Chapter Five
Amy
I had no idea what was going on. It was as though something had split inside me.
My brain had fried. A whole pile of memories tumbling down, dug up, blasting into me from all directions.
It was as though I was falling apart yet…
yet here was Mitch, holding me together—a glue to attach my limbs to my torso and my mind to the present even when everything wanted to spin to the past.
“Shh.” He kissed my temple and carried me into the bedroom.
The next thing I knew we were under the blanket and I was nestled into his warmth, his strength, and the masculine scent of him encompassed me.
“Take your time. Tell me when you’re ready,” he said, his breath a soft whisper my head. “Sleep now, it will do you good.”
I sighed and melted into him. A sense of safety grew inside me. It was a new sensation; to draw security from an embrace. But his big strong arms spoke to me without words, and the gentle caress of his fingers on my shoulder was an extra layer of guarantee that he was different.
I’d shouted at him to leave, to get out. Other guys had always gone, galloped out of the door when I’d told them to go. Sex was all they’d wanted. All they’d been with me for. And they certainly hadn’t given a flying fuck if I’d come or not.
Which I never had.
“I’ll bring some tools to fix your door,” he murmured into the darkening room. “Put the lock back on.”
“Good.” I spread my hand on his bare chest. It was coated in coarse black hairs, and his nipples were small and dark. “I should think so, too.”
He was quiet, so was I.
There was a picture on the wall opposite the bed.
I’d bought it on a whim a few years ago.
The image was of an opulent white-pillared villa on a cliff side, the sky blue and full of gulls, and the garden bursting with vibrant flowers and dotted with olive trees.
It seemed like a peaceful place to live.
Pretty. Lots of nature and sunshine and all alone.
Maybe one day I’d visit somewhere like that…maybe even have someone to come with me.
Like Mitch.
The only way that was going to happen was to do what Becca had been telling me to do for the last few years and move on from hook-ups to a proper relationship.
Was that person Mitch?
I took a deep breath. “I left The Way Forward a few weeks before I was eighteen.”
He didn’t speak, just kept drawing circles on my shoulder with his fingertips.
I stared through the dim light at the picture.
“At eighteen there is always a ceremony for women in the commune, it’s called the deflowering ceremony.
Looking back, I now know Nigel Strand chose eighteen rather than sixteen to avoid any kind of legal recriminations or social service involvement.
Consenting adults and all that. If he thought he could have had a public exhibition of sixteen years olds losing their virginity he would have.
But that kind of scandal getting into the headlines would be his downfall. ”
“Public?”
“Yes, the couples have to fuck with everyone watching. Including children. I’ve been watching adults have sex for as long as I can remember.
Not just at those ceremonies but in general.
There was no inhibitions in the commune, certainly for the men, they would fuck whoever they wanted, whenever and wherever regardless of who was around. ”
“Sounds like one big orgy.”
“That’s exactly what it was.”
“And you didn’t want to hang around for your ceremony. I don’t blame you.”
“No, I did not, because for me it was…” I swallowed the bitter taste that had filled my mouth. The words stalled. They were sick, perverted, unimaginable.
“Because for you it was…?” Mitch encouraged gently.
Still the words remained glued in place. Silent. Stubborn.
“In my line of work I’ve seen a lot, heard a lot,” he said. “Takes one heck of a story to shock me.”
“I’m sure.” I paused. “Nigel had declared that for my ceremony it would be Jeremy who took my virginity.”
“Your twin brother?” There were notes of both shock and disgust in his voice.
“Yes.” I shivered at the memory. At the conversation and declaration. At the repulsion and terror that had gripped me.
“But…but surely he, Jeremy, would have refused.”
“He said…” I twisted to look up at Mitch’s face.
“He said if Nigel, as prophet, had prescribed it to be then we must go along with it.” I paused.
“I don’t think Jeremy wanted to, I think he was brainwashed, as everyone was.
But no one supported my opinion. I was told I was questioning The Way Forward’s core beliefs, that I was disrupting the group’s traditions by refusing.
That a twin coupling was the most sacred of all and I should consider myself immensely lucky. ”
“It’s incest.” Mitch stroked his hand over my hair. “Illegal in this country and many others around the world.”
