Savage Atonement
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LAUREL sighed as Sally, the office junior, popped her head round her office door for the umpteenth time that afternoon and enquired with breathless anticipation, ‘Has he arrived yet?’

Barely glancing up from her typewriter, Laurel shook her head, ‘And when he does, I won’t be the first to know, Frances will, and Mr Marshall won’t be too pleased if he finds you in my office again, Sally. You know he’s in a hurry for that photocopying.’

‘Oh, honestly, you haven’t a romantic bone in your body!’ Sally complained, ignoring Laurel’s warning. ‘Here we are, about to receive a visit from practically the most famous writer in the country, and all you can do is moan about old Marsh’s photocopying! Aren’t you even the tiniest bit excited?’ she probed. ‘I saw him on television the other night, on a chat show. He’s gorgeous, don’t you think so?’

‘Mr Graves is simply a prospective client as far as I’m concerned,’ Laurel replied repressively. ‘I’ve neither read his books nor seen him.’

‘Then you’re missing a real treat on both counts,’ Sally told her roundly,’ adding enthusiastically, ‘Don’t you think there’s something smoulderingly sexy about dark-haired men——?’ She broke off when she saw Laurel’s face. Although Laurel had worked for Marshall and Marshall, Chartered Accountants, just as long as she had done herself, and in spite of all her questions, Sally knew little more about the older girl than she had done the first day she took over from Mary, Mr Marshall senior’s secretary, who had retired.

She could be attractive, if only she would do something about herself, Sally decided judiciously. The single golden bar of sunshine striking across her desk revealed tinges of dark red in the tightly drawn back hair in its neat chignon. Laurel couldn’t be more than twenty-one or two, but to judge by the way she dressed—in dowdy tweed suits and matronly blouses, her shoes sensible and sturdy rather than chosen to enhance the delicacy of her narrow bones—anyone would be forgiven for thinking she was a woman in her forties at least. She never wore make-up, and yet her skin had a translucent quality that Sally frankly envied. No one had ever heard her talk about her family, or indeed about anything unconnected with the office. Did she have a boy-friend? Remembering the way she always looked when the conversation turned towards boys and sex, somehow Sally doubted it. It was her considered opinion that for some reason Laurel had a hang-up about the opposite sex, but none of her probing had been able to reveal why. And yet she liked Laurel. She was the most senior secretary in the large accountancy firm, and yet by far the most approachable. She might drive herself to achieve almost impossible perfection in her work, and yet she always had time to help her, Sally, when the wretched photocopier started to spew out erratic copies; she was never above giving her a hand with the mail or with making the tea. Quite, different from Frances on reception who was supposed to help her.

At the thought of Frances Sally grimaced a little. Trust her to have all the luck! What Laurel had said was quite true; she would be the first one to see Jonathan Graves when he walked into the office, for his appointment with Mr Marshall, and no doubt she would make the most of it. Cat, Sally thought acidly, mentally comparing her own plumb brunette ordinariness with Frances’ cool Nordic looks, to her own detriment.

‘Are you honestly not even the slightest bit curious about him?’ she questioned Laurel curiously.

A faint smile touched Laurel’s mouth. Poor Sally, she was obviously finding it hard to believe that Laurel didn’t share her interest in their latest client. Bitterness replaced her smile. None of the male sex held any interest for her; What she did feel for them was uninterest if they happened to be as dry and distant as Mr Marshall, or a combination of fear and loathing if they happened to show any personal interest in her. It was a reflex action so deeply ingrained in her now that she was unaware of it; unaware of how much she shrank from even the briefest contact.

The trainee accountants in the light, airy room they shared on the floor below often discussed her—something which would have horrified her had she known of it, but she had lived deeply embedded in her own shell for so many years now that she was unaware of their thoughts. The male sex was a completely alien race to her. There had been no men at the convent where she had been sent after… after she had found herself all alone in the world. Initially they had sent her to a home, but her nightmares, her refusal to make contact with the other teenagers there had resulted in her being removed and sent to the convent.

She had been happy there in a subdued way, had even contemplated taking the veil, but the Reverend Mother had gently but firmly dissuaded her. She did not have enough experience of life to make such a decision, she had told Laurel, and there was no true vocation.

Of course, Laurel had known that was not the real reason she was being sent away; Reverend Mother was trying to be kind, to pretend that Laurel was not being rejected; but Laurel had known differently—and why!

Her fingers clenched over her typewriter keys, her sherry brown eyes darkening with remembered pain and horror. Her whole body started to tremble inwardly and she had to fight against the betraying sickness welling up inside her, the agonising memories she had sworn never to relive.

‘Laurel, are you all right?’

Sally’s anxious voice cut through her thoughts, banishing the threat of the past.

‘I’m fine,’ she lied, glancing at her watch. ‘How about a cup of tea?’

Frightened by what she had seen in the normally calm sherry-coloured eyes, Sally willingly complied. For a moment it had been like looking at a complete stranger; a different Laurel who had known an anguish and horror too great for her to comprehend.

They drank their tea in silence—Laurel was like that, not given to chatter or confidences, and yet for all her unworldly appearance, her frumpishness, Sally was suddenly struck by the thought that nothing one could tell Laurel about the sins and omissions of the human race would truly shock her. Quite why she should think this Sally didn’t know, and she tussled mentally with the problem for several minutes before realising that it was gone three o’clock and she would have missed Jonathan Graves’ arrival in the foyer. This was confirmed when the intercom on Laurel’s desk buzzed commandingly.

