Savage Atonement

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 (#u7ce7c419-dc21-54da-80a5-334d2a66d319)

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.