‘Right, so, let’s be having you.’ I bent down and slipped off my panties again and grimaced as I wiped between my legs. ‘Now, that’s one side of having sex that I hadn’t given any thought to. Ew.’
I dropped my panties onto the rug, removed the grape juice and beakers from the straw-bale table and sat on it, legs apart, wafting the skirt of my dress. A rustling outside made me jump. ‘Daran? Is that you?’ I stood up and cocked my ear. ‘Could you not stay away, knowing I’m not wearing any panties?’
‘You’re not wearing panties? I always knew you were a dirty girl.’
I leapt up. ‘Jamie Doyle! What the hell are you doing here?’
‘Watching you.’ He took a few steps closer, his dark eyes boring into my skin.
‘For how long?’
‘Long enough.’
My stomach churned. ‘Long enough for what, Jamie?’
‘To see you and the Father doing things a priest shouldn’t even be thinking about, let alone doing.’
I shuddered at the thought of him being a voyeur. ‘He’s not a priest and it was private. You shouldn’t have been watching.’
‘And you shouldn’t have been doing it.’ He took another couple of steps closer. ‘At least I know why you kept turning me down. You were already getting your needs serviced elsewhere.’
I backed away a couple of paces, my heart racing. ‘I turned you down because I’m not interested in you in that way.’
‘Why not?’ He took another step closer. Too close. I could smell alcohol on his breath again and see that gross foam at the corners of his mouth.
I shrugged. ‘I’m just not. I’m sorry, Jamie, but we can’t control who we fall for. I need to be getting home now, so I’ll say goodnight if you’ll just let me pass.’
‘You’re not going anywhere.’
‘Come on, Jamie. You don’t mean that.’
He took another step closer and reached out. ‘Such beautiful hair.’ He ran his fingers down a blonde tress. I froze. ‘Don’t ever get it cut. Because, if you did, I wouldn’t be able to do this.’ He grabbed most of my hair and yanked it, pulling me down onto my knees in front of him.
I squealed as my left knee scraped against a stone and pain shot through my ankle. ‘You’re hurting me, Jamie.’
‘Considering what I saw during your last go with the Father, you quite like it rough. It’s my turn now.’
‘No, Jamie, don’t,’ I whimpered.
But he unzipped his fly and released himself. ‘Suck,’ he ordered, thrusting my head towards his crotch. I gagged at the unwashed aroma and tried to clamber to my feet, but he had one hand entwined in my hair and the other on the back of my head, holding me down and pulling me towards him. I couldn’t move.
‘You take my dick in your mouth and suck it or I’ll tell everyone in the village about your dirty little secret. You’ll be ruined and your beloved Daran McInnery will be shipped abroad where you’ll never see him again.’
‘You wouldn’t do that.’ I knew he would. Even if I did as he demanded.
‘Are you prepared to take the risk?’
Finding some courage from God alone knows where, I pushed at his legs, but he held his ground and laughed. I slapped at them, but he laughed harder – a cold, sinister sound. ‘I’ll tell you something really funny, will I, Jamie? You put that thing in my mouth and I swear to God I’ll bite it off.’
Jamie looked down in horror. ‘You wouldn’t.’
‘Are you prepared to take the risk?’
‘You whore.’ He released my hair and I tried to scramble to my feet, but the punch to my left eye sent me crashing to the floor. ‘You asked for that,’ he yelled.
I tried to scramble to my feet again, but my left ankle wouldn’t hold and I fell to my knees again. Another punch knocked me onto my back. My dress flipped up, revealing my nakedness. Jamie’s eyes widened and, before I had time to move, he’d pounced on top of me. Pinning my arms above my head, he laughed as I screamed. ‘You’re in the middle of nowhere, slut. There’s nobody to hear you. But just in case.’ He grabbed at my discarded panties. ‘We’d better use a gag.’ He stuffed them into my mouth. ‘We don’t want anyone disturbing us.’
