Hell Hath No Fury (2 page)

‘Perhaps you'd like time to think about it . . .?'

‘No! No, no. Of course not!' She bit her lip. She didn't want to sound too eager. But neither did she want him to think she wasn't interested.

‘Does that mean your answer is yes?'

Maureen nodded.

Leaning across the table he took one of her hands and lifted it to his lips. ‘I am most honoured!' he said gravely.

Her tight smile masked her inner surge of contentment. Suddenly, her future had shape; a whole new vista was opening up. As Professor Philip Harmer's wife there would be so much to look forward to; a completely different way of life. Working together they could achieve tremendous success.

‘I'm very happy to do so,' she murmured.

‘And I'm extremely gratified that you have accepted.' He signalled to the waiter. ‘We must drink a toast! Champagne?'

As they clinked glasses he smiled gravely. ‘I realize you know very little about me. Or I about you, if it comes to that!'

Maureen smiled politely. She still felt mesmerized.

‘Confession time then!' He touched his glass against the side of hers again. ‘I'll begin. I'm fifty-three. A bachelor! I'm sound in wind and limb, and a practising Roman Catholic. You know the sort of work I do so there's nothing more I need tell you about that. You also know that I'm planning an expedition to the Far East quite soon.'

He paused, took a sip of his drink and regarded her solemnly. ‘I thought we could have a quiet wedding and make the trip a double event . . . Namely, our honeymoon.'

Maureen took a deep gulp of her champagne and almost choked. Things were moving so swiftly that she felt as if she was being bulldozed along.

‘As well as my work, I have private means, and a flat in Portman Mansions,' he went on, mentioning a prestigious block of property outside the town. ‘I've never been married and I have no family ties. What else can I tell you?'

Maureen smiled nervously. ‘It sounds as though you've led an irreproachable life!'

‘I hope so. I've always tried to conform, and to be a law-abiding citizen,' he added a trifle pompously. ‘My only brush with authority was when I was twelve. I was caught smoking in the bike shed behind the church by Father Declan, and he threatened to call the police,' he added with an attempt at humour to lighten the tension.

‘An exemplary character!'

‘Or a dull one. It depends on your outlook,' Philip remarked stiffly. ‘Having been brought up Roman Catholic I've always behaved myself because I have a very zealous conscience.'

‘It's an admirable quality!' Maureen murmured, her eyes shining. There was a curious old-fashioned dignity about him that she found endearing.

‘So now, what about you?'

Maureen shrugged her slim shoulders and looked thoughtful. ‘Equally blameless, I think.'

‘Go on,' he persisted. ‘I want to hear everything right from your schooldays.'

Maureen shrugged. ‘OK. After A-levels I spent two years at a business college, and then I went into marketing, specializing in research. Three years ago I started freelancing. For the last six months I've worked exclusively for you.'

‘An equally irreproachable life, or so it would seem! Not a single brush with the law? Not even a parking ticket?'

A shadow crossed her face. She avoided his eyes and drained her glass.

He frowned. ‘Is there something you've remembered?'

‘No . . . no. Nothing . . . nothing at all!'

Her emphatic denial increased his curiosity. ‘Look –' he leaned across the table, and took both her hands in his – ‘I hold you in very high regard, Maureen. Over the last few months you've become an irreplaceable part of my life. I value you as a friend as well as a colleague. I'm sure neither of us is passionately in love with the other, but for all that, I think marriage between us could work.'

She tried to speak, but failed. She had been aware of the charisma between them right from the moment they had first met. Her feelings for him went far deeper than mere friendship. Even so, she hesitated to tell him how much in love with him she was. He was so reserved that she felt it might embarrass him if she did.

‘In my business dealings I have always found complete honesty to be the most manageable way of conducting things. That is why I want us both to know everything there is about each other,' he told her earnestly.

‘Yes. Yes, of course! I do understand.'

‘I have told you all there is to know about myself. I am simply asking you to do the same.'

‘I have!'

