A Short Story by Maureen Younger from my forthcoming collection – An Ordinary Day

 

That was the day I thought I was going to be raped and murdered.

It’s strange how such an ordinary day can turn on a sixpence. You think there would be some kind of sign: an ear-splitting thunderstorm raging in the background; a premonition that something is not quite right; maybe a black cat meandering past you or an abandoned ladder standing on the pavement that you just had to walk under.

As it was, the weather was lovely: yet another gorgeous, sunny, Californian day.  No thunderstorms. No premonitions. No black cats had ambled past me: no ladders had stood in my path. I was enjoying the final stages of my round-the-world trip, having travelled first to Austria to see mates, from there to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Cook Islands, Tahiti and, last but not least, I had arrived in the good, old U.S. of A.

It was the early 90s, and I was at a loose end, drifting from one unfulfilling job to another. With money in the bank for once, I headed one damp and dismal November afternoon to the STA travel agency near Victoria Station in central London and bought myself a round-the-world ticket. I told myself it was because I had always wanted to see the world. I didn’t. What I wanted to see was yet another guy I was enamoured with and who I had enjoyed a very close relationship with but where, yet again, nothing had actually happened between us. Despite all proof to the contrary, I was convinced deep-down we were meant to be together even though he had moved to the other side of the world. I have to say this about myself: I’m not the best at taking a hint.

As soon as I stumbled out of the office, ticket safely ensconced in my handbag, I worried I had made the most expensive mistake of my life: what if I hated Australia? New Zealand? What if I was wrong about the possible romance? What’s more I was going to be celebrating Christmas, New Year and my 30^th birthday on my own. How depressing was that going to be?

Would someone like me enjoy backpacking around the world? I always wore smart dresses and stilettoes as my outfit of choice. I loved traipsing around castles, palaces, cathedrals, visiting all manner of historical sites. I suspected that castles and palaces were not the main reason why anyone visited Australia. Admittedly, I knew nothing about Australia apart from what I had garnered from watching, The Sullivans, Neighbours and Crocodile Dundee. In other words: not very much.

My fears proved unfounded even though my supposed love interest had by now a new love interest of his own. Faced with a hint that even I couldn’t ignore, I threw myself into travelling and discovered I loved Australia – the breath-taking scenery, the beaches that went on for miles and miles, the national parks the size of a European country, the cave paintings thousands of years older than any painting I had ever seen in Europe. I liked the people; I liked the food; I enjoyed meeting fellow travellers, hooking up with them for a while and then moving on. It was as if there was a parallel society existing in Oz, one for us travellers with our own mini transport system; our own network; our own support system.

What’s more I was happy – genuinely happy. I lost weight, got a tan and there must have been something in the mix as I enjoyed being Queen Bee on my travels with various admirers buzzing around me. Everywhere I went there seemed to be always someone to flirt with, although, true to form, that was as far as it generally went. It turns out happiness can be a rather attractive quality.

Then off to New Zealand for a far too short a stay and the islands of the Pacific. Staying in Fiji and The Cook Islands I felt as if I had landed in paradise, although neither were places where I would want to stay forever despite the pristine beaches and great weather.

Next stop Tahiti. It too was paradise, if only a far more expensive one. Arriving there one hot night, I descended from the airplane while a group of local musicians played on the tarmac and dancers in bright red traditional outfits danced to the beating of drums. It seemed out of this world. I felt as if I had just walked onto the set of a 1950s movie. So much so, I was half-expecting Stewart Granger or Deborah Kerr to make an appearance

It was also a place where, for once, the British weren’t hated. That was reserved for the French. Having lived in France, I might not be as fluent in French as I would have liked, but I spoke it fast and with confidence. Nevertheless, no French person would be under any illusion that it was my mother tongue. A French friend had once confided to me that when I spoke French I sounded like a German Jewish housewife, another that I sounded Belgian. I suspected neither assessment was a compliment. Native Tahitians didn’t seem to pick up on what I considered to be a glaringly obvious linguistic fact. I soon learnt in order to get on their good side I had to make it obvious I wasn’t French. I got into the habit of interrupting mid-speech whatever I was saying, mumbling out loud in English, how do you say that in French? In the meantime I would look as if I was concentrating really, really hard, and only then would I carry on speaking French. It worked like a treat.