“I didn’t know that then. I didn’t even know the word, it had never been taught to us for obvious reasons.”
“And you left before or after this ceremony.”
“Weeks before, but maybe I would have stayed if something else hadn’t happened.” I screwed up my eyes and fisted my hand on his chest. “I was young, I had nowhere to go, remember. I knew no one outside the commune and I had no money.”
He waited for me to go on.
I took a deep breath. “Nigel Strand was fond of exuberant sermons that mainly preached how lucky we were to have him leading us, and that we’d be the saved ones, the favored ones when the messiah came knocking.
People wept and shook and almost passed out with the excitement he stirred in them.
But on this particularly occasion he singled me out, dragged me to the stage, and proceeded to desecrate my character.
I was a risk to the light God had shone on the commune.
I was a traitor to the ways of the group.
I had dared to question His, God’s will, about fucking my twin brother in front of everyone.
I hadn’t refused at that point, at least not openly, but he’d made it sound like I had. ”
“Do you think you would have refused when it came to it?” He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if I had, they’d have held me down, and Jeremy would have been threatened with the whip if he hadn’t done it.”
“Rape as well as incest. Physical assault. The list goes on.”
“Nice bunch of people.” For a moment I paused and reminded myself that I was safe here.
“Nigel Strand worked the crowd into a frenzy of anger directed at me, but, he told them, they were lucky because he had a solution. I was to be debased, I wasn’t humble enough, didn’t care enough about the mission.
I didn’t know my place, and that required immediate action so that Jesus would still come to us. ”
“What did that mean? Debased? Not humble enough?”
“In this case it meant I had to be shown my worth, which was nothing. I was a vessel for carrying children, nothing more. And so a plan was made for the next day for me to be…there is no other way to say this…gang raped by practically every male in the commune.”
“Son of a fucking bitch!” He’d spoken quietly, but there was venom in his voice, and his muscles tensed.
“It had never happened before, so he said, but I was an immediate threat and that called for drastic action. My mother stared straight at me, throughout the entire sermon, her expression not changing. I knew she wasn’t going to help me, she’d never done anything for me, so why start now.
My father was the same; in fact, he punched the air when my fate was sealed, happy to have his daughter taught a lesson. ”
“They should all be in or rotting in Hell.”
“I couldn’t agree more.” I sighed and propped onto my elbow, looked down at him.
“And suddenly, back then, it hit me, that this wasn’t normal.
That this wasn’t the life I wanted and Jesus wasn’t going to turn up in Yorkshire and save me.
He wasn’t going to turn up and save anyone. Not a bloody chance.”
“So what did you do?”
“That’s when I left. I told Jeremy, no one else, and he didn’t try to dissuade me. I think he was the only person in that entire congregation who had been shocked at Nigel Strand’s obvious hate for me and disregard for me as a human being, and at his revolting plan for me.”
“Did he help you?”
“There wasn’t much he could do other than come to the edge of the compound with me, which he did, and give me a leg up over the fence.
There was always a guy or two patrolling at night, and he created a diversion while I ran up the hill and down to the road.
It was a mile away, and that’s when I got lucky with a lift from the Oxford professor and she brought me all the way here.
I’d left no trail because I hadn’t planned to come here.
I had never even mentioned Oxford to anyone. ”
“And then you met Rebecca and she helped you, too.”
“Yes, I couldn’t believe the kindness of strangers.
How they were willing to give me not just time but help and money and support.
No one had ever done so much for me, and now…
now I have a flat, a career, and I get to choose who I fuck.
I am worth something more than just a vessel for having babies. ”
“Too damn right you are.”
He was quiet for several minutes.
“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” I said eventually. “Sorry.”
“You have zero reason to apologize to anyone ever. These guys are behaving badly, breaking the law. Do the authorities have anything to do with them?”
“The kids are homeschooled, they’re a bunch of anti-vaxxers, so no, they are pretty much left to it.”
Again he didn’t speak.
“Why? What are you thinking?”
“As an officer of the law, I think they’re breaking it.”