Anne Bennett 3-Book Collection: A Sister’s Promise, A Daughter’s Secret, A Mother’s Spirit

‘Leave go of me.’

‘You must be joking,’ he said angrily. ‘What the bleeding hell are you playing at?’

‘How can you ask that?’ Molly cried. She wished her head did not feel as if it was filled with cotton wool and that the room would stay still, for she had the feeling that, to counter this, she needed to have her wits about her. She faced the man and said accusingly, ‘You were going to …’

‘I know what I was going to do, and so do you, you drunken whore.’ Collingsworth was so incensed he shot spittle from his mouth as he spoke. ‘So what is all this about?’

Molly was mortified with shame, and she thought that he had every right to be angry and upset. The way she had behaved he must have thought she was offering herself. Hadn’t she gone a good distance down that road? Unbidden, Ray’s face swam before her, charging her to be nice to this man but she fastened her brassiere and blouse before saying in a conciliatory way that she was far from feeling, ‘I am sorry, sorry that you have been upset and disappointed, and I do understand how angry you felt, but I am not that sort of girl and if I hadn’t drunk so much I wouldn’t have allowed things to get this far. Shall we get properly dressed now and we’ll say no more about it?’

Collingsworth jerked at Molly’s arm with such suddenness she cried out as she spun in front of him, and, holding her roughly by the arms, he slammed her so hard against the mirrored wall that the room swam. ‘Listen to me, you moronic slut,’ he ground out. ‘I know exactly what type of girl you are, what you are going to be, and that is a whore in one of the knocking shops in Birmingham from next week, so don’t come all innocent with me. You must have known the score.’

Molly was completely bemused. ‘What are you on about? What score and what do you mean? I am not a whore.’

He gave a grim and humourless laugh that sent a shiver down Molly’s spine as he said, ‘Maybe you’re not yet, but you soon will be.’

‘I will not!’

‘Jesus Christ, did you come over on the banana boat or were you born half-witted?’ he demanded. ‘Why d’you think Ray took you in, eh? Thought he was a bleeding charity, did you?’

‘I don’t know what you mean?’ Molly said, though her body seemed to be filling up with dread. ‘Ray has shown me nothing but kindness.’

‘Course he has, darling,’ Collingsworth said in a voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Heart of gold, has our Ray, and a few days ago out of kindness he sold you to me for tonight.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous, am I?’ the man sneered. ‘I speak the truth, and I bought you for my own use tonight because you have something that is prized and that I wanted and that is your maidenhead. I take it you are a virgin?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘There is no “of course” in this business.’ He pressed himself so close to her that he was spitting in her face as he spoke. She noted his eyes seemed to shine with a demonic light as he said in levelled tones that were as cold as ice, ‘And let me tell you another thing: I intend to have that prize that I paid for and you can be accommodating or not. Either way, it makes no odds to me.’

Molly was so frightened her heart seemed to be jumping about in her chest as she ground out, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Well, I do,’ Collingsworth suddenly bellowed. Rage that he had been duped, made fun of, took hold of him. Someone would pay. Molly was unprepared for both the suddenness and the power of the punch that knocked her to the floor and caused blood to pour from her nose.

Collingsworth looked at her coldly. He had promised Ray he wouldn’t hurt her physically, for it was well known that he sometimes liked to rough his woman up, and he would have been banned from many a whorehouse for it if he hadn’t been such an influential man, whom they all depended on. He hadn’t had any intention of hurting Molly when he had arrived that night, but that had all gone by the board now. She deserved all he was prepared to mete out to her and he powered a kick into her side as he said, ‘Get to your feet and let’s get down to it because I always get what I pay for.’

Molly gave a groan as the man’s foot caught her, and she curled up instinctively. Through bloodshot eyes she lay and watched the blood drip from her nose and pool on the carpet, as her assailant said, ‘Get up unless you want some more of the same.’

She heard his voice and saw the foot raised, and then she saw an old woman as if through a window in her mind. This image was not misty or hazy, though. The old woman’s cold eyes, like Edwin Collingsworth’s, were filled with malice and hatred, and her fists were raised. The image engendered such anger in her that she leaped to her feet and threw herself at Collingsworth with a shriek, like some sort of screaming virago.

Collingsworth was unprepared, both for the attack and for the strength of the girl, who looked as if a puff of wind would blow her away. He threw her against the wall, but as he came towards her, she kicked him between the legs.

