For an hour and a half, I said no.

Not once.

Not quietly enough that it could have been missed.

Not in some ambiguous language that required interpretation.

No.

I can’t.

I don’t want to.

Again and again, while the pressure continued.

I remember sitting in that flat and feeling as though my words were becoming smaller every time I said them. As though every no disappeared into the space between us and I simply had to find another one.

So I did.

No.

I can’t.

No.

There were lies too.

Things I was told that made the situation appear different from what it actually was. Things I would later discover weren’t true.

But in that room I didn’t know that yet.

I only knew that I wanted the pressure to stop.

And I need to say this too, because it is part of the truth of how I got here.

For a long time, I didn’t tell anyone.

There is a lifetime of people who hurt me in different ways, and I let them walk away. I didn’t report them. I didn’t name what happened. I carried it quietly and told myself that was just how things were.

But through therapy, something shifted.

For the first time, I started to understand that what had happened to me in the past did not have to stay unspoken. I started to understand that I was allowed to say it out loud. That I was allowed to call it what it was. That I was allowed to be believed.

And this time, I felt slightly stronger.

Not fearless.

Not certain.

But strong enough to tell someone about wrongdoing.

Strong enough to try.

So when something happened that I had spent an hour and a half saying I didn’t want to happen, I didn’t let it disappear the way so many other things in my life had disappeared.

I reported it. And then I had to live with it. Today, months later, my phone rang. The police told me there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute the sexual offence I had reported.

The officer was kind.

She said something that has stayed with me.

“It wasn’t the outcome we wanted.”

We.

Such a tiny word.

Perhaps she will never know how much I needed to hear it.

Because when somebody tells you there isn’t enough evidence, your brain doesn’t necessarily hear the legal meaning of those words.

It hears:

We don’t believe you.

Your no didn’t matter.

You shouldn’t have gone there.

You should have left.

You should have done more.

And perhaps the cruellest one:

He got away with it.

I know that isn’t necessarily what today’s decision means.

I know there is a difference between believing something happened and being able to prove a criminal offence to the standard required by law.

I understand that intellectually. Emotionally, it is much harder. Because I was there. The law has evidence. I have memories. The law has thresholds. I have an hour and a half that I cannot erase. The police also explored whether another offence, misconduct in public office, might apply. They sought legal advice because whether his particular position amounted to a public office for the purposes of that offence was complicated. Ultimately, I was told that route was too legally uncertain to pursue.

Another closed door.

And today I feel defeated.

There have been consequences. There was an internal investigation. He lost his job. I have been told he will not work in that kind of position again.

I know that matters.

Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to recognise that it matters. Today, though, I am grieving the accountability I thought might come. Because somewhere inside me there was still a small part waiting for somebody with authority to stand up and say:

You said no. That should have been enough.

Instead, I have not enough evidence.

Three words that can probably be typed neatly onto a screen and filed away. Three words that aren’t remotely neat when you’re the person they belong to. Because I didn’t experience my no as evidence. I experienced it as a plea. I remember how exhausting it became to keep saying it. I remember the pressure. I remember the things I was told. I remember discovering afterwards that some of those things weren’t true.

And I remember wondering how many different ways a person is supposed to communicate that they don’t want something before their words are allowed to matter.

Today I don’t have an inspirational ending.

I don’t want to manufacture one.

I don’t want to tell myself that everything happens for a reason or that this will somehow make me stronger.

Today I am angry.

I am sad.

I am disappointed.

And more than anything, I feel defeated.

Maybe tomorrow will feel different.

But today I need to allow myself to feel what perhaps I have spent most of my life trying not to feel.

Because a decision not to prosecute cannot travel backwards through time. It cannot put me back in that flat. It cannot erase those ninety minutes. And it cannot take back the words I know I said.

No was still no, even when there wasn’t enough evidence to prove it.