He shook his head. ‘You've told me very little. I don't even know how old you are!'

Suddenly afraid that Philip Harmer might withdraw his offer of marriage, Maureen became uncharacteristically garrulous.

‘I'm thirty-four, and I'm single. I have my own car, and my own home. It's a one-bedroom apartment in a new estate here in Dutton. My parents are still alive, and living in North Wales. They moved there when my father retired. I've already told you all about my career.'

‘And you've had no brush with the law . . . Not even when you were a teenager?'

The words were spoken in a jesting tone but she was conscious that he was watching her keenly. She felt a dull flush creep up her neck, gradually suffusing her cheeks.

‘No! No! Of course I haven't!' She spread her hands, then covered her face with them, shielding herself from his piercing blue stare.

‘There's obviously something you're not telling me,' he persisted in a puzzled voice. ‘What is it? If we are going to spend the rest of our lives together I feel I have a right to know,' he added pompously.

‘Can I have another glass of champagne!'

He frowned. ‘Of course!' He refilled her glass, but didn't join her in a second drink.

The silence between them was an uneasy one.

‘Now, what have you to tell me?' He waited expectantly.

Maureen sipped her champagne. ‘It was all a long time ago,' she said in a low voice. ‘I've never spoken about it to anyone else, except my parents . . .' She hesitated, wishing she'd kept silent, wondering if it was wise to say any more.

‘I'm listening.'

‘It happened when I was eighteen. The last day at school . . .' She took another drink from her glass.

The champagne sent a surge of euphoria through her, clearing her head, reviving long buried memories.

She felt as if she was being transported back sixteen years. One of an excited crowd of teenagers all clamouring around the notice board in the hall at Benbury Secondary School trying to read their A-level results.

She had been the only girl on the list. The other girls had all been bitterly disappointed. They began teasing her, deriding her achievement, calling her a ‘swot'. Boys who had failed, equally jealous of her achievement, had joined in.

The boys whose names were listed alongside hers had insisted she went with them for a celebration drink.

She'd never been in a pub before. They had downed pints of beer or lager, but they'd bought her a whisky and lemonade followed by a gin and tonic. Unused to drink of any kind, she had been legless by the time they left the pub.

The boys were in high spirits. A few blocks up the road five of them had bundled her into a disused shed on the edge of some waste ground. At first they'd been content to force kisses upon her, but it didn't stop at that. As they bantered and teased each other, they'd grown more and more aroused. Egging each other on, the lustful, drink-inflamed teenagers had raped her one after the other, leaving her bruised, battered and almost unconscious.

‘Since then, I've avoided men,' she told Philip Harmer in a shaky voice as she finished her account of the incident. She gave a tremulous smile as she looked across at him.

The look of horror on his thin face brought her sharply back to the present as though she'd been doused in cold water.

‘Are you telling me you were gang-banged?' he asked incredulously.

‘That's rather a crude way of putting it, but in essence I suppose that was what happened,' she admitted hesitantly.

He shuddered. ‘I don't believe I'm hearing this!'

She stiffened as she heard the revulsion in his voice. ‘It was a long time ago. And it certainly wasn't my fault!' she defended hotly.

Philip Harmer avoided her eyes, but she was acutely aware that he was deeply disturbed by what she had told him.

‘Will you excuse me for a moment?' Scraping back his chair he stood up and made for the toilets.

Maureen shook her head like a boxer recovering from a well-aimed punch. She couldn't believe that she had been so stupid. All these years she had never breathed a word to a living soul about what had taken place in that shed on her last day at school. And to blurt it out now! To Philip Harmer of all people! The one person she was most anxious to impress.

The pain deep inside her was like a knife turning in her chest. She felt physically sick. Tears pricked behind her eyelids. She blinked them away, determined not to break down. That would be the final humiliation.

She had almost regained her self-control by the time he returned to the table, but her head was spinning, and she suspected it was because she had drunk too much champagne.

‘Could I have a coffee?' she asked muzzily.