Laurel reached for it, and listened in silence for several seconds.

‘Mr Marshall wants me to go in and take notes,’ she told Sally, gathering up her notebook and two pencils. ‘It could take some time, so I think you’d better make a tray of tea. I’ll take it in with me.’

Marshall and Marshall was the old-fashioned type of firm that still believed in treating its clients in a courteous and leisurely fashion. Most of them were older people; and while Laurel didn’t mind this, Sally made no secret of the fact that she would have preferred to work somewhere with a more modern image.

Having checked that all was in order on the tea-tray, Laurel paused briefly to examine her reflection in the mirror, checking for any hairs straying from her immaculate chignon. There were none. There never were. Once, when she was at secretarial college, some of the other girls had tried to persuade her to wear her hair down. They had even tried to wrest the pins from it. Laurel paled at the memory, her eyes huge in the delicate triangle of her face.

Her bone structure was as fine as a bird’s. She was almost frighteningly slender, her skin very Celtically fair—an inheritance from the father she had never known.

He had been a Scot; a born wanderer, her mother had always said, and he had been killed in Hong-Kong during a riot there. Her mother hadn’t seemed to mind and Laurel suspected the marriage had not been particularly happy, but as she couldn’t remember him she felt no personal sense of loss. For as long as she could remember there had simply been herself, her mother and her grandparents: all living together in the large old house her grandfather had bought for his bride in Hampstead, within sight of the Heath. She had been happy in those days—happy and carefree. There had been a dog, a liver and white spaniel to yap at her heels and chase imaginary rabbits over the Heath. She had gone to a small local girls’ school which she had loved.

But then first her grandmother and then her grandfather had died, and there had only been her mother and herself in the huge old house, and very little money for its upkeep. Which was why her mother had started taking in lodgers.

Her hands shook, rattling the cups on the tray. She must pull herself together. What was the matter with her? There was no going back—she knew that. She had a lot to be grateful for; her small flat in the quiet block inhabited in the main by older couples, her small car which she drove into the country whenever she could spare the time. Something about the timelessness of the country landscape, the rightness of nature’s cycles had a beneficent effect upon her tensed nerves.

She was completely alone now. Her mother had always had a weak heart, and after… after the trial she hadn’t been able to endure the shame of what had happened and had slipped quietly away from life; away from her, Laurel acknowledged with self-condemnation. There had been a time when she thought that she ought to have been the one to die, not her mother, but that would have been too easy, too kind a fate. The gods had a different punishment for her.

She knocked and pushed open the office door. Mr Marshall as the senior partner in the firm had the largest office; one that, with its solid mahogany furniture, panelled walls and hunting scenes conveyed an air of solid respectability; no bad thing for a firm specialising in accountancy.

‘Oh, Laurel, you brought us some tea, Excellent.’

Mr Marshall permitted himself a thin dry smile. Laurel was the best secretary he had ever had—quiet, self-effacing and yet unbelievably efficient. He had been doubtful at first when the head of the typing unit had suggested her as a replacement for Mary Gilmour, but it had taken less than a month for him to appreciate the excellence of her choice, and Laurel had been appointed as his secretary. He glanced at her now. Her woollen suit in a muted honey brown was efficient and neat; a pristine white blouse with a high neckline and a row of pintucks down the bodice effectively-concealed the shape of her body, as did her heavy skirt, but not even the thick tights and sensible shoes she was wearing could detract from the slender length of her legs, and as she poured the tea at her employer’s command, Laurel was bitterly aware that the man seated opposite Mr Marshall, whose profile she couldn’t see without lifting her head, which she firmly refused to do, was quite openly and appreciatively studying them.

‘Leggy’ was how her grandmother had been wont to describe her, and at five foot eight, Laurel did have a length of leg that smaller girls openly envied. Indignation flashed in her eyes as, out of the corner of her eye, she saw their new client bend towards the floor, supposedly to remove some papers form the briefcase he had placed there, but Laurel knew that she was the focus of his attention, and a dark, smouldering anger burned up inside her; her voice was icy with dislike as she asked him whether he preferred milk or lemon in his tea.

He lifted his head and turned towards her, and Laurel felt the blood draining from her face, a low buzzing sound in her ears. It couldn’t be… but it was… every single detail of that face was burned into her mind with acid; there was no way she could forget or mistake it.

From a distance she heard Mr Marshall saying her name testily, and from somewhere she found the strength of will to lift the cup and saucer, proffering it to the man who called himself Jonathan Graves, but whom she knew by the name of Oliver Savage. And he had recognised her. She had seen it momentarily in his eyes before he had concealed his shock. She was bitterly glad that he had been shocked; what had he expected, or had he simply dismissed her from his mind, after he had destroyed her and left her feeling that death would be a merciful release from the only alternative life now offered her.

‘Sit down, Laurel,’ Mr Marshall instructed her when she had passed him his tea. ‘Mr Graves, or Mr Savage, as I believe he prefers to be called, would like to take away with him some brief notes on our discussion. Mr Savage, as you may know, is a writer,’ he explained pedantically. ‘He has been living and working abroad for some time, writing under the pen-name of Jonathan Graves, but he now intends to return to this country and is seeking advice as regards tax matters.’

