by Susan Elle
Logan catches up with Catherine just as everyone is being ushered out to the specially prepared marquee where the sit down meal is being served.
“You look ravishing,” he smiles, taking in her silky blonde hair that is starting to get an interesting flick to the longer ends. The heightened colour of her cheeks only serves to make her beautiful blue eyes shimmer more brightly as she laughs up at him breathlessly.
“Thank you kind sir” she curtsies, then kisses him full on the mouth not caring who is watching.
“What was that for?” he asks when she takes a step back from him. “Not that I’m complaining,” he informs her, catching her about the waist.
Catherine looks up at him; and even in her high heels, she does still have to look up at him. “I missed you.” It comes out as a quiet oath that sounds like she’s really saying ‘I love you’. And you taste so damned good.
The meal is exquisite, and the speeches are mercifully short – except for Arthur’s, of course. He has so many people to thank for various generous gifts and for the special friendships that have lasted over many years.
“What did you buy him, you never did say?” She whispers, leaning close to hear Logan’s answer. “Season tickets!” she exclaims loudly. “What the bloody hell does he want those for?” She asks thinking of Logan’s rugby team. “I wouldn’t have pegged Arthur or his wife as rugby fans. Unless the other one’s for Robert,” she frowns. “I suppose that might make sense.”
Logan laughs and gives her ear a playful tug. “Not that kind of season tickets, you dolt,” he tells her fondly. “They are a pair of season tickets to a private box at the Royal Opera House – both Arthur and Miriam love the opera. Perhaps we could go some time – do you like the opera?” He asks then notices that Catherine has stopped listening. Indeed, she has stopped moving at all and her hand, which had been relaxed through his arm a moment before, is now grasping it tightly.
She looks at him then, all the light in her eyes having dimmed behind fearful shadows. “I didn’t know he would be here. I’d never have come if I’d known he would be here,” she proclaims in a frightened little voice.
“Who are you talking about?” Logan looks around, frantically trying to spot who has put the fear of god in to Catherine. “Catherine, who are you talking about?” He asks again, when she just continues to stare at him.
“Charles Llwyd.” It is all she says before collapsing into Logan’s arms.
Catherine woke to find herself in one of the guest bedrooms of the mansion house. Miriam, Arthur’s kindly wife, is looking after her and assuring Logan that she will be all right after a good rest. One of the guests is a doctor and has already checked her over, apparently, but Logan still sounds frantic with worry.
“Logan...?” Her voice is weak but he hears her call out.
“Catherine...?” He has seen her looking drained before but now she looks unearthly. Her normally alabaster skin is now virtually translucent. “You had me worried,” he smiles. Once her eyes have focused on him properly he asks, “What was that about Charles Llwyd?” Logan frowns down at Catherine wondering if he heard her right. “Before you fainted...you said something about Llwyd.”
“I heard him...” eyes widening with alarm Catherine tries to sit up “...he’s here. I heard him,” she repeats her voice rising as the memory becomes clearer. That voice! That voice! That terrible voice!
Logan is holding her now and he is shaking violently. No. No, she realises, she is the one shaking from head to toe. “Catherine...” he is stroking her hair and his voice is soothing “...he was never here. I asked Arthur and Miriam, he was never invited. Arthur does know him but not on a personal basis, apparently...so you couldn’t have heard him. It must have been some sort of...of...” He tails off, has no idea what is going on with Catherine. How could he, as a child she witnessed the sort of horrific violence that would cause any stable adult to have a breakdown, the fact that she spent only two and a half years in psychiatric care is to her credit. “Look, you’ve been having nightmares about this man, maybe that’s all this is...some kind of an ‘awake’ nightmare?” He is clutching at straws and knows it, and so does Catherine.
