It was late, gone midnight, when they eventually let themselves into
the dark and silent house. The single, low-watt bulbs that were
supposed to illuminate the stairs and each landing of the flats
obviously needed replacing. Dark, shadowed landings were all very well
when he was with Claudia, but he didn't want her having to walk the
four flights to their flat on her own when he wasn't there with her.
Garth decided, making a mental note to replace the light-bulbs in the
morning and to speak to their landlord about them.
He was due back with the regiment tomorrow, and later as they lay in
bed together, he could hear Claudia sigh.
"What is it?" he asked her softly, reaching for her in the darkness.
"Nothing, really. I just wish you didn't have to go back tomorrow."
"I know, but it won't be for long. I've got some real leave coming up
at the end of the month," he reminded her comfortingly.
In the darkness, Claudia bit her lip. Some real leave, yes, followed
by a tour of duty in Northern Ireland. She was not an army daughter
for nothing.
"Dad was saying that they're talking about making cuts in any new
intake and of amalgamating some of the smaller regiments," she
commented.
"Mmm ... I know," Garth agreed. His new father-in-law had already
warned him about the rumours he'd heard that promotions were going to
be hard to come by in the future. At the end of the year. Garth's
present contract would expire and he had not yet made his mind up
whether or not he would sign on for another term. When he had
originally decided on a career in the army, he had not been thinking
about how it would affect a wife and children, but he had recently seen
several of his peers' marriages break down under the pressure of the
separations that an army wife inevitably suffered.
As Garth bent his head in the darkness to find her mouth with his own,
Claudia knew that it wasn't just the thought of his departure tomorrow
that was bothering her.
On Monday morning, she started her new job working as a probation
officer for one of the London borough councils.
Technically, she was well qualified for the job but she had felt at her
interview that her supervisor seemed, for same reason, antagonistic
towards her. Nothing she could actually put her finger on, just one or
two slightly add remarks about her background and a sense of the other
woman's rather challenging attitude, although, to be fair, she had to
admit that the inner-city conditions in which she would be working were
going to be tough.
"The army life I've been brought up in isn't a totally protected
environment," Claudia had responded as calmly as she could to Janice
Long's sharp probing.
"There can be problems with drink and drugs, marital breakdowns and, of
course, the trauma of men being badly injured and killed."
Then. " the other woman had responded, 'but here in this borough, we
often have to deal with children who have been abused ... beaten...
starved, subjected to every kind of emotional and physical as well as
sexual degradation. They are so vulnerable it's easy for them to go
off the rails." She had added, "How well do you think you are equipped
to deal with them?"
"I'm not," Claudia had replied honestly.
"I doubt that anyone is. I can't imagine that it's ever possible to
totally ignore one's feelings under such circumstances, but with time
and training I hope and believe that one can put aside one's own
personal response in order to help those we're there to help."
She had got the job but she suspected that she had not really convinced
Janice Long that she was the right candidate for it.
"Mmm..." Garth murmured as he nibbled at her lips.
"You taste good... You taste good all over, Clo/ he added huskily as he
lowered his head and started nibbling gently at the tender flesh of her
throat.
Claudia's whole body quivered. She knew what that particular note in
Garth's voice meant.
The first time he had told her that he wanted to kiss her, taste her
all over, she had been more shocked than aroused, and even now there
was still a part of her that felt faintly awkward, uncertain, about the
intimacy of what he was doing. Although the sensation of his mouth.
She shuddered more deeply as his warm, moist tongue started to circle
her nipple, then she closed her eyes and deliberately willed herself to
stop thinking about tomorrow and to enjoy instead the delicious
sensation of sensual pleasure and sexual excitement that was building
up inside her body.
As Garth felt her body begin to relax, he started to draw her nipple
deeper into his mouth, alternately teasing it with delicate flicks of
his tongue then with a much deeper, hungrier, full- mouthed suckling
that made Claudia tense her muscles and arch her back as her whole body
responded to the rhythmic pressure of his mouth.
Garth loved Claudia's breasts. He loved all of her, of course, but her
breasts were just perfect, filling the palms of his hands when he
cupped them, soft and warm and satin skinned, her nipples a warm coral
pink discreetly demure when she was not aroused but very erotically
hard and swollen in response to his lovemaking.
Her breasts were, in fact, a reflection of Claudia herself, modest and
quiescent publicly, but privately, delicious and erotic and
unexpectedly very sensually responsive.
In the darkness, Claudia felt Garth's hand stroking her breasts, then
moving to her waist and lower. Automatically, she moved with him,
parting her legs, quivering slightly with the onset of her need to feel
him within her.
His index finger circled her navel and teased a little bit farther
down. In response, Claudia bit reprimandingly on his ear in a mingling
of feminine urgency and warning.
Recognising this wordless signal of her need, Garth tugged passionately
on her nipple, using his body weight to keep her pinned to the bed
beneath him as he felt the reactive shudders of responsive pleasure
galvan ising her body.
The last thing on Claudia's mind now was work. The only thoughts she
wanted or needed to have were those of Garth and how he was making her
feel; of how he would soon be making her feel when the full, strong,
pulsating length of him was sheathed hotly inside her own body.
Behind her dosed eyelids, she was already visualising the coming
together of their bodies, his proud and hard, the skin stretched tight
over the passion-filled, dark-veined surge of his manhood, the glands
totally and, to her mind, oddly vulnerably exposed, the skin hot and
silky to her touch, thirsty for the tender moistness that lay within
her own body, which she pictured as a soft, wet, life-giving protective
place where he would be kept safe. Here in this secret and private
garden of Eden, his body could take its fill of pleasure in perfect
safety until with all the sternness of the sleeping Earth Mother once
worshipped and feared by the ancient Greeks, she reminded him of his
duty, his purpose, the soft muscles that had held him so tenderly now
tightening around him, making him, making both of them, obey the laws
of nature as they drew from him the spark of life.
It might not technically be necessary to have an orgasm in order to
become pregnant, but Claudia was secretly convinced that there was
something about the deep, convulsive movement that rendered her womb
particularly responsive and receptive to the act of procreation, the
creation of a new life.
If that was not the case, then why had Mother Nature specifically
designed a woman so that she should experience this need to have her
man penetrate her so deeply, completely, that she should feel as she
did right now, Claudia asked herself dizzily . and why also would a
man want to do so?