And he was right: nobody disturbed us, and nobody heard as I cried for help while I staggered across the meadow and fields in the darkness. Nobody heard as I limped through the village. Nobody heard as I crawled into bed at home shortly before midnight. Yet they all heard when I claimed I’d ‘tripped’ in the darkness. They heard that I was a ‘clumsy eejit’ while the nurse bandaged my twisted ankle and stitched my cheek back together. They heard that I wanted to get my beautiful, long locks cropped into a short bob because I ‘fancied a change, now I’m 16 and all grown up’. Because that was all they wanted to hear – the simple explanations muttered with fearful, downcast eyes and a tone that begged them to say, ‘Are you sure?’ But nobody really heard. Nobody asked. Nobody wanted to. Rape wasn’t something that happened in a good God-fearing community like Ballykielty.
Chapter 40
Present Day
I could hear whispering. I opened my eyes, but the room was in darkness. I was laid on my back in a bed. I fanned my arms out either side of me. I soon touched the wall with my left hand and the edge of the bed with my right. It was a single bed, which meant I wasn’t in my hotel room. So, where the hell was I? I tried to sit up, but my head hurt and I quickly lay back on the pillow again. I reached out my right hand and touched some sort of bedside table, which thankfully had a lamp on it.
A dull, yellowish glow lit the small room. It was a very feminine room. Three walls were painted a dusky pink and the fourth was papered with a delicate flowery pattern. A white wooden wardrobe stood opposite the bed, next to a tall white bookcase packed full of romantic and historical paperbacks. A couple of framed cross-stitches of cottages hung on the walls. It wasn’t a room in Ma’s house. Oh Christ, what if it was a room in Jamie Doyle’s house and he’d…? No! Surely it was too feminine. I imagined Nia had no say in the décor of their home.
The door opened and a shadow crept along the wall. My heart raced uncontrollably. I could have wet myself with relief when Aisling’s voice said, ‘Is that you awake, Clare?’
‘Where am I?’
She shuffled into the room. ‘Mrs Shaughnessy’s house.’ She placed a glass of water on the bedside cabinet.
‘The Black Widow? Why?’
‘She saw the whole thing. She’s the one who called the Guards.’
I closed my eyes. ‘What happened?’
She sat down on the end of the bed. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘I was about to leave, but Nia had my scarf. She… Jesus! Jamie Doyle!’ I sat upright and grabbed Aisling’s arm. ‘You’ve got to warn her. She’s not safe. He’s violent.’
‘I know. It’s okay. The Guards took him after he knocked you out.’
‘He knocked me out?’
‘Mrs Shaughnessy says he struck you and you went down like a sack of spuds.’
Aware that my face was throbbing, I reached up and touched my cheeks, wincing as I felt the swollen skin. I gently moved my fingers and they made contact with what I assumed were some Steri-Strips.
‘The doc came and patched you up.’ She shook her head. ‘You really don’t remember him hitting you?’
‘I remember him hitting me all right. On the night of my 16th birthday. Right before he raped me.’
The next several hours passed in a blur of visits from the doctor and the Guards. They took statements, they took photos, they took swabs from my nails and a sample of my saliva.
I discovered what had happened in the laneway. After wrapping my scarf around his hands and talking about it making a good gag, Jamie had lunged at me, thrusting the scarf across my mouth and grabbing both sides of my head. Nia, who’d obviously ignored his orders to go into the house, had sc
reamed and hurled herself at him. Her tiny frame was no match for his bulk and he’d swatted her away as though she were a fly. Seeing my sister pushed to the ground, anger-induced adrenaline flowed through my veins and I finally unfroze. I tried to knee Jamie in the balls, but he was too quick and jumped back, knocking me off balance on my stupid heels. As I staggered to regain my stance, he drew his fist back and hit me square on the cheekbone. I was already on an unsteady footing, so the force sent me to the ground and I hit my head. Dr Ellory suspected that the blow to my head hadn’t actually knocked me out but that I’d passed out as a result of the trauma of remembering what had happened on my 16th birthday.