‘You’re not French?’ would be the immediate response.

‘No, British.’ I would reply, and the change in how I was treated was instantaneous.

Now I was in the States. It was the final leg of my tour. Home was in sight. I had spent most of that day walking around San Francisco, visiting all the tourist traps, earmarked in my battered copy of the Rough Guide to the USA. Trees were in blossom, and I had enjoyed my wander around the city, soaking up the sights along with the sun. Kitted out in a dark pink summer’s dress, a cheap pair of sunglasses, blocking out said sun and giving everything a sepia tint, my white crocheted cardigan that I had brought along with me in true British fashion ‘just in case’ was proving surplus to requirements.

San Francisco had a more European feel to it than the little I had seen of America so far. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why that was. Maybe it was because using public transport didn’t seem to be an alien concept here, as it seemed to be everywhere else in California.

After a long day of sightseeing I took the train back to the little town just outside the city where I was staying. I had met an American girl in Tahiti who had committed the rookie error of inviting a total stranger to stay if they should ever be passing. I had of course taken her up on her offer. It was free accommodation and as my mini world trip was coming to an end, my budget was tight. It was obvious that I had outstayed my welcome, a fact I was studiously ignoring, and one she was far too polite to bring up.

When I had first arrived to stay, Paige had always accompanied me into town and shown me the sights. Today I had been left to my own devices. It was a subtle hint, but a hint nonetheless. I was untroubled by the thought of being left to wander around by myself. I enjoyed my own company. I had travelled around half the world by this point. What could possibly go wrong?

It was early evening when I took the local train back to the non-descript town where Paige lived. I headed to the taxi rank. As was customary in California, taking public transport from the station to Paige’s house was out of the question. I had learnt this basic rule more or less the moment I had stepped onto American soil.

My first experience of life in America had been the Greyhound Bus Station in East LA. I soon realised that, there at least, white people didn’t take public transport unless they were very, very poor. Looking around me as I arrived at the bus station, I seemed to be the only white face in town; everyone else was either Hispanic or African-American. I didn’t fit in. That was obvious from the way I dressed, to the mountains of luggage that surrounded me, to the look of utter bewilderment on my face. I might as well have had a sign on my head saying ‘mug me I’m a tourist’ written in bold.  Later on, I found I could easily impress white Californians with my tale of experiencing and ‘surviving’ East LA for a whole 40 minutes, an area which seemed to be as off-limits to them as a trip to the moon.

‘Why didn’t you hire a car?’ they would invariably ask.

‘I don’t drive,’ I would invariably reply.

If you ever want a Californian to look at you as if you have two heads then simply inform them that as a 30 year-old adult you have never once felt the necessity to learn to drive a car. Justifying this mind-set by mentioning you live in central London, and if you had a car you would never be able to drive it for the simple reason you’d never be able to find a place to park it, does nothing to prevent you from coming across as some kind of weirdo.

Of course, I didn’t know all this as I stepped inside the Greyhound Bus Station, having managed to haul myself and my luggage into the building. Once inside, I was struck by the fact that the waiting room was fenced off and guarded. In a bus station? That didn’t bode well. I soon spotted how well armed the guards were too. Firstly, guards? With weapons? At a bus station? Coming from Britain where your average British Bobby has to make do with a truncheon, I was concerned that if the supposed good guys were this heavily armed, what kind of weapons did the bad guys have? In the midst of my pondering and my confusion, a Mexican avocado farmer took pity on me, helped me buy my ticket and saw me safely inside the waiting room.

First stop was San Luis Obispo where I was staying for a few days before I headed further north. It didn’t take long for panic to set in as we trundled up the highway and the penny dropped that numerous places we were stopping at didn’t have bus stations as I assumed they would. You were simply dropped off at a stop on the road. By now, it was night and San Luis Obispo was still hours away. What if the guy I was meant to be staying with in SLO wasn’t there? After all, I had met him for a mere three days, several weeks previously when I was backpacking in Oz. What if he wasn’t there and the stop was just some bus stop in the middle of nowhere? I didn’t even have an address for him – just details of a post box where I could send him mail. This could prove interesting.

Hence my relief was palpable when the coach finally arrived at San Luis Obispo and it pulled into an actual bus station. What’s more the SLO guy, as I referred to him in my head for some reason, was there to meet me. He seemed to be the only person there, half-snoozing in a chair. One more generous traveller whose offer of hospitality I was shamelessly taking advantage of.

