The anger he was feeling earlier was beginning to slowly subside. The two grams of coke he snorted, not ten minutes ago, was also helping. Now, this girl sitting in his car was going to help him further. He needed her to unleash the frustration of his day and he was determined to make that happen.
“…sshhh… just relax… you will enjoy it more if you keep still and relax.”
His fingers were still forcefully trying to get underneath her knickers. Ginnie was scared. She silently scolded herself for wearing the short denim skirt.
“Please… don’t… oh god… please” She whimpered. She knew she couldn’t fight him. He was huge, compared to her small size 8 frame.
What had happened to make him behave like this? He was certainly not the guy that had charmed her a few days ago. That guy had taken her out for a proper dinner, in a proper restaurant. He had ordered a bottle of wine and poured it into a wine glass for her. He treated her like an adult. He made her feel special and exclusive. He had walked her home and held her hand. He had been nothing but respectful. They hadn’t even kissed.
She had fought off young boys her age, with their fumbling advances towards her, but nothing to this degree.
Normally, she only had to push them away but that wasn’t going to work here. Sean wasn’t a teenage boy. He was a man, who obviously had needs and she was going to fulfil them, even if she didn’t want to.
He was also on something because his eyes were rolling about in the back of his head. Ginnie instinctively knew that she wouldn’t be able to reason with him. She screamed out loud when four of his fingers found their way inside her. She had never felt anything like it.
It was a fierce, sheering burn, deep between her legs. As he forcefully penetrated her, she felt a warm trickle of fluid run down her legs. She thought she had wet herself. She was scared enough to do so. Sean had felt it too because it caused him to stop and look at his hands.
She was bleeding. He knew he had been a bit rough but surely he hadn’t been that rough. Had he? Then he realised.
He smiled and stroked her face.
“You’re a virgin?” His voice was husky.
Ginnie nodded while a tear rolled down her cheek.
Before she knew what was happening, Sean had lay the seat back and was on top of her. He tore off her knickers and ripped open the flimsy blouse she was wearing. He pulled her bra above her breasts and grabbed at her nipples with his teeth.
He brutally bit and sucked at them, ignoring her screams and pleas of wanting to go home. She had never experienced anything like this before. Although she had spent most of her life in and out of care, she had been one of the rare lucky ones that had managed to survive relatively unscarred.
She had heard of and known other girls that had fallen prey to ‘the system’ and had been abused by their social workers or foster parents but it had never happened to her.
She now almost wished that it had. Then, maybe she would know how to handle this situation.
The pain was almost unbearable. How did people do this for fun? She wondered. Terror was mounting up by the second. She couldn’t understand why he was doing this to her. She had no idea that he was rushing from the exhilaration of half killing a man, just before picking her up.
She also had no idea that this would have happened sooner or later anyway, it just so happened to be tonight.
Sean was fascinated by her body. It suddenly occurred to him just how young she was. Her breasts were budding.
They sat pert and static. She felt different inside too he decided. She was tight and clenched. It was different to the other women he had shagged, especially the working girls.
This one was a rarity. You didn’t often come across them untouched. They were all slags in the end though.
They all ended up on their backs, with their legs open, beckoning him. He had a strange power over women. Some, like Ginnie, did it out of fear; some because they found him dangerous and exciting; others did it because they wanted their next fix.
As he shoved himself into her and begun to ride her, she looked out of the car window; she could see her children’s home. All the lights were still on. They would all be gathered in the large lounge, watching TV or playing on the PS2, all unaware of what was happening to her outside.
She thought she had found a lovely new boyfriend; she had in fact, attracted a complete nutter. She tried to think of something, anything to stop her brain from registering what was happening. He was raping her. Thousands of alarm bells were going off in her head; the ringing was so loud in her ears. The comprehension of the situation imploded her mind. It hurt. It really hurt. Her lower body was on fire.
When he had finished the torrid abuse, he rolled off from on top of her and lay beside her. Her body was exposed. He had taken off her skirt and bra and was gently tracing his finger around her breasts and down to her stomach. It was a very different touch to the one she had just encountered.
It was soft and tender, unlike the animal attack that had just occurred. One thing Ginnie knew she could definitely rely on was that Sean Fergus was very weird and that he flipped from Mr Nice to Mr Terrifying within seconds.
“Did you enjoy that?”
Not sure if he wanted an answer, Ginnie nodded her head slowly. She had not enjoyed it. In fact she was absolutely disgusted. She had had to physically stop herself from heaving when he came inside her. When he lay on top of her afterwards, suckling at her nipple, she had to stop herself from shrinking away from him.
The more she had begged him to stop, the more he had shoved himself into her. She wanted to run from the car as fast as she could but something told her that if she wanted to survive, she would have to ride this out and play the long game.
“I said you would.”
He purred in her ear. His fingers stroked the hair between her legs. “You were a virgin? No fucker had ever touched you?”
“No.” Ginnie said “Can I go home now… please?”
She tried to sound as polite and humble as she could. She sounded like a little girl. And she was. She was a frightened little girl, who was in way over her head.
