LITMIR.BIZ

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at. Rachel with her long, pale blonde hair billowing in its natural spiralling curls around her shoulders and pretty face, expertly made-up by the far more experienced Julie, and her slender body encased in one of Julie’s tight black mini-skirts and a red cropped vest top which gave tantalising glimpses of her flat stomach as she gyrated to the disco music. If her parents had seen her dressed like that, they’d have died of horror. But she had been staying with Julie while her parents went off to visit relatives that weekend, and they had no idea what their only child, born very late in their lives, was up to while they were away.

      And it was to Rachel that Daniel came when the music changed to a lazy smooch, his hand light on her shoulder as he turned her to face him, his smile, like the rest of him, smooth, confident, charismatic. Aware of the other girls’ envy, she let him take her in his arms without a word of protest, could still remember those first tingles of shy awareness that fizzed up inside her at his touch, his closeness, the hard smooth line of male brushing against soft and sensitive female.

      They danced for ages before he spoke. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked simply.

      ‘Rachel,’ she told him, shy-eyed and breathless. ‘Rachel James.’

      ‘Hello, Rachel James,’ he murmured. ‘Daniel Masterson,’ he announced himself. Then, while she was still absorbing the sexy resonance of his beautifully modulated voice, he slid his hand beneath the cropped top, making her gasp at the hot stinging sensation of his smooth touch against her bare skin, and pulled her closer.

      He made no attempt to kiss her, or talk her into leaving with him instead of her friends. But he did take her telephone number and promised to call her soon, and she spent the next week camped by the phone, waitingyearning for him to call.

      He took her for a drive on their first real date. He drove a red Ford. ‘Firm’s car,’ he explained, with a wry smile she never quite understood. Then gently, but with an intensity which kept her on the edge of her seat with breathless anticipation, he made her talk about herself. About her family, her friends. Her likes and dislikes, and her ambitions to take art at college with a view to going into advertising. He frowned at that, then quietly asked her how old she was. Unable to lie, she flushed guiltily and told him the truth. His frown deepened, and he was rather quiet after that while she chewed on her bottom lip, knowing achingly that she’d blown it. Which seemed to be confirmed when he took her back home and just murmured an absent goodnight as she got out of the car. She’d been devastated. For several days she’d barely eaten, could not sleep, and was in dire danger of wasting away by the time he called her again a week later.

      He took her to the cinema that night, sitting beside her in the darkness staring at the big screen while she did the same, only without seeing a single thing, her attention fixed exclusively on his closeness, the subtle tangy smell of him, his hard thigh mere inches away from her own, his shoulder brushing against hers. Dry-mouthed, tense, and terrified of making a single move in case she blew it a second time, she therefore actually cried out when he reached over and picked up one of her hands. His expression was grave as he gently prised her fingers out of the white-knuckled clench she had them in. ‘Relax,’ he murmured. ‘I’m not going to bite you.’

      The trouble was, she’d wanted him to bite. Even then, as naive as they came and with no real idea of what it meant to be with a man, she had wanted him with a desperation which must have shown in her face, because he muttered something and tightened his grip on her hand, holding it trapped in his own while he forced his own attention back to the film. That night he kissed her hard and hungrily, the power of it taking her to the edge of fear before he drew angrily away and made her get out of the car.

      The next time he took her out it was to a quiet restaurant, where his eyes lingered broodingly on her through the meal while he told her about himself. About his job as a salesman for a big computer firm which, by the nature of the job, meant he travelled all over the country touting for new business and could mean his being out of the area for weeks on end sometimes. He told her of his ambition to own his own company one day. How he dabbled in stocks and shares with his commission and lived on a shoe-string to do it. He spoke levelly and softly so that she had to lean forward a little to catch his words, and all the time his eyes never left her face, not just brooding, but seeming to consume her, so by the time he drove her home that night she was in danger of exploding at the sexual tension he had developed around them both. Yet still it was just the one hungry kiss before he was sending her into the house and driving away. It went like that for perhaps half a dozen more dates before eventually, inevitably, she supposed, his control snapped and, instead of taking her to the cinema as they had planned, he took her to his flat.

      After that, they rarely went anywhere else. Being alone together, making love together, became the most important thing in her life. Daniel became the most important thing in her life, over her A-levels, over her ambitions, over the disapproval her parents made no bones about voicing but which made no difference to the way she felt.

      Three months later—and after he had been away in London for almost two weeks—she had been waiting for him at his flat door when he returned.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, and it was only now, almost seven years later, that she realised he had been far from pleased to find her there. His face had been tired and tense—just as it had looked over these last few months, she thought, on another pained realisation.

      ‘I had to see you,’ she’d explained, slipping her hand trustingly into his as he walked into the flat. Inevitably they had made love, then she made some coffee while he showered and they drank in silence, he lounging in a lumpy old easy-chair wearing only his terry bathrobe, she curled at his feet between his parted knees as she always was.

      It was then she had told him she was pregnant. He hadn’t moved or said anything, and she had not looked at him. His hand had stroked absently at her hair and her cheek rested comfortably on his thigh.

      After a while, he had sighed, long and heavy, then bent to lift her on to his lap. She had curled into him there, too. Like a child, she thought now. As Kate does when she goes to her daddy for love and comfort.

      ‘How sure are you?’ he had asked then.

      ‘Very sure,’ she had answered, snuggling closer because he was the axis her whole world turned upon. ‘I bought one of those pregnancy test things when I missed my period this month. It showed positive. Do you think there could be a mistake?’ she had asked guilelessly then. ‘Shall I go and get a proper test from the doctor before we decide what to do?’

      ‘No.’ He had rejected that idea. ‘So, you’re only just pregnant. I wonder how that happened?’ he had pondered thoughtfully.

      That made her chuckle. ‘Your fault,’ she had reminded him. ‘You’re supposed to take care of all that.’

      ‘So I was and so it is,’ he had conceded. ‘Well, at least we have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it.’

      And that had been it. The decision made as, really, she had expected it to be. With Daniel making all the arrangements, shielding her from any unpleasantness, handling her parents and their natural hurt and disappointment in her.

      Again, it was only now, seven years later, that she took the words he had spoken and looked at them properly. ‘We have time to get married without the whole town knowing why we’re having to do it’ he had said. And it hit her for the first time that Daniel would not have married her otherwise.

      She had trapped him. With her youth, her innocence, with her childlike trust and blind adoration. Daniel had married her because he felt he had to.

      Love had never come into it.

      The sound of a key turning in the front door lock brought her jolting back to the present, and she turned, feeling oddly calm, yet lead-weighted, to glance at the brass carriage-clock sitting on the sideboard. It was only eight-thirty. Daniel had not been due home for hours yet. A business dinner, he’d called it. Now she bitterly mocked that excuse as she went to stand by the open sitting-room door.

      His back was towards her. She could see the tension in him, in his neck

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