Chapter Seventeen
Grace
Tom drove silently into the storm, making quick progress on the motorway as the cars thinned out. Most people, it appeared, were too afraid to drive in such weather. Coarsened Tom wasn’t afraid, his hand tight on the wheel of his truck. He was used to this grim existence.
And, I supposed, so was I. Crowthorne House and all its mysteries had only distracted me from that fact, lulling me to sleep inside its luxury, a pearl inside an oyster.
It seemed, in the scorching light of reality, that I was destined for the Dales after all.
That, one way or another, Heather House was calling me home.
I glanced at him and noticed the tight muscles in his arms, his thighs, even bulging through his jeans.
His whole body looked hard and built for aggression, his expression a permanent glower.
When had that little boy I used to know become this powerful machine before me, ordering me back home to the Dales like escaped livestock?
Rain battered the windscreen, the wipers just holding up against the onslaught. Tom looked determined to press on, even knowing that the journey would be arduous, and would take hours yet.
“How long have you been following me?” I asked meekly.
He returned silence for a moment, his frown deepening, chewing something over in his mind.
“I came for you the day after you left,” he said in a clipped manner that made my hairs stand on end. “I wasn’t going to let you go. Not for long. But I understand it’s already too late.”
I hugged my arms around my shivering body as I looked at him, confused.
“Too late for what?”
“For you,” he said bitterly. “You let him touch you, didn’t you?”
I swallowed hard, realising, finally, that I wasn’t off the hook with Tom. That I was now in his dangerous clutches. All I had wanted was to get away from Crowthorne House, go back to the darkness I knew...and yet the darkness was here, already with me inside this truck.
“Answer me. He’s violated you hasn’t he? You aren’t a virgin any more.”
“I was never a virgin,” I said, almost spitting my reply. Though my heart beat wildly with fear, I couldn’t bear to hear him use that insidious word. “That was taken from me a long time ago.”
Taken; another word I despised. I used it because I knew that’s what people would think of me, especially in the village. They’d think that something had been removed from me, and that I had been a broken child with valuable chunks of her worth missing.
They would have been wrong. So wrong. I was defiant in my use of the words I so despised.
Tom fell silent. His mouth was a jagged line across his face, as if made by the slash of a knife.
“It was abhorrent, what your father did to you,” he said.
His words of acknowledgement hit me like a hammer.
I cowered back in my seat, my head and heart pounding, bile rising up in my throat.
“You...you knew? You knew what he did to me?”
“Not in so many words.” Tom shifted in his seat, staring hard at the road ahead.
“Everyone knew Gregory Lockett kept his daughter close. There were rumours. He weren’t right, him – my father said so.
Once, I came to knock for you to play, and your mother said you were away.
She had a face like thunder, wouldn’t look me in the eye, but I saw her glance toward the outhouse, just briefly, without meaning to.
..I went there, looking, and that’s where I found you.
I saw you through the broken window. He was on top of you,” said Tom.
My blood ran so cold that my tears turned to ice.
I began to shake violently, as if I were outside in the rain.
My heart ached, instantly, for Nick. I didn’t care if he wasn’t mine, I needed him.
I needed his arms around me so badly, right now.
That’s when I remembered it – the engagement ring, still on my finger, sparkling even in the darkness, catching the light of the passing lamps.
I held it for comfort, turning it with my fingers.
“You didn’t tell the police.”
“Who could I possibly tell? Who would believe me? The whole village knew, and nobody did a thing about it. It wasn’t in our culture to go to the authorities, Grace,” he said, so heartlessly.
“But you could have rescued me,” I whispered, wishing I could find the will to cry, but all that remained was emptiness.
“You didn’t want to be rescued,” he said, so casually that I wished I had a hammer, so I could cave his brain in.
“You wanted to be a good daughter. I thought you’d come to me when you were ready to be a good wife.
When your father died, and your mother got sick, I was patient, Grace.
Too fuckin’ patient. I knew you’d want to do the right thing, be there for her, look after her – ”
“She hated me,” I said. “She was jealous of me, because of what my father did to me.”
Tom fell silent again.
“It was a terrible thing,” he said solemnly, as if that was all there was to say about it.
“None of it matters now. I was ready for you, waiting for you, like I’d always planned.
..and then you went and gave yourself away to him.
