‘You fool… You fool…’ she taunted herself as she pulled on her clothes and quickly hurried into her own room. She didn’t bother trying to pack. She simply grabbed her handbag and headed for the stairs.
The kitchen door was half open. She could see Richard standing with the phone. He had his back to her, thank goodness. So he knew how to get rid of her, did he? Well, she would save him the bother, and the pleasure of further humiliating her. Oh, she could guess how much he would be anticipating that…anticipating reminding her of each whispered self-betrayal, each yearning touch and kiss…each word of longing and need kissed against his skin.
She let herself out of the front entrance of the house. Mercifully it had stopped raining, and the sky was clear, the moon almost full.
Her car was in the outhouse; the engine started first time.
She had just reached the beginning of the lane when the kitchen door was flung open and Richard came racing out.
She could see him in her rear-view mirror. He was calling to her, his shock plainly visible.
So he didn’t like being cheated of his plans to humiliate her, did he? Well, tough. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would let any man do that to her, no matter how much she loved him.
It must have started raining again, she decided, but when she switched on her windscreen wipers her view was still obscured.
It took her several seconds to realise that she was crying.
She drove slowly down the lane. There was no chance of Richard’s catching her after all. She tensed once or twice, wary of skidding on the mud and ending up as he had done in the ditch, but thankfully most of the surface water had drained away and her car was nowhere near as heavy as his.
She had no idea where she was going to go or what she intended to do.
For now it was enough that she had left him. Physically at least.
Emotionally it could take her the rest of her life to forget… Forget… She smiled bitterly to herself… Impossible. She would never forget. Not the pleasure, and certainly not the pain.
* * *
She rang Gale from a small village just after dawn, leaving a message on her answering machine saying merely that she was sorry and that she had not been able to stay… That she was all right and intended to use the rest of her holiday to see something of Europe.
After all, what else was there to do? She couldn’t go home. Not yet. She needed time and she certainly couldn’t go back to the farmhouse.
She drove all morning, stopping only when she recognised that she was virtually falling asleep at the wheel. She had no idea where she was, nor did she really care. She slept in the car and woke up dry-mouthed and feeling dirty.
A few miles further down the road she found an auberge where she booked a room.
Luckily the inn wasn’t very far from a town, where she was able to buy herself a few basic necessities and a change of clothes. She filled up her car with petrol and made an attempt to eat the meal she had ordered.
What was he doing now…? Waiting for her to crawl back to him? Did he know that she loved him? Had he thought that her sexual desire for him would be enough for him to torment her with?
In her imagination, she enacted series of vividly painful scenarios of him laughing at her, telling her he had never really wanted her.
‘I’ll deal with her,’ he had told George, and she had recognised in his voice not just dislike and contempt but an intention to punish as well.
She supposed it was partially her own fault. If she had not been so determined to stand by Gale… And if she had not been so stupid as to fall in love with him.
Hadn’t she recognised the first time she saw him that he was a very determined and ruthless man…? Why had she been stupid enough to imagine he would allow her to stand between the plans he and George had made?
He wanted the farmhouse, and George wanted to sell it to him. Her presence had made that impossible, and so he had waited and planned and then, when he had finally discovered a weapon he could use against her, he had done so with devastating effect.
‘I want you,’ he had said, and she had believed him, believed that if there wasn’t love then there was passion and need, but his passion had been ignited not by her but by his determination to succeed in removing her.
It was pointless dwelling on all the many small self-betrayals she had made. At least there was one small crumb of comfort. At least she would never have to see him again.
The pain felt as though something was wrenching apart inside her, splintering into a million tiny fragments of individual, agonising pain.
How could she be so weak…so stupid?
* * *