The memory of what Jamie had done to me, which I’d somehow managed to bury deep in the recesses of my brain for more than 17 years, was now as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Dr Ellory explained that it was normal for regressed memories to feel very recent at the point of their return. He suggested that Taz’s attack at New Year had started to awaken them, which was why I’d been having bad dreams and seeing shapes and shadows. Then the sight of Jamie Doyle again, brandishing a gag and laughing that chilling laugh, had been the final turn of the key to unlock Pandora’s box.
After I’d fallen to the ground unconscious, Mrs Shaughnessy had alerted the Guards, then ran across the road and into Ma’s house, screaming for Keenan and Éamonn’s help. Nia staggered to her feet and launched herself at Jamie, kicking, screaming and biting. She was no match for him, though. He grabbed her arms and bent one of them behind her back with such force that he actually broke it. Keenan and Éamonn managed to rugby-tackle him to the ground at that point, and several of the guests from the wake kept him pinned there until the Guards arrived.
The whole time he was pinned to the ground, he screamed and shouted about what a whore I was and how I deserved to be raped, and how Nia was just as bad, which was why he had to give her a damn good beating on a regular basis. I cried when I heard that. She was tiny. What sort of monster would do something like that? But I pictured him pinning me down in the farmhouse and hurting me so badly that I knew exactly what sort of monster would do that. Jamie Doyle. A man whose father’s bad blood flowed through his veins.
‘Are you sure you want to be alone tonight?’ Aisling said, as she drove my hire car towards the centre of Cork on Friday evening.
I twisted around in the passenger seat to see out the back window, where Mrs Shaughnessy was following us in Aisling’s car.
‘Mrs Shaughnessy’s been grand, but I can’t stay there. It’s not fair on her and I’ve been so on edge.’
‘Jim’s locked up. He can’t get to you.’
‘I know. I was thinking more about Ma. I kept expecting her to storm across the road and have another go at me.’
‘You could have stayed at my place.’
‘I couldn’t let Torin and Briyana see me like this. They’d have questions.’ She couldn’t argue with that. They’d want to know why their Auntie Clare’s face was covered in bruises. How could we tell them their Uncle Jim had thumped me, then thumped their Auntie Nia, then had to be pinned down by their Uncle Keenan and Uncle Éamonn until the Guards arrived to arrest him? Oh, and now he was in custody being questioned, not just about that incident but about 15 years of domestic violence and the assault and rape of a minor.
‘I’m worried about you, on your own, after what you’ve been through.’
‘You don’t need to be. I could actually do with some time on my own to get my head around everything. Remember, I’m tough as old boots. It takes a hell of a lot to knock me down.’
‘You and I both know you’re not and that what’s happened to you would be enough to push anyone over the edge. But we also know that you’re stubborn and nothing I say is going to change your mind, is it now?’
‘No, but I appreciate you offering.’
We pulled into the hotel car park and exited the cars. I thanked Mrs Shaughnessy for everything she’d done and was a little astonished when she pulled me into her arms and held me tightly. ‘If you need anything... anything at all… you’ll be sure to let me know, won’t you?’ She sounded as if she was about to burst into tears. I raised my eyebrows at Aisling over her shoulder but she shrugged, clearly as confused as me by Mrs Shaughnessy’s reaction.
Twenty minutes later, I was in my PJs with the snuggly complimentary hotel robe wrapped around me. I curled up on the large armchair overlooking the River Lee, sipping on a large glass of wine. I’d hesitated by the bar as I crossed the lobby, wondering if it might be more sensible to have a hot drink instead of alcohol. Coffee wouldn’t numb the memories, though. Wine would. And I wanted them to be numbed.
The return of my memories explained something that had been bothering me: why I hadn’t told Daran when I found out I was pregnant, and how I’d got pregnant in the first place when I had a morning-after pill to take. Despite the trauma I’d gone through, I’d actually remembered to take the pill, but I’d been sick several times that morning – probably from the shock – so it clearly hadn’t made it into my system. As for not telling Daran about the baby, I had no idea who the father was. I pictured Shannon. Anyone with eyes could see that she was my daughter. Personality-wise, she was very much like me too. I hadn’t seen anything of Daran in her so far. Was there anything of Jamie Doyle in her? Jesus, I hoped not. What about the red hair on Luke? Had that been Jamie’s but it had skipped a generation? If that violent rapist was Shannon’s father, did that make any difference to how I felt about her and Luke? So many questions. No answers. I gulped down the rest of my glass, poured another and took a big gulp of that. I looked over at my suitcase and chewed my lip.
