The Warrior's Princess Read online

  Sitting on the edge of the sofa, huddled in her bathrobe, she could feel herself starting to shake again as in her head she went over and over the facts that she could remember. Had she asked Ash in? She had danced with him several times, after all. She had had another drink. Then another. Who had given them to her? She couldn’t remember. Obviously she had drunk too much but had they been laced with something? Had she, in whatever state she was in, agreed to sex? Enjoyed it? Her hands were clammy. She could feel a wave of nausea building somewhere under her ribcage. The room was starting to spin again.

  She became aware suddenly of the sound of steps on the staircase outside running up towards her flat. Scrambling to her feet she ran to the front door, rammed the bolt across and slotted the chain into its keep then slowly, shaking with the kind of fear she had never in her life experienced before, she slid to the floor, tears pouring down her face as she leaned backwards against the wall, hugging the white towelling robe around her. Outside, the footsteps ran on up past her door without stopping and the sound disappeared somewhere on the upper floors.

  In the end she fell asleep where she was, on the floor, her back against the wall.

  When she woke it was to the sound of knocking. The door handle turned. Holding her breath she looked up at it, her stomach churning.

  ‘Jess, are you there?’ It was Will’s voice. ‘Jess, are you OK? Look, I wanted to apologise for last night. I behaved like an idiot. I’m sorry.’ There was a long pause, then she heard a deep sigh. ‘Jess? Are you there? What’s wrong?’ There was another pause. Then an angry exclamation. ‘I’ll see you on Monday for clearing up, OK, Jess?’ She heard him turn away from the door, then his footsteps as he ran down the stairs and the bang of the street door behind him. Then silence.

  He had behaved like an idiot.

  How had he behaved like an idiot?

  Surely it could not have been Will. They had quarrelled in the past, even before that last break up. They had done more than quarrel. They had fought. But he wouldn’t force her against her wishes. Would he?

  Could he have followed her and Ash home? If he had he could have let himself in. She was certain he still had a key in spite of his insistence that he had returned it to her. They had danced last night in the end. More than once. She could remember that. She’d felt his arms around her for a moment with such loving familiarity, felt herself relax into them. It was Will who, after a few minutes, had drawn away and moved alone to the music leaving her to dance by herself.

  With a weary sigh she closed her eyes.

  Much later she heard Mrs Lal from the ground floor flat open her door and go out, her slippers slapping on the steps. She was going to the corner shop; no need for proper shoes then. In spite of her misery Jess gave a fond smile. Sometimes the old lady would call up and see if Jess would like her to fetch a Sunday paper or some milk, but not today. Today there was silence; perhaps she had heard Will rattling her door and thought Jess must be out.

  Climbing stiffly to her feet, she went over to the window and looked down. Mrs Lal was walking slowly down the road, a blue cardigan pulled over her sari, her grey hair clamped into an untidy bun. As Jess watched she saw the old lady hesitate and slow down suddenly and cross over the road. Jess frowned, wondering why. Then she saw them. Two black youths loitering by the gate into the square. She watched them for a moment, her throat growing dry. One of them was Ash. The other his elder brother, Zac. They stood staring at poor Mrs Lal, obviously enjoying her discomfort. She saw Zac call out and the old lady moved more quickly, hurrying away from them towards the shop. Perhaps she should go down and chase them away. What were they doing here anyway? The boys lived on the Constable Estate on the far side of the school. Almost as though he was conscious she was watching him she saw Ash move suddenly. He stepped out into the road where she could see him more easily and perhaps he could see her, and she saw him sketch once more the elaborate theatrical courtly bow in her direction. She saw Zac laugh and aim a half-hearted kick at his brother’s head, before Ash blew a kiss towards her house and both boys turned away, loping nonchalantly towards the Underground station and the busy High Street.

  Jess backed away from the window. He couldn’t have seen her. It was much too far away. And he didn’t know where she lived. Correction: he wasn’t supposed to know where she lived. She felt herself grow ice-cold. He had done it. It was Ash and he was mocking her. Oh God, what was she to do? He was telling her what he had done; gloating; knowing she could never nail him for it. Daring her to try. That was why he bowed. Her best student. She had thought she’d won his trust and respect and this was how he had repaid her.

