Hell Hath No Fury by Rosie Harris Page A

to hush matters up.
    Her feelings had been ignored completely, she thought resentfully. The important factor in her parent’s eyes was that the school year had ended. She wouldn’t be going back to school, so she need never see anything of the boys who had perpetrated this appalling crime, or any of her other classmates, ever again.
    Apart from the boys involved, and her father was quite sure they would say nothing, no one else knew what had happened. If they were discreet the terrible incident need never become public knowledge, her parents insisted.
    â€˜You won’t be staying in Benbury,’ her father had said firmly.
    â€˜You mean I can go to university and study History!’
    â€˜Oh, no! That’s out of the question after what has happened. You will have to settle for something more practical, like a business course.’
    â€˜Why? I’ve always dreamed of going to university. You always said I could if I got the right grades.’
    â€˜You could have done. But not now, not after what’s happened,’ her father intervened. He turned to his wife. ‘Tell her can’t you! Explain why it is pointless to make plans like that,’ he said irritably.
    Her mother looked uncomfortable. ‘It’s because of what happened, Maureen. You see, you might be pregnant.’
    The shock quelled her ready arguments. It was only much later that she realized how ridiculous it had been to let them take a decision of that kind in the heat of the moment. On the very night she had been raped!
    Three months later, when she should have been settling into university, she was both relieved and bitterly aware that they had all worried unnecessarily.
    Once they knew she wasn’t pregnant her parents’ relief was tempered by concern that people might find out what had happened. They made her promise never to talk about the rape ever again, not even to them, and certainly not to anyone outside the family.
    And she hadn’t. Not until Philip Harmer had been so insistent on knowing all about her past. Then it had come rushing out like wine from an uncorked bottle, gurgling, and spilling, and staining.
    By rejecting her because of what had happened all those years ago, Philip Harmer had aroused in her all the rage and resentment she had never expressed as a timid, frightened teenager.
    The result had been an intense determination to wreak revenge for the self-hate and sense of inferiority and guilt she’d carried with her all these years.
    He’d set in motion a maelstrom that on the one hand terrified her by its implications but on the other filled her with deep-seated satisfaction that the time had come for retribution.
    She was determined to exercise all the skills she possessed to create the ultimate in revenge. And then she would put Benbury, and everything pertaining to it, right out of her mind. She would never return. Her whole life would be changed.
    It would take time, and concentration, and attention to detail. But she could do it. Tonight had been the first phase, and everything had gone exactly to plan! It had been an unsurpassed success, she congratulated herself.
    She finished double-checking everything in the black grip, and then she bundled up the black cagoule, the ultra-sensitive rubber gloves, and the black woolly hat and dropped them into a black bin bag. She slipped off the black canvas trainers she was wearing, which she’d bought only a few days earlier, and dropped them in as well. They’d better go. Better to be safe than sorry.
    It was a pity that everything she’d worn wasn’t made of paper, then she could have put them through the shredder, she thought as she knotted the top of the black sack. As it was, she’d have to drive to the council tip and dispose of them first thing in the morning.
    And then shop for new ones!
    It seemed crazy, an unnecessary expense, but all the careful research she had done in advance had made her decide it