Mrs Colton notices and her lips narrow into a thin line. Her greying yellow hair is still in curlers but she is already wearing her ever-present bright pink lipstick. A vast floral silken robe is cinched tightly around her thick waist. Her abundant breasts and hips are straining against it. But Mr Colton has eyes only for me.
“Did you disobey our rules?” he shouts at me. “Answer me, girl!”
He shakes my arm, and his hard fingers dig into my flesh, where I know they will leave bruises.
Stupid creature, says the voice, with his stupid questions. Are you really going to let him grab you like that?
I hang my head, and mutter, “I’m sorry.”
“I’ll teach you to be sorry,” he snarls.
He drags me up the stairs towards my attic room. Mrs Colton follows closely behind. When we get there, his eyes flit around the room and narrow when they see my bed. He knows that I put it against the door last night.
He drags me over to it and throws me down. I try to sit up but he holds me, forcing my head against the mattress. He is a big man, well over six feet tall, and he pins me effortlessly. His hand slaps into my backside, and I can’t stop that first scream of pain. I clench my teeth together to stop any more sounds coming out. Again and again he hits me, his knee pressing into my back as he gets into it. The fabric of my clothes is thin and every blow on my flesh makes me flinch.
If you must let him do this to you, says the voice, don’t squeal like a wounded animal.
I want to scream at him to stop. How dare he touch me? But my shouting will only make it worse. I bite my tongue to keep from doing it.
Hush now, says the voice. Tonight, while they’re sleeping, we’ll pay him back. A little sharp knife to where it hurts most.
Suddenly Mr Colton turns me over until I am facing him. One hand presses roughly into my waist and his other hand digs into my hair. He is breathing hard, his eyes wild. He is looming over me, tall like his boys, and broad with a barrel chest, his face and body turned to fat from long hours at a desk. His broad shoulders block out the light, making him seem like a monster. My hands come up in front of me as if to fend him off.
“That’s enough, George,” says Mrs Colton.
There is a long moment of silence when all I can hear and see is his harsh breathing and his awful face. He looks at her angrily.
“That’s enough, I said!” she snaps. “You’ll be late for work.”
Mr Colton reluctantly moves away. He slams the door on the way out.
“Harlot!” Mrs Colton hisses, advancing towards me. “How dare you flaunt yourself half-naked in front of my husband?”
I scramble backwards on the bed, trying to get away, but she slaps me anyway. And once she has started she can’t stop. She pinches me and then she jabs me and then she punches me, her hands a flurry of increasingly violent movement.
She is a big woman, only a couple of inches shy of six feet. She is strong too, from all the dough that she bashes every day and from her constant gardening. Her blows hurt. They land everywhere. On my back, my chest, my stomach. On every part of me that offends her, except my face. She doesn’t touch my face.
Fight back! the little voice snarls. Some Angel of Death you are!
She hates Mrs Colton more than I do. But I don’t fight. I curl up, bringing my knees to my chest to protect myself. This only makes Mrs Colton angry and she drags me off the bed onto the floor, where she starts kicking me.
Her physical abuse started a few months after I arrived here six years ago. I am her stepsister’s daughter, adopted as a baby. They say I was in the car crash that killed my adoptive mother, but I have no memory of it. Or of anything of my life before it. No memories of a time when I was loved. They would have been a comfort, but they had never come. Perhaps they never existed. Perhaps her sister sensed what I was too, and hated me for it.
When I first arrived here I had thought that Mr and Mrs Colton with their prying eyes watching my every move was awful. But then their sons had come home from college. The boys had started trying to find ways to get me alone, and Mr Colton had been jealous, and Mrs Colton’s slaps had turned into punches.
Get up and hit her, insists the little voice. Or let me. I’ll do it for you.
I whimper as one of Mrs Colton’s kicks lands in my stomach, punching all of the breath out of my body. And then suddenly she stops kicking me. I am gasping from the pain. She drags me up by my hair and forces me to sit on my bed.
“Quit your crying,” she hisses.
I flinch, thinking she is going to strike me again. I hate the flinch but it is an automatic reaction. The door opens and Buck comes in. She must have heard him coming.
In his mid-twenties, Buck looks like a trimmer version of his dad. A big stocky young man who girls must find attractive if his string of girlfriends is anything to go by. I find him repulsive.
The only good thing about him is that his mother never hits me when he is there. She doesn’t want her boys to think she is anything but sweet. But Buck isn’t stupid. He knows exactly what is going on.
His eyes look me over and he smiles greedily, seeming to relish my humiliation. I look away from him.
“Darling,” she says brightly to him. “I thought you and your brother were going to work today?”
“Nah,” he says, lazily leaning against the door with his basketball in his hands. “Maybe later.”
Buck and Cody are supposed to be working for their father, but they mostly work only when they want to, something which infuriates Mr Colton.