“So...basically... what you’re saying is...I’m crazy as a frigging loony tune.” Her cheeks are now full of colour. Angry colour, Logan notices. “What the fuck do you expect me to do now?” Catherine leaps off the bed, her arms waving wildly in exasperation. “Maybe you should get me locked up again...isn’t that what you’re really thinking?” Pulling on the ridiculous heels that she has worn to the party, Catherine turns on Logan. “If you don’t even believe me how the fuck can you help me?” Answer me that, Sherlock!
Turning on her heels with Logan following close behind, Catherine speeds down the staircase. However, on descending the last step Logan spins her around. “Just stop!” Logan is looking pretty angry himself. “I am not saying I don’t believe you. I’m just suggesting that there might be an alternative explanation.” His brown eyes hold a fiery glint in there dangerous depths, but Catherine is too blinded by her own temper to pay any heed.
Brushing his hand off her arm, Catherine, in a deceptively quiet, almost reasonable voice, bites out, “Let me make a suggestion that you would do well to act on. Get the fucking car and take me home!”
Not a word passes between them until Catherine realises that Logan is taking her back to his house. “I asked you to take me home,” she states, her temper not having cooled despite the time spent travelling back.
Giving her a sidelong glare, Logan’s temper fires up to match Catherine’s. “Fine!” He swings the Mercedes round the next roundabout and heads back the way they just came. Five minutes later, they pull up in front of the five-bed house where Catherine rents one of them. He doesn’t stop the engine or make any move towards her, and that is just fine with Catherine.
Removing her seat belt with hands that are now trembling with temper, Catherine opens the car door and slides out. Before slamming it shut, she glares back, “Fuck it!” Even before she can turn away, the sleek black Mercedes is disappearing into the night. Shit!
Feeling a fool, standing on the pavement in the early hours of the morning in an evening dress, Catherine wheels round then clutches at her heart in fright. “Ben...what the fuck are you doing here?” Willing her heart to stop trying to claw its way out of her chest, Catherine reaches into her tiny evening bag for her keys. Looking at them reminds her that her damn car is still parked on Logan’s drive. Perhaps she can get Ben to drop her round there some time tomorrow when Logan might be at work. It isn’t cowardly doing it that way, Catherine reasons to herself, she just can’t be arsed to have another run in with him. She has, after all, more important things to do with her time.
Ben sits quietly in the only chair, wicker with a cushion that doesn’t quite fit, that Catherine has in her one room all-inclusive living area. He watches her now, pottering about making coffee on her pathetic electric hob. Beneath it is a tiny oven, and to the side is a two-foot square work surface that has to be used for everything. Next to that is the smallest stainless steel sink and single drainer he has ever seen and he can’t stem a chuckle.
“Why do you live like this?” he asks as Catherine brings him a steaming cup of black coffee. “You could live in luxury...”
“But I choose to live here,” she interrupts, moving to the single bed to sit on it. She looks around. “I have my own bathroom...” she waves a hand towards a shower cubicle fitted into the opposite corner of the room, “...a kitchen, a bed...” she pats the blanket she is sitting on “...the only thing I can’t do in here is take a leak,” she grins ruefully. “You take money far too seriously,” she tells Ben, and gets herself more comfortable, leaning back against the wall.
“And you don’t take it seriously enough,” he scolds then smiles. “Not that you ever have. I couldn’t believe the pittance you were charging when we first met – your clients were ripping you off instead of the other way round.”
�
�I’m not in this for the money. It just happens to be a handy by-product of something I actually enjoy doing.” Catherine is being completely sincere. She never had much growing up alone with her mum. After she’d been murdered, Catherine had had even less. The psychiatric unit had all kinds of everything she could ever have wanted, except for her mother. And she’d had to come to terms with the fact that there was no going back – no one was going to come up to her shouting ‘hey kid, fooled yah!’ Not that anyone had ever come. She had gotten used to spending a lot of time looking out of her bedroom window.