All things considered, in comparison to my first trip by public transport in the States, the train journey to and from San Francisco had proved a lot less troublesome. At the cab rank, I approached the first available taxi. As I did so, the driver smiled and told me in heavily accented English to come and sit in the front. Mistake number one: I know now if a taxi driver asks you to sit in the front with him, NEVER get in the taxi.

Unaware of this golden rule, I assumed he was being friendly. I jumped into the front seat, took out the slip of paper Paige had left for me that morning and gave him the address. I commented on his accent; after all, it was hard to ignore. He told me his name was Ivan and he was originally from Bulgaria. He was a bear of a man, his body almost spilling out of his seat. I was tempted to ask if he’d been an Olympic shot putter in his youth. He had the build of someone who had been immensely strong and fit when he was younger, but had maybe dabbled in too many steroids and his muscles were now turning to fat.

Wisely deciding against making such a bon mot, I babbled on about how I was from London, travelling solo on a round-the-world trip and staying with someone I had just met for a few days on my travels. In London, I wouldn’t give a complete stranger the time of day.

My modus operandi whenever importuned in my home city was to pretend not to speak English and mutter a few sentences in German at my would-be interlocutor. In my experience, it was a most effective ploy, given that very few fellow Brits speak German as a second language. Once or twice I had even applied this tactic when accosted on the tube while engrossed in the evening newspaper: apparently unable to speak the language, but sufficiently proficient to do the crossword. All in all, I would never have made a convincing spy. Yet here I was telling a complete stranger what I was up to. But when you’re travelling, you have a false sense of security: the belief that when you’re on holiday nothing bad can happen to you. The belief that you can be open to people in a way you wouldn’t be at home because, what the hell, you’re never going to see them again.

Ivan seemed friendly enough, we chatted back and forth, and it wasn’t long before he parked up outside a house. For the life of me I couldn’t be sure if it was Paige’s house or not. There were no lights on in the house but, then again, Paige had said she’d be out for most of the day hence why she couldn’t accompany me into town. I had never seen the house late at night, and I had never paid that much attention any time Paige had driven us back home. I looked to see if I could see the house number. Nope: there didn’t seem to be one on the house. Maybe it was on the post box? Nope: a post box was nowhere to be seen either. I hesitated.

Looking around, it was all so different from a British town. We might be in a residential area, but there was no pavement to step out on, no street lighting, no passers-by. The whole street was shrouded in darkness. If I got out, and it wasn’t where Paige lived, I would have no way of finding the right house. There was no way of contacting Paige; there was no one to ask. If I made the wrong decision that was it. I was screwed.

Ivan watched me as I sat in the front seat, my eyes darting around, desperately trying to make out something that looked familiar.

‘Are you sure this is it? I can’t see the house number?’ I asked.

‘Give me paper with address.’

I handed over the paper and continued to look around me.

‘Address not exist,’ he said.

‘What do you mean it doesn’t exist? This is the address she wrote down.’

I grabbed back the piece of paper and read out loud what Paige had written on it.

‘Are you sure it’s not here?’

‘No, can you see house?’

I wasn’t sure I could. Not in this light. Why was there no damn house number? I could feel myself beginning to panic. Before I could think what to do next, Ivan drove off in silence. Where was he going? I looked out the window. No one was about. There weren’t even any other cars on the road. We were driving down a dark street in silence to goodness knows where. I forced myself to seem calm. Whatever I do I mustn’t show fear I told myself.

I had learnt that trick many moons ago while living in Paris. One night I had gone to watch a triple bill of the Sisi films at a cinema in the République, a district just down the road from me. The Sisi films were a series of films that purported to depict the life of the Empress Elizabeth, Austria’s answer to Princess Diana, if from a previous century and with longer hair. I had presumed they would be in the original German with French subtitles. That was my excuse to myself for going to watch them: it was a way of keeping up my German rather than me just wanting to watch some schmaltzy films. Unfortunately, all three films were dubbed into French. I might have lived twice as long in Paris as I had in Vienna but my French wasn’t half as good. I had understood very little of what was said, but having paid for my ticket, I was damned if I wasn’t going to stay till the bitter end.

