Alison Fraser - Bride Required

Now Dee lay on her mattress in the dirty squat and recognised it as the night her childhood had ended. She hadn’t run away immediately; she hadn’t been brave enough. She’d wanted to trust Edward’s promises that it would never happen again, so she had. Until the next time two months later. And the time after that at half term. And so on.

Each time he went a little further and each time she became more locked in the awful conspiracy of silence because she hadn’t blown the whistle loudly enough that first night.

Each episode of kissing or touching or accidentally brushing against her brought them closer to the day he would finally rape her. She threatened to tell on him, but never did. Who to tell? Her mother, who popped a pill at the least upset and was on another planet most of the time? Or family friends, who admired Edward for taking on a ready-made family? And, of course, by not telling she reinforced the lies her stepfather was telling himself: that she wanted him the same way he wanted her.

When he arrived mid-term to take her out for a surprise lunch, Dee wanted to refuse, but what could she say when he sat in the headmistress’s office playing model stepfather? And who else could see what lay behind his smile? Not Mrs Chambers, smiling back as good old Edward charmed and smarmed his way into her confidence. Not her best friend, Clare, who read too many teen magazines and thought her stepfather sexy.

So she went upstairs for her jacket and came down the hard way, throwing herself from the landing. Dramatic, possibly, and certainly painful, as the sprained ankle she’d intended escalated into a torn ligament in her knee. She also had to suffer Edward playing the concerned father and caring doctor, until she wanted to scream at them all, Open your eyes. See him for what he is!

But still it was worth it. A trip to the local hospital took precedence over the lunch.

It was that visit which decided her. She waited until her knee mended and the exams were over, then bought a one-way ticket to London. She stayed in a cheap hotel, unable to find work or the bedsit she’d vaguely planned. After a month and a half her money ran out, and she ended up sleeping in a shop doorway for three nights until the police picked her up, and, not believing she was sixteen, located her on a register of runaways and called her parents.

They came to collect her. Her mother was distressed but forgiving, while Edward just seemed relieved. He walked up to her and hugged her as he had in the old days, with a warmth that was natural and fatherly, and promised her everything was going to be fine. After three nights’ sleeping rough and being terrified, Dee would have believed the devil himself. She arrived home in time for her seventeenth birthday and was lavished with presents.

For eight months Edward kept his promise. Dee didn’t give him much choice to do otherwise, returning to boarding school in the autumn, then spending much of the Christmas holidays on a skiing trip. Then she made the mistake of going home for Easter.

At seventeen, and confident, she imagined she could handle anything, but she was wrong.

She had no real warning. That was the trouble. Her mother had a headache, but that wasn’t unusual. Dee sat down to lunch with Edward and he was in great form, relating amusing anecdotes about hospital life. She didn’t really notice him filling and refilling his glass. She wasn’t aware of a mood change until it was too late…

Dee shut her eyes now. She didn’t want to relive it. What had happened had seemed unreal, but was no less disturbing because of it. She had panicked and she had run, and this time no one had come looking for her.

She had no home now, no family, no past. She could do what she wanted, be what she wanted. She could marry Baxter Ross for ten thousand pounds and not give a damn.

Why not? Would it be so hard to be Mrs Baxter Ross?

She wouldn’t have to sleep with him. She probably wouldn’t have to eat with him either. Talking might not even be required, unless they had an audience.

Ten thousand pounds, and she could lie in a clean bed without listening for every sound in the dark, eat without worrying about where the next meal was coming from, live without fear constantly in the background.

In fact, even a cynic like Dee could see it—Baxter Ross just had to be a dream come true!

WHAT was the opposite of a guardian angel? A jinx, Dee supposed. Whatever it was, she had one.

Having tossed and turned for most of the night, she slept when the first rays of light squeezed through the boarded windows and only woke when the air was warm and the sun high in the sky. She didn’t need a watch to tell her she was already far too late. She would never reach the Continental Hotel by nine.

She went all the same, with Henry in tow, and used her last money on the fare. The hotel was posh and exclusive, and its doorman wouldn’t let her past the steps. Reluctant enquiries were made. They confirmed a Dr Ross had been there—had being the operative word. It was her fault for being late, but she cursed him all the same. Couldn’t he just have waited?

She drifted off to the nearest tube station and, without a flute to play, did what she hated and begged outright. Her dismal face drew little sympathy, but enough for her fare home, tea and a roll at Rick’s and two tins of dog food.

She made her way home, thinking the day couldn’t get worse, but it did. She saw the caravans first, parked at the near end of the estate. For a moment she thought they belonged to gypsies, until she saw the vans on the other side and was whistled at by two workmen swilling beers on a caravan step. The developers were moving in.

She raced along to her maisonette, thinking she might already be too late to fetch her stuff, but the flats still stood, doors and windows now plastered with orders to quit and a demolition date two days hence.

She’d known it would be soon. When she’d found the place there had been other squatters around her, but most had since disappeared. She rounded the corner of her block to find the couple from downstairs passing stuff out through a gap in their boarding.

They claimed to have somewhere to go and invited Dee to come along with them, but Dee felt safer on her own.

She went up to her flat and was relieved to find the boarding still in place. She helped Henry in first, because he was too stiff to manage on his own. She collected her things together, ready to move on in the morning, then sat on her dirty mattress, trying not to think of the chance she’d let slip by.

It was some hours later when she heard noises again. They were distant at first, probably coming from the far end of the block. She heard the sound of splintering wood. A board being moved. Perhaps it was someone like herself, looking for a place to sleep. Usually she laid low, waiting for whoever it was to settle.

This time, however, it seemed they were checking every flat, searching for something or somebody, and Dee no longer felt like sitting tight. So she slipped through the gap in the boarding and landed soundlessly on the balcony below, then tried to haul Henry through, but he kept backing away. Having been reluctant to wake, he was even more reluctant to go walking.

Dee heard footsteps directly below her and, panic rising, made another grab for his collar. Unfortunately Henry began to whine and scrape and generally protest at the idea of going through the narrow gap for the second time that day. She leaned further and Henry disappeared altogether in the direction of the bedroom.

Dee might have climbed back in, but the footsteps were no longer below her; they were echoing up the far stairwell. As she withdrew from the window her jacket caught on a nail. The sleeve ripped slightly, then held fast. Rather than rip it further, she shrugged out of it and left it hanging as, in panic, she took to her heels along the balcony towards the other staircase.