Yesterday's Echoes

She knew how curious people were about her, and could guess at the questions they probably asked one another about her. Always sensitive and by nature an extremely private person, she was acutely aware of how different she was, how isolated from experiences which seemed commonplace to others.

It wasn’t as though she weren’t attractive, as though men weren’t drawn to her, Chrissie had exclaimed in exasperation four months ago on Rosie’s thirty-first birthday, when she had brought up her perennial complaint about Rosie’s dedication to her single state.

‘I’ve watched you,’ she had accused. ‘You freeze the poor things off as soon as they try to get close to you.’

Her mother had been more understanding, but equally concerned.

‘I don’t understand it,’ she had said sadly. ‘Rosie, you were always the one who loved playing with your dolls, who always, from being a small child, talked about getting married and having children. Of the two of you, I always thought it would be Chrissie who would be the career girl. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your life, darling. If being single is what you want…’

‘It is,’ Rosie had told her mother fiercely, but she suspected that her mother knew as well as she did that she was not telling the whole truth.

But how could she explain, reveal to her mother, to anyone, the thing that had made her like this, the guilt, the pain, the shock of self-discovery, the realisation that her degradation and humiliation, her stupidity, had been witnessed by someone else? These had proved so painful to her that the only way she could deal with them was to try to cut herself off from them, from the person she had been before it had happened, to try to create a different person—a safer, better, more responsible, more controlled person.

How could she tell anyone about what had happened? She was too afraid of them condemning her, looking at her, reacting to her in the same way that Jake Lucas had done.

Over the years she had gone over and over it so many times in her own mind, hating herself for having allowed it to happen, for not being more aware, for not realising what was going to happen.

She knew she was not guilty of ever having done anything to encourage him; she could acquit herself of that crime. She had never come anywhere near doing or saying anything to make him think that she might actually want him. How could she have done? She had not had the least conception of what sexual desire was.

She had been a very naı¨ve, protected sixteen, and still far too shy and immature to be sexually aware in any way.

No, she had done nothing to lead him on, but she had had that drink and she hadn’t been able to stop him, and she knew enough about the world now to realise that if she were ever to tell what had happened there would always be those who would wonder…doubt…especially if they were male.

And she could never allow herself to get involved with a man without telling him, without wanting to share with him that secret, shamed, still-hurting part of herself.

And since she was afraid of allowing herself to love a man, only to discover him turning away from her with the same disgust that Jake Lucas had manifested, she had chosen instead not to take the risk of becoming emotionally committed to anyone. It was safer that way, and safety, protecting herself from hurt—these were very important to Rosie. When people commented on her manless state, she told them coolly that she was content the way she was. Normally the coolness she exhibited, the control, was enough to deter them and to protect her, but today was different.

Today she was feeling too vulnerable…too raw inside, too achingly aware of that small, sleeping bundle held protectively against Neil’s shoulder and the man still standing somewhere among the crowd on the lawn, perhaps still watching her…

She shivered, feeling the perspiration break out against her skin, watching helplessly as Neil’s expression changed to one of concern.

‘It’s the heat,’ she heard Chrissie saying. ‘She’s always been vulnerable to it. It’s that red hair and Celtic skin. I told her not to take her hat off.’

There were, Rosie decided faintly as Chrissie led her firmly away, perhaps advantages to having Chrissie for a sister after all.

She quickly changed her mind, though, when Chrissie refused to allow her to drive home.

‘But I need my car,’ she protested.

‘Not now, you don’t,’ Chrissie told her. ‘And if you have got heat or sunstroke, you won’t be needing it tomorrow either.’

‘I’ve got a meeting in Chester tomorrow morning,’ Rosie protested, but Chrissie wasn’t listening.

‘Honestly, Rosie, I should have thought at your age you’d know better,’ she was complaining as she opened her own car door. ‘At times you can be even worse than Paul and Allison…Now get in and I’ll take you home. If we didn’t have the Curtises coming round this evening, I’d take you home with me. I know you…’

Sickly, Rosie closed her eyes. She felt as weak and nauseous as if she were in fact physically ill, but she knew quite well whatever—or rather, whoever had caused those symptoms.

No matter how much logic she used, her senses, her reactions still continued to remind her of the trauma which lay buried in her past.

Jake Lucas. If only he had not been there…that night.