It was the early hours of the morning by the time I left the cinema. Rather than take a taxi, I had decided to walk home to my tiny flat off the Boulevard Voltaire. I was far too tight to splash out on a cab despite the lateness of the hour. As I walked along the street, I was joined by a young guy whose first mistake was to ask me if I was English. I knew that like most French people he used the adjective incorrectly to mean British, but being of Scottish stock, I refused to condone such blatant ignorance. ‘Non, je ne suis pas anglaise,’ I replied. He threw some other nationalities my way – allemande, hollandaise, belge, suisse, italienne. ‘Non,’ was invariably the reply. Having given up on finding out where I was from, he continued to talk to me: what was I doing?: where was I going?: didn’t I know it was dangerous to be walking out this late at night on my own?: did I have a boyfriend?: where was he?. I couldn’t shake him off. I decided if he continued to walk with me all the way down the road I would not turn off down my street, but instead continue on to Nation and ring the doorbell of a mate who lived on the main boulevard and ask her for help.

He continued to accompany me for several minutes, and then suddenly turned towards me, his face close to mine and asked me if I was scared. Of course I was scared. It was late at night: no one else was about and I was by myself with some bloke who I didn’t know who was insisting on walking home with me. ‘Non,’ I replied and gave him a look as if to say it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard in my life, which was quite a feat given that I had fielded questions from British tourists while working as a holiday rep in Majorca in the 1980s. He looked at me for a moment, shrugged his shoulders and walked off. I was relieved, but I couldn’t quite believe that it had been that easy to get rid of him. Is that what a man like him feeds on – fear? Is it just no fun otherwise?

Now, sat in the taxi, I was wondering where the hell we were driving to, my anxiety was increasing and my stomach was turning summersaults, but I was determined to seem nonchalant. Yet, I couldn’t help taking turns to look out my side of the window, then out through the windscreen and then past Ivan to the little corner of window I could see at his side, desperately hoping I could spot a place or building I might recognise.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘We drive round and see if you recognise house,’ he replied, as if he could read my mind. He switched off the meter. ‘No charge.’

What was I going to recognise? It was pitch black outside.

‘Take me back to the train station, please,’ I suggested.

That seemed to make the most sense to me. I could wait there. It would be safe. I’d be surrounded by people and I should be able to call Paige from there. Meanwhile, my inner panic stations were on full alert. We seemed to be driving further out of town. That couldn’t be right. I was desperately trying to think how I could extricate myself from the situation I found myself in.

‘The station. Can you take me to the train station, please?’

‘What you do there? At station,’ he replied and grinned.

‘I could wait till my friend gets back home and phone her to come and get me.’

‘No phones there,’ he replied.

That seemed unlikely, but this was America. What did I know? I’d had fun trying to ring SLO man from LA under the mistaken belief that would be regarded as a ‘local’ call.

‘Well, take me to the police station,’ I suggested.

‘Police? This America. I cannot take you there. What they do?’ he answered back.

He might have a point I thought. American cops weren’t like British ones. I knew that much. I thought of an old Dave Allen joke whose conceit was that if you asked a British policeman the time, he would tell you it. You ask an American cop the time, he’d tell you to fuck off.

‘Well, let’s stop and I’ll ask one of the neighbours.’

‘This America,’ Ivan replied. ‘You cannot walk up to door. They shoot you.’

Again he had a point. Only a few weeks previously some poor Japanese tourist had been shot doing exactly that.  I scoured the streets. It was so unlike a British town. Things we took for granted simply didn’t exist here. Not only was there no street lighting, no pavements, no passers-by, but no bus stops, no late-night corner shops or tube stations. No familiar markers you could use as a guide or a refuge if you needed one.

The panic was setting in now. He had point blank refused to drop me off at any of the places I had suggested; and where the hell was he driving me to anyway? I picked up a map that was wedged between the front seats.  I switched the car light on and somehow managed to find the street I was supposed to be staying at. I spotted we were passing a mass of water that lay in the opposite direction of where Paige lived. If I was right, we were heading away from her side of town.

While the dread inside me intensified, conversely I felt an overbearing need to be nice to him, a need which at the same time infuriated the hell out of me. I didn’t want to be nice to him. Ideally, I would have liked to have punched him in the face and jumped out of the car, but he was huge and well-built and could have swatted me like a fly. And jump out to where? Where could I go? I had no idea where I was and no idea how to get to safety. For a second, I toyed with the idea of opening the car door onto oncoming traffic. A crash. He’d have to stop then. Would that work? Minutes later the lights of a solitary oncoming car headed towards us; I realised I didn’t have the guts to take such a risk. I felt crushed.

