The Sunday I unleashed my hormonal lust on Greg after nippers turned out to be quite an adventurous one.
As Greg, Kate and I had been packing up after Nippers a guy appeared and hovered around until Kate noticed him. She then introduced us to Henri β a guy on holiday she'd meet who she was planning to hang out with that day.
Physically he was a fine specimen. Square jawed and well built, he could have come straight from the front cover of a woman's 'bodice ripper' novel. He was Kate's typical male selection. But there was more to him than that.
In the nearly five years between when I'd turned 16 and I'd meet Greg I thought I'd developed a pretty good creep radar β identifying those guys whose interest in me was limited to the space between my legs. As I shook hands with Henri that radar was pinging like mad. Looking him in the eye as I momentarily held his hand, a mental picture formed of a bird of prey, its talons firmly pinning Kate's body to the ground in preparation for dissecting her, while already eyeing me off for the next meal. Superficially it might have been just a sinister edge I detected in his over friendliness and I might have set aside my judgement on that if his reaction to Greg when he was identified as my boyfriend hadn't been chillingly cool. But there was definitely also something in the way he looked at me.
We had a brief conversation talking about plans for the day, during which we revealed we usually had Sunday night dinners at one of the local pizza places.
We crossed paths with them a couple of times during the day. I couldn't help notice Kate had set out to impress this guy. While swimming at the beach she had changed from her lifesaver swimwear into her gorgeous sexy one piece and when we saw them in town later in the day she was wearing over that a flattering sheath mini-dress with a plunging neckline. She looked scalding hot. If I'd noticed one thing with Kate, how much effort she made to look good for a guy was a fairly good indicator of her intentions with him. Whatever might be my personal impression of Henri, unless he really blew it, I'd guessed this guy was in for a good night.
As it turned out, it was just as well we'd told Kate about our plans for the night. We were sitting at the pizza place at around 8 pm having just finished our meal when Kate staggered in looking for us; seriously drunk and highly agitated. Now Kate is not usually a heavy drinker. She does more than me, but I'd never before seen her anything like as she was then; drunk to the point of being on the edge of passing out. And that's the other thing. Her reaction to drink is normally just to get happy, relaxed and outgoing.
This was all different. She was volcanically angry β not with us but with something that had happened to her. Her voice was loud enough to attract the attention of everyone in the place and she was talking about the guy trying to drug and rape her; using a few ripe swear words in the process.
There was no doubt she needed our urgent help, so Greg helped her back out of the Restaurant towards his car while I settled the bill. I caught up with them as Greg was trying to support her with one arm while ferreting about for his car keys with the hand of the other. We got the back door of the car open and settled her on to the back seat facing us with her feet still on the pavement as we started to ask her what had happened.
It was difficult to get a clear answer. As she faded in and out of consciousness she just kept repeating that he'd tried to drug and rape her. When I tried asking directly whether he'd actually hurt her or interfered with her, she just kept repeating the same thing. And she was clearly very angry about what had happened. For us the question was whether we take her home, to the police or to the hospital. I figured without a clear statement of what had happened, the police were unlikely to be of much help and if we took her to the hospital, we'd wait for hours in the emergency department just to be told to take her home and put her to bed.
In the end a couple of things made us decide to take her home. Firstly she didn't look as though she'd been interfered with. There was no sign of bruising or other physical injury and her clothes were not dishevelled. I could see she had her one piece swimsuit still on underneath her dress, so if she'd been sexually assaulted I figured it's likely the assailant would have tried removing all her clothing. From where I was kneeling next to the car door as I spoke to her I could also get a good look at the crutch of her swimmers. Even in the approaching dusk, the pattern of the dried salt on them showed no particular dampness. I guessed I could conclude at the very least that it was unlikely she'd been subject to any incident of unprotected sex and probably no actual sex at all.
Secondly, her words were always that 'he tried'. Nothing she said indicated anything beyond trying to drug her had actually happened. That was not to say that he hadn't committed any number of potentially criminal acts, but absent physical evidence or even a witness able to give a lucid description of what happened, I guessed the police would cause more stress to Kate than they would to him.
So we decided to take her home; hoping her mother would be there to assist with any further decisions or action. Greg got a towel to put across her lap while I sat in the back seat with her as Greg drove the short distance. Once we'd settled her in to the car and got moving she fell almost instantly asleep.
We got her out of the car by supporting her one on either side; rousing her just enough that she was able to support her own weight on her legs. We'd only gone a few steps when that support disappeared β her legs collapsing under her. That caught us off guard and we were only able to slow the rate of decent as she went down inelegantly to the ground on her bum; her knees up and legs spread untidily apart.
Life got more complex when with an "I've got to pee" we heard the unmistakable hiss of a woman urinating accompanied by a relieving sigh from her. Almost instantly she then threw up down the front of her dress; it spilling all the way down from her upper chest to the top of her thighs. As we were caught off guard by this she fell over on her side as a second vomit spread under her face and through her hair. Greg immediately went in to first aid mode, checking her breathing and, since she was now in any case lying on her side, moving her arm and leg to hold her there while we worked out what to do.
Greg hated the thought of her lying in her own vomit, so his first action was to check out a nearby bit of grass for bindies and ask me to help move her over there where he repositioned her in the recovery position. It was at this stage I really hoped Kate's mother was home. She was soiled with her own urine and vomit and, while I was happy to help get things right, some decisions were going to have to be made and things were going to get personal in a way I wasn't entirely comfortable with. Still, there were no lights showing in the house, so as I went and knocked on the door I wasn't optimistic.
No answer. We were on our own.