Savage Atonement. PENNY JORDAN

comforting. The emotional storm had left her tired and drained, and the slow thud of his heart soothed her.

      ‘Better now?’ he asked at length. ‘You’re a pretty potent package, you know,’ he added when selfconsciousness returned and she had moved away from him. And there was an oddly strained look to his mouth. ‘I’d better get you back before I’m accused of rape myself!’

      His words shocked her, reminding her of how little she knew about him, how foolishly trusting she had been, and she scrambled out of the car before he could stop her—not that he made any attempt to do so. The smile he gave her as he drove off disturbed her. There was something about it that frightened her.

      When she got back to the home no one had missed her. Rachel came to see her to tell her that they were moving her to another home—an all-girls one this time, where they thought she would fit in better.

      For the first time since the trial she didn’t ask about her mother, and as Rachel told her parents that night over their evening meal, ‘I think she’s beginning to accept that her mother’s deserted her, poor little scrap. That brute Trenchard ought to have been locked away for a lifetime—not simply six months!’

      It was the weekend before Laurel knew the truth; a weekend that brought to light Oliver Savage’s real identity in the shape of a colour supplement article about her; an article that purported to be a personal interview with Oliver Savage, in which he tore her reputation and everything she had said to him in shreds. ‘Does any really innocent teenager accept a lift from a stranger and then proceed to practically invite him to make love to her?’ And so it went on, and reading it Laurel was barely able to believe it. Haltingly she explained to Rachel what had actually happened; how Oliver Savage had twisted everything she had said, pounced on her own admission that she had known of her stepfather’s desire, and according to him fanned it.

      ‘The man must have a warped mind to do something like this!’ Rachel stormed later, when Laurel had been sedated and put to bed. ‘He’s talked to Laurel, seen her—he’s supposed to be an intelligent human being, can’t he guess what sort of effect his article is going to have on her? The first human being she brings herself to confide in, and he does this to her!’

      ‘He’s a reporter,’ Peter told her dryly, ‘What do you expect? Although I agree it was bad luck on Laurel’s part that she had to meet him when she was at her most vulnerable. He’s renowned for his dislike of the present rape laws; claims that in ninety cases out of a hundred the men have been led on and aren’t totally to blame. No doubt he was waiting there, hoping for an interview with Trenchard, instead he got Laurel, poor little kid!’

      Being involved in a rape case was something that clung like mud all through your life if you let it, Laurel reflected as she folded the papers and put them away. Shortly after the trial her mother had died, and then Bill Trenchard had been killed in a car accident several months after he had been released from gaol. Over the years she had learned to bury the past so deeply that it could never be resurrected, but today Oliver Savage had reappeared in her life, ripping the tissue of scars from old wounds, making her relive the past, and he wanted to talk to her. Why? So that he could do a follow-up article? Victim of sexual attack, six years on? What was he hoping to find? That she had lovers by the score? Bitter laughter welled up inside her. Well, he was doomed to disappointment. No man had ever touched her since. How could she let them; how could she offer a decent, moral man the body that had been sullied by her stepfather’s touch; a body that the world told her had actively encouraged that touch? Coming on top of her ordeal at the trial Oliver Savage’s article had driven her completely into her shell. For months she had simply refused to talk to anyone, and looking back now she shuddered to realise how close she had come to insanity. But that was all behind her now, and just as long as she remembered to trust no one, to rely on no one, she would be safe.

      A little to her surprise she slept reasonably well, without the nightmares which had plagued her after the article was published. Feeling thankful that it was a Saturday and she had the weekend to recover her composure, she ate her breakfast, made out a shopping list and set out for her local shops, as was her normal Saturday morning ritual. One of her weekly chores was the changing of her library books. She was an avid reader, and the girl behind the desk recognised her.

      ‘Why don’t you try this?’ she suggested, proffering Laurel a book. Her hand shook as she took it and saw the name Jonathan Graves on the spine.

      ‘No, I don’t think so.…’ she began, then changed her mind, and clutched at the book until her knuckles whitened. Perhaps she ought to read it? Perhaps it would give her a deeper insight into the man, a clue as to why he would want to see her.