Jonathan Graves and Oliver Savage, one and the same man; what sort of books did he write? Laurel’s lips curled fastidiously. She could make a fair guess. They would be tainted with the same sort of sensationalism he had brought to his work as a journalist. Men like him shouldn’t be allowed to write, to condition the minds of others with their skilfully manipulative lies. Truth to them was simply something to be twisted and warped until it was a broken unrecognisable thing, just as she.…

Only the superhuman strength of will that had carried her through the last six years enabled her to sit down and make notes of the discussion that ensued between her employer and Oliver Savage. Although she refused to betray it, she was aware of every nuance of his voice, every inflection behind the words. The sickness she had experienced on first seeing him so unexpectedly had faded, leaving in its place an anguished fear. What if he should try to talk to her, to.… But no, she couldn’t bear that. All the time her pencil skimmed busily over the lined paper of her shorthand notebook her thoughts collided and entwined, writhing formlessly like snakes inside her head, confusing and bewildering her. She had deliberately angled her chair so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, and it came as a shock, when she raised her head for a momentary respite, to discover that he had shifted his and that he was searching her face, as though he wanted to lay bare the bones beneath the skin and delve into the secret recesses of her mind. He had always instilled fear in her, but now her fear was greater. It gripped her, stifling her, tensing her body, leaving her face pale and her eyes strained.

It was a relief when Mr Marshall started speaking again and she was free to bend over the notebook, blotting out the image of his face. A sexy face, Sally had called it on more than one occasion, when trying to persuade her to study his dust jackets. She hadn’t been interested enough to even glance at them—an omission she regretted now, because had she done so she would have been prepared for this meeting, would in fact have been able to avoid it. He moved, the long line of his thigh intruding on her vision. Sickness clawed at her stomach, and her fingers slackened over the pencil, so that it slid from them on to the floor.

They both bent to retrieve it together, and because his arm was the longer, expensively encased in dark suiting, a gleaming white shirt cuff circling the sinewy masculine wrist, he reached it first, his arm brushing against the exposed flesh of Laurel’s for the merest fraction of a second—but it was long enough to have her cringing away from him, her eyes dark with terror and loathing, emotions which he registered with hooded grey eyes before handing her her pencil.

He had not changed, Laurel thought sickeningly, or if he had it was simply to become more intensely male, even more dominant and powerful. She had sensed the power in him right from the first; sensed and feared it, and because of what had gone before her rawly scraped nerves had responded badly to it, and because of that he had trapped her in the nightmare web of questions he had thrown at her. Questions which had eventually destroyed her and killed her mother, while he and.…

With an almost physical effort she wrenched her thoughts away from the past and back to the present. Why should he have changed, after all? Six years in the life of a man of twenty-seven were hardly likely to have the same cataclysmic effect as six years tacked on to the life of a girl of fifteen, for whom they represented a flowering and growing such as she would never experience again. Only Laurel had never experienced that flowering; it had withered and died. In six short months she had grown from a child to a woman, with a burden of knowledge she had found too heavy to carry. Mechanically she took down Mr Marshall’s careful speech. Sally was always complaining that working for Marshall and Marshall was dull and boring, but Laurel didn’t find it so. To her it represented security and safety, just as her old-fashioned clothes and primly repressive appearance did. Once, like Sally, she had delighted in pretty clothes and even tentative experimenting with make-up. But all her femininity had been frozen inside her and nothing could ever thaw it now.

She was glad when Mr Marshall signified that she could leave. There had been a look in Oliver Savage’s eyes when he recognised her that she remembered; a questioning, searching look that said that he wouldn’t simply leave matters where they stood. Perhaps he was no longer an investigative reporter; but he had obviously never lost the instinct of hounding people; of questioning and badgering them until they gave him what he wanted, just as she had done.… But he would never get the opportunity to question her again. He had destroyed her once, and the woman who had emerged from the ashes of that destruction was impervious to the Oliver Savages of this world.

‘Goodness, you look pale—are you all right?’ Sally questioned when she emerged into her own office. When Laurel nodded her head, she added in a more enthusiastic tone, ‘Well, come on, tell me all about him. Is he as incredibly sexy close up as he is in his pictures?’

‘I didn’t look.’

Sally grimaced, obviously not surprised by the lie. And it was a lie, for she had looked, searching that all male face for some tinge of compassion or regret, but there had been none. Only arrogant maleness.

‘I suppose they’ll be in there hours yet,’ Sally protested, ‘You know what old Marshall’s like once he gets going. Have you got much to do?’

‘Only these notes. They shouldn’t take long. I’m leaving early tonight,’ Laurel announced, averting her face so that Sally wouldn’t guess how sudden this decision was. ‘I’ll leave the notes on my desk before I go, but I’m going to have to rush.’

‘Okay, I get the message,’ Sally told her, taking the hint and sliding off her desk. ‘It’s time I was rounding up the mail anyway.’

Once she had gone Laurel concentrated on typing back her shorthand, glad of the solitude of her office which offered no outside distractions. It took her just over an hour, and towards the end of it she was holding her breath as she raced to get the work finished before the meeting inside her boss’s office came to a close. Some deep instinct was urging her to get away, to leave the office before Oliver Savage walked in and found her there. Savage by name and savage by nature, she thought numbly. And she had been savaged once by his merciless talent for destruction, she wasn’t going to let it happen again.

She had just pulled the last sheet from her machine, and was reaching for the cover, when Sally suddenly burst in, her curls tangled, a smudge of ink on one cheek.

‘Thank goodness you haven’t gone!’ she exclaimed. ‘Laurel, it’s the photocopier. The wretched thing just won’t work, and John Lever wants a dozen copies of some document running off before I leave. He wants to send them out in tonight’s post.…’

‘I’ll come and have a look at it.’