It was time.
Chapter 41
I stuffed the last letter back into its envelope. He’d never known I was pregnant. Daran said he’d wondered and had even asked Father Doherty, but he’d categorically been told I wasn’t.
I poured another glass of wine. Bollocks! That was the end of the bottle. The second bottle. I glanced towards the phone by the bed. No! I couldn’t order a third bottle, and I certainly couldn’t move on to spirits. I’d be sick. Chances were, I was going to be sick anyway with nearly two bottles inside me. Oh well, couldn’t feel worse than I already did.
I’d cried, and laughed, and cried some more as I read through Daran’s letters. His early ones were filled with regret that he’d been the cause of my exile, but no regret about our relationship. He poured out his ongoing love and devotion to me, and his longing that we’d be reunited once more. As time progressed, his letters became more chatty. The expressions of eternal love were still there, but it was as though he were right next to me, chatting about his day and his hopes for the future.
When he moved to Sumatra, the letters had arrived less frequently. The love was still there, but there was also a resignation that we weren’t going to see each other again. There was so much of God’s work to be done over there that he couldn’t ever see himself leaving, but he didn’t think it was the right place for me.
I didn’t need to read my letters to him, because I knew they followed the same pattern: hope followed by resignation that Da had succeeded and we’d never be together.
I rummaged in the pile for the second one, scattering the others to the floor. He quoted 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13 – a verse from the Bible that is heard frequently during wedding ceremonies: ‘And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.’
I think of this verse constantly. It’s so perfect for us right now. I HOPE that you’re happy and are being treated well, wherever you’ve been sent. I have FAITH that God will reunite us when the timing is right because He was the one who brought us together. He believes in us. And, of course, my LOVE for you will last until the end of time and beyond…
The words, which were already blurred from the wine, became even more blurred as tears dripped onto the page. I swiped at them. I wasn�
�t going to cry. If I cried for what we’d lost and what could have been, they’d have won. Da would still be controlling my life.
A knock on my door made me jump. I glanced at the phone. I hadn’t ordered a third bottle of wine, had I? I staggered over to the door, bouncing off the bed, then overcompensating and ricocheting off the wall. I opened the door.
‘Ben! How…?’
‘Aisling called. I thought you might need a friend,’ he said, reaching out his arms. ‘I hope I’ve done the right thing.’
‘I need a friend,’ I whispered. As I fell into his arms, the tears started again. ‘He raped me, Ben. He raped me.’
He stroked my back and held me tight. ‘I know. I’m sorry, Clare. But I’m here now and nobody can hurt you anymore.’
At some point in the early hours, my eyes flickered open. My mouth felt as if I’d eaten sand, my cheeks were tight from unwashed tears, my eyes stung and my head thumped. I focused on Ben, fully clothed on top of the duvet, and smiled to myself. My knight in shining armour. Again. Yes, I felt terrible, but I felt safe.
When I awoke again, Ben was sitting by the window, reading a newspaper. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, folding the paper and placing it on the table.
‘Hungover.’
‘I’m not surprised.’ He nodded towards the two empty bottles on the dressing table.
I rubbed my head. ‘Was I coherent last night?’
‘You were a bit slurred and very upset, but I got the gist.’
‘Did I make an eejit of myself?’
He sat down on the bed next to me. ‘You could never make an idiot of yourself. And, if you had, you’d have had every right to. You’ve had a heck of a few days. I’m sorry about your dad.’
‘I’m not.’ I looked away, reluctant to let Ben see the hate in my eyes. ‘He wasn’t a nice man.’
‘What happens next?’
‘It’s his funeral today.’
Dreaming About Daran (Whitsborough BayTrilogy Book 3) Page 25