She was ecstatic when he had turned his attentions to her. She had known of him, heard of his reputation and rather fancied some of the notoriety. She thought she was so lucky, when he started chatting to her in the park a few days ago.
He had singled her out and had been so sweet. He had known her name and that impressed her no end. But now she had changed her mind. She was terrified and he knew it. It suddenly occurred to Ginnie that he didn’t just know she was scared; he actually got off on it.
“Not yet.” He was smiling. He watched his hand stroke her hair. He slipped his finger down slightly further, to her clitoris and watched her face crumple up with revulsion.
He had had plans for this one. She was going to be one of his new girls.
She was young and the punters would like that. They would pay a fortune for her. She was slim and very pretty, which meant he could use her for his more prestigious clients, the judges and alike. But now he knew that she was a virgin, it changed things slightly.
He wanted her to himself for a while. She was untouched goods. He had been the only man that had been there and it made him feel invincible. It was actually the vast amount of cocaine that he had consumed that was giving him this invincible feeling but for now he was happy to believe in the myth that it was her.
He let his fingers play with her at their own free will.
He liked the control he had over her, the fear he had already instilled in her. Ginnie would do as she was told, he knew that. She was innocent and reminded him of someone he used to know and love and for a while he was going to pretend he had her back.
“I want you to be a very good little girl and do something for me.” He kissed her then; his tongue deep in the back of her throat. Ginnie couldn’t help but gag this time.
“I want to you to pretend to be someone.” He slipped a single finger inside her, much gentler than b
efore. Then he whispered. “Rachel.”
* * *
Four days later, she found herself standing in a small bathroom, in a flat in Harold Wood, wondering what the hell was happening to her. The building itself was rat infested, with water leaking from pipes along the skirting boards.
Needles and burnt tin foil lay in the passages outside, the domineering smell of urine clung to every wall.
The bathroom was in no better state. The walls, that may have once been a creamy yellow, now bore a murky grey soot that layered everything. The toilet and sink sustained mass rust erosion and what was left of the white paint work was melting into an abyss of reddish brown.
The bath was filthy and covered in a black scum. She turned on the shower and it made a chugging noise that travelled along the pipes on the ceiling and down the walls, there was a gurgling before water spurted out the mouldy head.
She undressed and stepped into the bath. Every bone ached and throbbed. She looked down at her battered body.
Her legs were a mass of black and purple. He had hurt her pretty badly. She couldn’t do what he had wanted. How could she? She had never so much as kissed a boy with tongues, let alone done the things he had asked of her.
He had punished her when she couldn’t perform to his commands. Then he tortured and raped her, over and over. He had to carry her from the car to the flat because she couldn’t walk. He laid her on the bed and stroked her hair, while whispering soothing words into her ear, until she fell asleep.
He switched from nice to terrifying and back to nice so many times throughout the first night, but all the time he called her Rachel. It was only days later, when he helped her to the bathroom so she could shower, that he called her by her name.
As the warm water washed away the blood and semen that was stuck to her body, she wondered who Rachel was.
She hoped he never found her because the girl was in for a much worse time than she had suffered, Ginnie was sure of that. He loved and hated her so much; it was frightening to see how much it consumed him.
As much as he had let rip on her, Ginnie was also sure he had held back. He had known she wasn’t this Rachel girl but he needed to pretend she was. The more coke he snorted, the quicker the switches happened. It got to the point that Ginnie didn’t know which one he was going to be at any given second.
She had never felt so relieved as when he finally fell asleep and stopped pawing at her for a while, Although, even then, he still held her very close to him, in a vice like grip. Before he fell asleep each time, he told her that she was now his. He said he now owned her and if she tried to escape he would kill her and set fire to the children’s home, with everybody inside it.
This was enough to make sure that she did as she was told. She wasn’t particularly fond of the home but it had small children in there. They were innocent, but then so was she. He said that, if she was a good girl, then he would let her go when he had finished with her. She wasn’t entirely sure he meant it. She had a feeling this dingy flat would be the last place she ever saw.
She kept that thought to herself though and only allowed herself to think it once.
Chapter 4
October 2005
Walking through to the bar, Rachel gave a huge sigh of relief the lunchtime rush was over. She hated that part of her shift. It was too fast and stressed. The various ovens, microwaves, fryers and grills bleeped and beeped for two hours solid; the orders fl ying out of a ticket machine that sat on the gantry. Little notes of paper, with the orders printed in a feint black ink.
Whoever was on that particular station had to be quick to catch them, otherwise the order was lost and forty fi ve minutes later, an irate waitress would be standing in front of you shouting obscenities, waving her arms, going red in the face and almost imploding.
There were constantly members of the kitchen team running in and out of fridges and freezers, shouting out orders to other stations. It was a very noisy place to be and Rachel’s head was thumping.
All she wanted was a coffee, a cigarette and fi fteen minutes peace. The bistro was lively at all times of the day and night but the lunchtime was the worst. The advantage of being situated in Brentwood’s busy high street was that the place was never empty. The benefit of this to Rachel was that there was always plenty of waitressing shifts on offer for her.