Laurel was halfway down the corridor before she remembered that she had left her handbag in her office and that she would have to go back for it. She hesitated, and Sally, suddenly impatient, grasped her arm, tugging her towards the general office. ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘He’s going mad with me, you know what he’s like’.

It took longer than Laurel had anticipated to find the problem—a piece of paper jammed inside the copier, but eventually she managed to get it working again, and at Sally’s insistence remained at her side while it ran off a dozen perfect copies of the requisite document.

Her hand was on the door of her office when she heard voices inside, and she was just about to retreat when Mr Marshall opened it, his frown relaxing as he saw her.

‘Ah, Laurel, I was just telling Oliver that it isn’t like you to leave early. You’ve done the notes?’

Skirting her desk and carefully avoiding so much as glancing at the tall male figure standing by the window, Laurel proffered the typescript to her boss. Her handbag was by her desk, and she reached for it, her voice hesitant as she asked if she might leave.

Mr Marshall looked slightly surprised at such unusual behaviour on the part of his perfect secretary. The phone rang before he replied and Laurel answered it. It was Mrs Marshall, and her boss excused himself to Oliver Savage to take the call in his own office.

Hastily grabbing her handbag, Laurel made for the door, but inexplicably Oliver Savage was there before, her, blocking her exit.

‘Laurel… it is you, isn’t it?’

His eyes held her mesmerised, unable either to deny or accept his question.

‘I want to talk to you. I’ll drive you home.’

‘No!’

The word jerked past her lips, her eyes dilating in her pale face.

The grey eyes narrowed, studying her slowly, missing nothing of her clothes or appearance. Like someone on the threshold of a nightmare Laurel saw his hand reach out to her, touching her face. She cringed back, seeing but not understanding the hardening of his mouth.

‘You’ve got a smudge on your face. Ink.’

He turned his hand towards her, showing her the ink on his own fingers from the contact with her skin.

‘It’s the photocopier. I.…’ I must get out of here, her mind screamed wildly, but she managed to subdue the impulse to give way to her emotions. Emotions trapped and betrayed. She had learned that lesson by now, surely? She had learned that screaming and panic achieved nothing, and coldly incisive questioning and lies all.

Laurel?’

The warmly tender way he said her name sickened her. He had said it like that before… before.

‘I must talk to you.…’

‘No!’

It was a low animal cry of pain, regretted as soon as she had uttered it, and she saw from the sudden darkening of his eyes that Oliver Savage had registered it.

She heard the faint click as Mr Marshall replaced his receiver and came out to join them. Quickly picking up her bag, she hurried towards the door, and then to her horror she heard Oliver Savage drawling coolly, ‘You’ll excuse us if we rush off, Marshall, but I’ve promised to give your secretary a lift. It seems she has an important date this evening.’

Mr Marshall positively goggled, and if she had been in a mood to appreciate it, Laurel must have been struck with the humour of the situation. Mr Marshall was plainly not used to thinking that his secretary might have a life outside the firm that she was anxious to run home to every night. Instead, she stammered a bitter protest, stifled beneath the coolly measured tones of Oliver Savage’s voice as he murmured something about getting in touch and studying the notes, and then, her arm in his imprisoning grip Laurel was forced to endure the disbelieving stares of the girls in reception as she was marched past them and out into the late autumn evening.

Once outside she tried to tug herself free, anger lending a faint colour to her otherwise pale face.

‘Just what do you think you’re doing?’ she hissed angrily at her captor. ‘I have no intention of going anywhere with you or saying anything to you.…’

‘Well, at least that’s an improvement on the ice-cold maiden I saw back in that office. It’s a relief to know you’re not entirely subhuman, Laurel.’

‘Is it?’ Her wrist was caught in his free hand, the intimate contact of his flesh against hers shocking her into silence. No man had touched her since… since.… She made a small whimper of protest in the back of her throat, her eyes giving away more than she knew.

‘Don’t touch me!’ She got the words out between clenched teeth, surprised to see how white he had gone.

‘You don’t like being touched, do you, Laurel?’ he asked with quiet emphasis, reading his answer in the sudden tightening of her features. ‘Dear God! I’ve been looking for you for five years, do you know that?’

Her wooden expression seemed to defeat him and she felt a momentary flash of triumph that she had been able to reduce him to a loss of words; he who had always been so clever with words, made them do his bidding, made them destroy her life.

‘Laurel, we must talk.…’

‘I don’t want to talk to you!’

Someone jostled them accidentally, and he released her momentarily. It was enough. Deftly twisting away from him, Laurel ran, mingling with the crowds, allowing herself to be swept away with them, her heart thudding like thunder as she waited for him to catch up with her.

A taxi slid to a halt in front of her and disgorged its passenger. Without hesitation, Laurel leapt in, giving the driver her address, and as they pulled away from the kerb she had a fleeting glimpse of Oliver Savage’s angry and disbelieving face

CHAPTER TWO

SHE couldn’t eat, couldn’t even drink the cup of tea she had made for herself, and she paced her small flat restlessly before coming to a decision. Like a sleepwalker she went into her bedroom and opened the wardrobe, lifting the cardboard box out of the bottom. They had given her this when her mother died. She had been at the convent then and Sister Theresa had wanted to burn them, but the social worker had murmured the magic words ‘mental therapy’ and she had been allowed to keep the box. She had looked at them again and again in those first few months, reading and re-reading until her head was full of the words.

