Bride Required

‘An only child. It’s what they call them in China, now they operate a one-child policy… Apparently couples in Britain are also opting to have a single child so they can give them everything.’

‘Is that what you were given…everything?’ He wondered once more about this girl of contradictions.

‘Of course,’ she answered in ironic tones. ‘As you see, I dine at the Ritz, buy my clothes from Harvey Nichols and live in a darling little mews house in South Kensington.’

He gave her an impatient look. ‘I take it that means no.’

Dee shrugged. He could take it how he wanted. In truth she had been spoilt—materially anyway—until the day she had run away in her state-of-the-art trainers, designer jeans, and the baseball jacket that had come with a three-hundred-pound price tag and had fallen apart within weeks of her hitting the London streets.

She handed back his passport, and he said, ‘Now you know who I am, perhaps you could trust me with your address.’

‘Just because you’re Dr Ross?’ She pulled a face, still unimpressed.

‘Point taken.’ He took one of the cheap paper napkins Rick had tossed down in front of them and wrote something on it.

‘The Continental,’ Dee read. ‘Sounds posh.’

He ignored her, writing down the nearest tube station and precise directions on how to find the hotel. ‘Meet me in the foyer tomorrow at nine o’clock, and we’ll go shopping for suitable clothing. Okay?’

Dee nodded and put the napkin in her jacket. She didn’t meet his eyes. If she had, he might have realised she was already having second thoughts. Girls who met up with strangers, however respectable-looking, were asking for trouble.

Baxter watched her as she got up, issued brief thanks for the meal, and, gathering her possessions and dog, made for the door. He was no fool. Chances were he would never see her again.

Dee walked quickly, checking behind her a few times, but there was no sign of him. He trusted her. He actually believed she was going to meet him.

‘Mug,’ she muttered aloud, but it didn’t stop her feeling guilty. She hadn’t meant to lead him on. It was his fault really. It had sounded so attractive—sleeping in a clean bed, eating good food, earning money for virtually nothing.

But nothing was for nothing in this life. She knew better. She thought of her stepfather—respected consultant, charming host, generous father. For a while, at least, until he’d looked for the pay-back.

Dee put a brake on her thoughts. She wasn’t going to get bitter. She wouldn’t let him ruin her life. She wasn’t like the other girls, running away from a lifetime of abuse. Much of her childhood had been happy, and she still had hopes of a future better than her dismal present.

She checked behind her once more before she veered towards the wasteland which surrounded the maisonettes. All boarded up, they looked deserted, but she knew that several had been turned into squats. Hers was at the end of the block and two flights up.

She looked along the balcony and down below, checking she was alone, before dislodging the loose boarding at the bottom of a window. Then she squeezed through and dragged Henry after her. She replaced the boarding and used a brick to hold it in position from the inside. She kept a torch in her rucksack, and used it long enough to locate the candles and matches hidden under the rotting sink-cupboard.

She slept in a back room, where the last occupant had abandoned an old mattress. It was stained and musty, but better than the floor. Dee had her own sleeping bag, which she washed with her clothes at the launderette when she had any spare money. She still never felt clean.

She’d lived like this, in one squat or another, for three months, and she’d begun to get used to it. She supposed it was meeting Baxter Ross that had made her re-evaluate. She went to the toilet and looked in the cracked mirror above the sink. A gaunt face with hollow eyes looked back at her. Once she’d been considered pretty, and was vain enough to wonder if anyone would see her as such again. Or had her looks gone, along with her middle-class attitudes? Blown away by insecurity and desperation?

She thought of what Baxter Ross was offering. Right at the moment it was the only chance of a future she had. Perhaps she was crazy to turn it down. It would mean living a lie, but so what? She had watched her mother doing that for years.

Had her mother pretended with her father, too? Dee wasn’t sure. She had seemed devastated when he died, but within months had been going out with Edward Litton, a consultant at the hospital.

At first Dee had resented it, out of loyalty to her father. But, as time went on, she’d realised her mother couldn’t cope on her own. Edward had seemed to accept her so she’d accepted Edward, and had been a gawky-looking bridesmaid at their wedding.

When had things changed? It was hard to pinpoint, but it seemed, on reflection, that cracks had appeared in the marriage quite quickly. Though beautiful, her mother needed constant reassurance of the fact, and although seemingly vivacious in company, was subject to depressions. Dee’s father had been supportive, but Edward was a different kind of man, and his impatience, as well as his disappointment, was evident.

At times Dee had actually felt sorry for him and had feared he might leave. Feared, because at fourteen she had been as selfish as the next teenager and hadn’t wanted responsibility for her mother’s happiness.

But they’d papered over the cracks and continued to present an idyllic front to the rest of the world. Dee had been part of the conspiracy, then. Grateful that he’d stayed, she’d grown closer to Edward, and he had seemed fond of her, too.

It was Edward who had begun to realise she was growing up and had given her money for trendy clothes rather than the juvenile outfits her mother had bought to keep her looking about ten—which had been difficult when she was already way past adult height by fourteen and filling out by fifteen. It was Edward who had allowed her to go to her first disco and had laughed when she’d arrived home a little tipsy. Edward who hadn’t overreacted to her minor teenage rebellions of smoking cigarettes and bunking off school. And Edward who’d argued against boarding school, claiming that, just going into her final GCSE year at sixteen, Deborah was far too old to adapt.