  She phoned Brian Barker with her resignation on Monday morning. She told him she was ill; too stressed to teach any more. She cut off his protests by switching off her phone. Then she went to the doctor who confirmed that her memory loss could well be the effect of some kind of drug. She had gone for the morning after pill. She had not thought of the HIV test, the other tests the doctor insisted on; the doctor’s worried glance as she examined her. ‘If you don’t know who it was, Jess,’ she said gently, ‘you cannot take chances. The bruises, the muscle stiffness. You obviously weren’t a willing participant in this. You are right, you were raped and you should go to the police.’ On that point Jess had not changed her mind. She spent the rest of the day huddled in a miasma of depression and self-pity.

  The doorbell rang at just after five. This time she opened it. It was Dan. After a moment’s hesitation at the sight of her white face, he strode past her straight into the sitting room, taking a seat in the armchair near the window. ‘So, what’s this I hear about you resigning? You can’t! The school needs you. I need you in my department. Besides, you have to give a term’s notice.’

  ‘I told Brian I was ill,’ she said after a moment’s pause.

  ‘And are you?’ He was scrutinising her face carefully.

  She shrugged. ‘No. Yes. I have my reasons, Dan. I’m sorry to let you down.’ She met his gaze defiantly, then at last looked away. She had perched uncomfortably on the edge of the chair opposite him.

  ‘You are my best literature teacher. You’ve done wonders. You’re part of the team, Jess,’ he said carefully. ‘Can’t you tell me why you want to go?’ He narrowed his eyes, still studying her.

  She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry.’ She shivered in spite of the warmth of the afternoon drifting in through the window with the roar of distant traffic from the High Street.

  ‘Come on. I need a reason. What can be so bad? Is it Will? I saw him pestering you at the dance.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Jess?’ He moved forward and reached out to put a hand on her knee as she sat across from him.

  She flinched at his touch and he frowned, sitting back. ‘What’s wrong?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It was Will, wasn’t it? He did something to upset you.’ He stood up and took a few paces across the floor and back again. ‘Did he hurt you?’

  She shook her head. She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone what had happened.

  ‘It was Will, wasn’t it?’ Dan repeated. ‘I’ve never trusted that arrogant bastard!’

  ‘He’s got nothing to do with it, Dan.’ She was shredding a tissue.

  ‘You were quarrelling with him at the disco. I saw you.’

  ‘Not seriously.’

  ‘It looked pretty serious to me.’ He narrowed his eyes. There was a moment of silence. ‘Why did you and Will break up?’

  ‘That’s none of your business, Dan. I don’t want to talk about this.’

  ‘He looked pretty pissed off when you left after the disco. He could have followed you and Ashley home.’ There was another long moment of silence. ‘It was Ashley! Ashley did something!’ Dan said softly at last. ‘The little bastard! What happened, Jess?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Leave it, Dan.’

  There was another pause. She was picturing Ash, by the railings near the gat
e to the square. The bow. The arrogant way he had looked up at the window of her flat. The blown kiss. She tried to force the image out of her head, but it refused to go. She had danced with him. She liked him; she had encouraged him. Perhaps she had given him the wrong idea. She sighed miserably. He was a lad with so much potential, set to get top grades. If she accused him and she was wrong and it wasn’t him a police enquiry would destroy him anyway. It would never go away.

  ‘So, you’ve made up your mind.’ Dan gave up asking questions. ‘You are definitely going to leave?’ He was watching her so closely she felt he was reading her mind. She nodded.