Now she was going to look at them again.

Her hands shook as she lifted first the album and then the newspaper cuttings from the box. Yellowed and slightly faded now, they were all clipped together in date order. Drawing a shuddering breath, Laurel looked at the first one.

‘Teenage girl accuses stepfather of attempted rape,’ screamed the headline.

There was a blurred, grainy photograph of her at fifteen, her long russet hair windswept and untidy. Rachel Hartford, the social worker in charge of her case, was holding her hand. Poor Rachel, she had been as bitter about the outcome as Laurel herself and had given up her job.

Beneath the first cutting were others, gutter-press cuttings, with stories made up of the gleanings of whatever the reporters had been able to learn from their neighbours.

Then there was the court case. Laurel started to tremble as she remembered the ordeal, the cuttings disregarded on the floor. That should have been the worst she had to endure. Rachel had been disturbed when she learned who the defence counsel was, he had a formidable reputation and was extremely expensive. Neither of them had known where her stepfather found the money to afford such a lawyer—at least, not then; and Laurel had gone straight from his clever mauling almost literally into the arms of Oliver Savage, who had skilfully soothed and questioned her. So skilfully that she hadn’t even realised that he was a reporter until his article appeared. And he didn’t write for the gutter press; his articles carried weight, and what he had written about her was something she couldn’t endure to contemplate even now.

For her own sake the social services had sent her to a children’s home after the hearing; her mother was already seriously ill and unable to look after her.

She glanced at the small bundle of cuttings clasped in her hand, the past hovering over her like a dark shadow.

‘Don’t shut it away,’ the psychiatrist who had seen her at the children’s home had told her, ‘talk about it—work it out of your system.’

But because she had always been over-sensitive, because of her self-loathing and hatred of everything that had happened, she had locked it all away, becoming withdrawn and repressed.

If only she had known who Jonathan Graves was—but she hadn’t, and now it was too late to stop the memories crowding in on her, taking over her mind, forcing her to remember.…

She had been thirteen when her grandparents died, just on the threshold of womanhood. She had missed them dreadfully. To supplement the family income her mother had decided to take in lodgers; the big house near the Heath was too large and expensive for the two of them, and yet both were loath to leave it.

Their first lodger had been a teacher. Laurel had liked her. She taught at a large comprehensive school and Laurel had listened wide-eyed to her stories about it, comparing it with the small convent school she attended.

Miss Sayers had got another job and had left, and for a while Laurel had watched her mother’s face grow pinched and worried. But then one day she had returned home from school to find her mother smiling at a strange man sitting on the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea.

Laurel had disliked him on sight and had shrunk away when her mother introduced him as their new lodger.

He was some sort of salesman and seemed to work odd hours, because whenever Laurel returned home from school she invariably found him in the kitchen with her mother. This had always been their special shared part of the day, on which even her grandparents did not intrude, and Laurel had resented his presence. She disliked him altogether. He was only an inch or so taller than her mother, but powerfully built, and slightly balding. Laurel didn’t like the way he watched her mother, or the way his eyes rested on her sometimes, as though he was aware of the feminine budding of her body beneath her school uniform. Always acutely sensitive, her defence system sprang into action whenever he was in the vicinity, the tiny hairs on her body prickling with dislike.

She longed to tell her mother how she felt, but somehow a gulf had sprung up between them. Her mother seemed to like Bill Trenchard. Her cheeks and eyes glowed whenever she was talking to him, and one afternoon when Laurel came home from school a little early, as she walked into the kitchen they seemed to spring apart, guilt written large in her mother’s eyes, satisfaction in Bill Trenchard’s.

His air of satisfaction made Laurel feel sick. He had been kissing her mother; she sensed it with all the outraged instinct of her own growing sexuality.

She was just beginning to learn about sex at school from her friends; Laurel had always been slow to make friends and had no ‘best friend’ in whom she could confide her growing dislike of their lodger. All she could do was to acknowledge in her own mind that to think of her pretty mother and ‘that man’—as she mentally thought of him—doing those things she had heard about at school made her feel physically ill.

She hadn’t known then that it was a normal part of growing up to feel a certain amount of disbelief and revulsion towards the sexual act on first learning about it, and she had remained locked in a world of misery, hating herself for loathing a man her mother so obviously liked and yet unable to do a thing about it.

At night she prayed fervently that he would be transferred elsewhere, that he would leave; and then, as though to punish her, her mother announced that she and Bill Trenchard were to marry.

‘Please understand, darling,’ she appealed, seeing the disbelief and dismay in Laurel’s eyes. ‘I’ve been alone so long, and Bill is such fun. We’ll be like a real family,’ she promised. ‘Bill adores you.… I know it will seem strange at first, because you’ve never had a father.…’

‘Bill isn’t my father,’ Laurel said bitterly, just as the door opened and he walked in.

For a moment she thought he was going to strike her, he looked so furious, and she cringed back instinctively, hoping against hope that her mother would change her mind.

As she shot out of the kitchen she heard Bill Trenchard comforting her mother. ‘Don’t worry about it, she’ll come round. You know what they’re like at that age. She probably fancied me herself.…’

Fancied him! Alone in her bedroom, Laurel shuddered with loathing, hot tears of misery sliding down her cheeks. How could her mother marry a man like that? How could she bear the thought of him touching her, of…? Like a nervous colt her mind skittered away. Bill was not a particularly fastidious man. She had seen him coming from the bathroom, draped merely in a towel. His torso was thickset and covered in coarse dark hair, as were his back and arms. The sight of his partially naked body revolted her, and she couldn’t understand how her mother could endure to look at it, never mind touch it.