Faced with no other options, my survival instinct kicked in and told me I had to be nice to him. If I was nice to him then maybe he wouldn’t harm me. He’d realise how nice I was and leave me alone. I could be charming. I was attractive. I would have to rely on that. At the same time, I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I had done the right thing: I had taken a licensed cab. Surely these guys were vetted. Yet I was being driven god knows where by someone who refused to take me to where I wanted to go and refused to let me out of the car.

He eventually turned off the main road and drove down a rutted path which intersected a forest to our right. Stopping in a clearing, he parked the car under a massive tree: he gave a deep sigh as the car shuddered to a halt. This is it: I am going to be raped and murdered: my body will probably never be found. I’ll be one more statistic. One more missing woman. Then I spotted the car phone. In my best posh English I asked him if I could ring Paige to let her know what’s happening. After all, I didn’t want to worry her. Without waiting for an answer, amidst a profusion of thank yous, I rang Paige’s number. The voicemail kicked in and I quickly left a message.

‘Hi, it’s me. I’m with Ivan the Bulgarian Taxi Driver.’

I made sure that piece of information was on tape. If I was going to be murdered I wanted them to know who the fucker was who did it. ‘I’m in his taxi. We can’t find your house for some reason, but he’s helping me to find you.’

Ivan must have cottoned on to the possible ramifications of what I had done. After all, it was hardly in code and his English wasn’t that basic. It must have sunk in that someone somewhere would know who I was with and when. Seconds later, he reversed the car and we were back off down the path and back on the main road. Within minutes we were outside the house we had first stopped at.

‘This it,’ he said, pointing at the house.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

By this stage I didn’t care if it was the right house or not. I had rather risk getting shot at by a neighbour than stay one more second in the car with him. I jumped out the car and to my horror he squeezed himself out of his side of the car too and stood next to me blocking my escape down the front path.

‘You go back to San Luis Obispo tomorrow. Yes? I drive you,’ he informed me, with a massive grin on his face as if he was salivating over a juicy steak.

‘It’s all right. My boyfriend has bought me a bus ticket already. I might as well use it.’

I stressed the word boyfriend in the hope he’d back off even if it was a chronic exaggeration of my relationship with SLO man.

‘That’s OK, no need pay. I take you for free. Much better than bus.’

Was he kidding?  He’d more or less kidnapped me, taken me to a forest and now he thought I would want to get back in the car with him.

‘That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think my boyfriend would like it.’

At this he sidled up so his body was almost touching mine. I could see from the look on his face he was enjoying the situation: the power. I might be trying my best to seem outwardly calm, but he sensed I was scared. I still had to play nice. I was so close to escaping his clutches. I just needed to get indoors.

‘You invite me in?’ He pointed at the house.

‘No, I’m fucking not!’ was the response which formed in my head. However, for once in my life, I made the effort of translating my thoughts into more polite words.

‘I’m sorry. It’s not my house. I can’t invite anyone in without asking Paige first. It would be incredibly rude.’

He sidled up even closer, put out his arm and began to feel up my breasts. I wanted to scream and tell him to fuck off, punch him in the face, do something, but the only weapon I had was playing fucking nice. After all, if I tried anything, he could knock me sideways with the flick of his wrist. And he knew it. What’s more, he knew that I knew it. All I could think about was that I had to get out of here at any cost. If this was the price I had to pay then I had to pay it and be thankful that I had got off so lightly.

‘Thanks for all your help, Ivan,’ I said as loud as I could, ignoring what he had just done to me. ‘Thanks for being such a helpful taxi driver,’ I shouted. ‘Bye.’

I turned and steeled myself to walk calmly to the door: walk normally I kept telling myself over and over again. He mustn’t see how scared I am. If I run, I was sure of it: he’ll follow me inside. If I walk normally I’ve more of a chance. I fumbled at the door with the key, expecting any minute to hear his footsteps coming down the path. If I did, I decided I would start screaming. I would scream the whole neighbourhood down for as long as I could. Finally, the key was in the lock, the door opened and I was inside the house. I slammed the door shut, leaning against it, unable to believe my luck. I was safe.