Foster care had not been much better. You had to be able to move from one house to another at the drop of a hat, so it wasn’t a good idea to have lots of possessions. More often than not everything she’d had fitted into a couple of Tesco carrier bags. Her most important needs were more skills really. Like, how not to intrude into the resident family that was offering her a so called home. They didn’t really want her there but the benefits they claimed made it worth the hassle, she supposed. However, the one thing you had to learn was, never back down. Once you did, you were fodder for every bully who wanted to take their own frustrations, tempers or loneliness out on someone else with their fists. That had been a lesson she’d learned fast and still lived by.
Ben watches the emotions playing over her face. He has loved Catherine from the first time he laid eyes on her; but he soon learned that if he made a move on her he would be out the door and his feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Catherine had been running scared. Ben had sussed that right off. It has taken him a lot longer to piece her past together from the little tit-bits she lets drop in an unguarded moment – but they are rare. “What is it, Colson...you look haunted?” As usual.
“Colson...?” Ben repeats when she gives no reply.
Instead of answering his question, Catherine asks him one of her own. “You never did tell me why you were waiting outside the house for me? Did you lock yourself out or something equally daft?” She knows he hasn’t but doesn’t want her question to sound like a pervy accusation.
“No.” he states looking suddenly uncomfortable. “I took a chance that you might be home, that’s all. You haven’t been into the office since...well, since we had that god awful row.”
“I’m actually really glad to see you.” A smile steals across his face and Catherine continues quickly. “I mean, I could use your help.” He doesn’t interrupt and she ploughs on in case her courage fails. “First, I need to fill you in on a few very personal things.”
Ben leans forward in the chair. “I think I may already know some of it,” he interrupts then sits back as Catherine looks at him, obviously annoyed.
“Just give me a minute, Ben. If I’m going to do this I need you to let me tell you in my own way.” Ben nods his assent and Catherine steels herself against the pain she knows the re-telling will bring. “You already know I have no family,” she begins steadily. “I think you may already know, too, that I was in foster care from the age of twelve until I was seventeen, and that’s when I moved here.” Her hands sweep the room again. “This was, is, my first home.”
“I had heard most of that,” Ben confesses. “And I had sort of heard that your mother had died. But that’s about it really.”
“My mother was murdered,” she clarifies, “and I was in the room when it happened.”
Ben gasps loudly, realising the significance immediately. “You were left alive by the murderer and stayed with her while she died?”
The smile she gives him is ugly and sneering. “You could say that...or you could say that a performance was given especially for me.” Catherine can see that Ben is full of questions but holds a hand up to stop him voicing them. “Just let me tell it my own way,” she reiterates then begins again.
“I was home alone, when the man broke in. He didn’t seem to know I was there, at first. My mum was working just down the road, and I prayed she would come back soon.” That prayer has haunted Catherine for years. She has blamed herself for wanting so desperately for her mum to come home and make whoever was in the house go away. Has believed she somehow wished it all on her. “Anyway,” she shakes off the unpleasant thought, “she did come home, and she did confront the man. But he just laughed, grabbed her and brought her into the bedroom where I was hiding under the bed. After taping her hands and feet to the bed and putting more tape over her mouth, he raped her.” She hears Ben’s muffled, “Oh my god,” but ignores it.
She doesn’t tell him how the bastard hurt her mum so badly that she screamed the whole time, or that instead of climbing out from under the bed to help her she’d curled herself up in a ball, closed her eyes tight and put her hands over her ears.
“I don’t know if he knew I was there the whole time, but as soon as it was over he reached under the bed and pulled me out by my feet.” Catherine furrows her brow, trying to recall that part of the memory. “I can’t remember ever making a sound, he just seemed to know I was there; and that’s when the nightmare began.” She takes a deep, steadying breath before carrying on. “I don’t know where he got the tape – brought it with him I suppose – but he used a lot of it to tie me to a chair. He forced my legs open, commented on how lovely my white cotton knickers were, then taped each leg separately to the outside of the front legs of the chair. I was so exposed, so terrified of what I thought he might do to me.” Her sudden, self-deprecating laughter made Ben jump. “Sorry, I just can’t get over it even now – I was so busy worrying about me that it never occurred to me that my mum was still in danger; never occurred to me that the son-of-a-bitch might actually kill her.”