They were married within the month—a quiet register office ceremony. Laurel had had a new outfit for the occasion. Her mother and Bill had taken her shopping. She had hated it. Bill had chosen her dress, a brief mini which exposed the fine length of her legs. It was far shorter than anything she had worn before, and she had felt acutely selfconscious in it. She had worn her hair down; and it was only later, looking at the photographs with the eyes of an adult, that she had realised how provocative she had looked; the tight, short dress with its scooped neckline; her hair, long and thickly unruly, but at thirteen she hadn’t been aware of such things and she had merely known that her new stepfather was looking at her in a way she didn’t like.

After the ceremony Bill had taken them all out for a meal. They had had wine, and Laurel had a vivid memory of her mother looking flushed and happy. If only she could have stayed like that!

They weren’t going away on honeymoon, but her mother had arranged for Laurel to spend the night with one of their neighbours. When she came downstairs with her case, after their return to the house, Laurel was surprised to find her stepfather alone in the kitchen.

‘Your mother’s just gone upstairs,’ Bill informed her. His face was darkly flushed and when he came near her Laurel could smell the wine on his breath, sour and unpleasant.

‘Well, now that you’re my little girl, how about a kiss for your new dad?’

Laurel froze and stared uncomprehendingly up at him. She had kissed her grandparents, of course, and her mother, but some deep protective instinct warned her that kissing them was different from kissing Bill Trenchard.

‘Still sulking, are we?’ Bill demanded aggressively when she remained mute. ‘Well, don’t think I don’t know why! Wishing you were getting a little of what’s in store for your ma, is that it?’

Not really understanding what he was saying, but knowing that she didn’t like the tone of his voice, nor the look in his eyes, Laurel started to move away, but Bill moved faster, trapping her against the sink.

‘No need to get jealous, there’s plenty to go round,’ he told her thickly. His hands were large and sprinkled with dark hairs, and Laurel shuddered as they closed on her shoulders, his breath hot and sour against her face.

‘Now.…’ He was breathing heavily, as he brought his face down to hers. ‘How about a kiss for your new dad?’

Laurel longed to scream, but she was too frightened. If only her mother would return! She hated the way Bill was touching her; the red moistness of his mouth. If it touched her own she would be sick, she knew it.

She heard her mother outside, and shook with relief as Bill released her, grabbing her case and rushing out of the room before her mother could see her fear.

All that night she barely slept. How could her mother marry a man like that? She longed for someone to confide in; someone to talk to, and she bitterly regretted the death of her grandparents. Slow painful tears coursed down her cheeks as she contemplated her future.

Some instinct made her say nothing at school about her hatred of her new stepfather, or the unwanted intimacies he forced upon her. Sometimes it was nothing more than touching her skin, other times it was worse, disguised as ‘fooling about’ so that her mother looked on fondly, while she was forced endure his hand on her body as he ‘tickled’ her—but at least he had never tried to repeat that horrid kiss.

Laurel thought he was doing it to punish her because she wouldn’t accept him as her father, and to placate him and stop him from continuing to touch her she started to call him ‘Dad’. But it didn’t seem to have any effect, and she was always glad when his job took him away—sometimes for days at a time.

Then he lost his job. He had been married to her mother for six months when it happened, and she seemed to grow pale and worried overnight.

There wasn’t enough money now for her to stay on at the convent school, she explained gently at half term, and when school re-started Laurel would be attending the local girls’ school.

It was ten times larger than her small private school and she felt lost in the huge classes and anonymity of the place. They were on a different syllabus and she was completely out of step. To make matters worse, Bill had started drinking, and she frequently heard him shouting at her mother and her mother crying.

One afternoon she came home from school to find Bill slumped in front of the television and her mother in bed.

‘Sulking because she doesn’t want me to go out tonight,’ Bill pronounced, slurring his words the way he always did when he’d been drinking. ‘Perhaps if she was a bit more fun to be with I wouldn’t need to go out. Two of a kind, aren’t you, you and your mother; neither of you know how to give a man a good time. Perhaps I ought to do some man a favour and teach you before it’s too late.’

Laurel fled, seeking sanctuary in her mother’s room. Her mother looked pale and tired, and Laurel couldn’t bring herself to add to her worries by telling her what Bill had said.

Going to the larger school had opened her eyes a little, and she knew now that Bill shouldn’t talk to her or touch her in the way that he did, but she knew that to complain to her mother would bring Bill’s wrath down on her head. Her mother was too loyal to complain, but Laurel knew that she wasn’t happy.

She had learned to become adroit about keeping out of Bill’s way. Unknown to anyone else she had bought and fixed a simple bolt to her bedroom door.

She knew from listening to the giggled confidences of the other girls about their boy-friends that there was more to sex than the basic animal coupling she had first thought, but remembering the revulsion she felt whenever Bill touched her she couldn’t understand how anyone was able to enjoy it.

As far as Laurel was able to see, Bill was making no attempt to find another job, and they were all three having to live off the small capital her mother had been left by her parents.

Bill’s drinking had increased too, coupled with a violence which could manifest itself in broken crockery and on one occasion a livid bruise to Laurel’s arm when she had been too slow to obey his command for a second cup of tea. Increasingly Laurel was finding her mother in bed when she got home from school, her eyes strained and her face pale, but she never allowed Laurel to speak a word against her husband.