If the clitoris was a woman's prime source of pleasure, then why should
she have this need, this urgency, this wanton, aching, screaming com n
pulsion to urge Garth ever deeper inside her, to feel the hot, wet
explosion of his release just as close to her womb as he could possibly
get?
Very slowly. Garth released Claudia's nipple, kissing his way down
over her flat belly, her skin damp and softly sheeny with sexual
arousal, but she still covered her sex with her hand.
Circling her navel with his tongue. Garth placed his hand over hers,
lacing his fingers down through hers as he slowly and deliberately
stroked the crisp dark curls that covered her pubic mound and then
slipped one finger deeper, parting the demurely closed outer lips of
her sex to explore the moist sensuality they were concealing.
The sensation of her own hand pressed hard against her pubic bone while
Garth's finger stroked her made Claudia moan a small, shocked protest.
There had been times, rather shockingly frequent occasions, in fact,
during their engagement when Garth had not been there, when she had
lain alone on her bed touching herself, exploring herself, initially
simply idly, wondering how she might feel to Garth. But then, as her
newly aroused female senses caught fire, her touch had been more
deliberate, more purposeful and urgent. She had never discussed these
acts with Garth, nor had he previously indicated that he knew that they
took place.
Now, instinctively, she realised that he did, an awareness that was
confirmed when he whispered rawly against her stomach, "I want you to
think of me like this when I'm not here, Clo. I
want you to remember how good it feels. It does feel good, doesn't it.
"
Unable to stop herself from shuddering as his fingertip gently rotated
the small, throbbing, almost too sensitive nub of her clitoris, Claudia
could only moan a choked response. Automatically, her legs were
opening, her hips moving in a hungry, grinding motion as she locked the
fingers of her free hand in Garth's hair and tugged protestingly, at
the same time trying to free her other hand.
Amazingly, Garth let it go, his own hands reaching for her hips.
Claudia expelled her breath in a relief-cracked groan, eagerly
anticipating the slow thrust of him within her achingly responsive and
ready body, but instead of penetrating her. Garth lowered his head and
manoeuvred her so that her body opened easily and eagerly for him as he
ran the tip of his tongue from her clitoris right down the length of
her most private region and then back up again, firmly repeating the
caress over and over again until the whole of her sex felt swollen and
wet, tingling, aching, with the heat of a sexual urgency so intense
that had she been able, Claudia knew that she would have taken the
initiative herself.
Even so, it shocked her when Garth seemed to read her mind, taking hold
of her and rolling down onto the bed on his back while he lifted her
over his body, over it and down onto it, down onto him.
Tou want me. take me," he whispered rawly to her.
"Show me how hungry you are for me,
Clo. -show me how much you want me. Yes, that's it," he told her
thickly as she moved on top of him, lifting her hips, then lifting
herself as she slowly and uncertainly at first started to ride him.
The look on his face told her all she needed to know, giving her the
courage and encouragement to take control of her own sexuality and of
him. She heard him groan as she deliberately compressed her muscles
and held him still.
Hungrily, he reached for her breasts. Claudia leaned forward, moving
oh so slowly and deliberately up and down the thick, hot moistness of
his shaft, slowly at first then faster while Garth groaned and kneaded
her breast and then reached down between her legs to tug on her now
erotically engorged clitoris.
The combined sensation of Garth touching her while his penis filled her
was almost too much for Claudia to bear. She was aware of a sensation
of hurtling towards a barrier and knew that once through it she would
have absolutely no control. Everything was rushing over her too fast
for her to stop and she heard herself cry out Garth's name.
Then she screamed as her body exploded in a climax so intense that she
was still shuddering with the aftershock of it minutes later when she
lay wrapped in Garth's arms, the tears of release lying damply on his
chest.
"That's how I want you to remember me... ms... when I'm not here,"
Garth whispered roughly to her as he kissed her damp eyelids and then
her mouth.
"That's how I'm going to make love to you the night we conceive our
child."
They had already talked about the family they planned to have, not for
a while yet, but neither of them wanted to wait too long. Claudia
wanted four children, two boys and two girls, but Garth had demurred
that maybe they should stop at two.
"Four will be expensive to educate, especially if I stay on in the
army," he had warned her.
That was another subject they had discussed at great length. Claudia
was well aware of what it meant to be an army wife, and the last thing
she would ever do would be to want to come between Garth and a career
he loved, but Garth himself, as she knew, was now having second
thoughts about his own commitment to the army.
"I wish you weren't going back tomorrow," Claudia repeated drowsily to
him as she started to slide towards sleep.
Garth groaned.
"So do I. Oh, God, Clo, but that was good.-.yoy were good...."
Slowly and lovingly, he ran his hands over her orgasm-relaxed body. He
didn't consider himself to be a man who was in any way oversexed and he
hoped he wasn't a selfish lover, but he was, he acknowledged, quite
highly sexed and Claudia aroused him as no other woman had ever done or
would ever do. If they woke up early enough in the morning, he would
be able to make love to her again before he had to leave. As he eased
her body down against his own, he wondered how she would react if he
asked her to forgo wearing any underwear the next time he came home.
Just
Clo. -show me how much you want me. Yes, that's it," he told her
thickly as she moved on top of him, lifting her hips, then lifting
herself as she slowly and uncertainly at first started to ride him.
The look on his face told her all she needed to know, giving her the
courage and encouragement to take control of her own sexuality and of
him. She heard him groan as she deliberately compressed her muscles
and held him still.
Hungrily, he reached for her breasts. Claudia leaned forward, moving
oh so slowly and deliberately up and down the thick, hot moistness of
his shaft, slowly at first then faster while Garth groaned and kneaded
her breast and then reached down between her legs to tug on her now
erotically engorged clitoris.
The combined sensation of Garth touching her while his penis filled her
was almost too much for Claudia to bear. She was aware of a sensation
of hurtling towards a barrier and knew that once through it she would
have absolutely no control. Everything was rushing over her too fast
for her to stop and she heard herself cry out Garth's name.
Then she screamed as her body exploded in a climax so intense that she
was still shuddering with the aftershock of it minutes later when she
lay wrapped in Garth's arms, the tears of release lying damply on his
chest.
"That's how I want you to remember me... ms... when I'm not here,"
Garth whispered roughly to her as he kissed her damp eyelids and then
her mouth.
"That's how I'm going to make love to you the night we conceive our
child."