  He continued to look at her for several seconds in silence. ‘OK. I’ll make it right with Brian.’ He seemed to have decided not to argue with her any more. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get a brilliant reference, I’ll see to that, if that’s what you want. Looking on the bright side, you’ll probably get a fantastic position in some private girls’ school. Just right for you.’ He gave a small sharp laugh and she frowned at the sudden bitterness of his tone. ‘Take the summer off, Jess,’ he went on. ‘Forget all about whatever it was that has upset you so much and start again in the autumn!’ Leaning forward, he patted her knee again. ‘Whatever it was, Jess, get over it. Don’t think about it. Put it all behind you.’

  2

  Stephanie Kendal was seated at the work table, painting designs onto a tray of small ornate mugs ready for the final glaze. Glancing up at the window, she frowned. The sunlight had gone from the garden. Long shadows were advancing across the grass towards the studio where she sat listening to the radio. Leaning forward she turned it off. In the sudden silence she could hear a thrush singing in the distance through the open door. Slightly shorter, slightly plumper and slightly older than her sister, Jessica, there was a definite family likeness in the two women, inherited from their mother. From Aurelia Kendal they also took their love of literature, their artistic talent, their charm and their unconventionality. As a reaction against their mother’s decision to live as a hermit in a small cottage in the wilds of the Basses-Pyrénées when she was not bestriding the world in her capacity as travel writer and journalist, both her daughters had gravitated to inner London after graduation and teacher’s training college. Jess was still there. Steph had caved in, turned her back on the bright lights and spent her latest divorce settlement on this Welsh dream, a small mountain farmhouse not very far from the place where her mother had once lived before she had decided to swap the hills of Wales for the mountains of France.

  But she wasn’t sure any more if she had done the right thing.

  Setting down her brush she reached for a paint rag and wiped her fingers, frowning a little as she did so. The sound had been so small she had barely heard it over the music on the radio. A click, no more, from the far side of the studio.

  She scanned the shelves of pottery, the bags of clay, the jars of glaze, the tins of paint on the table by the wall. The rough stones of the old byre were white-washed, the medieval window slits glazed, the crook beams high above her head brushed, with here and there an ornate iron hook from which were suspended the light fittings and a glass mobile which jingled faintly in the draught, a gift from one of her many admirers. There it was again. A click, followed by a rattle. A bird or an animal must have come in through the open door while she was working and be poking around on the shelves. Quietly she pushed back her tall stool and stood up.

  Several minutes of careful searching produced no clue as to the source of the noise but she was feeling more and more uneasy. She could sense something or someone there. Watching her. She could feel the stare of eyes on the back of her neck.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice even to herself sounded nervous.

  Going to the door she stared out. The byre sat at right angles to the house with its white-washed walls and roof of old Welsh slate, joined to the kitchen by a newly built passageway. The door at which she was standing led directly outside into the L-shaped former farmyard where her car sat surrounded by terracotta pots of lavender and rosemary. She frowned. The total isolation of this old mountain farmhouse had been one of its attractions when she bought the place and mostly she adored the quietness, though admittedly the peace was often short-lived as a succession of friends came through her doors. But lately, when she was on her own, something had begun to unsettle her. This feeling that she was being watched. That someone or something was in the house with her. Not a human being. She could deal with that, she reckoned. No, it was something more subtle. More sinister. It wasn’t the noises, although she found herself listening constantly, aware of them even over the sound of the radio. No, it was something else.

  She turned back into the studio and caught her breath. Just for a fraction of a second a shadow had moved near the back table. She blinked and it was gone. Or had never been there at all.

  Outside she heard a crow calling as it flew across the valley, its shadow a swift flick across the warm stones of the yard. That was what she had seen. The shadow of a bird. Relieved, she turned to go back into the house just as in the kitchen the phone began to ring.

  ‘Steph, it’s Kim.’ The bubbly voice seemed to fill the place with sunshine. ‘Have you thought about my invitation? Come to Rome, Steph. Please. You can work here! Whatever you like. I’m rattling round in this apartment on my own. All my friends have gone away for the summer, it’s weeks before I’m leaving for the Lakes and I need you!’

