Alison Fraser - Tainted Love

She was tempted to hitch-hike, but didn’t. A car stopped of its own accord while she stood there.

‘Going to Oxford?’ the young man driving the open-topped Morgan enquired, and, at her nod, invited, ‘Hop in.’

Clare hesitated, but not for long. The young man had Hooray Henry written all over him and she judged him—if not his driving—to be safe.

She was right. He drove like an idiot, chatted her up like mad, but made no dangerous moves. She earned her lift by listening, more or less attentively, to his bad jokes, suffered his laughter and thanked him politely for delivering her direct to the station.

She’d no sooner waved him goodbye than a car screeched up in his place. A Jaguar, green in colour, familiar in driver.

She was so surprised, she waited while Fen Marchand jumped out of his car and, with a face like thunder, came round to her side.

‘And who was that?’ he demanded without preamble. ‘A friend of yours?’

‘Well, no...’ Clare found herself on the defensive. ‘Not a friend, exactly. He just offered me a lift.’

‘I know,’ he grated back. ‘The question is what he imagined you were offering in return.’

‘I...nothing!’ Clare spluttered back. ‘Look, Mr Marchand, I don’t know what kind of girl you think I am—’

‘The stupid kind,’ he cut in rudely. ‘Forget the fact he was driving like a bloody maniac most of the way. Do you know how many places he could have turned off on that road? Do you?’ he demanded, grasping her roughly by the arms.

Unable to free herself, Clare threw back, ‘You tell me. You’re the one that goes creeping around, following people.’

‘I was waiting in the pub car park for you,’ he countered heavily, ‘when you decided to go off with a total stranger. What do you expect me to do? Leave you to get raped on some lonely farm track?’ he said brutally.

The words made Clare flinch, then relent slightly. ‘In that case, it’s kind of you to be concerned, but I can take care of myself.’

‘I bet!’ He scoffed at the idea, before coldly informing her, ‘It wasn’t kindness, Miss Anderson, it was self-preservation. I didn’t fancy being suspect number one had your lift decided to murder you in a post-coital rage,’ he declared with angry volume.

Clare’s face flamed like an over-ripe tomato, conscious of heads turning in their direction. ‘Would you keep your voice down?’

‘Why?’ he threw back at her. ‘I imagine you like people noticing you. Young men, at any rate. In fact, I wonder if I misjudged the situation. Perhaps you were hoping for a little adventure down some country lane—’

‘Why, you—’ Clare tore her arm free and cracked a hand against his cheek.

He touched his face, shocked for an instant, then rasped, ‘You bitch!’ as he made a grab for her again.

She backed off, hissing at him, ‘You want me to scream, Professor...? Do you?’

Fenwick Marchand looked angry enough not to care. He took a step towards her and she opened her mouth as if to scream. ‘All right,’ he growled at her, ‘you win. Don’t make a fool of us both.’

‘Oh, you don’t need any help for that, Professor,’ she retorted on a contemptuous note that drew his furious scowl.

‘Then presumably you don’t need my help either, Miss Anderson,’ he countered in a voice like ice.

‘If you mean your job—stick it!’ Clare suggested less than politely, and, having burned her boats, walked off into the rush-hour crowd.

She felt good. Buoyant. Triumphant. At least until she’d caught her train. Then she had time to think, time to count the cost of another failure. True, she’d never stood a chance. He had written her off before they’d even met. But he wasn’t going to be the only one. Few people wanted to employ ex-offenders.

And that was what she was. Clare Mary Anderson. Number 67904, C Wing, H.M. Prison, Marsh Green, Sussex. Category B prisoner. Convicted of a variety of offences.

Guilty of some, too.

‘LOUISE!’ Clare was taken aback at the sight of the other woman standing outside her room in the hostel.

‘I did telephone,’ Louise Carlton explained, ‘but there was no answer.’

‘No, the caretaker’s hardly ever there,’ Clare answered absently, still staring in surprise at her visitor.

It had been over two weeks since the interview. She hadn’t heard from Fenwick Marchand or Louise in that time, but then she hadn’t really expected to. She’d assumed Marchand would relay their quarrel and his sister would naturally take his side.

But here was Louise, saying in her kindly manner, ‘I meant to come last week, only I had a touch of flu... May I come in?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Clare waved her inside the room and cleared her only chair of a bag of shopping so that the older woman could sit down. ‘I was going to write to apologise, but...’

‘Apologise?’ Louise looked quizzical.

‘Well, I know I let you down.’ That had been Clare’s main concern over that fiasco of an interview. Louise had given her a chance, and she’d done her best to blow it.

‘On the contrary,’ Louise rejoined, ‘it’s I who should apologise. I hadn’t realised my brother could be so narrow-minded. I should have, though. He’s never been easy, even as a small boy.’

Clare could believe that, although she found it hard to imagine Fen Marchand as anything but fully grown and mean with it.

‘He was a late baby,’ Louise confided, ‘and tragically our mother died shortly after his birth. Fen’s upbringing was left to a series of housekeepers, before our father packed him off to prep school at the age of eight.’

Clare was struck by the similarity between Marchand senior’s childhood and Marchand junior’s. ‘Is Miles at boarding-school, too?’

Louise shook her head. ‘Fen has been educating him at home, but boarding-school is definitely on the cards. He’s at his wits’ end, you see. That’s why I’m here...’

Clare frowned, wondering what Louise was leading up to. Surely Marchand wasn’t considering employing her?

It seemed not as Louise ran on, ‘I might as well be frank. He took on another housekeeper last week when I was ill. He got her through an agency. Anyway...’ She hesitated mid-tale.

Clare misunderstood, saying, ‘It’s all right, Louise. I knew he’d never offer me the job. I don’t mind.’

‘Oh, but he is ,’ Louise insisted, ‘offering you the job. Now. If you’ll take it... You haven’t got another, have you?’

‘Well, no, but...’ Clare had lost the thread of this conversation somewhere ‘...if he has someone else?’

‘ Had ,’ Louise corrected drily. ‘She lasted two days. I’m afraid Miles didn’t take to her and, well...I might as well tell you—he put a frog in her bed. A dead one. I know it sounds absolutely disgusting. Actually it was. But I can honestly say he’s never done anything quite like it before. Been rude, certainly, and answered back, but nothing quite like that. I don’t know where he got such an idea from.’

Clare did. She remembered giving it to him.

‘Fen was livid,’ Louise continued, ‘and duly announced that Miles was to go to boarding-school in the autumn, whether he liked it or not. Well, Miles obviously doesn’t like it because he’s been in a state of dumb misery ever since.’

‘Oh.’ Clare’s face clouded in sympathy with the boy.

‘Not that I blame Fen,’ Louise hastened to add. ‘What else can he do? He can’t work and look after Miles, and it’s too late for him to take a year’s sabbatical. He’s tried.’

‘Really?’ Clare didn’t hide her surprise. Because he was well-off and successful, she hadn’t seen Fen Marchand in the role of a single parent, struggling to do the right thing for his son.