They had already talked about the family they planned to have, not for
a while yet, but neither of them wanted to wait too long. Claudia
wanted four children, two boys and two girls, but Garth had demurred
that maybe they should stop at two.
"Four will be expensive to educate, especially if I stay on in the
army," he had warned her.
That was another subject they had discussed at great length. Claudia
was well aware of what it meant to be an army wife, and the last thing
she would ever do would be to want to come between Garth and a career
he loved, but Garth himself, as she knew, was now having second
thoughts about his own commitment to the army.
"I wish you weren't going back tomorrow," Claudia repeated drowsily to
him as she started to slide towards sleep.
Garth groaned.
"So do I. Oh, God, Clo, but that was good ... you were good...."
Slowly and lovingly, he ran his hands over her orgasm-relaxed body. He
didn't consider himself to be a man who was in any way oversexed and he
hoped he wasn't a selfish lover, but he was, he acknowledged, quite
highly sexed and Claudia aroused him as no other woman had ever done or
would ever do. If they woke up early enough in the morning, he would
be able to make love to her again before he had to leave. As he eased
her body down against his own, he wondered how she would react if he
asked her to forgo wearing any underwear the next time he came home.
Just
Clo. -show me how much you want me. Yes, that's it," he told her
thickly as she moved on top of him, lifting her hips, then lifting
herself as she slowly and uncertainly at first started to ride him.
The look on his face told her all she needed to know, giving her the
courage and encouragement to take control of her own sexuality and of
him. She heard him groan as she deliberately compressed her muscles
and held him still.
Hungrily, he reached for her breasts. Claudia leaned forward, moving
oh so slowly and deliberately up and down the thick, hot moistness of
his shaft, slowly at first then faster while Garth groaned and kneaded
her breast and then reached down between her legs to tug on her now
erotically engorged clitoris.
The combined sensation of Garth touching her while his penis filled her
was almost too much for Claudia to bear. She was aware of a sensation
of hurtling towards a barrier and knew that once through it she would
have absolutely no control. Everything was rushing over her too fast
for her to stop and she heard herself cry out Garth's name.
Then she screamed as her body exploded in a climax so intense that she
was still shuddering with the aftershock of it minutes later when she
lay wrapped in Garth's arms, the tears of release lying damply on his
chest.
"That's how I want you to remember me... ms... when I'm not here,"
Garth whispered roughly to her as he kissed her damp eyelids and then
her mouth.
"That's how I'm going to make love to you the night we conceive our
child."
They had already talked about the family they planned to have, not for
a while yet, but neither of them wanted to wait too long. Claudia
wanted four children, two boys and two girls, but Garth had demurred
that maybe they should stop at two.
Tour will be expensive to educate, especially if I stay on in the
army," he had warned her.
That was another subject they had discussed at great length. Claudia
was well aware of what it meant to be an army wife, and the last thing
she would ever do would be to want to come between Garth and a career
he loved, but Garth himself, as she knew, was now having second
thoughts about his own commitment to the army.
"I wish you weren't going back tomorrow," Claudia repeated drowsily to
him as she started to slide towards sleep.
Garth groaned.
"So do I. Oh, God, Clo, but that was good ... you were good...."
Slowly and lovingly, he ran his hands over her orgasm-relaxed body. He
didn't consider himself to be a man who was in any way oversexed and he
hoped he wasn't a selfish lover, but he was, he acknowledged, quite
highly sexed and Claudia aroused him as no other woman had ever done or
would ever do. If they woke up early enough in the morning, he would
be able to make love to her again before he had to leave. As he eased
her body down against his own, he wondered how she would react if he
asked her to forgo wearing any underwear the next time he came home.
Just the thought of her sweet, warm body being covered only by a dress
or skirt made him start to ache and tingle.
Stop that, he warned his slowly engorging penis sternly. You're going
to have to wait until morning.
Claudia listened intently as Janice Long started to outline the details
of one of the cases Claudia would be working on.
"She's eighteen now," she told Claudia, watching her reaction to the
identity photograph inside the file depicting a ravishingly pretty
darkhaired girl.
"She's also a heroin addict," her supervisor continued grimly.
"She first came to our notice three years ago when the police picked
her up for soliciting. She told us then that she was seventeen and
that she'd run away from home because her stepfather was abusing her.
It's a common enough story," she added when she heard Claudia's quickly
indrawn breath of pity.
"Yes, I know," Claudia agreed, 'but that doesn't make it any the less
appalling. "
"Mmm ... I dare say it wouldn't if it happened to be true. Katriona,
though, unfortunately happens to be an extremely skilled and habitual
liar. Most of these girls are. They live in a fantasy world half the
time. That's part of their problem. Ours is trying to separate the
fantasy from the reality."
Although she didn't say so, Claudia thought the older woman was being
unduly hard. The girl was, after all, just that, and it made Claudia's
compassionate heart ache for her to think of how frightened she must
have been to find herself on the streets, alone and vulnerable.
As Janice Long watched her, she sighed under her breath. Here was
another one, wet behind the ears and dewy-eyed, running over with the
milk of human kindness for the rest of mankind. Well, she'd soon
learn, just as she'd had to do herself.
The people they were dealing with might be victims and in need of their
help but that didn't stop them from possessing their fair share of
human vices, being manipulative and crafty, underhanded, deceitful,
dishonest and sometimes downright dangerous.
Katriona, for all her stunning good looks and her comparative youth,
was no angel. Unlike many others of her ilk, her drug habit had not
been forced on her by a manipulative pimp intent on keeping her 'on the
game' so that he could live off the money she made him. Katriona
didn't have a pimp--she didn't need one as she had more than once
boasted to Janice. She was the one who used men, not the other way
around.
She had told Janice that she started using drugs simply because she
wanted to see how it felt and she had laughed when the young trainee
with Janice at the time was unable to conceal her shocked reaction at
this information.
Privately, Janice suspected that Katriona paid for her addiction by
selling drugs to some of the other youngsters who shared the squat with
her,
but neither she nor the police had ever been able to prove it.
"You can't pin anything on me," Katriona had announced smugly the last
time the police had picked her up and Janice had known that she was
pleased by their inability to do anything.
One thing Janice did know, or rather thought she knew, was that,
despite all her denials, at some stage in her life Katriona had been
abused in some way by a man, if not sexually then certainly emotionally
and physically. Her hatred and bitter contempt of them were classic
signs even if Katriona herself would never admit it.
