“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 witha 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.”