Forty minutes later, Paige and her sister Sydney arrived home. I recounted events as if it had all happened to someone else. It was as if I had already disassociated myself from the ‘me’ who had experienced it.

‘Do you want to call the cops?’ Sydney asked.

‘No,’ I replied.

That came as a shock. I had always considered myself to be the type of woman who would call the police if something like this ever happened to her: moreover, that you had a duty to report something like this. At school, at work, I had always been the bolshie one: the one to stand up and be counted. The unofficial trade union rep. At sweet sixteen I was working as a cashier when management decided one Christmas to take away all the chairs in order for us to work faster. I refused. The only one. The manager came up to me at the till.

‘The chair has to go,’ she informed me.

‘No, it doesn’t. Legally, I’m entitled to one.’

I flicked open the staff handbook which I had made sure was to hand and pointed to the relevant paragraph.

The manager took one look at it, saw the determination sketched in my face, sighed and walked off. I kept my chair.

Yet here I was and the last thing I wanted to do was talk to the police about it: to go through it all again. I wanted it behind me. I didn’t even want to think about it. As it was, I was leaving town tomorrow to spend a week with a man whose company I enjoyed. I didn’t want to hang around here making statements to the police.

What’s more I was leaving the States in a couple of weeks’ time. What good would it do anyway? It would be my word against his. And what had he done really? He’d driven me around in his taxi, refused to let me out, driven me to a forest, drove me back to where I needed to go and felt up my tits. He would argue that he had been trying to help me find where I was staying; he’d touched me by accident and I was some neurotic woman who’d watched too many crime shows.

Even if it went to court, I was hardly going to be popping back to the States for some trial any time soon; presumably to be asked how short the dress was that I had been wearing that night; if I had been drinking; what underwear I had on and how many men I had slept with. Despite the fact that my dress had reached my knees, I don’t drink, my knickers were spectacularly uninteresting ones from BHS and I could count the men I had slept with on one hand, I was pretty certain that somehow it would still end up having been all my fault.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to report it?’ Sydney asked.

‘Yes. Most definitely,’ I replied.

‘What I don’t understand,’ Paige said, ‘is how you didn’t recognise the house.’

‘I’ve never seen it in the dark and I couldn’t see the house number anywhere,’ I explained. It felt somehow as if Paige was laying part of the blame for what had happened, on me.

‘But it’s on the mailbox,’ Paige said.

‘What mailbox? I couldn’t see the mailbox outside the house,’ I replied. What did she think I did? Spotted the number and decided to go on a mini road trip with a Bulgarian sociopath for the hell of it.

‘Oh I see. The mailbox isn’t outside our house. It’s on the opposite side of the street with a few of the others,’ Paige explained.

What the fuck? Who the hell has their post box on the opposite side of the fucking street?

The next morning I briefly mentioned what happened to me while I was on the phone to SLO man before I set off back to his place. Maybe I downplayed it, I don’t know, but we never mentioned it. I was so relieved to see him, I didn’t care. Here was a man the total opposite of the taxi driver. It was the tonic I needed: to be in male company that was kind, considerate and caring.

After that day I did what most women do when something bad has happened to them. I never told a soul. I locked it away with all the other bad things that had happened to me. My own personal treasure trove of times when someone, somewhere, has felt entitled to try and own me, possess me, force themselves on me, touch me, scare me or humiliate me. I hid it away so deep that you kid yourself you’ve forgotten about it and then something happens: you’re out one night and someone follows you out of the tube; you’re walking home late one evening and a car comes to a halt beside you, the engine still running, as the driver rolls down the window and offers to give you a lift, when you refuse, he flies into a rage, calling you names and calling you out; you’re in a bar and a guy blocks your path and harangues you for not wanting to talk to him or letting him buy you a drink, as if it’s your personal fault that he’s single. That’s when the contents from your own personal treasure trove start to rise and circulate throughout your body, and the fear begins to grab you by the throat, and you try and stay calm; you might even feel the need to play nice – despite everything – despite every sinew in your body crying out for you to fight, to hit out whatever the odds, but sometimes you don’t because you’re scared and they are stronger than you, and you want to survive. And what’s the worst thing about it? You know for you and for every other woman around the world this is just an ordinary day.