A Matter Of Trust

She almost missed hearing the car pull up outside, and in fact she suspected that she would have done if she hadn’t happened to be on her way downstairs at the time.

She frowned a little. The small compact Volvo was not somehow or other the kind of car she had expected the man to drive.

The net curtains hanging at the landing window obscured her vision of him and she had to flick them back a little as well as switching on the cassette which Leigh had impressed upon her she was to have with her at all times.

The man emerging from the car was tall and dark-haired. Before opening the garden gate he paused, glancing down the road, so that Debra had an unobscured view of his face.

A tiny shock of sensation curled through her, an immediate and disturbing physical response to him that made her check and tense.

He was frowning slightly and looked rather more formidable than she had imagined. He looked like a man used to being in control of himself and others. Warily Debra watched him. She had expected him to look different, less powerful, less compelling. She had assumed that he would have about him an air of weakness and self-indulgence, which this man most assuredly did not.

Before walking up the path he paused and then looked up at Elsie Johnson’s house. Immediately Debra tensed. He couldn’t possibly have seen her watching him, could he?

Her heartbeat suddenly accelerated, her muscles tensing. She dared not look out of the window in case he was still studying the house.

One minute went by and then another. This was ridiculous, she told herself crossly. There was no reason why she should not simply walk past the window, why she should feel so intimidated.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to move. Only when she was safely on the other side of the window did she allow herself a brief glance out of it. The man had gone inside the house.

Vigilantly Debra kept watch all evening, but all that happened was that she got cramp. All was quiet from next door. No one had arrived or left.

When she went to bed she set her alarm for six-thirty so that she could be on duty for seven when Jeff went home.

She didn’t need the alarm. She hardly slept at all, and not just because she was in a strange bed, she admitted as she dressed. It wasn’t just what she was doing that disturbed her; the man himself had unnerved her.

By seven o’clock she was eating her breakfast in front of the sitting-room window, where she had a clear view of the Volvo.

When by nine o’clock the Volvo was still there she began to panic a little.

Could he have left via the back door? Had he guessed that he was being watched? Had he perhaps even left during the night while Jeff was watching him?

At half-past nine she settled herself upstairs, where she had a clear view of the back garden and through the open landing window could hear any sound from outside at the front.

At eleven o’clock a taxi drew up alongside the Volvo and a woman got out. She was tall and elegant, expensively dressed, and as she paid off the driver Debra congratulated herself on noticing the wedding ring she wore.

Whoever she was, she certainly wasn’t Ginny Towers, Debra reflected with satisfaction, and then she remembered that she was supposed to take photographs.

She had almost left it too late, and, as it was, she had to squash herself into the side of the window-frame and lean out of the window a little to get a good clear shot of the woman.

It was only as she withdrew that she realised that the man had opened the front door to welcome his visitor.

He had his back to her, and for some reason it gave her an odd sensation in her tummy to look down on him.

Vertigo, she told herself quickly, wondering if she dared risk trying to photograph them together without his noticing her, but it was too late. He was already ushering the woman inside.

Debra could hardly believe her luck when later on the two of them emerged into the garden. Despite her shaking hands, she managed to get several good shots of them standing talking together.

At three in the afternoon another taxi arrived and the woman left.

Standing beside the open landing window, Debra dutifully recorded this fact.

Although the man accompanied her to the taxi, he did not touch her in any way.

Leigh had described him as having a penchant for very young women. His visitor had not fallen into that field. She had been around his own age, early to mid-thirties.

Well, at least she had got some photographs of them together, Debra told herself as she went downstairs to make herself a drink.

She had just made it when the doorbell rang. She went to answer it without any sense of apprehension, her mind on the task Leigh had given her.

The safety chain wasn’t on and she opened the door automatically without thinking, tensing in an alarm which came too late as she watched the man from next door march angrily into the hall and push the door closed behind him.

‘Would you mind telling me exactly what you think you’re doing?’ he demanded curtly.

He was tall, Debra acknowledged, and strong as well, his body athletic and powerfully muscled. No doubt he found it paid to keep himself fit in order to impress his youthful victims. After all, a man of thirty-odd could not possibly hope to have the physical appeal of one much younger, she told herself, stubbornly ignoring the evidence of her own senses, which told her quite categorically that this man need not have any fear that younger rivals might present a more physically compelling appeal.

‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered as the guilty colour stormed her face. ‘But I don’t—’

‘You don’t what? You don’t know what I’m talking about?’ he interrupted her savagely. ‘Like hell you don’t. In someone old and alone, snooping on the neighbours can be understood and excused; in someone your age…well, let’s just say you’d have to have some profound behavioural problems.’

As she heard the contempt in his voice Debra found that she wasn’t shocked any more. She was angry…very, very angry.

‘You’re the one with the problems,’ she told him unequivocally. ‘Or don’t you believe that it’s a problem for a man of your age to want to seduce a girl barely over the legal age limit for sex? Men like you disgust me,’ she added passionately. ‘You deliberately lie and deceive. You don’t care who you hurt…how many lives you destroy. It’s just a game to you, isn’t it? Girls like Ginny…too young and innocent to see what you really are.’

‘Now just a minute,’ he began grimly, but Debra had the bit between her teeth now and she wasn’t going to stop. How dared he force his way in here and try to bully her…to accuse her, when he was the one…?

All her normal caution and restraint was swept aside in the passionate tide of feeling that engulfed her. She had been so lucky, so loved and protected as she had grown up, but she was well aware that not all young girls were, that there were men like this one…like Karen’s stepfather, who deliberately made young, vulnerable girls their victims; who destroyed them emotionally and ruined their lives. And he had the gall to stand there, glowering angrily at her.

‘Why don’t you simply leave her alone?’ Debra swept on, ignoring his interruption. ‘She’s seventeen years old. Young enough to be your daughter.’

She saw him start and was grimly aware of the shock that momentarily darkened his eyes.

‘I suppose you hadn’t thought of it like that, had you? Men like you never do. You’re too obsessed with your own appetites…your own perversions.’

She heard the breath whistle out of his chest, and stopped, suddenly shocked by her own vehemence, suddenly realising her own vulnerability and danger.

‘I don’t understand what’s going on here,’ he told her, adding menacingly, ‘but if you think I’m going to tolerate you spying on me, photographing me, lying about me, well, let me tell you, there are laws against the kind of thing you’re doing.’

‘There should be laws against people like you,’ Debra spat shakily at him.

He was clever, she had to give him that, twisting things…accusing her…intimidating her with his alien male presence.

She was suddenly acutely conscious of the narrowness of the hall, of the closeness of his body, of the anger she could feel emanating from him.

‘You won’t be in any danger,’ Leigh had told her. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

‘I want those photographs,’ he told her flatly, ‘and I want to know just what you think you’re doing.’

‘You know what I’m doing,’ she told him. ‘I’m trying to make sure that Ginny finds out exactly what kind of man you are…before it’s too late.’