She had no shoes on, however, and so, although he doubled up at first, he had recovered enough to be after her as she made for the living room. She wondered where Ray was and how long she had been with this mad man, and knew she had to get out of the place, out into the street and shout for help.

Collingsworth, who had thought Molly would be easily subdued, was taken aback at first and then he seemed to increase in strength. Chairs and small tables were overturned, and vases and lamps crashed to the floor as he crossed the room in pursuit of Molly until he had caught her by the arm and smacked a hard hand across her face so that for a moment she was blinded. In that moment he had her against him, his fingers pulling her knickers to one side. She gave a yelp of terror and punched him to each side of his head with her fists, which were as hard as little hammers. Then she tore herself from his grip, hearing her blouse rip but paying no heed as she made for the door.

But when Collingsworth caught hold of her again, she felt despair fill her being and she knew this was it. She was spent. He would have his way with her and there was nothing she could do about it because she had no strength left.

He kicked her to the floor, and she saw he had the heavy base of a table lamp raised to crash down on her head. She dived under a coffee table. Before her were Collingsworth’s legs, and in a split second she had hold of them and jerked with all her might. Collingsworth had been unbalanced, ready to smash Molly’s skull, and before he was able to recover himself he fell heavily. His head hit the table with a sickening thud as he went down so when he hit the floor he was already unconscious, and blood was seeping from a gaping wound, staining the carpet crimson.

For a moment Molly sat and looked at him. She was petrified and didn’t have a clue what to do, but she knew one thing: if he came to again he would kill her as easily as swatting a fly. She had to get him to the door, bolt and lock it against him and wait for Ray to come home. He would tell her what to do.

Ordinarily, Molly wouldn’t have been able to move even a man of Collingsworth’s stature, but that night she managed it although she was both sweating and crying with the effort when she eventually heaved him outside the door of the flat. She couldn’t leave him there – he was too close – and she rolled him to the top of the stairs, pushed him with her foot, watched him topple down the first couple of steps and then disappear into the darkness. She heard him hit every step.

She gave a sudden shiver and realised that, while she was scantily clad, Collingsworth was naked. She ran into the bedroom, collected up his clothes and threw them down the stairs. Shaking from head to foot, she bolted and barred the door behind her. Then, overcome by nausea, she fled for the bathroom where she vomited over and over into the toilet.

Now that the fight was over, she was aware of aching pain everywhere and she could plainly see why when she stood before the mirror. Her body was a mass of bruises, but her face had borne the brunt of Collingsworth’s anger and she sported two black eyes, her face was smeared with blood from the shattered nose, and her bottom lip was split wide open. She wanted to lie on the floor and weep but she knew that that would achieve nothing, so she forced herself to run a bath. She sank with a sigh into the perfumed waters, knowing everything would sting and throb afresh, but she felt defiled and dirty and she needed to try to wash that feeling away.

EIGHTEEN (#ulink_9915dd6c-0ea7-54ee-a588-535cc8ee4e1d)

Molly tossed and turned on the bed, in too much pain and far too upset to sleep, but as she played the scenes over and over again in her head, she became horrified by what she had done and she began to wonder if it had been her fault in some way and if she could have handled it better. The point was, she had drunk too much to behave in any sort of logical way and that was her fault. And was it really necessary for her to push Collingsworth down the stairs, especially as he had already passed out and had a head wound seeping blood?

She hadn’t been thinking straight. She had just wanted the man as far away from her as possible, where he couldn’t hurt her any more, but what if she had killed him? He was rich and influential, Ray had intimated, and she knew she would never get away with killing or even maiming such a person. What would happen to her when it was discovered what she had done? She ran her trembling fingers around her neck, imagined the hangman’s noose tightening there and felt sick with fear.

Ray would know what to do when he came back, though she faced the fact he might be less than pleased with her at first, because pulling Collingsworth’s legs from under him so that he was knocked unconscious and then rolling him down the stairs could not be construed as being ‘nice’ to him by any stretch of the imagination.

But then when she told Ray what Collingsworth had wanted to do, surely he would see that she had little alternative? When he saw the mess that the man had made of her face, she imagined that he would be incensed on her behalf, because she knew that he couldn’t be involved in any of this, whatever the odious man had said. If he had been, wouldn’t he at the very least have tried to take advantage of her before this?

She had offered for him to share her bed. She was sure she wouldn’t have minded too much, not if it had been Ray, but he had been too much of a gentleman to do that. Instead, he had cared for her and certainly had never laid a finger on her in an inappropriate way.