Shaking her head in wonder at her own selfishness, Catherine takes a second or two to swallow a huge ball of shame before she can continue.
However, Ben beats her to it. “Are you crazy?” Ben is on his feet now, not attempting to go over to her or offer comfort, he knows she won’t tolerate that. But he will be damned if he’ll let her carry the blame for what some monster did or for any thoughts of self-preservation she might have had. “Are you totally nuts?” Catherine winces at that but realises Ben is unaware of her time in psychiatric care and isn’t about to clue him in. Pacing angrily up and down the small room he finally comes to a stop at the foot of her bed. “Just how old were you when this happened?”
“Ten,” she replies, “or near as damn it.”
“Ten,” he repeats incredulous. “And you’re seriously telling me that you think a ten year old girl could have done anything to stop that maniac from doing exactly what the hell he pleased? He’d have snapped your pretty young neck in a heartbeat, by the sound of him!” he grinds out, angry on Catherine’s behalf.
Catherine appreciates his anger. No one has ever gotten angry on her account before; well, except Logan, she has to admit if only to herself. “Do you want to hear the rest or do you need to rant some more?” she asks quietly.
Ben shakes his head and retakes his seat saying a very quiet, “Sorry, won’t happen again.”
“Ok, well, I’m not going to go into too much detail about the rest of it...I just can’t right now. Suffice to say, after taping my legs open to the chair I was sitting on, he forced my arms around each side of the high back and taped my hands together real tight.”
Catherine remembers the pain and unconsciously rubs at them. “He tore off another piece of tape and fastened it across my mouth...though I don’t know how he got it to stick the tears had been flowing the whole time and never stopped. Then he pulled my mum up by the hair, her eyes were closed, I wasn’t sure if she was pretending or if she really was asleep – I didn’t realise till much later that he’d knocked her out cold.”
Another gasp from Ben gives her pause, but Catherine is determined to get it all out. “He dropped my mum back on the bed then actually left the room. I was amazed. Was that it? Was he really gone?” She looks at Ben then. “That’s when you could have called me crazy,” she tells him with a knowing shake of her head. “I actually believed the son-of-a-bitch had gone, but
he’d only gone as far as the outer hallway to get his tool bag. Then he brought my mum’s small coffee table in and set his terrible instruments out in precise rows right in front of me.”
Ben’s hand flies to cover his mouth, his grey eyes growing wet with tears that he is fighting valiantly.
“My mum was still out of it, and by the way he looked at me I knew they were meant to hurt me. I had never been so terrified in all my young life. I think he enjoyed that. He’d pick them up in turn, opening blades and cutting a piece of paper to prove how sharp they were. Or he’d open and close various types of pliers and cutters – I know now that some of them were the type of cutters you would use for pruning roses, or some such happy shit. Anyhow, he waved them right under my nose and told me, in detail, exactly what he was going to do with each tool, then moved over to my mum’s bed and began cutting her toes off one by one.”
She has to stop. Her chest is so tight she can barely open her lungs enough to take another breath. But she does, and the next and the next. She can’t look at Ben now; knows she can’t hold it together much longer and seeing his shock and horror will only heighten her own.
“As I said, he put plenty of masking tape over her mouth before he raped her, and taped each wrist and ankle to the four corners of the bed. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t scream; at least not loud enough to make anyone else but me and that monster hear.”
She does look up at Ben then, too lost in the horror of her tale to see his freely flowing tears. “I don’t know that it could have been any worse to hear those screams right out loud; her eyes told me everything I didn’t want to know. She didn’t have any knickers on; he’d ripped those off during the rape, and I thought he might rape her again.” Catherine’s head is already shaking when she says, “He didn’t, but what he did with those tools of his was much worse.” Her mind gradually returns from the hell she’s had to relive in the telling of her mother’s suffering, enough to focus on why she is telling Ben in the first place.