.

She put her head back, held her hands tightly together. It was almost a relief to hear him asking. This was her story – some lies, some uncertainty. And this was the story of her sister – but this story was – worst of all – hers. She tapped her phone, tried to stay present. She called Mattie’s number. It went to voicemail, as usual, Mattie’s voice teasing as though she was undecided as to whether she would really return your message.

‘She’ll call me tomorrow.’ Wait, that is all Hana had to do, not go forward or back, just wait. She tried not to reach for the phone again. It had probably been a bad idea to leave the flat today. She thought about making up another story but she was so tired. Oh god, she was tired. ‘I’m fine,’ she said again. She was always fine right up until she wasn’t.

It had been daylight when she found the hotel. Mattie’s bed was empty and unmade and a note said she’d gone to the airport. Hana took off the dress and tights she’d been wearing, placed them on the bed in the shape of Mattie’s sleeping body, like those cut out clothes and paper dolls they’d had when they were kids. 

Later, there were questions. Things weren’t coming back. People talked and Hana watched their mouths moving. What time had Hana left the bar? Why had Mattie left Hana? What was the address of the apartment? How much had Mattie and Hana had to drink? She hadn’t done anything wrong, they just wanted her to know it wasn’t going to be easy. In any case, she wouldn’t be going to work tomorrow, or the next day. Someone else would have to deal with it.