Faith by Lesley Pearse Page A

you doing?’ she exclaimed, suddenly aware her blouse was unbuttoned too.
    ‘Just loving you,’ he said. ‘Don’t move, let me just touch you there.’
    She leapt to her feet, brushing his hands away from her, shuddering with revulsion. ‘You dirty bastard,’ she screamed at him. ‘How could you!’
    Running from the room, she took the stairs two at a time and locked herself in the bathroom. She felt sick and very afraid, and a few minutes later when she heard him coming up the stairs she yeiled out for him to go away.
    ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said outside the door, his voice soft and caressing. ‘You looked so beautiful and I just got carried away. I’m sorry if I frightened you, but I thought you felt that way about me too.’
    ‘Of course I didn’t, you’re an old man,’ she shouted back. ‘Mum will go mad with you when I tell her.’
    He asked her to come out of the bathroom, but she refused. He was silent for a little while, but she knew he was still there.
    ‘Okay, so I made a mistake,’ he said eventually. ‘But you did bring it on yourself, snuggling up to me. How was I to know you didn’t want it?’
    Laura was crying now, and she couldn’t put into words how defiled she felt. All she kept saying was that she was going to tell her mother.
    ‘You must think hard before you do that,’ he said. ‘For one thing, I’ll just tell her that you started it and that you’ve been flaunting yourself at me since you moved in here.’
    ‘She’ll know that’s not true,’ Laura sobbed. ‘You’ve been creepy with me from the start.’
    ‘Is giving you and the others a good home creepy?’ he asked, a chilly note in his voice. ‘Is giving you good food, warm clothes and anything else you need creepy? I think not, and if your mother does believe your version of what happened, then it will all end. You’ll all have to go. Back to another slum, until your mother takes up with another sucker willing to keep her.’
    He went on and on insistently and Laura realized then that he was cruel enough to put her family out on the street. ‘I thought you loved Mum,’ she sobbed. ‘But YOU don’t, you’ve just used her.’
    ‘Used her! That’s rich,’ he exclaimed. ‘She made a play for me the moment she knew I was a widower. Listen to me, Laura, and listen good. Your mother is just a whore. She’d have dropped her knickers for any man with money, I knew that from the start, but she was good company and she gave me what I wanted. It’s up to you now, tell her if you must, but you’ll be the one to blame if she takes your part and I have to throw her out.’
    ‘You’re horrible,’ Laura shouted back at him. ‘Mum will want to go when she knows what you said.’
    ‘You’d better think about your sisters and Freddy,’ he said threateningly. ‘The girls won’t thank you for it, not when they have to leave that school where they are doing so well, or their pretty bedroom. And what about Freddy when he has to leave his tricycle and other toys behind? But June won’t take your part anyway, a good whore knows when she’s on to a good thing. She’ll just hate you for upsetting the apple cart.’
    Laura protested, but feebly, for the thought of Meggie and Ivy’s faces when they had to leave here was too awful to contemplate.
    ‘I’m going downstairs now,’ he said. ‘Go to your room and stay there. I hope that by morning you’ll have decided on the smartest move, which is to keep this to yourself.’
    Laura heard her mother come in later, and Meggie calling out to Vincent to show him her new shoes. Every sound that wafted up the stairs was one of a happy family, and Laura sobbed into her pillow knowing that Vincent was right, everyone would suffer if she told the truth.
    Her mother didn’t come up to see why she was in bed, which in itself suggested she didn’t care too much about her eldest daughter. Meggie brought a glass of milk and a sandwich up later, but even she was too excited