Sara's Child (9 page)
Tall and lean, Catherine makes a lovely vision in her short pink and grey dress, Logan observes as he watches her standing on the terrace looking out at Ellie’s island. Her drastically short blonde hair, though it is starting to grow enough on top to flutter slightly in the breeze, doesn’t detract from her beauty in his eyes. He imagines she stands around five feet nine or ten, still below shoulder height to him in her bare feet, but then most women are he concedes. He walks towards her, making sure she will hear him coming so as not to startle her out of her reverie. “Penny for them?”
Catherine’s cheeks pink prettily as she remembers her daydreams of Logan. “Not worth it,” she dismissed. “I was only thinking about work,” she lies unconvincingly.
What a body!
“Well…,” Logan chuckles, “…if thinking of work puts that colour in your cheeks I’d love to see what thinking of us does to you.” He moves in for a kiss and she puts her arms around his neck instinctively. “Mmm,” he groans, as their lips part, still holding her in the circle of his arms, “you taste as good as you look.” His eyes are warm and staring right in to hers.
What do you see in me? Can you see the ugliness inside…?
She smiles up at him, her blue eyes bright with tentative hope and a love she still has not admitted to, even to herself. “That’s all you get for now, big boy,” she murmurs, and makes to move out of his arms, but Logan is not letting her go.
“For now…?”He repeats suggestively. “Does that mean you have plans for us for later?” His hands move down from her waist to her bottom, and pull her to him intimately.
“Logan!” Catherine is more than a little pink, now she is mortified. “Henry…,” she splutters looking warily back at the house. Bloody hell!
His quiet laughter does nothing to lessen her embarrassment, but he does drop his hold on her then takes her hand instead. “Let’s go for a walk,” he invites, not even attempting to hide his intentions from her.
Her heart leaps into her throat, her breathing suddenly laboured, but she moves with him willingly.
And they say dreams are just wishes the heart makes – I’ll have to daydream more often!
Halfway towards the lake and its surrounding trees and gardens, Henry calls out to Logan. “You’ve got a visitor, son.”
Fuck!
Logan takes Catherine’s face between gentle hands. “I think I know who it is and this shouldn’t take long.” He takes the time to kiss her until her pulses race, and then breaks away reluctantly. “Remember my place, we’re just getting started,” he smiles evocatively.
She watches his long muscular legs eat up the ground to the house and thinks his arse looked good enough to sink her teeth in to. Catherine laughs to herself, suddenly feeling all hot and bothered and knowing it has nothing to do with the glorious sunshine.
Hurry back, Logan. Phew!
However, Logan’s business with the visitor has taken a long time. Long enough that Catherine has made her way back to the terrace and is sipping a glass of iced orange juice, freshly prepared for her by the inestimable Aida. With the French windows open, she can clearly hear Logan outlining a property refurbishment deal to someone. It doesn’t sound to Catherine like he is talking about doing up just any little building, not with the huge amounts of money she’s heard him mention.
Mmm, I wonder if Logan can find us some new office premises at a reasonable price. If any prices can be called reasonable these days!
Then she hears the visitor speak for the first time, his Welsh accented voice deep and distinctive. She stands reflexively, the glass slipping unnoticed from her hand. Walking backwards, she stumbles off the terrace on to the surrounding grass and freezes, completely immobile.
That voice!
This one’s a beauty; I can cut toes off in a blink, watch. No, no, Oh God, please no. See, now listen to those lovely screams – that’s what real pain sounds like, little girl. I can’t breathe…I can’t…
She hasn’t even noticed their conversation conclude; hasn’t stopped hearing the sound of that voice…that voice…that voice, her mind repeats as her world rocks beneath her bare feet.
“What the hell!” Logan rushes forward, takes hold of Catherine’s stone cold shoulders and gives them a gentle shake. “Catherine, what is it?”
As she follows Logan’s glance down her body, Catherine realises that her bare legs and feet are now soaked in her own urine. “Oh my god!” She cries out on the verge of hysteria. Then a hand flies up to cover her mouth, her eyes going wide as that voice, that terrible voice, reverberates around in her confused thoughts.