Laurel’s fourteenth birthday came and went. Her mother suggested a small party at home, but Laurel had no desire for the other girls at school to be exposed to her stepfather. Unknown to herself she was drifting apart from her peers into a world of her own, where her stepfather stalked through her nightmares, and she went to school listless and drained.

It was the games mistress who noticed the bruise on her arm, and who questioned her about it. The school was a large one and Laurel wouldn’t be the first case they had had of child abuse. Mrs Kellaway had trained at a large Northern school where she had learned quickly to see the telltale signs of beatings.

‘I… I banged it on a door,’ Laurel told her quickly, unable to prevent the deep flush staining her skin. ‘It doesn’t hurt.’

As Mrs Kellaway confided in the headmistress a little later, it could quite easily have been an accident, and Laurel was beyond the age for child battering.

‘On the other hand,’ she added, ‘she’s too withdrawn; living in a world of her own half the time. It might be as well to pay a visit to her home.’

The headmistress sighed and agreed. Mrs Kellaway was something of a new broom, and middle-class parents were apt to be vociferous in their complaints about teachers’ interference in their pupils’ private lives.

There was a week to go before the start of the summer holidays. Laurel had been studying hard for her exams, hating the thundery, stifling atmosphere pervading the Heath. The heat seemed to sap her strength, leaving her drained and tired, and she longed for a proper thunderstorm to clear the air. Her school books weighed heavily on her arm, and the closer she got to home the more her footsteps lagged. There had been a brooding menace about Bill these last few days that sharpened her fear; a look in his eyes that flooded her with an instinctive knowledge she fought against accepting. He wanted her physically. She could see it in his eyes, read it in his touch, and she shrank from the knowledge, deliberately keeping out of his way.

The kitchen was empty when she got home, and she heaved a sigh of relief at crossing this first hurdle safely. Sometimes he was there waiting for her, drunk and truculent, pinning her against the wall while he criticised her mother, his eyes roaming hotly over her body as though he could see the slender feminine shape beneath the school uniform.

She tiptoed past the living room, but it was so quiet she risked a glance inside. There was no sign of him. Perhaps he was out?

Her spirits lifting, she hurried upstairs. Her mother was in bed. She seemed to be shrinking daily, and Laurel had pleaded with her to send for a doctor. She had refused, and since she had no friends in the neighbourhood who called, Laurel had no one in whom to confide her fears concerning her mother.

‘Bill’s gone out,’ her mother told her, in answer to Laurel’s question, but Laurel noticed that she avoided her eyes, as though she too knew of her daughter’s fear and the reason for it.

‘How was school?’

Obediently, Laurel told her about her day, suggesting that she shower and then bring her mother a tray of tea. ‘We could share it,’ she suggested eagerly, ‘just like we used to before.…’ She bit her lip, knowing her mother allowed no criticism of Bill, but for once there was no soft reprimand from the bloodless lips.

‘A tray of tea would be lovely,’ was all her mother said.

A modern shower had been installed in the bathroom, at Bill’s insistence, and during the work the old lock had come loose from the door. Bill had promised to fit it, but Laurel noticed as she walked into the bathroom that it had come free altogether. Closing the door, she stripped off and stepped into the shower, closing the curtain.

These last few months her body had changed dramatically. She was tall and slender with small high breasts and a narrow waist and hips. Her legs were long, tapering to fine ankles, her body almost that of a woman.

She showered quickly, enjoying the cool spray of the water on her heated skin. She was just showering off the last of the soap when the bathroom door opened.

‘Well, well!’

She stood transfixed as her stepfather’s eyes searched greedily over her body. He closed the door softly behind him and leaned against it. He had been drinking, Laurel could tell. She reached hurriedly for a towel, but he snatched it away, slurring this words as he said slowly, ‘Not wanting to hide yourself away from your dear old dad, are you, Laurel? You know, the trouble with you, my girl, you’re too repressed, frigid, like that mother of yours.…’

‘You’re not my father!’

Laurel said the first words that came into her head, her stomach crawling with sickness and shame for the way he was looking at her body. It was like the worst of her nightmares, when she was exposed and ridiculed, and she shrank back in horror as Bill reached out a hand and touched her still damp skin. A shudder rippled over her, and too late she saw the rage burning in his eyes.

‘Think yourself too good for me, do you? Just like that mother of yours! Well, we’ll soon see about that. You won’t be so proud when I’m pleasuring that body of yours, my girl, you’ll soon see.…’

‘Get away from me!’

‘Oh, come on, now, don’t give me that innocent act. I know all about you girls. You’re dying to know what it’s all about really, aren’t you? I’ve seen the way you look at me.…’

‘Like I hate you!’ Laurel spat at him, screaming instinctively as he grasped hold of her naked body and lifted her out of the shower, his face livid and mottled as he bent over her.

‘I’m your father, my girl,’ he told her furiously, ‘and you have to do everything I tell you. In my day a father took a strap to his kids if they didn’t obey him. Is that what you want, Laurel?’

Still grasping her arm with one hand, his free hand went to his belt, and Laurel knew with sick certainty that he wanted to beat her nearly as much as he wanted her body. Her thoughts ran in terrified circles, her body tensing against him.

‘Come on, you want it as much as I do. I’ve seen the way you look at me. I’m all man, Laurel,’ he told her slowly, his eyes glittering with feverish excitement, ‘and I’m going to prove it to you.…’

She screamed as his fingers kneaded her breast, his mouth hotly sour on her skin, and kept on screaming even when he shook her like a rag doll, almost throwing her to the floor in his rage.