  Steph glanced uncomfortably over her shoulder at the door which led to the studio. When Kim had first issued her invitation she had hesitated. Rome in summer would be unbearably hot and noisy. Kim, widowed after less than ten years of marriage to her wonderful, too-good-to-be-true, adoring older man and ensconced in her beautiful flat in a palazzo, no less, and with his considerable fortune all to herself, just could not be as desolate as she made out. But then again perhaps she was and perhaps the lure of Rome was too exciting to ignore. After all, what had Steph to lose? At most a week or so’s production of her pots. Less, if she and Kim no longer got on as they had in the old days when they were all at college together. Half an hour later she had switched on her computer, booked her flight and was already rifling through her cupboard for her case.

  Jess smiled ruefully as her sister’s voice rattled on until finally there was a pause.

  ‘Jess? Are you there? Aren’t you pleased for me? You knew Kim and I had kept in touch, didn’t you.’ Already there was a lilt of Wales in Steph’s voice.

  ‘That’s fantastic, Steph. Only …’ Jess grimaced. ‘Only, I was going to ask if I could come to Ty Bran to stay for a bit over the summer. I’m fed up with London and a bit desperate for a break. I want to go somewhere no one can find me. I want some peace to do some painting. Maybe rethink my lifestyle. I’m considering a career change. See if I can hack it as a painter.’ No point in telling her the real reason, spoiling Steph’s day; no point in making her feel she should cancel her holiday.

  ‘But that’s brilliant!’ Steph’s excitement dulled her usually perceptive reading of her sister’s moods. ‘Come here and welcome. In fact I’d be really pleased to have someone look after the place. My pot plants will need watering. If you come, that’s perfect! You can have some peace to do all the painting and thinking you want!’

  Putting down the phone Jess sat for a moment staring towards the window. Was she doing the right thing? She was allowing someone to chase her out of the job she loved; out of the flat she adored, out of the city she had come to enjoy and she was allowing him to think he had got off Scot free. He had got off Scot free. There would be no police. No identification. No repercussions for him at all.

  As the sunlight shone in through the window, focusing on her pale green patterned rug, illuminating in minute detail each small criss-crossed shape of the design, she heard the downstairs door bang and footsteps on the stairs. She held her breath. Slowly the steps grew closer, steady, loud, masculine. She swallowed, sweat breaking out between her shoulder blades. Had she locked her front door
? Surely she had. She had become obsessive about it. She sat, unable to move, her eyes fixed on the door handle, hearing the sound reverberate round the flat. The steps reached the landing outside and she heard them stop. For a moment there was total silence, then slowly the steps began again, walking up towards the next flight. Only then did she realise that she had stopped breathing altogether. She was shaking from head to foot. Jumping to her feet, she went out into the hallway and checked the chain on the door. It was safely in place, as was the bolt and the deadlock. It was then, as usual, that her fear was replaced by anger. He had done this to her! No one … no one had the right to terrorise her like this, to make her feel vulnerable, threatened, in her own home! It was outrageous. She hated the man who had done this to her, and she hated herself for having been made a victim. She would not be a victim. Somehow she had to regain her confidence.

  It was better outside. She felt safe on the bustling, noisy street and in the crowded shops and sitting over a latte at a table outside one of the little pavement cafés, watching the pigeons plodding fearlessly amongst the feet of passers by, dodging between the wheels of buggies and bicycles. The pub across the road was festooned with banners, shredded by the winter wind and still hanging there months later. Two meals for the price of one. Watch today’s match here.

  Crowds of people waited in front of her to cross the road, constrained by the railing which stopped them spilling into the traffic. The lights changed, they flowed across; behind them another group built up again. Above her head, a tattered silver balloon hung like a dead bird in the branches of a tree, flapping amongst the leaves. At the end of the road the traffic whirled on an endless choreographed dance around the mini roundabout. She sipped her coffee, reluctant to move. The noise was unstoppable; deafening. Engines; music; the cooing of pigeons on the ledges of the buildings high above her head; people talking and laughing and shouting and swearing; the warning siren of a reversing lorry; mobiles ringing every few seconds, their insistent ring tones an endless selfish cacophony against escalating raucous yells.