Matter of Trust

She made a small whimpering sound of fear that Marsh instantly picked up on, turning to her, holding her as she turned to run, and then quickly picking her up so that her sharp cry of protest was muffled against his shoulder as he carried her the rest of the way up the stairs.

Distantly her mind registered the fact that her body welcomed rather than rejected him, that somehow being held by him made her feel safe... secure.

Her senses welcomed the house’s anonymity. If it was alien and unfamiliar to her then he, whoever it was who had destroyed her home and her peace of mind, would not be drawn to it to desecrate it as he had done her home.

Marsh crossed the landing and pushed open a bedroom door, nudging the light switch with his shoulder.

The room was small and plainly furnished—a bed, an old-fashioned walnut dressing-table and wardrobe, a dull green carpet on the floor and equally dull curtains at the window—but Debra welcomed its dullness, its lack of anything that corresponded to the bedroom she had decorated and furnished with such enjoyment and care.

She knew she would never ever be able to walk into that bedroom again without seeing what had been done to it.

‘The bathroom’s the first door on the left,’ Marsh told her quietly as he slowly released her. ‘I’m just going downstairs to make us both a drink. Call me when you’re in bed.’

‘But I can’t go to bed,’ Debra told him. ‘I don’t have anything to wear.’

She frowned as she heard the words, not recognising the whispery, confused sound of her own voice, trembling a little as she sensed how intense her shock must be for her to make that kind of comment... for her to actually look to Marsh to protect and provide for her, as though somehow she had reverted to childhood and was incapable of doing those things for herself; she, who prided herself on her independence.

‘Wait here,’ Marsh told her.

When he had gone she stared round the room, abruptly filled with such a sense of panic that she wanted to run after him, to plead with him not to leave her.

She was actually turning towards the door when he came back, carrying a soft blue shirt.

‘I don’t wear pyjamas, I’m afraid, but perhaps this will do,’ he offered, handing it to her.

It was clean and ironed and yet when she touched it, gripping it with her hands, holding it tightly against her body, her grip seemed to release from its fibres an elusive hint of his body scent.

‘Don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe here,’ Marsh told her, watching her.

‘You really think it might have been Kevin Riley?’

The words burst from her, filled with need to have him deny it, but instead he said tiredly, ‘It seems like it.’

‘That means he must know that Karen told me.’

‘It’s all right,’ Marsh assured her. ‘The police checked. Karen is perfectly safe. And so are you.’

Debra looked solemnly at him, her eyes wide and dark.

‘Am I?’ she questioned tautly.

‘Yes.’ He sounded so sure, so calm, that a little of her fear seeped away.

The bathroom was old-fashioned and rather chilly. In any other circumstances she would have found the rented house slightly depressing, with its lack of those small personal touches that made a house a home, but now she almost welcomed its blank anonymity, drying herself slowly on the rough towel she had found in the airing cupboard, her movements weighed down by fear and stress.

She hesitated before putting on Marsh’s shirt, touching it reluctantly before sliding her arms into it and then quickly fastening the buttons. She was just walking across the landing on her way back to her bedroom, when she heard Marsh call out from the bottom of the stairs, ‘Debra, are you all right?’

Immediately she tensed, frozen into immobility and speechlessness, caught fast in a paralysing web of panic and fear.

She heard Marsh coming upstairs but still couldn’t move. She saw him frown as he looked into her face, distantly aware of the controlled urgency of his movements as he put down the mug he was carrying and came towards her.

The sensation of his arms going round her, of being held and rocked as though she were still a child, swept aside reality and logic. She leaned on him instinctively, soaking up the comfort of his body, its warmth and protection, a child again, seeking the safe comfort of an adult to protect her from her childish fears.

‘That photograph,’ she said painfully, the words surfacing past the defences she had tried to erect against them. ‘He wanted it to be me, didn’t he? He wanted to do that to me.’

She was shaking now, the nausea and fear raking her stomach with sharp nails of terror.

‘You mustn’t think of it like that,’ Marsh told her. ‘That’s what he wants you to do.’