There was an uncomfortable silence while they waited for the waiter to bring it.

‘When are you planning . . .' Maureen fumbled for the right words. She didn't think ‘for us to get married' were appropriate at the moment so she changed it to: ‘To leave on this visit to the Far East?'

Philip Harmer frowned, his mouth pursed. ‘I'm not sure. I haven't finalized the exact date of my trip yet.'

‘It will be quite soon?'

‘Oh yes!' He gave a thin smile. ‘No point in delaying matters . . . no point at all.'

She relaxed a little. Now the initial shock had passed it seemed he was taking her revelations in his stride.

Her spirits lifted. That must mean that everything was going to be all right between them, and she had nothing to worry about after all. It had been something of a bombshell for him, but now she'd confessed he would be able to forget all about it, just as she had done all these years.

M
aureen Flynn tried desperately to get to sleep. She tossed and turned, plumped up her pillows, buried her head under the bedclothes, all to no avail. No matter what she did she was unable to blot out from her mind the humiliation and despair she felt following her revelations to Philip Harmer.

She still couldn't believe she had taken such a risk with her own future. She must have been mad! It was like winning the Lottery and then screwing up the ticket instead of collecting the winnings.

Would she ever be able to forget the look of distaste on his thin face when she'd told him that she had once been raped, or was it going to haunt her forever?

To have guarded her shameful secret all these years and then to have blurted it out like she had done was unbelievable! And to Philip Harmer of all people!

What could she have been thinking about? Such utter stupidity! It was bordering on a death wish. He was the first man who had ever penetrated the hard shell she'd built around her feelings. The only man she had ever met who appealed to her as a prospective partner.

The only man who had ever proposed to her!

It wasn't like her to blab about her past. That was a closed book. She'd buried it deep in her subconscious many years ago. Something she'd been determined to forget for ever. Now it was all floating on the surface again.

Her mind seethed with memories as the harrowing experience flooded back into focus. She was back there. In that dank, dirty shed with its cobwebs and dirt floor. She was being jostled by the boys, pushed and pawed, slobbered over.

It had started with wet, beery kisses. First one, then another. Then they were all over her, scrabbling like pigs in a trough. Pushing their wet mouths against her throat and neck.

She'd felt sick and frightened when they'd started pulling at her clothing. Ripping off her school blouse they grabbed at her breasts, squeezing, licking, sucking. When she'd cried out in pain one of them had stuffed a grubby handkerchief in her mouth. She'd kicked and fought, trying to get free, but the more she'd struggled the more frenzied they'd become. They'd behaved like vicious animals

Sandy Franklin had been unspeakably cruel. Tall, raw-boned with a wild shock of red hair, and big, bony hands, he'd been the most callous of them all. He'd been the first one to rape her, goaded into doing so by taunts and jeers from Dennis Jackson.

Jackson had been the oldest of the gang. Head boy. A natural leader. Brainy. Scheming. Sinister, with a vicious streak of cruelty in his make-up.

He'd egged Sandy, and the others, into action. Ordered them to hold her down, to strip off the rest of her clothing. There'd been a gleam of enjoyment in his green eyes when she'd begged him to tell the others to stop.

He could have put an end to them molesting her. They both knew that. One word from him and the others would have held back, but he chose not to. It was obvious from the look on his face that he was experiencing a vicarious thrill from what he was witnessing.

He'd waited until last for his turn.

Maureen felt herself breaking out into a cold sweat as she recalled the unspeakable indignities she'd suffered at his hands. Afterwards, along with the others, he'd taken to his heels. They'd left her lying there in the shed, sobbing.

Bruised and shaken she'd stumbled home. Her parents were shocked and outraged when they heard what had happened, but they told no one, not even the police. So great was their shame that they had refused to even call a doctor!

Trembling and tearful, her mother had bathed her and tended to her cuts and bruises. Then she'd put her to bed with aspirins and hot milk, almost as if nothing untoward had happened.