Page 54 of The Trouble With Love

‘No, it’s not a free country. At least, this part here is our country, and it most certainly is not free for lesbian sluts to writhe around in, copulating with the forces of Hell.’

I almost laughed then, at the overblown ridiculousness of his hatred. Vivienne and copulating with the forces of Hell were not compatible images. But his hand was hard on my arm, I could feel each individual finger even through my multitude of sweaters and my good coat. ‘What if we promise not to do it again?’ I asked, my voice smaller than I liked.

‘Yeah, ’cause you can always take the word of Satan’s whores.’ He began to walk now, dragging me backwards across the hard packed snow.

‘What are you doing? I’m not going anywhere with you!’ I skittered and wheeled alongside him, struggling for purchase but my boots had only nylon soles and slid unprotestingly across the wet surface. ‘You can’t do this.’

He inclined his head downwards. ‘Think I can, darling.’ He nodded again. ‘This gives me permission to do pretty much whatever I want right now,’ and I saw the metal sheen and grip of a hand gun, jutting from his pocket like a lethal erection.

‘What . . . where are you taking me?’ I tried to dig my heels in but my feet just slipped out from underneath me and his crocodile-jawed grip got tighter on my arm as he used it to hold me up.

‘Putting you somewhere. Somewhere you’ll be safe until I come back for you.’ Now he stopped walking but kept pulling until I was dragged right up against him. ‘I’ve got uses for you yet.’ His spare hand came into view, gun casually between his fingers as though it was nothing more than an accessory. He ran his thumb over the barrel like you might stroke the palm of a sinisterly familiar hand.

I started to struggle, yanking back against his hold on my arm. I could smell his body, his hair, an age-old cigarette on his breath. I tried not to notice, not to feel the threat of the swelling in his groin or the insolently possessive way he put the gun barrel under my jaw and tipped my face up to force me to look him in the eye. I couldn’t breathe now past the terror tightening my airways as he forced my body to turn slowly in front of him and squealed as I felt the gun drop, his hand move across my body, dipping and diving, until he increased his grip with a jerk that almost broke my arm. ‘Shut up. I’m just looking for . . . ah, there we are.’ My mobile appeared from my pocket for a second and then vanished into the depths of his clothing.

‘You can’t do this!’

‘Yeah? You think?’ His tongue became visible, poking from the corner of his mouth like a little hard-nosed rodent. My fear seemed to be exciting him or at least fuelling some twisted fantasy. ‘Because I think you need to learn some manners, girlie. Need to learn your place.’

My heart rose and rose until I thought it was going to come out through my ears and I could taste the bitter swell of adrenaline on my tongue. ‘And where would that be, exactly?’ It barely came out, a mere whisper, but I said it and then felt proud, even though my tongue had clacked with dryness over my teeth as I had.

He pushed his face against mine, so close that I could see the chip in his front tooth and my nose pricked with the rancid scent of wet wool from his coat. ‘Underneath me, darling, that’s where.’ And then he laughed, a harsh spit-spraying laugh that sent flecks of phlegm onto my cheek and he dragged me forward again, tightening his grip on my arm again until my fingers went numb.

Eventually we stopped in front of a small wooden hut, the kind the farmers use to keep their pheasant feed in and my abductor took a key from his pocket. ‘We’ll be nice and quiet in here,’ he said, as though showing me to a hotel room. ‘No one ever comes out here, except Michael, and I was wondering what to get him for Christmas.’ He swung round suddenly and touched my face. ‘Might be the first year he gets an unwrapped present.’

Even my skin backed up at the feel of his finger on my cheek. It crept tighter to my bones while I swallowed a sudden flood of saliva and tried to keep myself from vomiting.

The padlock opened and the door swung inwards. ‘But then, wouldn’t want you freezing to death before Mike gets a go at you. He likes his girls warm and lively; now me, I’m not so fussy. In you go.’ A shove and I overbalanced, toppling into the little hut and banging my knees on the ground. The man was right behind me, a silhouette of evil in the doorway, blocking the light, my air, my escape, his elbows angled oddly until I realised what he was doing — flipping his coat aside to get access to his zip.

I screamed, just once, a weirdly throaty noise as though it came from a nightmare, heeling myself backwards on the muddy floor until I was tight up against the far wall, splinters rasping at my neck. My fists clenched and I worked my back up the timber as I fought my shaking legs to let me stand, let me fight, while my brain begged me to lie down, play dead, stay still, and breathing and gagging had become the same thing.

Into the rough quiet a two-tone tune exploded like a gunshot in a mausoleum and the man swore then began fumbling his coat back into place, grabbing through the pockets until he came up with a phone. ‘Shit. What do you want?’ A squawkback of answer. ‘Yeah. I guess. Okay, I’m on my way.’ Two seconds later I was alone, the man gone without a word to me, the door was relocked and I was left perched awkwardly on the muddy floorspace, bile souring my tongue and my breath broken in my throat. I looked around. There was no window, the only light in the hut came from under the door in a narrow slice and the air smelled of birds and plastic.

After a few frozen seconds I gave in to tears. Pathetic, I know, but it seemed appropriate and gave my body time to get over the shaky, shocked feeling. Then, after a moment’s consideration — I didn’t want to find that he’d only walked a couple of yards and could shoot me through the wood — I hurled myself at the door in case, by some fluke, he hadn’t locked it properly, or I could burst free. But the door opened inwards. Even if I’d been heavy enough to break the hinges, I would have had to be on the other side of it. After that I yelled for a bit, kicking at the door in the hopes that some passing ramblers might hear me and come. They didn’t. When my throat was sore and my eyes were stinging, I slumped down on the claggy earth floor and wondered what I was going to do when my captor came back for me.