The bistro was laid out around a long counter that housed five high-yield espresso machines and several glass display cases, containing pastries and savoury items such as sandwiches. It had an unrefined feel to it; retaining that permanent sense of “just came in from the rain”.
The interior was slightly dingy; dark colours, low light.
Bizarre, raw artwork lined the walls and the muted couch pillows on the leather sofas were perpetually warmed by the sitting locale.
A slight musty scent was partially covered by the smell of roasted coffee that hung in the air; aromatic and alluring.
An odd assortment of tables and chairs were staggered across the wooden floor in front of the bar, each honoring a chic, red lace table cloth. Dried flowers, in miniature glass vases, sat in the middle.
Among the throng of Wi-Fi sipping laptops, sat people reading the dog-eared pages of books or newspapers. There were mothers with babies and prams clogging up the avenues for the waitresses. A small group of college students had taken over the black leathers sofas that lined the walls. The cornucopia of sounds became a mishmash of noise; Rachel always found it surprisingly invigorating.
She put her cup under the coffee machine that sat at the end of the bar and pressed the button. Then she heard him.“Coffee mate”
Rachel’s whole body jolted, as if she had just had an electric shock. Her fingers trembled, as she removed her cup and reached for a spoon. She took a deep breath and turned round to face the voice.
He didn’t see her at first. He was concentrating on the barman serving him; dressed in a dark blue pair of fitted jeans, a charcoal grey T-shirt and white loafers.
God he looked good! The thought overwhelmed her. He was supposed to have gained weight, grown a beard, looked older. The years were supposed to have been unkind.
“Latte, Cappuccino, Macchiato, Mocha, Espresso?” The barman asked.
“Fucking Hell! I just want a coffee”. He snapped back He started sorting out his change. Rachel smiled to herself. He hadn’t changed. He was still just as arrogant. It surprised her, that the thought made her smile. It is hardly a personality trait that should be found attractive, but she did. She always had; in him anyway.
Those seducing blue eyes still catapulted her heart out of her chest. For a split second, Rachel considered walking away, before he saw her, before she opened that door again.
The door that had stayed closed for a long time.
“You’re not causing trouble are you, Mr Fergus?”
The words were out before her brain had even registered what was happening. It was too late now. Walking away was not an option anymore. She had made that initial contact.
She had crossed the line. Rachel knew that.
She knew she should have walked away, before he had seen her, before he could enchant her with that smile; the smile that was enchanting her right now.
Why, out of all the bistros, had he walked into hers?
After eight years, why today? Why did he look so damn good? Rachel’s head was full of why’s.
“Not anymore. Can I get you a drink?”
That smile was still there. It transported Rachel, back to a time where she was young and free, when she first met him, when he had swept her off her feet, when he had managed to take a piece of her heart that would never be owned by another person ever again.
“I don’t finish for another two hours. If you are still here, you can buy me a drink.” With that, Rachel turned around and walked out, to the back of the bar.
He watched her leave and smiled. His day just got a whole lot better. He picked up his coffee and went over to a table that was near the kitchen entrance
. He would see her come out when she had finished her shift. He wouldn’t miss her. No way. He had only just found her again.
Rachel sat down outside, on the step at the back of the Bistro. She lit herself a cigarette, dragging deeply and exhaling loudly. The small car park was full, which was surprising for a midweek lunchtime.
She thought it had been more busy than usual. The steps in front of her were littered with cigarette ends and half drunk coffee cups. She cursed the kitchen boys and made a mental note to remind them to clear up after themselves.
She stared out across the industrial sized bins that were lined up against the wall of the bistro; flattened cardboard boxes lay in metal cages to the side of the steps. It was a beautiful day, considering it was still late winter. The sun was high and the air was so still against her skin, she was assailed by the memory of him once more.
Then she realised that, as cool as she had thought she had just handled the situation, it was all undone by the fact she was wearing the bistro’s strict white blouse, black skirt, black low heeled shoe dress code, a very unflattering hairnet and an incredibly dirty apron.
Oh she had it going on all right. She groaned inwardly.
She looked a mess. As if he was going to still be there in two hours. What was there to wait for? She hardly oozed style.
She finished her coffee and smoked another cigarette.
Walking back through to the kitchen, her mind wandered back to the day she realised she could not be with him; not ever. They were seventeen and completely smitten.
Actually, infatuation was probably the better term to use; it bordered on fanatical and obsessed. It only lasted a few months. Rachel put a stop to ‘them’ on January 24th 1997. The date she will remember forever. It was the day she made either the best decision or the biggest mistake of her life.
Even now, nine years later, she did not know which one it was. She knew that there had not been a day gone by when she had not thought about him, dreamt about him, fantasised even. Sean Fergus.
She had fought against her every instinct every day. He was the love of her life. That she was certain of. But they were self destructive together. That she was certain of too.
Matilda Wren Page 3
