Chapter 5: What We Put in the Gaps

What We Put in the Gaps

Sunday 27^th October 2013

There are rumours going around Westmouth again.

I am going to deal with those first because what is happening on campus is important, and because some of the things people have been saying over the past few days have made me extremely uncomfortable.

Then I am going to talk about badminton. At considerable length.

First

There has been a rumour circulating since Friday that another woman has been attacked. That is the only responsible sentence I can write.

There has been no confirmation from the university or the police. I have found no statement from anybody directly involved. I do not know when or where it allegedly happened, what the person responsible allegedly did, or whether anyone matching any of the descriptions circulating on campus exists.

The absence of confirmation does not prove that nothing happened.

It means we don’t know.

It also does not grant permission to invent what did.

This distinction has apparently become optional.

The first version I heard was that a young woman was approached near the park and escaped. By lunchtime the next day, she had been sexually assaulted. Then raped. By Friday evening, somebody claimed that a body had been found.

Yesterday, somebody actually used the phrase ‘Jack the Ripper style.’

They said it with the breathless earnestness people adopt when enjoying a story they know they should find horrifying.

Concern and appetite can sound remarkably similar until you listen properly.

Within two days, an unidentified woman went from frightened to murdered without one named source, official statement or verifiable fact. Locations have changed. Times have changed. The alleged victim has been described as a first-year student, a postgraduate, a local sixth-form student, and someone older with no connection to the university at all.

One account says she escaped into a building. Another says she is in hospital. A third says her body was found in the park.

These cannot all be true. It is possible that one of them is. It is possible that none is.

There might be a frightened young woman somewhere in Westmouth who experienced something terrible on Friday. There might be a young woman who had an unpleasant encounter, reported it, and has subsequently had strangers turn what happened to her into something increasingly horrific. Or there might have been no attack at all.

I don’t know. Neither do you.

What troubles me is not merely the inaccuracy. It is the way an unknown woman has been turned into communal entertainment. Every retelling requires a more dramatic detail, so that the speaker possesses something the previous speaker did not.

People ask, “Have you heard?” with excitement hiding just beneath the concern.

If there is a woman at the centre of this, she is a person. She is not the opening chapter of a campus murder mystery. She does not owe several thousand strangers details of the worst thing that may have happened to her so that we can decide which rumour won.

If there is no woman at the centre of it, inventing her assault or death is not harmless. It increases fear, makes it harder to identify reliable information and ensures that any genuine report must compete with fiction.

The silence from the university and police has created a gap. I understand that they may be protecting an investigation or somebody’s privacy. Or they may simply have nothing to confirm.

But gaps attract stories.

“I heard...”

“Apparently...”

“My friend’s flatmate knows someone...”

“Someone in my seminar said...”

None of those turns uncertainty into fact.

What bothers me is the way the uncertainty disappears with every retelling. Someone says, “I heard there might have been another incident.” Then the next person says, “Apparently there was another attack.” That becomes, “A girl was attacked.” Which morphs into, “A girl was sexually assaulted.” Eventually, somebody is standing in the Students’ Union telling people a woman has been murdered as though they have personally inspected the crime scene.

Stop. Please. Just stop.

I’m not saying the rumour is false; I’m saying we don’t know whether it’s true, and all the speculation isn’t helpful to anyone.

I would welcome a short statement from the university saying either that they are aware of a reported incident and are investigating, or that they have received no report corresponding with the rumours. No names. No lurid details. No information that could identify anybody involved.

Until then, the existing safety advice remains sensible. Travel together after dark. Use lit routes. Make sure somebody knows where you are. Report anything you actually witness.

If you possess first-hand information, tell the police. If your source is somebody whose flatmate heard it from a girl in a seminar whose boyfriend knows a security guard, do not improve the story before passing it on.

Better still, do not pass it on.

“I don’t know” is a complete sentence, and it is often the most honest one available.

Everything Else

I would now like to write about some things I know actually happened, because they happened to me.

The Celestial Quartet rehearsed. We are improving. Eight consecutive seconds of competent Shostakovich may have been achieved. There is disagreement over whether it was actually eight. Finn claims nine.

Finn is wrong.

Orchestra continues to be one of the best parts of my week. The Dvořák is increasingly wonderful.

I went to the Westmouth Union again. I am still not a debater, but apparently I am now “considering” becoming one. This seems to be a distinction understood only by me.