I’m sorry, mummy. I’m so sorry…
Before Logan can stop her, Catherine dashes off into the house, up the stairs to her bedroom and locks the door safely behind her. She barely makes it to the bathroom in time, vomiting as if her insides will tear at the force of it. When it finally subsides, Catherine can only think of a shower. She can hear Logan hammering on the bedroom door demanding to be let in. Were it a less sturdy door it surely would have given way. But she can’t focus on Logan right now, can’t even comprehend how frantic he must be after finding her in such a state. Lifting her face into the warm spray of the shower, Catherine slowly lowers herself to the floor of the cubicle. She sobs a million tears, each one clearing away the mist that has hung over the buried memories of her mother.
She was hiding in her mother’s bedroom under the bed. The noise of someone breaking into the house downstairs had terrified her. She had hoped and prayed that he would take whatever he wanted quickly then go before her mum came home; but Catherine’s prayers hadn’t been answered. She’d heard her mum calling for her, becoming increasingly impatient when she got no reply. Then there was a scuffle, her mother screamed but the sound was cut off suddenly and Catherine held her breath in fear. Then she heard heavy feet on the stairs and the bedroom door had opened; Catherine had clapped both hands over her mouth to stop any noise escaping then had to listen as the man dumped her mum’s body on the bed and began tying her to it.
“I tried, mummy…” Catherine, hands clasped around her knees, rocks herself with the pain of remembering, “…I tried to warn you that he was there; but it wouldn’t come out. My voice just wouldn’t come out,” she sobs for her mother over and over. Then, finally, when the only water tumbling down her face is the spray from the shower, Catherine draws herself up, wraps a large towel about her and moves robotically to the wardrobe.
Downstairs Henry is trying to calm Logan, telling him to give her some space and time. “She’s stronger than you give her credit for,” Henry states confidently. “Catherine has taken care of herself just fine up till now and you ought to just let her calm down, then we’ll see what’s what.”
“I need to leave now,” Catherine states simply, quietly, standing at the foot of the stairs and taking them both by surprise. Both men turn in their seats to look at her, their heads whipping round in unison as if she has just yelled at them. “I can call a taxi,” she offers when neither of them moves, “I really don’t mind.”
For the last couple of hours, Logan has been wearing a groove in his father’s hallway after trying to break the bedroom door down hadn’t worked. He was desperate to talk to her, wanting her to explain what the hell happened in the short time he’d left her alone. However, looking at Catherine, he can see that any explanations will have to wait. Her face is ghost-like, shut down, blank of all emotion.
“Come and sit down for a minute, Catherine,” he invites, rising to his feet as she continues to stand at the foot of the stairs. “I’ll have to bring the car round first.” But Catherine doesn’t move, or blink. Logan makes his way slowly towards her, but knows instinctively that now is not the time to offer comfort or any physical contact. Instead, he gets the car, stows the few bags that Catherine has brought down with her in the boot, then says goodbye to his father, promising to ring him later that night.
The drive back to Sheriton is not as enjoyable as the trip down had been. The tension in the air is heavy enough to cut with a knife, but Catherine just doesn’t know where to begin.
As if she has said the words aloud, Logan asks her to tell him only what she can. “You don’t need to go into specifics,” he encourages, trying to make it as easy for her as possible.
The fact that he is driving and has to concentrate on the narrow country lanes means he won’t so easily be able to turn to look at her; to see the horror of the nightmare on her face, and she takes some comfort in that.
“I’m not sure that I can anyway,” she tells him, “I’ve tended to push it all to the back of my mind.” Catherine expects Logan to chime in with some words of encouragement or empty platitudes. She’s heard them all as she was growing up. “I was at home on my own,” she begins. “My mum was out doing the cleaning job I told you about. I was nine, almost ten, so it was no big deal. I’d watch the telly, or more likely read one of my many books.” She surprises herself by smiling and Logan hears it in her voice. “One of the reasons my mum took the extra work was to keep me supplied with endless books. I was hard work, you see.”