Getting the element of surprise, grabbing the gun and fighting like a bitch was my only option. I felt a bit weak and silly that I’d let him get the drop on me so easily anyway, especially after I’d recognised him. And who was this bastard anyway? What axe did he have to grind with anyone doing whatever they wanted in these woods? So what if my best friend was black? So what if we had been prancing about, invoking Beelzebub? So fucking what?

But really. What was I going to do? What had so nearly happened hadn’t felt like something I could talk my way out of. My bum was numb and my back ached at the awkward way I had to hunch. The hut was only about six feet square and I couldn’t stretch either out or up. And what was Kai’s involvement with these men? Did he share their cause? And how long had I got before the guy came back, possibly with his friends?

I indulged myself in another kicking and screaming session, but although it relieved my feelings a bit it didn’t attract any help. The hut was too deep into the woods, too far from any footpaths, and Barndale was too remote for there to be hope of anyone wandering past. My heart skidded again as my generalised fear threatened to spiral down into hysteria and I was suddenly struck with the thought that this guy might come back, rape me, murder me and no one would know where I’d gone. I’d just be . . . gone. Nicholas, my parents, Meg, Cerys . . . would they be left forever wondering, forever hoping that I might turn up?

I lay down on the floor with my face against the gap at the bottom of the door and felt a small draught move my hair. Tears fell hotly, running down into the ground as I lay there feeling stupid. Helpless and stupid. Wishing I still had my mobile, some way of signalling to the world that I was here.

Come on, Holly. You’re noted for being able to talk your way out, or deal, or . . . think.

I cut the self-pity loose and crouched up. The dim, snow-tinted light showed that, apart from half a bag of mouldy-looking grain, the hut contained one wooden pallet with an unopened plastic sack of fertiliser on, two bits of string, a big metal tin that had probably once had something useful in but now contained only a few damp-looking matches, and the wrapper off a Mars Bar which told me I could win a ticket to the 2006 World Cup. Great. I sat on the edge of the pallet with my knees uncomfortably bent double and dug in my pocket. I’d nicked the last of Cerys’s glucose tablets so I wouldn’t starve, and could probably manage to scrape some snow in, so I wasn’t going to spite my captors by being nothing but a freeze-dried corpse when they eventually came back for me. I crunched a tablet, the sweet taste contrasting horribly with my circumstances, and thought.

It was strange how the prospect of being raped and murdered concentrated my mind, and the melting sugar on my tongue swam around my senses, combining with the free-sky blue of the fertiliser bags until an image clicked into my head. Sweet smoke, lots of attention . . . Ooh. All that hanging about on film sets might finally be useful. Fertiliser and glucose. I’d been on set for one spectacular bitch fight between two rival costume guys, where one had bribed some of the backstage boys to build a smoke bomb and set it off in the other’s trailer . . . I’d seen how it was done. All I had to do was replicate it and I could set up a smoke signal that should be visible to anyone in Barndale Woods. With luck they’d at least come to find out what was on fire in such damp conditions . . . Well, what was the alternative? Sit here in this damp, chilly little hut until I got terminal rheumatism or raped at gunpoint? I think I’d go with the possibility of blowing my own head off, thanks.

So I did what I’d been shown how to do. Bearing in mind I’d seen it done by professionals, who’d measured everything and observed all the correct safety procedures, it went surprisingly well for an amateur event, right up until I was trapped in a hut full of sugar-smelling smoke, with a load of burning wooden pallet. The draught came swirling under the door, sucking in oxygen and driving the smoke up and out through the holes in the roof. The fire went out and I started coughing, my breath squeezed out past roughening soreness in my throat as the smoke billowed past me. It stank.

Just then I heard a sound outside the hut. A soft footstep. I stopped breathing. Tears streamed from my eyes as I tried to hold the coughing for long enough to hear what was going on out there, no voices, just the sound of someone being quiet. A brief, exploratory shake of the door, and I barely had time to ready myself before an almighty grinding, splintering sound and the door came flying back into the hut, bringing half the frame with it. I ducked past the smoke, kicked out at the coat-shrouded and hooded figure behind it, and ran. Felt my foot connect with a groin but barely had time to register the grunt of pain as my attacker went down and I was running. Racing headlong into the forest, the snow dragging at my feet, tipping me into drifts that I almost burned my way out of with fear; no idea of where I was going or how many I was escaping from, just head down, panic-stricken running as fast as my smoke-congested lungs and my snow-braked boots would allow.

I sprinted for as long as I could, muscles stretched with fear and my hearing supernaturally alert for the sound of gunshots or pursuit. Ran, weaving through the trees, until with my chest groaning and wheezing I slid down into a hollow surrounded by huge oaks and filled with the cast-off leaves of centuries. There I collapsed. My ribs ached, my legs had no strength left in them and I had the horrible feeling that I’d run back towards Dodman’s Hill rather than away from it. I lay flat, on top of melting snow and surrounded by plastic sheeting and loose earth, gasping as quietly as I could.

After a few minutes, when my breathing had eased, I heard a voice.

‘Holly?’ It was a cautious whisper.

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