The whole of her past was, in fact, shrouded in mystery, but again that
was not so unusual with these youngsters. Boys as well as girls
arrived in London, sleeping rough and disappearing into the teeming
underworld of youthful vice and squalor until they were picked up by
the police and passed on to the social services. By that time, they
had generally invented a new past for themselves.
Sometimes, unfortunately all too rarely, fate was kind and a much loved
youngster was reunited with his or her distraught parents, but more
often than not. Janice frowned as she studied Claudia's down-bent
head. They always proved to be more trouble than they were worth, these
upper middle-class, overidealistic young graduates who hadn't a clue
what life was really all about and who still described their parents as
"Mummy' and " Daddy' while working with. Mummy and Daddy. God,
Katriona would laugh in her face. Either that or scream a torrent of
vile abuse at her the moment she heard Claudia's "Queen's' English
accent. But it was not her job to protect the likes of the Claudias of
this world from reality. No one had forced her to take the job--a job
for which she was completely and culturally unfit so far as Janice was
concerned.
She herself had grown up on a vast council estate in the north of
England. The only reason she had ever been allowed to take up the
place she had won to the local grammar school had been because the
headmaster of her junior school had stepped in and persuaded her
parents to allow her to go.
Even then, there had been the indignity of having to wear a second-hand
uniform, of there never being enough money to pay for her school
dinners--and as for any school trips. She had soon learned to adopt an
attitude of indifference to shield herself from the taunts of her
schoolmates. At university, when she hadn't been studying for her
degree, she had been working to support herself and keeping out of the
way of the bosses.
Bar work during term time and the backbreaking slog of fruit picking
during the summer. Those summer jobs had been the worst. You always
got some man who thought you owed him a favour for letting you have the
job--and the kind of favour he wanted meant lying on your back with
your legs wide open for him.
Well, not Janice. She had seen too much of what that brought you.
"But who are her parents? Where has she come from?" she heard Claudia
asking her frowningly as she studied the file Janice had given her.
Janice gave a small shrug.
"Who knows? Maybe not even her. With her looks, she could have Gypsy
or Italian blood but..." Janice gave another shrug.
"But hasn't anyone ever asked her, talked to her?" Claudia
protested.
Janice raised her eyebrows.
"Talked to her? We're dealing with an out and out heroin addict here.
You don't talk to them... you talk at them and if you're lucky
something might just about get through."
"You sound as though... as though she's someone to be written off."
"She's already written herself off," Janice told her brutally.
"She'll be dead before she's twenty- one."
"But surely something can be done," Claudia persisted, unable to
conceal her shock.
"A rehab clinic... or..."
Janice shook her head.
"You'd be wasting your time and the taxpayers' money," she countered
grimly.
"She'd never agree to go into rehab and even if she did... One of the
first things you have to understand is that..." She paused and shook
her head.
What was the point in telling her? Let the girl find out for
herself.
Young trainees. Why the hell did she always have to be landed with
them?
and Betray 131 * * Determinedly, Claudia refused to allow her
feelings of revulsion to show as she followed Janice up the cold, damp
concrete stairwell littered with rubbish, its air heavy with the fetid
stench of urine and vomit. The huge tower block, like its neighbours,
was a rabbit warren of crumbling concrete, of decaying lives. Its very
existence, Claudia reflected, was an indictment, a testimony, of man's
inhumanity to man.
"Two more flights," Janice puffed.
"By the way, don't ever be tempted to risk the lifts in these places,"
she warned Claudia.
"They're notorious for breaking down one of our team forgot and ended
up being trapped inside one for almost forty-eight hours."
Claudia shuddered.
"Here we are," Janice announced.
"It's this way."
Numbly, Claudia followed her supervisor as she hurried down the walkway
that overlooked the dismal rectangle of land enclosed by the tower
blocks. Down below them on the ground, a group of teenagers kicked
aimlessly at the rubbish that had fallen from a skip, their shoulders
hunched defensively, defeatedly, Claudia recognised.
"It's this one," Janice told her, stopping outside a flat that looked
more like a heavily fortified prison than a home, its windows blank and
barred, its original wooden door replaced by one of heavy [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]l.
Janice rapped briskly and then waited. Claudia could hear the sounds
of bolts being withdrawn on the other side of the door and her stomach
muscles started to clench. A sharp sense that she was somehow standing
at the portal of a potentially fateful event suddenly swept through
her, banishing logic and reason.
As a panel was pushed to one side to reveal a spy hole, Claudia fought
the temptation to give in to the inner voice urging her to flee, to
leave, before it was too late.
"What do you want?7 she heard a male voice demanding truculently from
inside the flat.
"I want to see Katriona Spencer," Janice responded crisply.
"Well, she don't want to see you," the voice responded.
"She's busy doing a bit of business. Know what I mean?" he added with
a leering laugh.
"Tell her no visit, no giro payment," Janice told him unperturbedly.
There was a few minutes' wait, then just when Claudia thought they were
going to have to leave, she could hear the sound of further heavy bolts
being drawn back and the door swung open.
If she had thought the stench on the stairs hardly bearable, it was
nothing compared to the appalling smell from inside the flat. It made
her gag and want to retch as she followed Janice inside. It was, she
acknowledged, the stench of degradation and pollution, of human beings
who had descended into something dark and obscene.
As Claudia followed Janice through the claustrophobic hallway and into
the room that lay beyond it, a thin bearded youth, his torso bare, his
jeans pulled down to reveal his flat, thin buttocks, stood up and
slowly started to pull them up. Behind him on a filthy mattress a girl
lay naked. Hastily, Claudia averted her eyes, but Janice far more
hardily demanded, "Where's Katriona, Lucy?"
"She's upstairs," the girl responded listlessly, ignoring her nudity
and her spread-legged pose as she reached across the grubby mattress
for the needle that Claudia could now see glinting in the thin light
coming into the room.
As she moved, Claudia could see the existing needle tracks in her arms,
and her emotions switched from shocked revulsion to compassionate
pity.
"Save it," Janice advised her, correctly reading her thoughts as she
indicated that they were to go upstairs.
"Like Katriona, Lucy services her habit through prostitution," she
informed Claudia as they walked back into the hallway.
"Unlike Katriona, though--at least as yet--Lucy has one prison sentence
behind her and another all too likely."
"What for?" Claudia asked her, expecting to hear that the girl had
stolen goods to pay for her habit or perhaps sold them to the other
users.
