Christopher Nicole - Her Name Will Be Faith

Jo hugged her back. “I love you all too, remember?”

“Then you’re not thinking of… well… separating? Or anything like that?”

She was actually considering the dread word, divorce. But she couldn’t tell them that. Certainly she didn’t intend a separation, which could only make matters worse while solving nothing. “No. No, I’m not,” she promised. But Babs and Mike both noticed she wasn’t smiling.

The phone on Jo’s desk buzzed, and she picked it up, heart pounding. She still hadn’t called Richard, although she had almost made up her mind to, knowing full well that it meant she would go to bed with him. But Michael had returned from Newport as aggressively contemptuous of her as ever.

So perhaps Richard had grown tired of waiting; Mark would have gone back to Florida by now.

“Josephine Donnelly.”

“Washington here, Mrs Donnelly. There’s a…” Washington hesitated. “Gentleman down here to see you.”

“Gentleman?”

“Says his name is Stuart Alloan. Says you and he are old friends.”

“Stuart Alloan? I’ve never heard of him. Oh, well, you’d better send him up.” She was preoccupied, at once with thoughts of Richard and with researching her next assignment, Nino Fabretti, the famous guitarist, who was going to be in New York the following week. Stuart Alloan? She looked at her watch; it was half past three, and Florence and the children had not yet got home from school.

The doorbell rang, and she looked through the peephole, while releasing the locks. All she saw was a face, which was certainly familiar… then the door was pushed in with a violence that all but knocked her over. “What on earth…” She gazed at the young man in the dirty sweatshirt and jeans, and the cowboy hat.

“Hope I didn’t hurt you, ma’am,” he said. “You remember me? Name’s Stuart Alloan.”

Jo drew a sharp breath. “Yes. I remember you, Mr Alloan. How did you know where I lived?”

“You told me your name and the magazine you worked for, ma’am. They gave me your address.”

That stupid girl, Jo thought; am I going to have a word with her. But first, this lout had to be removed. “What do you want?”

He looked her up and down. Working at home, she wore only a housecoat, as he could certainly tell, however tightly she had retied the cord before answering the door. “Well,” he said. “I thought you might have a copy of that article you were gonna do on me.”

“Not on you, Mr Alloan. On hurricanes. But the magazine only comes out once a month, and the article is in July’s issue. Sorry. So if you’d like to leave…”

He had closed the door behind him, and now looked around the lounge. “Say, some place you got here, doll. Must be money in writing for magazines, eh?”

Jo discovered her heart was pounding quite painfully, and she was feeling a little sick. The nearest telephone was in the study — on the far side of the intruder. And Nana was in the kitchen, asleep; she would be awakened by a call, but the kitchen door was shut, again behind the intruder. How on earth had she been so careless? Simply because her brain had been entirely filled with thoughts of Richard. But there was no use in losing her head. “The apartment belongs to my husband,” she said. “Who will be home any minute.”

“Is that a fact?” he asked. “You know that’s what they all say?”

“They all?” She licked her lips, slowly backing across the room towards the brass-edged glass table. It was used to display ornaments, one of which was a tall, slim statuette, cast in bronze, on a marble pedestal. It could be a serviceable weapon. “You mean you make a habit of calling on women in the middle of the afternoon?”

He pointed at her. “Don’t gimme any sauce, lady. I kinda like you. All of you. I really came up to see if you was ready to show me those tits.”

Jo reached the statue, and wrapped her fingers round it, breathing a sigh of relief as she lifted it from the table. “If you don’t leave right now,” she said, “I am going to brain you, and then hand you over to the police.”

His finger was still extended. “Now that’s fighting talk, doll. You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna take that thing and stuff it right up your ass. You’ll like that, eh?”

He came round the sofa, and Jo inhaled. She hadn’t expected to be challenged. But then she hadn’t expected anything like this to happen at all. Not in her own apartment, guarded by Washington… but she had told Washington to send Alloan up without checking further– Washington had all but told her, without actually being rude to a possible friend of hers, that he didn’t like the look of the fellow. “I mean it,” she warned. “I…”

Alloan moved far more quickly than she had anticipated. She swung the statue, but he easily evaded it, and then caught her arm with a strength that surprised her, twisting it so that she yelped with pain and dropped the ornament to the floor with a thud. Then his other arm went round her, clutching her against him, and his fingers were tugging at her housecoat, tearing it open to fumble inside, digging into the flesh of her breasts and buttocks. She gasped and twisted and used her elbows and kicked at him, and managed to get away, although leaving the gown in his hands as she stumbled forward and fell across the back of the sofa.

Before she could recover he had seized her shoulder to hold her there, head down, legs flaying. While he also picked up the statuette. “Now,” he said. “Just let’s part these pretty little cheeks…”

“No!” she screamed, hating herself for being so terrified. “No, please…”

The front door opened and Florence and the children stared at the scene in front of them.

“Florence?” Jo shrieked. “Call Washington. Call the police. Call…” She realized the hand had left her shoulder as Alloan straightened, and she turned, kicking as hard as she could for his crotch. Momentarily distracted by the intruders, Alloan did not defend himself and gasped with pain.

“Nice work, Mom,” Owen Michael shouted, running into the room, seizing a large Chinese vase, and smashing it over the man’s head.

Alloan was still bent double; clutching his genitals… and he had dropped the statue. Jo grabbed it again in both hands, swung and hit him on the head with all her strength.

“May I ask just what the shitting hell has been going on?” Michael Donnelly stood in the center of his lounge and looked around him.

“Oh it was terrible, Mr Donnelly,” Florence said.

“A man was here,” Tamsin shouted.

“Assaulting Mommy,” Owen Michael declared.

“Mommy was all bare,” Tamsin informed him.

“But Mommy bopped him one with the statue,” Owen Michael assured him, proudly.

“And Owen Michael hit him with the big vase,” Tamsin added.

“Blood everywhere,” Florence managed to get a word in.

“You were all bare?” Michael echoed, looking at Jo who was now fully dressed.

“Washington came, and the police, and took the man away,” Tamsin said.

“The sergeant said Mommy had been awful brave,” Owen Michael went on.

“And he said Owen Michael had been brave too,” Tamsin added loyally.

Nana barked and attempted to frisk; even if she had missed the actual combat, she hadn’t had such an exciting afternoon in years.

Michael continued to glare at Jo. “I think you kids had better go do your homework,” he said. “Your mother and I would like to have a little chat.”

“Yes,” Jo agreed, understanding that her ordeal was not yet over. “Run along, children. Thank you so much, Florence. I think you saved my life, literally.”