“You’ve got a visitor downstairs,” Buck says.
Mrs Colton looks startled. Our client’s appointment isn’t supposed to be until this evening. Her face goes pale. Her eyes flick to me and I can tell that she is worried the visitor might have heard her hitting me.
Chapter 3
DIANA
“She’s here already?” says Mrs Colton, looking flustered. “How long has she been here?”
“It’s a man,” says Buck. “He just got here.”
“What man?” she asks sharply.
Buck grins, looking at me with a malicious expression in his eyes. “Dunno. But he seemed to know all about the little freak here.”
Mrs Colton looks flustered. She stares at him with her mouth open. She is still looming over me, and I can tell she is worried the visitor might have heard her hitting me.
“Must be the husband or her brother or something,” she mutters.
Buck shrugs, making it clear he thinks the appearance of an unwanted visitor isn’t his problem.
Mrs Colton moves away from me and straightens her gown. “But I wasn’t expecting… I have to go down and get dressed. I told her to come alone this evening. She wasn’t supposed to send someone else.”
She looks at her son expectantly, like she wants him to go away. But he only stands there, grinning fake-stupidly.
Looking frustrated, Mrs Colton turns to me. “The stupid woman has sent someone to check on us. He probably wants proof you’re the real thing, so you’d better make it convincing. Give him exactly what he wants.”
She knows I can’t make the visions come on demand. She doesn’t care. When they don’t, she expects me to make things up. It’s why she lets me use the internet to research customers. I don’t bother to tell her tonight’s client doesn’t have a brother. And her marriage didn’t survive the grief of a lost child. Tonight’s client doesn’t have anyone at all.
My stomach twists in knots thinking of the poor woman. Tonight’s client is the mother of the girl hanging from the tree. I had barely managed to persuade Mrs Colton not to put pictures of her up in my room. It would have been too awful to see her face day after day.
“Your best behavior, do you hear?” Mrs Colton says. “And put on something decent!”
With that she sweeps from the room, frowning at her son and yet affectionately patting his cheek on her way out.
Buck lingers after she is gone, like he has no intention of leaving. He is standi
ng in the doorway, blocking me from shutting it. I don’t ask him to leave because he will not listen to my request. I walk over to my door. I am hoping that if I casually try to shut it he might leave, that he won’t want to make trouble within earshot of his mother and the visitor.
However, he only smirks at me and puts his foot out to wedge the door open.
“You heard her,” he says. “Put on something decent.”
“Not with you here,” I say. I wanted to sound quietly firm, but my voice comes out meek.
“Then you are going to have to go out wearing that, aren’t you?” he says, smiling at my damp nightshirt. It is long and greying pink and saggy, and though it is hardly better than anything else in my wardrobe, I know I can’t go down wearing it.
“Please, Buck,” I say quietly.
“I wish you’d please Buck,” he says, leering at me.
Coward, says the little voice inside me. She means me, not him.
I know there will be no getting rid of him. I go over to my clothing rack and eye up the meagre selection. All of the dresses are Mrs Colton’s old dresses. They are baggy and worn at the edges, and are mostly grey or brown. She only gives me her ugliest hand-me-downs.
Buck comes to stand behind me. He puts his hand on my hip. “You want a pretty dress?” he whispers in my ear. “I could buy you a pretty dress.”
“Stop it, Buck!” I say it loudly and sharply enough for my voice to carry downstairs. I know he will make me pay for it later, but I am hoping that the fact we have a visitor will save me from his attentions right now.
Buck scowls. His hand tightens on me until it hurts, and then it lets go.
“Sure thing, sweet cheeks,” he says, but instead of leaving he sprawls across my bed, his head propped up in his arm so that he can watch me. I want to shove him off it.
I turn my back on him. I select a cream skirt that I had to hand-sew to make it fit me, and huge white blouse. They are my usual clothes for first meetings with clients. And then, before Buck realizes what I’m going to do, I run out of the room as fast as possible and down the stairs and into the bathroom. I lock the door and keep my foot wedged up against it as I hastily change clothes. When I get out of the bathroom, to my relief, Buck is nowhere to be seen.
I slip down the stairs to the ground floor quietly. I don’t want the man to hear me. I am hoping to get a sense of who he is before he sees me. The murmur of tense voices comes to me from the lounge, but a sudden whiff of apple-flavored smoke distracts me. It is not real, but it gives me the urge to go to the window in the downstairs entryway. I peek out.
A car is parked on the street outside our drive. A sleek black limousine with tinted windows. The passenger window is partially rolled down and a puff of smoke is coming out of it. I see a thin cigarette held in a slender hand. Within the car I glimpse a silhouette of an elegant woman and then the window rolls up, concealing her from view. She is not the client. The client would be weeping, not smoking. The client would be in the house eager for my help, not waiting in the car.
