She had forgotten, though, that he was not the same age as her pupils, and that she was not dressed in her normal authoritative way, and, as he straightened up and made a drunken apology, to her fury she also heard him make a comment about her breasts that was both over-familiar and exceedingly coarse.
It was only the discipline of three years of teaching that prevented her from reacting, not just by furiously objecting to what he had said, but from allowing the hot stinging surge of mortified feminine colour to burn up under her skin.
Like all women, she had experienced unwanted male comments about her body before, but this was different; for one thing what he had said was a good deal more crude than the normal joking and sometimes funny remarks called out by van drivers and building site workers, and for another…
For another, she was unpleasantly aware of the man’s leering enjoyment of her defencelessness, his awareness not just of her inability to physically punish him for his rudeness, but of the fact that the manager appeared too afraid to challenge him either.
The temptation to stand up and demand the auberge owner call the gendarmerie was almost too strong for Livvy to resist, but then she reminded herself that she was on holiday and inevitably any kind of formal charge made now would result in delay to her resuming her journey in the morning.
Much as it irked her, she decided that on this occasion she would simply have to do nothing, other than finish her meal as quickly as she could and leave the dining-room.
Ten minutes later she realised that was not going to be so easy, and wished a little bitterly that she had demanded that something was done earlier, when the hotel owner had still been there for her to make demands on.
The little waiter who had been serving her was plainly terrified of the quartet; the other diners, like her, had obviously decided to finish their meals just as quickly as they could, and as the dining-room rapidly emptied Livvy felt disconcertingly conscious of the fact that she was soon going to be the only other occupant of the room.
The leader of the quartet was still making comments about her to his companions. She tried to comfort herself by reminding herself that he would only feel free to say things that were so vulgar and crass because he did not know she spoke French herself.
As a teacher, she was used to adolescent male aggression and thought she had learned to cope with it, but this was something different, she recognised. He was not an adolescent—here she had no authority…here, as his lewd, disgusting comments were making so plainly obvious, she was just another vulnerable, available woman.
She pushed her plate away, her appetite gone. Much as it went against the grain to be seen to be running away from them, she knew she had to go. The restaurant no longer felt safe; in fact it had become an alien, hostile place. All her feminine instincts warned her to leave. She got up as quietly and calmly as she could, ignoring the comments being shouted at her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her tormentor stand up, but she refused either to turn her head or to be betrayed into showing any fear.
Her room key was in her handbag, but as she heard the restaurant door open behind her she still walked over to the reception desk and asked the clerk behind it,
‘Are there any messages for me? It’s room number twenty-four.’
She knew of course that there would not be any messages, but standing at the desk gave her a legitimate reason for turning round and checking that she wasn’t being followed.
And if she was and he overheard her asking for messages, hopefully it might make him think that she was not, after all, alone.
‘No, there is none,’ the clerk told her, having checked the slot.
The leader of the quartet had left the restaurant after her and now he was standing several feet away, grinning insolently at her, but to her relief, although he paused with deliberate mockery as he drew level with her, he didn’t make any further attempt to speak to her or touch her, simply moving on.
Thanking the clerk, Livvy hurried towards the stairs. Her bedroom had a good, firm lock on it and she intended to make sure she used it.
As luck would have it, her room was the last one along the corridor, right opposite the fire escape. Later she told herself that if she had been more alert she would have remembered that fact and acted accordingly, but as it was, when she finally reached her door, she simply gave a small pent-up sigh of relief, turned her back to the fire escape and opened her bag for her key, while keeping a strategic eye on the corridor to make sure that she hadn’t been followed.
Because of this, it came as even more of a shock when she was grabbed from behind, her attacker laughing triumphantly as he swung her round to face him, pressing her body up against th
e wall with the weight of his while he taunted her with having tricked her…
He looked even less appealing close up than he had done in the restaurant, Livvy acknowledged as she fought down her panic and tried not to wince as he breathed garlic- and onion-laced fumes into her face.
His hands were round her forearms, exerting a pressure which would leave her with bruises, the weight of his body imprisoning her against the wall.
She didn’t make the mistake of trying to fight him, sensing that that was just what he wanted, that he would relish the opportunity physically to subdue her. He was talking to her, laughing at her as he told her in explicit detail what he intended to do to her. Fear flickered inside her, spreading a numbing, dangerous paralysis through her body, and yet at the same time she felt oddly distanced from what was happening, apart from it, the enormity of it such that a part of her brain simply refused to accept it was happening.
As he ground his hips against her body she tensed in rejection. The door opposite her own opened and the hand that had been groping for her breast stilled.
Livvy was just about to call out thankfully for help to the man emerging from the room to place his breakfast menu on the door-handle when she recognised him.
It was the man from the car park, the one who had arrogantly let her see how insignificant he had thought her.
He was wearing a towelling robe open to the waist, revealing hard, tanned skin roughened by silky, dark hair.
A tiny frisson of unfamiliar sensation ran through her. The man holding her bent his head and tried to kiss her, muttering loudly, ‘You know you want it. Downstairs you were showing it. Well, it won’t be long now, chérie, and I promise you I’ll show you what it’s like to have a real man, a Frenchman.’
Across the few feet separating them, Livvy could see the disgust in the other man’s eyes, the contempt. The man holding her was still talking, pouring out a stream of sexual obscenities which he appeared to deem suitable seduction talk.