“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 avirgin,” 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 defiantin 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,” hesaid, so heartlessly.
“But you could haverescued 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 – ”
“Shehatedme,” 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 donetoher.” 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. Iknew 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.”