To Crowthorne, who kills his whole family and locks his mad wife away in a hospital, hoping nobody will notice what he’s done with her.
What he’s done to her.” Tom righted himself as he drifted from the lane.
“You heard what he said. It was Louisa who set those fires. She’s unwell,” I said, surprising myself by defending her. Something about those words – mad wife – set a fire inside me, despite my fear. “It wasn’t her fault. He was protecting her.”
“Rubbish. He’s covering for himself,” said Tom.
“You’ve no proof of this,” I said. He wanted me to believe Nick was a psychopath, and I wouldn’t.
He had hurt me, betrayed me, but he was no monster. I knew what a monster was.
“It’s a well-known secret. You learn these things when you ask about town, like I did. There’s a lot of well-known secrets in the Dales, too,” he said, biting his bottom lip as he put his foot down to gain speed. “Lots of open sins that you wouldn’t be so keen for me to go to the police about.”
I shivered harder, covering my ears, wishing I could drown out what he was saying. I drew up my knees and tired to make myself small, into a tiny ball, barely there.
“Rumours about how Grace Lockett likes to forage for toxic mushrooms in the hills, so she can cook her father a good supper. About how her mother went to pieces and took to her bed when she knew what her precious daughter had done.” Tom’s voice got louder and more penetrating, no matter how small I made myself.
..Even in the darkness, I could hear him smiling around his cruel words.
“Shut up,” I cried, my hands over my ears, shaking my head rapidly between my knees.
“That this very same daughter likes to fluff-up her mother’s pillow – ”
“Shut up! Shut up!” I kicked wildly, screaming, covering my face.
Tom’s laughter felt close and wicked, like it was inside my head. When he finally stopped, the silence was more deafening than the laughter. All the while, the rain came hard against the wind-shield.
“I’ve always accepted you for who you are, you know. It’s you who wouldn’t accept me. Thought you were too good for Tom Stoddard, you stuck-up bitch.” He pulled off the motorway onto a slip-road, before slowing on the hard-shoulder near a host of tall, dark trees.
I looked up from my hands, startled to find we’d completely stopped.
“Why aren’t we moving?” I asked, my eyes flitting around us. We were in a deep lay-by, far enough from the road that even if someone pulled over, they wouldn’t hear my screams. Not until it was too late.
“I’ve had enough of talking,” said Tom, opening his door and stepping into the rain.
When he appeared beside me and flung open my passenger door, I screamed, but the smack from the back of his hand quickly silenced me.
He hauled me out of the car and dragged me, kicking and thrashing, into the cluster of trees.
I found my voice again as he pulled me along, and screamed as hard as I could, but it only invited another back-handed smack.
“You were my friend,” I said, swallowing the coppery taste of blood. “Please don’t do this.”
“It’s too late for that,” said Tom, finally throwing me down at the base of a tree.
I could see no stars to comfort me behind the thick black rain clouds, or the moon beyond the barren twigs. I kicked and thrashed but he spread open my legs. He unbuckled his trousers and then pulled my knickers down, pinning me with one hand while he did so.
“Don’t do this, Tom,” I begged.
His mouth covered mine, silencing me. His kiss was sickening, brutal, and biting.
When he pressed against my opening, I was alarmed, terrified, by my body’s reaction.
Despite my terror, my defiance, I was close to the edge, about to tumble over.
My body’s betrayal of me drew a sob from deep within my throat.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t want this.
“You’ll enjoy this,” he said savagely, his hands holding my jaw, his smile brutal above me. “Crowthorne just broke you in for me.”
I curled my fingers, turning them into claws. At my first opportunity, I would go for his eyes.
But suddenly, he was torn from me, gone from between my legs.
I sat up, scrambling to my feet, to see Nick landing a punch against Tom’s jaw.
The cracking sound echoed among the trees.
Tom lurched at Nick and delivered punch after punch, but Nick took them as if they were weightless.
I edged closer, almost blinded by the darkness.
Only the faintest light from a glowing lamp post behind the trees allowed me to see anything.
Nick was larger than Tom, more imposing, and his age offered experience while Tom’s offered agility. They grappled, hitting the forest floor, before Nick got the advantage. He mounted Tom and delivered blow after blow directly to the face, each thump sounding wetter than the last.