‘Don’t make me angry, Laurel,’ he warned her as he flung himself down on top of her. ‘You’ve teased and tormented me enough, and I’m going to have you!’

Her body felt heavy and lethargic, crushed by the oppressive weight of his, but some instinct for survival lent her the strength to scream once more, the sound stilled by the sudden pressure of his mouth, making her gag sickly. He was going to rape her and there was nothing she could do to stop him. Tears ran from her eyes, terror making it impossible for her to move, and then outside the bathroom door she heard her mother’s voice calling to her, saw her turning the door handle; saw the look on her face as she looked down on Laurel’s sprawled naked body pinned to the floor by the heavy weight of Bill’s.

Like a surly bear Bill clambered to his feet, but Laurel couldn’t move. She felt frozen with fear and self-shame. She had seen the look in her mother’s eyes as she stood in the doorway; a look that said quite plainly that whatever had happened Laurel was to blame.

‘She drove me to it, Elaine,’ she heard Bill mutter defensively, ‘Always parading about in front of me with next to nothing on—oh, she’s always careful to make sure she doesn’t do it when you’re around, but she’s always been jealous—always wanted me herself. You know what teenage girls are like… sex-mad, the lot of them. I couldn’t help myself… she was begging for it.…’

Laurel wanted to deny his accusations, to plead with her mother for understanding, but somehow the words would not come. She knew she had not encouraged Bill—she loathed him, neither had she flaunted herself in front of him, but her pride would not allow her to beg her mother to believe her.

As Bill followed her mother out of the bathroom, he turned once, giving Laurel a look that warned her that it wasn’t over, not by a long, long way.

Even with the lock on her bedroom door she refused to sleep that night, starting at every sound. She dressed for school in the privacy of her room, leaving early so that she could use the showers there instead of washing at home. Her body was bruised where Bill had touched her, and the sight of the finger marks against her breast made her retch dryly in shivering horror.

She found it hard to concentrate on her lessons. The last two of the day were gym. Half way though them the headmistress arrived, accompanied by a man—a school inspector, Laurel had later learned, but at the time all she had known was that he was a man and that for some reason he wanted to see her vaulting over the ‘horse’. The mere fact that someone was watching her was enough to destroy her shaky confidence. She mistimed her leap and half fell over the horse, and might have injured herself quite badly if he hadn’t leaped forward to catch her. But all she was aware of as his hands grasped her was that this was how Bill had held her last night, forcing her to the floor, touching her intimately, and as the world swirled and darkened around her, she was dimly aware of herself screaming, no, no, don’t touch me!

When she came round she was in the headmistress’s office. Miss Kellaway was there, but there was no sign of the man. Matron was also there and another young woman whom the headmistress introduced as Rachel from the Social Services Department, the significance of which didn’t dawn on her until much later.

‘Now, Laurel,’ the headmistress began kindly, ‘don’t be frightened. We’re here to help you, you know, my dear.…’ She paused, coughed and looked a little embarrassed.

‘Laurel, Miss Kellaway tells me that some time ago you came to school with a bad bruise on your arm. And now today, when you fainted… your body is very badly bruised, my dear, and.…’

The social worker interrupted gently, ‘What Miss Laker is trying to say, Laurel, is that we believe you may have been sexually abused.… Yes, I know you don’t want to talk about it, don’t want to admit it even to yourself, but you aren’t the first girl it’s happened to, Laurel, and you won’t be the last. We only want to help you, and there’s nothing to be frightened of. You do know, don’t you, that it’s illegal for someone to have sexual relations with a girl under sixteen? And it’s silly to get involved with such a rough boy-friend. Have you got a boy-friend, Laurel?’

She managed to shake her head, her whole body burning with the shame of what was happening to her. How could they understand? How could they know how she felt; how guilty and tainted; how much she hated her body?

‘Matron will have to examine you, Laurel,’ Rachel, the social worker, was saying in a soothing voice. ‘Nothing to be afraid of. If you’ll just go with her now.…’

Like a limp rag doll, Laurel went with her. The examination was painful and to Laurel humiliating, although she knew that Matron was deliberately trying not to hurt her, but afterwards she was sick, and she was still shivering when she was taken back to the headmistress’s study.

‘Matron tells us that you’re still a virgin, Laurel,’ Rachel announced, ‘But I don’t believe that you were a willing participant in whatever happened to you. We want to help you, dear. Why don’t you tell us about it?’

She wanted to, but Bill had warned her that if she told anyone they wouldn’t believe her.

As though she knew what she was thinking Rachel said softly, ‘You have a stepfather, Laurel—was it him?’

She started to cry then and Rachel had comforted her, gently drawing the whole story out of her.

‘Now listen to me, Laurel,’ she said when she had finished. ‘You are in no way to blame, in no way at all. You mustn’t think that.’ Over Laurel’s head her eyes met Miss Kellaway’s. ‘Men like him ought to be shot,’ she said bitterly. ‘When I think of the damage he might have done.…!

‘Now, Laurel,’ she said quietly, ‘for your own sake it might be better if you lived away from home for a while. Not for punishment,’ she added quickly, ‘but to protect you.’

‘My mother.…’

‘Don’t worry, we’ll explain everything to her.’

Laurel hadn’t argued, thankfully believing that her ordeal was over, but it was only just beginning.

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