Matter of Trust

Soberly he went back upstairs.

Debra was still asleep. Much as he would have liked to spend the rest of the day, and as many days as possible after that, in bed with her, there were things he had to do.

He smiled as he saw his discarded shirt, picking it up. His touch seemed to release from the fabric the scent of her skin. He felt his body’s response to the sensual messages it was receiving and groaned under his breath.

This was ridiculous, he derided himself, torn between laughter and disbelief. He was a man of thirty-odd, not a boy who had just discovered the power of his sexuality.

He moved quietly around his room, collecting his clean clothes, and then went into the bathroom to shower and dress.

When he came back, Debra was still asleep.

He had some telephone calls to make. He wondered if Debra kept any clothes at her parents’, and acknowledged grimly that she would probably feel unable to wear anything that had been in her own house when Kevin Riley had broken into it, and he couldn’t blame her for that.

The boy might have had a poor start in life and been set a bad example by his father, but there was no way Marsh could ever condone what he had done. His mouth tightened as he remembered the look on Debra’s face when she had seen her bedroom.

He went downstairs, made his phone calls, including one to Debra’s parents to explain what had happened, and to assure them that Debra was safe and that he would be driving her out to see them later in the day.

He then went to make some coffee, and realised when he opened the fridge that he didn’t have any milk.

He frowned, wondering whether to wake Debra and tell her he was going out, and then decided that he wouldn’t be gone long enough to bother disturbing her.

* * *

Debra woke up with a start. It was light outside, and she wasn’t in her own bed. Where was she... what... ?

And then abruptly she remembered.

She glanced at the pillow next to her own. Trembling a little, she touched the indentation where Marsh’s head had lain.

It had really happened. She and Marsh had really made love, and not just once but twice. She gave a tiny shiver as her brain suddenly leapt into frantic overdrive.

Marsh wasn’t with her now. Did that mean that he regretted what had happened? That he was subtly trying to tell her not to read too much into the intimacy they had shared? Not to behave like a callow innocent who believed that making love was the same as sharing love; as giving love?

She shivered again, knowing that this was what she had dreaded all along; that this was the reason she had been so afraid of her own feelings.

She hadn’t wanted to love Marsh because she was afraid of the pain of losing him.

She tensed as she heard a sound from downstairs that she couldn’t wholly identify. It sounded like something breaking, but the sound was somehow slightly muffled, as though whoever had made it was trying to disguise it.

A tiny thread of alarm jerked at her nerve-endings. She sat upright in the bed, gripping the covers, calling out anxiously, ‘Marsh.’

She could hear someone coming upstairs and she called out again, more sharply this time.

The bedroom door opened.

Shock held her rigid as she saw who had come in. She recognised him immediately from McDonald’s. Kevin Riley.

The sound she had heard must have been him breaking into the house. Those were her last reasoned logical thoughts as panic filled her.

One look into his eyes told her that he had known she was here; that he had come here deliberately looking for her.

‘Bitch,’ he told her, enjoying the sound of the word, rolling it round his mouth before spitting it out at her.

‘You and that little whore, Karen—you grassed on me, didn’t you? Think you’re so good, don’t you? But you’re not... you’re just a tart, like all the others. Good at it, was he?’ he asked, nodding at the indentation on the pillow. ‘Made you scream, did he?’

Debra felt the nausea bum her stomach, a sour acid mixture of fear and revulsion and shame as well that she, an adult, should allow this boy to humiliate and terrify her like this.

He was only fourteen, she reminded herself, but she could still remember the photograph he had pinned up in her bedroom, the destruction he had wrought, and she dared not look away from him... dared not let her glance waver. If she did he might move...come over to the bed...