The Housekeeper's Awakening

‘Yes.’

‘Aggressively?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘That’s a definition of rape in many of the statute books,’ he gritted out and there was a dark anger on his face she’d never seen before. ‘What stopped him?’

‘Someone came into the room to collect their coat and disturbed us.’

‘And then you called the police?’

She didn’t answer, not straight away, and in a way wasn’t this the bit she was most ashamed of? That she had succumbed to pressure and other people’s expectations and allowed them to take control of the situation.

‘No. I decided against it.’

‘You decided against it?’

‘That’s what I said.’

There was a split second of a pause. ‘Do you want to tell me why?’

Carly met his eyes and their dark light washed over her. Dark light was a contradiction in terms, wasn’t it? But that was what she was getting from him. And it was disarming. It was like a deep bath at the end of a long day. Like holding out your cold hands in front of a blazing fire.

‘What stopped you from reporting it?’ he said.

‘My mother did,’ she said baldly.

‘Your mother?’

‘She said it would be impossible to prove, that it would be his word against mine, and she had a point. He was insanely rich and well-connected, and could have hired the best defence lawyers. I was just an ordinary girl with a sick father and no money. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. My name would have been mud. It would have been just one more thing to add to the stack of dark things which were building up at home. And it wasn’t as if he actually raped me.’

‘But what about the person who came in to collect their coat? Couldn’t they have been called as your defence if they witnessed the attack?’

She gave a bitter laugh. ‘It was a friend of his,’ she said, ‘who described it as “horseplay”.’

For a moment he winced, as if her pain were his pain. ‘Cabrón,’ he bit out, his eyes darkening as he walked over to the bed and sat down beside her.

Carly tensed, but the arm he placed around her shoulder felt protective, not seductive. Although she guessed that in some way it was seductive. He seemed to represent safety and she’d never really had that before. She wanted to lean against him and drink it in, but she forced herself not to. She had learnt to stand on her own two feet and she didn’t need to lean on anyone, but, even if she did, it certainly shouldn’t be Luis, because he was the antithesis of safe. Luis was all about danger.

‘So that’s when you started sublimating your femininity,’ he said slowly.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Oh, I think you do.’ He nodded, as if something was suddenly making sense to him. ‘That must have been when you started scraping your hair back into that damned ponytail, which means nobody ever gets to see it. Probably around the time when you stopped wearing clothes which might flatter you, or the make-up which most women your age wear. You must have thought that if you didn’t draw attention to yourself then you wouldn’t attract the wrong kind of attention. That by being invisible, people would look through you rather than at you, and it wouldn’t ever happen to you again.’

r /> His perception was unsettling and Carly could feel the sting of tears at the backs of her eyes. But she blinked them away, because to break down and cry in front of him would be the final humiliation. ‘You think that suddenly you’re qualified to act as some kind of amateur shrink, just because I’ve told you my sob story?’

‘It’s not a sob story, Carly. It’s the truth. And I want to help you.’

‘Well, I don’t want your help,’ she said, pulling away from his grasp and staring out at the terrace, where a fat bee was disappearing into the scarlet trumpet of an hibiscus flower.

‘You might not want my help.’ His voice was quiet. ‘But you want me.’

Forcing her attention away from the pollen-brushed bee, she jerked her head round to look at him. Suddenly she realised that she was sitting on a bed next to him and she shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t be within six feet of him. And she definitely shouldn’t be staring into his eyes like that and losing herself in their dark luminosity. ‘No, I don’t,’ she whispered.

‘Then try saying it as if you mean it.’ His mouth flickered into a hard smile. ‘Except we both know you can’t.’

‘I can’t believe you’re saying this. Do you really think it’s...acceptable...’ her voice shook ‘...to start talking about desire, in the light of what I’ve just told you?’