Juliet decides to tell Oscar about Friday night. She will tell him because she has to tell someone. He's a close friend, but not her first choice.
Juliet says, 'I have to talk to you about something, something serious,' and Oscar winces like Juliet is about to tell him she wants to move out. Juliet glances at the closed door to Hannah's empty room - the sting of her big Australian move still fresh in both of their minds. Hannah would've been Juliet's first choice to tell.
'Hang on, let me brace myself,' Oscar says, heading to the kitchen to uncork a bottle of wine and pour them each a glass before Juliet begins.
She's not moving out. Oscar is relieved, until he isn't.
The wine in his glass quivers. He is furious. He does not look at her. To his credit, he listens closely to her and he does not try to touch her. He does not interrupt. Even when she tells Oscar the name of her attacker - a casual acquaintance of theirs - he behaves. When she finishes her story she is shivering and in tears, and he hands her a tissue from a warm packet stuffed into his pocket. But he is furious - his face red with it.
'I'm so sorry,' he says. 'I'm so angry. I'm so angry that men are like this,' he adds, indignant.
'It's okay,' says Juliet.
'It's not okay. Fucking hell, Juliet, it's not okay. Have you reported it?' Juliet says no. Juliet knows she'll have to hand her phone over to the police and thinks about the unsubtle texts from her weed dealer, the photos of herself in lingerie and the four-year-old account on the website she had once used to flog her dirty underwear.
Juliet wishes Emma still lived round the corner. But Emma moved back to Glasgow after her wedding and now she's incapable of FaceTiming without Jamie. And Juliet loves Jamie. But every time Juliet tries to speak to Emma, Jamie is there.
'That's good. That's good, because the justice system is so fucked, don't you think? Like, oh . victim of sexual violence, are you? How about some state violence, as well?' Oscar runs his thick fingers through his well-groomed beard.
'I feel a bit guilty, though. About . not doing anything,' says Juliet. 'I feel like I'm supposed to do something.'
'You will, though,' Oscar says. 'You could shame him on social media, or . There must be like, a racists getting fired type of thing for sex criminals.'
'I think that's just like . the Sex Offenders' Register, isn't it?'
'You wouldn't have to call him out on your account.' He completely ignores her half-joke. 'In fact, we could do it more like . more like a whisper network. Or I could message my friend from that feminist book club, the one with all the Instagram followers. Get them to name and shame him,' he says. He looks at Juliet expectantly. She gets the sense he has thought about this before. Oscar has lain awake at night and thought about what he would do if one of his friends was raped; how he could sort it out without phoning the police.
Juliet recalls a night out from a few years ago. Some man had grabbed Hannah's arse on their way out of the club, and Hannah didn't tell them what had happened until they were all in the taxi home. Oscar picked an argument with her. Juliet and Hannah were sat in the back of the cab, while Oscar lectured from the front seat - I could have said something to him, he'd insisted. I wouldn't have let him get away with it.
'I don't think I want to make a spectacle of myself like that,' says Juliet.
'No. Of course not. You're more of a direct-action girl, aren't you?' says Oscar, presumably referring to the time Juliet egged a red-faced EDL marcher at a counter-protest shortly before they were moved on by police. Oscar had repeatedly told her, I wish I'd thrown something. He had sulked all day. 'We could confront him.'
'Oscar .' Juliet says. 'I don't want you to do anything. I just wanted to talk about it.'
'Okay,' says Oscar. 'I'm sorry.'
They drink and Oscar looks for a harmless film to put on, something devoid of upsetting content. He puts on Wayne's World, and they drink more wine. His leg bounces up and down and he keeps looking over at Juliet like he's annoyed. He keeps looking at his phone.
'He's in the Crown and Anchor right now,' says Oscar. The Crown is around the corner. A ten-minute walk, at most. 'I just saw it on his Instagram story. I just went to block him, but my thumb slipped.' He shakes his head. 'I'm going to say something.'
He stamps over to his shoes piled in the corner; pulls on a heavy pair of DMs he calls his kicking boots.
Juliet's backpack is in a heap by Oscar's shoes. A plastic button reading kill your local rapist glints at her, calls her a poser.
'Are you coming with me? You don't have to.' Oscar zips up his jacket. Juliet says she'll come.
They walk to the pub and Juliet feels as if she has left her soul behind on the sofa. Her body trails behind Oscar, on automatic pilot.
'What are you going to do?' Juliet asks.
Oscar doesn't hear her. He's walking a little ahead of her. His legs are much longer than hers, and he doesn't seem to notice that he's leaving her behind.
When they enter the pub, Oscar buys them both pints. He doesn't ask Juliet what she wants, if she wants, he just puts the lager in her hands. He drinks his in a few greedy mouthfuls bracing himself, slamming the empty glass on the bar before he stalks the pub like an eager dog looking for his ball. Juliet slops beer over her hands as she tries to keep up.
They find the rapist upstairs, playing pool. He looks at Oscar and Juliet, and smiles. He waves them over. He winks at Juliet.
'Hey, trouble,' he says. Juliet watches Oscar and says nothing. Her heart is hammering, her throat is tight. She shakes so much that she can almost feel her bones rattling. 'Are you okay?'
'She'll be fine,' says Oscar. Oscar looks back at Juliet, expectantly. He is avuncular, urging a shy child to say hello. 'Won't you?'
She shrugs. She sips her pint.
'Can I have a word, Juliet?' says the rapist. 'About the other night,' he adds. 'You didn't answer my messages.'
'She doesn't want to speak to you,' snaps Oscar.
'Er .' The rapist looks to Juliet for backup, smirks, Get a load of this guy. 'Right. No offence, pal, but this is none of your business?' The rapist puts down his pool cue and takes a step towards Juliet. Oscar stands in front of her, blocking her with his bulk. Juliet can't seem to do anything but sip her pint.
'I'm making it my business,' says Oscar. The people with the rapist are not paying attention to this exchange. Juliet recognises some of them; there's Sarah-from-Work's boyfriend, the barista from her favourite coffee shop, a tattoo artist she's friendly with. No women, though. 'She told me what you did.'
The rapist's smirk shatters, twists; he glares at Juliet.
'What I did?' says the rapist. 'The fuck does that mean?'
Oscar grabs a half-empty can of Red Stripe and chucks it at the rapist, hitting him in the chest, spattering beer everywhere. The rapist drops his half-empty pint, which shatters at his feet.
Oscar rushes him, and the rapist catches Oscar in his arms. They embrace like boxers in the middle of a prize bout; it is almost tender. Oscar easily overpowers the rapist, who is a far smaller man, still blinking beer from his eyes.
Juliet has never seen Oscar successfully get in a fight - she's seen him square up to people before, and his size always defuses the confrontation. Now, he knocks the rapist to the ground and pummels him, clumsily among the glass and the beer.
Juliet cannot tell how hard Oscar is hitting the rapist, but a string of bloody spit lands on her white trainers. The rapist's friends only now seem to clock that something is going on, and Sarah's boyfriend and the barista remove Oscar, demanding to know what the fuck he's playing at. The rapist spits out a bloody mass of pulp and broken...