Instead, to her shock, Janice told her bluntly, "She murdered her own
child--oh, it's not uncommon," she warned Claudia when she saw her
expression.
"It wasn't deliberate, of course. It never is. She just lost her
temper with the poor little sod one night when the punters hadn't paid
her enough for her fix. She lost her temper and lashed out at him when
he didn't get out of the way in time. She picked him up and threw him
against the wall. He was five years old and a tough little tyke but
not tough enough--she broke his skull. Luckily for him he died in
hospital three days later without recovering consciousness."
"Luckily!" Claudia protested, too shocked to hide her feelings.
"If he'd lived, he'd have been brain damaged and if Lucy wasn't
prepared to look after him properly, to love and protect him as a
healthy, undamaged child, just what chance do you think he would have
had with the handicap she inflicted on him?"
Claudia made no answer. What answer was there to make?
"In here," Janice instructed as they reached the landing. She pushed
open one of the bedroom doors.
After the filth and squalor of the downstairs flat, combined with the
horror of the story she had just been told, the sight of the young
woman seated on the bed studying her reflection in the dressing-table
mirror as she slowly brushed her lustrous, long black hair was so
incongruous, so normal, that Claudia could only stare at her.
Unlike the girl they had just seen below, this one was clear-eyed and
intelligent-looking, her green eyes sharply intent in her small
triangular face. She was very pretty, more than pretty, Claudia
acknowledged, round about her own build but taller, dressed in a
long-sleeved, unexpectedly clean-looking T-shirt and a pair of jeans.
"Who's this?" the girl demanded of Janice, jerking her head in
Claudia's direction.
"Claudia has just joined us," Janice explained smoothly.
The other girl gave Claudia a contemptuous look.
"A trainee, eh. Jesus, just look at her," she mocked.
"I'll bet she's never even opened her legs for a man, never mind..."
Claudia battened down her instinctive sense of outrage and revulsion,
her anger at the way the girl was unwittingly intruding on the privacy
of her lovemaking with Garth, defiling it almost, her training coming
to the fore as she calmly ignored what the girl was saying.
"Never mind that, Katriona," Janice challenged her, reaching out before
the girl could stop her and holding her wrist firmly with one hand
while with the other she pushed up the fabric of her shirt to reveal a
heartbreakingly fragile arm and its even more heartbreaking evidence of
her drug use.
"She certainly doesn't use," she told the girl sharply, 'and neither
would you if you had any brains. "
"No?" the girl derided, tossing back the thick, heavy weight of her
glossy, curly hair.
"Well, I've certainly got enough sense not to fall for that old line.
What do you want?"
"You're on probation for soliciting," Janice reminded her.
"It's a condition of your probation that we see you."
"So, you've seen me." Katriona shrugged dismissively, then reached out
to the dressing-table for a lipstick and started to apply it carefully
to her soft, full mouth.
She was ftne-boned, her movements light and fluid like those of a
dancer. Who was she, where had she come from and why. why did she
stay here, living like this, when quite plainly.
Claudia reined her thoughts in. One of the first things she had
learned was that it wasn't her role to judge or to question.
"You don't have to do this, Katriona," Janice told her quietly.
"An hour from now, you could be trapped in a car with a John who's got
a knife at your throat and who's refusing to pay you for what you've
done. Even if he does, you've got to get back here without any of the
pimps catching you. Why bother when you could have a prescription for
methadone and--' " Go into rehab? Forget it. "
"You're a fool, Katriona. One day, you're going to be like Lucy
downstairs, too drugged out to bother closing your legs between
punters, never mind getting dressed. Is that what you want?"
"I'll never be like Lucy," Katriona denied fiercely, her green eyes
flashing with fury as she rounded on Janice.
"Now, get out of here.
Get out! And the next time," she commanded as Janice shrugged and
started to head for the door, 'next time... send her."
Send her. Claudia blinked in astonishment as the other girl pointed
towards her.
"I mean it," Katriona stressed.
"She gets in ... you don't. Understand?"
You're looking awfully pea ky darling. Is everything all right? "
"Everything's fine. Mummy," Claudia snapped, then regretted it as she
saw the hurt expression on her mother's face.
"I'm sorry," she apologised, placing her hand on Jean Fulshaw's arm in
a gesture of remorse.
"I'm... I'm just a bit tired, that's all and..."
Mentally, she gave herself a small shake. The last thing she wanted
was to start feeling sorry for herself or to start complaining to her
mother that she was missing Garth.
The regiment was in Northern Ireland. Garth had managed a snatched and
unsatisfactory twenty-four-hours' leave before his departure, and they
had made love with a passionate intensity, which, while physically
fulfilling, had somehow left her feeling emotional and weepy.
It hadn't gone down very well at work when she had asked for leave
herself at such short no tice. Eyes glistening with tears, she kissed
her mother goodbye and watched as she climbed onto the train.
She had come up to London to spend the day with Claudia and do some
shopping, but
Claudia simply hadn't been in the mood. The heavy cold she had had the
previous month had left her feeling lethargic and run-down. It hadn't
helped that one of the other probation officers had been transferred,
leaving Claudia to take on most of his workload in addition to her
own.
Janice might be right, she acknowledged wryly. Perhaps she really
wasn't cut out to do the job.
"Don't take it home with you," Janice had advised her, but Claudia was
finding it increasingly difficult to put up the necessary emotional
barrier to separate herself from the problems of her clients,
especially Katriona.
"You're becoming too involved," Janice had warned her and she was
right. There was something about this particular girl, something
compelling and haunting about the sheer, senseless waste and tragedy
that her life had become.
"It doesn't have to be like this," Claudia had counselled her,
forgetting her professionalism in her longing to be able to do
something to help change things for her before it was too late.
"It's already too late," Janice had told her shortly when Claudia
discussed the case with her, her emotions overcoming her awareness that
her supervisor already thought that she was overly emotional for the
job.
But how much of that assessment was the truth and how much was caused
by a not unnatural sense of resentment because of the way Katriona had
insisted that the only person she would speak with was Claudia?
"She's doing it because she knows you're new to the job," Janice had
warned her grimly, shortly after a case conference meeting, where it
had been decided that in view of the rapport Claudia seemed to have
established with Katriona, she be assigned as Katriona's permanent
caseworker.
"Personally, I don't know why we are so accommodating with the girl,"
she had sniffed, but of course she did. They all did.