However, Ray wasn’t there, so it was down to her. She knew she had to find out exactly what she had done to Edwin Collingsworth. Her nerve ends quivered and she wished she could curl up in bed and pretend that the naked man, maybe lying dead at the bottom of the stairs, was nothing to do with her.

She shivered as she pushed the covers back, for the place was like an ice box and her head pounded as she lifted it from the pillow. She felt as if she was going to be sick, but she fought the nausea and slid her feet thankfully into slippers. She wished the silky wrap she tied around herself was a cosy woolly one, for though it looked fine, it was not made for warmth.

She doubted, though, that anything could warm her up properly, for it was terror that was filling her veins with ice. She padded across to the front door and, once there, it took all her reserves of strength to slide the bolts back and ease it open. She had picked up one of the torches Ray always left in a cupboard in the hall, and by its light, dim though it was, she saw there was nothing at the bottom of the stairs. There was no body, no clothes – nothing.

However, she had to be certain, and she descended the stairs, her senses on high alert, ready to flee at any moment. But, the stairwell was completely empty except for the little pool of blood at the bottom. Then her torch showed up something gleaming on the floor. She bent to look more closely and saw that it was a pair of gold cufflinks. Collingsworth’s she presumed, which must have fallen out of his cuffs when she threw his clothes down the stairs. She put them into the pocket of her wrap.

She should have felt relieved, but she wasn’t. What if someone had found him and summoned an ambulance, or maybe he had regained consciousness enough to dress himself before stumbling into the street to get help. Either way, it wasn’t necessarily good news for her.

She went back to the apartment, not bothering to slide the bolts now that Collingsworth was no longer at the bottom of the steps. In the kitchen she made a cup of tea, hoping it might stop her teeth chattering. And that was where a furious Ray found her a little later.

Collingsworth’s chauffeur, Will Baker, had brought Ray and Collingsworth to the apartment the evening before. His instructions were then to take Ray wherever he wanted to go, return to the apartment, and wait outside it until his boss might need him. However, it had been cold sitting in the car, and after an hour, the chauffeur had got out to walk up and down, slapping his arms to his sides and had stepped out of the wind into the entry just below Molly’s window to light up a cigarette.

When he heard the commotion, he had grimaced to himself, for he guessed the little quirk his employer had of occasionally beating up young girls and women had got the better of him again. There could be trouble over this if he had done her harm, because Ray had told him he had warned him not to hurt her in any way. He knew why too: the girl was lined up to go to Vera’s whorehouse the following week. ‘Installed before Christmas and working like a good ’un by the New Year,’ was the way Ray put it, and if she was damaged in any way, he knew full well Vera wouldn’t want her, or pay for her, till she was healed and could be of some use.

The chauffeur moved round to the front door of the house, though he knew that it was more than his life was worth to interfere. That was, until he heard the unmistakable sound of someone falling down the stairs. He knew then that his employer might have killed the girl. It wouldn’t be the first time either, he knew, and it had sickened him when he had heard his heavies boasting about it.

Anyway, he decided, whether Collingsworth liked it or not, he couldn’t leave someone who might well need help at the bottom of the stairs so he waited till all was quiet beyond the door before he cautiously opened it. Mindful of the blackout, he had to shut it behind him before he could turn on his torch and then his heart skipped a beat, for it was no young girl there but the battered and bruised body of his employer, and though he was as naked as the day he was born, his clothes lay in a heap on top of him.

Had the girl done him in? Fought for her honour, like? Dear Christ, she was in one heap of trouble, whichever way it was. Will leant across, felt for the pulse in his employer’s neck and was relieved that he was alive at least, so it wouldn’t be the gallows for that young girl, whoever she was.

But the man was still unconscious and the wound Will saw on the back of his head was bleeding profusely. He tried to stanch that with his handkerchief before shaking him gently and whispering, ‘Mr Collingsworth, sir. Mr Collingsworth. Wake up, sir. Wake up.’

He was relieved to see his employer’s eyes flutter open, even though he did shut them straight away, growling out irritably, ‘Turn that bloody torch away from my face, you fool. Nearly damned well blinded me. And where the hell am I anyway?’

But the chauffeur didn’t have to answer that, because the events of that evening had begun to seep into Collingsworth’s brain and consummate rage filled his entire body. ‘Help me into my clothes, man. Don’t just stand there,’ he commanded.