If not the client, then who? I go to the door of the lounge. I can hear Mrs Colton saying something quietly and angrily. Which is surprising. The door is slightly ajar, but not enough for me to see who she is talking to. Frustrated, I push it open a couple more inches.
A man is sitting on an easy chair. He is slim, with a greying beard and round wire-rimmed glasses, and hair that is long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail. He is dressed in one of his usual expensive suits, complete with a fancy waistcoat. It is my psychiatrist Dr Carrington.
The sight of him startles me. I back away from the door, but Dr Carrington sees me. He stands up swiftly, reminding me of a snake rising to strike. His dark eyes are fixed on me, and a strange smile is on his face. It is almost victorious.
“How wonderful to see you, Diana,” he says. “It has been too long since our last session.”
He comes striding over to me, his hand outstretched. I shy away, but he puts his arm around my shoulders and firmly guides me into the room. I glance at Mrs Colton whose lips are tightly pressed together with disapproval.
He sits down on the couch opposite Mrs Colton’s, and I am forced to sit beside him, the weight of his arm around my shoulder keeping me there. Mrs Colton glares at me. I can feel his thumb smoothing back a lock of my hair. He touches my collarbone, making me flinch as he presses the injured spot.
“But what happened here?” he says almost tenderly.
“She fell,” says Mrs Colton, her face impassive, but I can tell she is furious with me for failing to cover up the bruise.
Dr Carrington eyes an old bruise on my wrist that the long-sleeved blouse has failed to cover. “She seems to fall quite regularly.”
“She’s a clumsy girl.”
“Perhaps she’ll learn to be more graceful when she comes to live at Maplewood Park,” he says smoothly.
In shock, my eyes dart to Mrs Colton. My heart begins to pound. What the heck is he talking about? I’ve heard of Maplewood Park Retreat. It is a care home for long-term patients, the sort of place you can never leave.
Does Mrs Colton want to put me there? But what about the money I earn for her? I know she needs it. She had been glad, and I had been so disappointed, to find out back when I turned eighteen that I couldn’t leave yet. My probation had been extended because Dr Carrington hadn’t signed off on my mental health. He’d said I wasn’t ready yet, and the same again when I had turned nineteen and twenty — even though I had worked so hard to give him no cause for concern. My final assessment is due soon, just after I turn twenty-one.
And now he wants me to be admitted to Maplewood Park?
I realize that Dr Carrington’s words have taken Mrs Colton by surprise too. An icy silence has formed between the two of them. Mrs Colton and Dr Carrington are glaring at each other, both refusing to break away from the other’s gaze. It is like whoever looks away first will lose.
Suddenly I am scared. More scared than I have ever been before that I might never be free. I try to push back the fear, clenching my fists to try to stop my hands from shaking.
Though I hadn’t been allowed to go to school, I had devoured every book I could get my hands on, all for the dream of somehow getting a job and an apartment of my own. Of being free. I’d even figured out a rudimentary escape plan in case Mr Colton and the boys refused to let me leave. I’d researched a women’s shelter that might help me and planned the route there to the last inch, even managed to hide away the bus fare. But I thought I would be escaping from here, not Maplewood Park with its gates and security guards and fences.
I try to let none of this show on my face. Mrs Colton has told me a thousand times that she will not tolerate me thinking for myself.
Mrs Colton gives Dr Carrington a cold smile. She pats the empty seat beside her and gives me a meaningful look. I quickly go to sit beside her, and Dr Carrington looks disappointed.
“And why would Diana be going to live with you?” says Mrs Colton icily.
“Not with me,” says Dr Carrington. “Given Diana’s psychological condition, I will be recommending that she moves into a facility that is better equipped to take care of her.”
“Your facility. Owned by you. Run by you,” says Mrs Colton sharply.
“That is beside the point,” says Dr Carrington. “As her doctor, you’ll be aware that the lawyers will be looking for a recommendation from me.”
“What lawyers?” I ask.
“Be quiet!” Mrs Colton snaps.
“The lawyers administering your late mother’s estate,” says Dr Carrington. “Has your aunt not discussed this with you?”
Mrs Colton gasps in outrage. “How dare you! What I choose to discuss with my niece is my business.”
“What estate?” I ask. My eyes flick from one to the other. “What about my probation?”
“Your probation?” says Dr Carrington.
I blink. Why is he pretending to not know about this? He has always told me that my future dep
ends on his assessments of me. He seemed almost to enjoy holding that power over me, and using it to make me talk to him.
“My probation,” I say. “With the police? Because they think that I… that I… Mrs Colton says they think I killed my mother.”
“You did kill your mother,” Mrs Colton snarls. “You were in the car with her, you little demon. You must have pulled the steering wheel. Why else did she crash?”
“I didn’t!” I cry out.
It’s not true. I can’t remember it, but I know it can’t be true.
“You don’t deserve her estate,” she spits poisonously.
Psychic for Hire Series Box Set Page 2