Katriona was playing a very dangerous game. In return for a certain
amount of leeway as regards her own activities, she was supplying the
police with information on a large ring of drug suppliers who, like
her, operated in the sprawling underworld the flats had become.
"You'll have to be careful," Claudia had warned her when Katriona had
talked derisively to her about how easy it was to get men to confide in
her.
"If they find out..." But Katriona had simply laughed.
"They won't. To them I'm just another quick. fuck. They seem to
forget that while I've got my mouth wrapped round their cock, I might
not be able to talk, but I can still listen, and anyway, what can they
do?"
She had shrugged.
"Nothing. I know too much. Not like you," she had taunted Claudia.
"You know nothing. How old were you when you lost your virginity?"
she had demanded.
Claudia had shaken her head but had still not quite been able to stop
herself from blushing.
Katriona sometimes seemed more interested in cross-questioning Claudia
about her life than in talking about her own.
"Mummy and Daddy/ she had mimicked once.
"I'll bet they spoiled you rotten, didn't they? And I'll bet he does,
too, doesn't he?" she had challenged as she grabbed hold of Claudia's
hand and looked at her wedding ring, demanding, "What's he like... is
he any good in bed?
God, why am I asking you that? If he is, you know what that means,
don't you? " she had taunted.
"They don't get to know what turns a woman on by saving themselves for
their little bridey wifey, you know.
"Has he ever used a pro? How do you know? Have you ever asked him?"
she had asked as Claudia shook her head during one meeting, then had
laughed when Claudia started to gather up her papers.
"Hit a nerve there, didn't I?" she had crowed.
"They all do it, you know," she had added softly.
"No matter how respectable, how faithful, how loving they make out they
are, they all do it. For all you know, he could be a regular client...
one of my clients...."
She had paused, waiting, for even though Claudia had begun to get the
measure of her and to know how much Katriona loved getting her off
guard, she had still risen to the bait and returned coldly, "I very
much doubt it. Garth is in the army. He rarely comes to London and--'
" Oh, the army. Well, they're the worst of the lot," Katriona had
interrupted her, her mouth curving in a triumphant smile, her green
cat's eyes glittering with the onset of the craving she still told
herself she could control.
"How did you meet him?" she had asked casually, but Claudia had got
herself back under control.
Katriona had a long, raw wound on her left arm that looked as though it
had been caused by a knife. Even as she made that judgement, Claudia
was aware of just how much she had learned already. Six months ago,
she wouldn't have known what a knife wound looked like, never mind
instantly recognise one.
"Lucy did it," Katriona told her carelessly as she saw Claudia frowning
at it.
"It looks nasty," Claudia commented.
"Has anyone seen it?"
"Sure... every punter I've had since she did it two nights ago, and
that must be, oh... I dunno, say ... ten or maybe twenty. There was a
group of them last night. Kids from some posh school, too shit scared
to do it alone, so I said the others could watch while I showed one of
them what it was all about. Christ, they were a real bunch of
wankers--literally--but still, they paid well."
Claudia said nothing. She was used to Katriona by now and knew how
much she liked to shock her.
Firmly refusing to be sidetracked, she sat down. Katriona had
steadfastly refused to give them any personal details about herself,
and it was part of Claudia's job to do what she could to find out
something--anything--about her background and her family.
"You must have parents, Katriona," she began.
"They--'
"Must I?" Katriona interrupted her bitterly.
"Why? Because the rule book says so? Well, I've got news for you.
Life isn't always played by the rules."
"But you must have someone. A mother... a father ...
grandparents..."
"Grandparents." Katriona gave a bitter yelp of laughter.
"Christ, if I had, they'd be ancient. My mother was forty-seven when
she had me--I was a miracle baby. They thought they couldn't have
children, you see.
They'd been married twenty- six years when I arrived. Perhaps someone
should have told them that they needed to have sex a bit sooner than
they did. "
"They must have loved you very much," Claudia suggested gently.
"Must they? I wouldn't know. My mother was still in shock from the
trauma of the neighbours knowing that she'd slept with my father. She
died... a heart attack, because having me had weakened her heart, you
see. She was just too damned old, that was the truth of it."
Although Claudia winced at the cruelty in Katriona's voice, she forced
herself not to make any comment other than saying quietly, "What about
your father?"
"My father... Oh, he was a saint," Katriona told her cynically.
"Everyone said so, and so it must be true, mustn't it? Can't think how
they produced me, can you?"
"Is he still alive?" Claudia pressed her.
Katriona shrugged. She had injected herself just before Claudia's
visit and the drug was al and Betray 143
ready beginning to take effect. The last thing she wanted to do right
now was to talk about her bloody parents.
"I don't know and I certainly don't care. Why should I? He never
cared about me. His bloody school mattered more to him than I did."
"His school?" Claudia questioned.
"He was a teacher. A housemaster," Katriona emphasised mockingly, her
accent changing, mirroring the clear, well-modulated tones of Claudia's
own voice.
"He taught at a private school--for boys. They didn't take girls, so I
had to go to the local village school, but he taught me at home, as
well. They... my parents... had originally met when they were both up
at Oxford, and although they couldn't afford to send me to a private
school, he was determined that I would get a place at my mother's old
college."
"Which college was that?" Claudia asked her, guessing when Katriona
made no response but simply closed her eyes and turned her head away,
"Lady Margaret Hall. Somerville
"Think you're bloody clever, don't you?" Katriona growled at her.
"What the hell does it matter which college it was? There was no way I
was going there. If I had wanted to go to university, I'd have wanted
it to be somewhere a hell of a lot more trendy than bloody Oxford.
Essex. somewhere like that, but he would never have agreed to that.
So far as he was concerned, it was Oxford or nothing. Even Cambridge
wouldn't have been good enough. "
Claudia said nothing but she could hear the bitterness and the anger
beneath the seeming contempt in the other girl's voice.
"Did you like school, Katriona?" she asked.
"Like school?" Katriona yelped with laughter.
"Oh sure... I loved it.
I loved sticking out like a sore thumb and being the target of the
other kids because I was the one with the dad who taught at the big
posh private school. Just like I loved having to spend every damned
evening locked inside with him, listening to him ranting on about how
important it was for me to have a good education. Well, I soon showed
him that as far as I was concerned, there was far more to life than the
classics and that when it came to what really mattered, what was really
important, I could teach those upper-class idiots he was supposed to be
educating some far more important facts of life than anything they'd
ever learn from him. Not that he or the head saw it that way. "
She opened her eyes and gave Claudia a vulpine smile.