Law remains difficult, but I remain enrolled.

Dr Bennett continues to be excellent.

Right. The serious thing.

Badminton

The badminton tournament begins this Wednesday. There are sixteen pairs, meaning four victories would win it. Paul and I are unseeded because we are a new team. We are in the same half of the draw as Ross and Gemma, although we should not meet them until the semi-final.

I would prefer to meet them in the final.

Paul continues to point out that reaching either requires winning the preceding two (or three) matches. This is technically correct and spiritually unhelpful. I am beginning to hate the phrase, “If we get that far.”

For our final full practice, I arranged two matches against teams from the opposite half of the draw. This means we cannot encounter either of them before the final.

Our first opponents are in the tournament but are more social than competitive players. They play primarily for exercise and enjoyment. Paul says these are perfectly acceptable reasons to play the sport, but I’m not sure I agree.

We won 21–12 and 21–8, and I was irritated that we conceded twelve points in the first game, which possibly demonstrates that last week’s reflection on patience has not yet completed its journey from my brain to the rest of my personality.

We played a third game while waiting for our next opponents. Paul suggested swapping partners to make it more even. I declined.

He described this as evidence that I remain terrifyingly competitive. I described it as respecting the partnership. Neither argument altered the teams.

We won the third game, too, even though I’m sure Paul was trying to let the other team win. I didn’t voice that opinion. I didn’t think that was wise.

Growth.

Our second match was against Geoff Wallace and Maddison Powell. They are a couple, an established doubles pair. They have played together for years, not weeks. If Ross and Gemma are the strongest pair in the club, Geoff and Maddison are generally regarded as the second strongest. They were runners-up to Ross and Gemma in each of the last three university tournaments.

This was the match I wanted. The test I wanted.

It turned into something rather more than that.

The first game reached 22–22 before we won the next two points and took it 24–22.

The game was ridiculous. Nobody could get away. One point. Two points. Back level. One ahead. Back level. It went beyond 21 because you need to win by two.

I got the final point.

I was pleased. Very pleased.

But it wasn’t comfortable. Nothing about it was comfortable. They made us work for everything, and for the first time since Paul and I started playing together, something began to click. Last week I spent most of our session repeatedly telling him to communicate. This was, apparently, irritating.

This week he communicated. Calls. Movement. Leaving shots. Covering behind me when I went forward. Letting me know when he was attacking from the back. And I was doing the same. We weren’t thinking separately anymore. Not all the time. But sometimes.

That was new.

They won the second game 25–23. It was the same story. Nobody managed to establish a meaningful lead until the end.

That made it one game each.

Tie-break game.

By the time we started that final game, more than a dozen people had gathered to watch. Ross and Gemma were among them. They mostly stood quietly and whispered to one another, which I assume means they were identifying weaknesses to exploit rather than discussing our attractive sportswear.

The crowd changed the atmosphere, though.

The badminton club is usually noisy anyway. Games played across eight courts make a surprising amount of sound. But gradually our court became the noisy one. People reacting to rallies. Applauding points. Calling encouragement. It felt ... Familiar.

I hadn’t realised how much I missed that either. Playing when the score matters. People watching. That tiny tightening in your stomach before the serve. Knowing that the next point matters more than the last one. Knowing your opponent feels exactly the same thing.

I had forgotten that feeling.

Or perhaps I had tried to forget it.

The third game was extraordinary. Nobody led by more than one point for long. Every serve felt important. Every mistake felt enormous. The score climbed beyond twenty-one for the third game in a row. At that point, you stop thinking about the score in the normal way. Every point sets up or saves match point. Every mistake could lose it. Every good shot might win it.

Eventually, it was 29–29.

At 29-all, the next point wins. No requirement for a two-point margin anymore. Sudden death. One rally. Geoff serving. Paul receiving.

I remember everything about that rally.

Everything.

Which seems ridiculous because it probably lasted less than thirty seconds.

Geoff served high and long to Paul. Paul drove the return hard and low down the right. Maddison reached it but could only parry it back. I moved forward and flicked the shuttle low across the net towards the opposite side.

Geoff raced forward and returned it, then Paul sent his return high across the court and over Maddison’s head. She managed to turn and hit a backhand towards me. I played it right down the middle between them, creating just enough hesitation so that Geoff’s only option was to send the shuttle high.