But he had been there…

She winced as Chrissie slammed her car door and started the engine. She was still feeling nauseatingly sick, her body clammy with shock. If only she hadn’t already been caught up in the aching pain that seeing the Hopkinses’ new baby had caused her, she might have been better able to control her reaction to Jake Lucas, she told herself miserably.

Her sister was still talking, still admonishing her for taking off her hat.

‘You left it upstairs on Gemma’s bed,’ she heard Chrissie reminding her. ‘You mustn’t forget to collect it when you go back for your car.’

Rosie lived several miles away from her sister and her family. She could well remember the fuss Chrissie had made when she had found out that Rosie was selling her neat, modern flat and buying a run-down, isolated farm worker’s cottage.

‘It will eat money,’ she had warned Rosie. ‘And wait until you have to spend a bad winter there. You’ll be completely cut off.’

She had frowned disapprovingly at Rosie’s sotto voce ‘Please God’ before going on to remonstrate again with her for her foolishness.

‘I don’t like leaving you here on your own like this,’ she said now as she stopped her car in the lane outside the cottage.

‘Chrissie, I’ll be fine,’ Rosie told her wearily. ‘Stop fussing. I’m an adult, not a child.’

‘You’re still my baby sister,’ Chrissie told her forthrightly, ‘and if you’re that grown-up, how come you didn’t remember to keep your hat on?’

As she got out of the car, Rosie sighed. Typical Chrissie. She always had to have the last word, but beneath her rather bossy manner Rosie knew that Chrissie was genuinely concerned for her and, as she saw that concern now reflected in Chrissie’s eyes, her irritation melted away.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she assured her. ‘A good night’s sleep and—’

‘Ring me in the morning,’ Chrissie demanded imperatively. ‘I’ll come over after I’ve taken Allison and Paul to school and drive you across to collect your car.’

Rosie felt the irritation bubbling up inside her again. She had a meeting in Chester at ten o’clock in the morning. She couldn’t afford to hang around waiting for Chrissie to come and collect her, and she certainly wasn’t going to cancel. It had taken her months of delicate negotiations to persuade Ian Davies to see her and she wasn’t going to throw away everything she had worked so hard for.

She knew that a lot of people had been surprised when she had taken over from her father when he had retired, especially Chrissie. It had been one thing for her to work for him in his insurance agency business, but quite another for her to take over that business and run it single-handedly, despite the fact that she was professionally qualified to do so and had had several years of practical experience, working first for a much larger concern and then, for three years before he retired, for her father.

It had been very hard for her at first, getting the clients to accept her, but then she had managed to deal with a particularly complicated case and get compensation for a client who had come to her after being unable to get satisfaction from his insurance company through another broker. He had been so impressed that he had recommended her to his friends, but breaking down the barriers of male reserve and lack of faith in her abilities was a constant battle.

It didn’t help of course that in her normal, everyday life she was so quiet and unassertive, and she had to acknowledge that at barely five feet two, with a very small body frame and a sometimes irritatingly delicate and feminine set of facial features, her physical appearance was perhaps not that of a woman who could withstand the occasionally slightly sneaky tricks adopted by her clients’ insurers. Not that they would consider it like that.

Gamesmanship was how they preferred to think of it, a justifiable use of their power, and if someone was weak enough to be browbeaten into giving up a claim or settling for less than they had initially expected then tough luck.

But Rosie had no time for such tactics. She could be surprisingly ruthless and determined when she had to be, but there was no getting away from the fact that in the two years since her father’s retirement the business had lost out to some of the much larger agencies.

She had refused to be downhearted; there was still a market…a need for someone like her who was prepared to give specialised time and attention to a client’s needs. The problem was persuading the clients, not convincing herself that her skills were superior to those of a large, faceless organisation.

Which was what she was hoping to do at tomorrow’s meeting with Ian Davies.

She had heard in a roundabout fashion that he was dissatisfied with his existing brokers since they had amalgamated with another firm. A fire at one of his rental premises, which had resulted in his full claim being turned down by his insurers, had increased that dissatisfaction, and Rosie had seen her chance and taken it.

He was a contemporary of her father’s and, she suspected, not wholly comfortable with women taking a leading role in business. She knew that persuading him to give her his business was not going to be easy, but she was determined to at least try.

To prove to others that she was just as proficient as the equivalent male, or to prove to herself that, just because she was a failure as a woman, it did not mean that she had failed as a human being, that just because she had lost her self-respect, her sense of self-worth, her belief that she was worthy of being loved, it did not mean that every pleasure in life was denied her.