"So learning how to go down properly on a boy wasn't on the
ti[محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ble.
So what? I'll bet they got a hell of a lot more mileage out of what I
taught them than they ever did from Pa's lessons and it made him
realise that I was there. "
Claudia could see the anger and resentment in her eyes now, as well as
hear it in her voice, and her tender heart ached for her. Reading
between the lines of the sketchy tale Katriona had just drawn for her,
Claudia suspected that her father, so much older than his daughter and
plainly more used to the company of boys than girls, had perhaps in
Katriona's eyes appeared to reject her after her mother's death and
that she had decided if the only way she could gain his attention was
by behaving 'badly' and breaking the rules, then that was what she
would do.
"It's not too late, Katriona," she had said softly.
"You could still go back. You could--' " Of course it's too bloody
late," Katriona interrupted her furiously.
"My God, you make me sick, you're so stupid. And what makes you think
I want to go back? What the hell is there for me to go back to? He's
probably dead now anyway," she added uncaringly, 'and if he's not, then
he ought to be. Everyone over twenty-one should be dead. I certainly
intend to be," she added broodingly.
Claudia's heart missed a beat. She had already been warned by Janice
that given her current lifestyle, Katriona was unlikely to live much
longer, just as she had been warned about the danger of allowing
herself to become too emotionally involved with any of her cases.
Later that evening working at home, dutifully trying to fill in the
empty blanks in Katriona's case history with the fragmented bits of
information she had been given earlier, Claudia put down her pen and
stared tiredly into space. She had a bruise on her arm where a young
boy had tried to steal her bag as she left the flats, and there had
been an unpleasant few seconds in one of the stairwells when another
addict had tried to hassle her for money. If she was honest with her
n self, she knew that she was finding the work depressing and
exhausting and without the payback of feeling any satisfaction that she
was actually doing anything positive.
Today had been a bad day, she acknowledged as she rubbed her aching
forehead. Katriona in particular, despite the rapport she felt she had
established with her, or perhaps because of it, seemed to delight in
deliberately trying to get under her skin, her barbed remarks designed,
or so it sometimes seemed to Claudia, not just to nettle her but to
actually inflict damage on her. Katriona was a formidably intelligent
young woman and Claudia had no doubts whatsoever that her father had
not been overly ambitious in wanting her to go up to Oxford.
She knew what Janice was all too likely to say about the family
background Katriona had supplied her with today; she would think that
Katriona was likely to have made it up, that it was simply a clever
fiction she had created around herself, but Claudia sensed that, for
once, the girl had been telling the truth.
As she started to write down the gist of their interview, Claudia
paused to nibble on her pen and to ponder on the probable details of
her life that Katriona had not revealed to her. That she had been
intensely jealous of her father's dedication to his job and the pupils
he taught had been patently obvious--and natural. The tragic death of
her mother must have traumatically affected them both. It was easy to
see why a shy, scholarly man already middle-aged might have retreated
from his wife's death and its unfortunate consequences.
Being left the sole parent to a young daughter, he more than likely
found solace in his work. As a result, Katriona had undoubtedly tried
to make him aware of her presence, her needs, by becoming difficult and
rebellious, the classic situation of a child deciding that attention
gained through bad behaviour was better than no attention at all.
"So how old were you when you left home, Katriona?" Claudia had asked
her casually, slipping in the question, but not apparently casually
enough because Katriona had instantly been on guard, her response
dagger sharp and instantaneous.
"I was fourteen," she had replied, 'and I didn't leave. I was told to
go. "
When she saw the expression on Claudia's face, her mouth curled into a
derisive smile.
"You don't believe me. Well, it's true. I was given an ultimatum and
so was my father. If he wanted to keep his job, then I had to go. My
presence as a teenage girl was too disruptive to the boys for me to
stay." She gave a small shrug.
"Of course, my father could have chosen to live outside the school. I
hated living there, anyway, but he liked the Hat we had. The rooms
were elegant and classically designed. Sure they were, but rooms with
ten-foot-high ceilings take some heating and the school wouldn't
install central heating in the staff's quarters.
My bedroom windows had ice on them in the winter, we could only have a
bath after the boys had had theirs,
the water was always cold. " She gave a small shiver.
"It must have been hard for you Claudia had responded sympathetically.
Katriona had made no response; the drug she had injected was clouding
her mind, her ability to think. Claudia recognised the surly,
mistrustful look entering her eye and knew that there was no point in
questioning her any further.
Fourteen. She sighed now before recommencing her writing. A child
still, but the streets of London and far too many other large cities
were home to runaways of that age and much younger--a sad fact she had
good cause to know.
"You shouldn't be working here," Janice had told her acerbically yet
again only the other week.
"You're more equipped for delivering meals on wheels in some pretty
country village."
"I'm fully qualified to do my job," Claudia had felt bound to remind
her stiffly.
"Academically, yes," Janice had agreed, her upper lip curling, 'but
emotionally. " She had shaken her head vigorously.
"No way, you're the sort who'll grit her teeth and pretend until the
job gets too much for her and she cracks. Then we end up having to
cope with her workload. You need to be tough to work in this
environment. You need to understand what we're working with. Feeling
sorry for them won't do it and the only way you can understand them is
from living with them, from growing up alongside them--' " Like you
did? " Claudia had interrupted her.
"Like I did," Janice had agreed, adding grimly, 'face up to it,
Claudia. There are some people who are never going to make it, who are
born simply to die. There you see, I've shocked you, but it's the
truth. They have no purpose, no future, no hope, nothing. "
Claudia hadn't been able to make any response, the pain of what Janice
was saying hurting her too much.
It hurt now thinking about Katriona. She wasn't like that; like those
whom Janice had described with such cruel accuracy. Katriona had the
intelligence to make something of herself, of her life. If she would
just agree to try a rehab programme, Claudia was sure she could be
helped to see how much better her life could be.
"She doesn't want to see," Janice had told her.
"And the harder you try to persuade her, the more she'll dig her heels
in. Katriona's sole mission in life is to degrade herself just as much
as she possibly can. It's her way of punishing whoever it was in her
life who hurt her. It gets some of them that way. Be careful,
Claudia," she had warned her curtly.