Only this time her mother had stood her ground, and Dee had been dispatched to a girls’ school in Hampshire. Dee had minded going, but had settled in surprisingly easily. After the tensions at home, the school regime had been almost relaxing.

Still, she’d looked forward to the Christmas holidays, and Edward and her mother had both seemed pleased to see her. There had been the usual seasonal parties, and Edward had paid for several new dresses—including a white mini-dress that showed off her endless legs. She had been self-conscious in it at first, but had worn it at their New Year party and felt tremendously grown-up.

Perhaps she had looked it, too, because no one had objected to her drinking glasses of the wine being passed around. She had been merry rather than drunk, and had danced a lot with an older boy called James. They had ended up kissing in the summerhouse outside. Deborah had enjoyed the kisses and even allowed some minor petting, but she’d had no plans to take things further.

Edward had drawn other conclusions when he’d found them in a passionate clinch. He’d come the heavy father and sent the boy packing, then he’d turned on Dee. She remembered repeating, ‘Nothing happened,’ over and over, but he hadn’t really been listening as he’d grabbed her arm when she’d tried to leave. It was only later she had understood: he’d been drunk, and mean with it.

At the time she’d felt only shame as he’d accused her of being a slut and suggested she’d been ‘begging for it’. There had been more of the same, but, naively, she hadn’t been frightened. Even at that point she’d still assumed he was acting like an irate grown-up. Then the bile about her mother had begun to spill out, and effectively brought their father-daughter relationship to an end.

‘Please.’ She tried to pull away as he regaled her with details of his empty, sexless marriage.

‘Well, at least we know you’re not frigid, little Deborah,’ he went on relentlessly. ‘Not so little, either, now…’

His eyes lowered to her burgeoning breasts, outlined in the brief, tight dress, and the hand that had gripped her arm began to smooth over her bare skin.

Dee fought panic and the desire to be physically sick. This was a nightmare. In a moment, they would both wake up and everything would be as before.

‘Let’s go back to the party, Edward, please…’ Her face was white with shock.

‘Why? So you can let that boy paw you again?’ Edward’s laugh was humourless as he blocked her move to the summerhouse door. ‘Sweet sixteen and obviously dying for it, the way you walk around the house in your shortie nightdresses.’

Dee shook her head and kept shaking it, denying provocation, denying she wanted this, denying his right to do it as he clamped his arms round her and forced his mouth on hers, ignoring her resistance, his teeth cutting into her lip, his tongue a violation. She resisted, and kept resisting, twisting and fighting, kicking and squirming, pushing at his chest until finally, somehow, she was free.

She turned and ran blindly to the house. The party was still in full swing and few noticed as she burst inside and made for the toilet, bolting the door before being violently sick in the bowl.

Dee had intended to tell her mother later, but Edward beat her to it. In his version she had drunk too much and had been throwing herself at everybody, including himself. He made a joke of it, then dismissed the incident as normal adolescence. Her mother didn’t question it, and when Dee tried to say Edward had kissed her she refused to listen.

Now Dee lay on her mattress in the dirty squat and recognised it as the night her childhood had ended. She hadn’t run away immediately; she hadn’t been brave enough. She’d wanted to trust Edward’s promises that it would never happen again, so she had. Until the next time two months later. And the time after that at half term. And so on.

Each time he went a little further and each time she became more locked in the awful conspiracy of silence because she hadn’t blown the whistle loudly enough that first night.

Each episode of kissing or touching or accidentally brushing against her brought them closer to the day he would finally rape her. She threatened to tell on him, but never did. Who to tell? Her mother, who popped a pill at the least upset and was on another planet most of the time? Or family friends, who admired Edward for taking on a ready-made family? And, of course, by not telling she reinforced the lies her stepfather was telling himself: that she wanted him the same way he wanted her.

When he arrived mid-term to take her out for a surprise lunch, Dee wanted to refuse, but what could she say when he sat in the headmistress’s office playing model stepfather? And who else could see what lay behind his smile? Not Mrs Chambers, smiling back as good old Edward charmed and smarmed his way into her confidence. Not her best friend, Clare, who read too many teen magazines and thought her stepfather sexy.

So she went upstairs for her jacket and came down the hard way, throwing herself from the landing. Dramatic, possibly, and certainly painful, as the sprained ankle she’d intended escalated into a torn ligament in her knee. She also had to suffer Edward playing the concerned father and caring doctor, until she wanted to scream at them all, Open your eyes. See him for what he is!

But still it was worth it. A trip to the local hospital took precedence over the lunch.

It was that visit which decided her. She waited until her knee mended and the exams were over, then bought a one-way ticket to London. She stayed in a cheap hotel, unable to find work or the bedsit she’d vaguely planned. After a month and a half her money ran out, and she ended up sleeping in a shop doorway for three nights until the police picked her up, and, not believing she was sixteen, located her on a register of runaways and called her parents.

They came to collect her. Her mother was distressed but forgiving, while Edward just seemed relieved. He walked up to her and hugged her as he had in the old days, with a warmth that was natural and fatherly, and promised her everything was going to be fine. After three nights’ sleeping rough and being terrified, Dee would have believed the devil himself. She arrived home in time for her seventeenth birthday and was lavished with presents.

For eight months Edward kept his promise. Dee didn’t give him much choice to do otherwise, returning to boarding school in the autumn, then spending much of the Christmas holidays on a skiing trip. Then she made the mistake of going home for Easter.