Catherine falls silent recalling her mum’s futile attempts to occupy her. But she had grown bored quickly, had become sullen and cheeky or gone off on long walks round the neighbourhood. Anyway, she knows it hadn’t been easy for her mum; until she’d discovered books, that is. And not the usual junior novels like all the other kids read. No, hers had been expensive textbooks.
As if life wasn’t difficult enough for mum.
“Catherine…?” is all Logan needs to say.
“I couldn’t get enough books,” she begins again. “No stories or novels,” she dismisses with a snort of disgust, “but real books; about how things work and why. I mean, at nine you not only want to know who invented the modern jumbo jet, or how its put together, but how it manages to stay up there in the clouds with all those people and luggage and other things that should make it too heavy even to leave the ground, let alone fly thousands of feet above it.” She is smiling again, he knows, and is glad for her to have those precious memories as well as the horrors that she still hasn’t spoken of. Is she stalling, he wonders.
“My mum marvelled at the things I came out with – see what this does, mum – Or, look what that does, mum – and, look how this works, mum”
So selfish. So completely self-absorbed
. Catherine shakes her head in wonder at her mother’s patience. “So…you can see, how buying books that gave me all the information I seemed to crave became the easier option; and working evenings gave her a break from me anyway.”
She needed it
.
“Yet Arthur Kingsley told me that you had never been to university,” Logan interjects. “Was he wrong…?”
“No he wasn’t wrong.” Then she tells him about being called a freak at school. And about the bloody noses the other kids’ parents had regularly complained that their children were coming home with. “I was happiest on my own,” he hears her continue. “I didn’t need any of them. But my mum couldn’t understand it when the school complained about my behaviour and my inability to interact during lessons. I’d become the model child at home, you see. As for exams,” she flicks them off with a sharp wave of her hand, “I just refused to do them.”
Refused to tow their bloody line. Fuckers!
“But, why?” he asks, suddenly confused. “You could have done anything, gone to university and been anything you wanted to be.”
“Yeah,” she scoffs, “if I’d just played the game the way they wanted it played. ‘We’re reading The Lord of the Rings just now, dear,”’ she mimics, doing her best impression of the redoubtable Miss Parish, her English teacher. “Then she confiscated the book I was reading and forced me to read the book she wanted me to read out loud in front of the whole class.” She actually crosses her arms over her chest in a move that brings a smile to Logan’s face. One that, the now angry, Catherine has noticed. “Oh I suppose you were Mr Popular,” she scoffs acidly. “Always the little gentleman; yes sir, no sir, three bags bloody full sir.”
Jesus-H-Christ! A right Little Lord fucking Fauntleroy!
Logan actually laughs out loud at that, and Catherine’s scowl deepens. “I was no saint, I assure you,” he tells her, still chuckling at her description of him. “But learning never did come easy to me, so I had to discipline myself to study hard and pay attention in class. Not all of us have blotting paper for brains,” he counters.
“Were you always set on going to university then?” she asks. “Or did you get pushed along the way by your parents?”
“You’ve met my father – does he seem like the pushy parent type to you?”
Catherine thinks that over. No, Henry had not seemed like that at all. But then what did she know about fathers, she’d never had one. “I don’t have any experience in the father department,” she states matter of fact. “But I wouldn’t have said that Henry is pushy, not in an overbearing way anyway,” she clarifies.
“But you think he could be in other ways…?” He is genuinely interested in her opinions, and is enjoying their frank exchange; though he knows he is facilitating her stalling tactics at the same time.
“I think he’d have kicked your arse black and blue if you’d cheeked him the way I used to cheek my mum.” She turns to smile at him, but it falters and dies, leaving her looking sad.
My mum ought to have given me the back of her hand. I never deserved her. So loving. So patient. So…
“Is that what your mum did?” he probes gently. “Did your mother hurt you, Catherine? Is that what you’re remembering?”