"She'll hurt you if she can-whatever way she can.
She needs to hurt others nearly as much as she needs to hurt herself.
"
And Claudia had known that it was true. There had been several
occasions when she had sensed a cruelty, a malevolence almost, about
some of Katriona's comments to her, just as she had sensed the girl's
angry determination to undermine and unsettle her, to denigrate and, if
she could, destroy everything and everyone contra n dieting her own
warped and destructive view on life.
But understanding why Katriona behaved the way she did did not always
lessen the efficacy of her bitingly cruel tongue, Claudia acknowledged
ruefully.
Claudia woke up, yawning and stretching, blinking in the dazzling glare
of the oncoming headlights of other cars as Garth turned into their
street.
They had spent the weekend--his first off since his tour of duty in
Northern Ireland--with Garth's parents, and after two late nights and
Garth's mother's justly famed cordon bleu [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ng, Claudia had fallen
asleep on the way home.
It had been an enjoyable weekend--she got on well with Garth's parents,
who had never made any secret of the fact that they welcomed her as a
daughter-in-law--but Garth had been slightly on edge, not specifically
with her, or indeed with anyone. It had been more as though he had
been having difficulty in gearing down to everyday civilian life after
a high-tension existence with his regiment.
Not much mention had been made of his tour of duty at either of the two
dinner parties his parents had given during their visit, but Claudia
suspected that it would have been something that he and his father
would have discussed when Garth had gone to join him in his study while
Claudia helped his mother to prepare Sunday lunch.
An old school friend of Garth's father had been present at the Friday
evening dinner party. He ran his own PR business, his clients in the
main drawn from the world of politics and high finance. Claudia had
heard him telling Garth quite seriously that if he were to leave the
army he would certainly be interested in having Garth come to work for
him.
"I don't know the first thing about public relations," Garth had said,
laughing.
"That's where you're wrong," Nicholas Forbes had corrected him
immediately.
"Through your work, you're promoting an image, and that in essence is
what public relations work is all about. You're good with people. You
know how to deal with them, how to work with them and bring out the
best in them," he had continued, and as she listened to him, Claudia
had realised that he had judged Garth's character very shrewdly and
accurately indeed.
She wondered if he knew through Garth's father that Garth was concerned
about how much of a future he would actually have with the army now
that he had a wife to consider.
"It isn't that I'm fiercely ambitious," Garth had told his parents over
lunch on Friday just after they had arrived and the four of them were
seated around the comfortable kitchen table.
"But one day, hopefully, I will have a family to support." He had
smiled, giving Claudia a teasing glance, before adding more seriously,
'and besides, I don't want to be an absentee father. "
What Garth wasn't saying to his parents, but what they had both agreed
on, was that, unlike them, their own children were not going to be sent
away to boarding school--an experience that neither of them had
particularly enjoyed.
While Garth brought in their cases and the boxes of fresh fruit and
vegetables Garth's mother had insisted on giving them from her own
kitchen garden, Claudia went over to the sink to fill the kettle.
She heard Garth come in and close the door, and as she turned her head
he came towards her, blocking her into the small space between the sink
and his body. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and started to
nuzzle the nape of her neck.
"Garth," she protested, "I was just going to make some tea."
"I don't want tea... I want you," Garth growled, tightening his hold on
her, one hand covering her breast, the heat of his breath hot against
her skin.
When Garth had arrived home on Wednesday, they had had a passionately
sensual and sexual reunion; on Thursday night, too, they had made love,
and on Friday morning Garth had woken her with the slow suckle of his
mouth on her breast.
She had known instinctively that the urgency of his lovemaking and the
intensity of his sexual desire for her were heightened by his recent
tour of duty. Whenever he came home on leave, he was always hungry for
physical contact with her;
eager to make love and to make up for the time they had been apart.
But this time, there had been a new sense of urgency, an edge not of
aggression towards her but of some tautly controlled male emotion.
Lying in bed next to him at his parents', profoundly thankful for the
size of their house and the fact that their bedroom was the full length
of the house away from his parents' room, Claudia had suddenly been
acutely aware of how very fragile human life was. All the time Garth
had been in Belfast, she had steadfastly refused to allow herself to
dwell on the fears that she knew must be experienced by everyone for
the safety of someone they loved when that someone was in a dangerous
and hostile environment, telling herself that to give in to her fears,
even subconsciously, might somehow or other weaken Garth and make him
more vulnerable. But the first night he had been home, she had woken
constantly in the night, reaching out to touch him just to reassure
herself that he was actually there beside her and safe.
She had not even objected when he had insisted on making love to her at
his parents' home, something that normally made her feel acutely
self-conscious and unable to completely relax. But her urge to be
close to him, to be held by him, to be a part of him, had been so
strong that it had overwhelmed her usual inhibitions.
"Garth," she protested again, but already she could feel her body
starting to respond to his touch, tiny shivers of delicious sensation
quiver n ing across her skin where his mouth was caressing it.
"Mrrun..." was the only response he made to her half-hearted
protest.
Against her body as he pressed closer to her she could feel the hard
throb of his erection.
The hand caressing her breast slipped inside her top, pushing away her
bra while the other hand tugged at her skirt.
"Garth, no," she told him breathlessly.
"We can't, not here...."
"Oh, yes, we can," he told her thickly in response, his hand already
touching her body, caressing her sex, his own reacting to the hot, wet
feel of her just as she was reacting to the hard male pressure of
him.
The musky aroused male scent of his body was making her feel dizzy just
as he enveloped her. She could feel the hardness of his thigh pressing
against her leg. She could hear the urgency in his voice as he started
to move rhythmically against her.
"Lean forward," she heard him instruct her. A fierce thrill of shocked
excitement raced through her.
She had never been particularly adventurous in bed and, compared with
what one heard and read, her sex drive seemed nowhere near as high or
as demanding as that of other women of her age, but suddenly, with
Garth caressing her with his hand at the same time as he started to
penetrate her with quick, fiercely hungry thrusts, to her own
bemusement she found herself grinding her own body back against his,
panting with a mixture of urgency and excitement as she started to
quiver from head to foot with the onset of a need for him that was
almost as intense and immediate as his for her.
When his thrusts became slower and more deliberate, she moaned in taut
feminine frustration, which elicited a hot, savage groan of excitement
from Garth as he moved faster and deeper within her body, responding to
the message of her demanding and wholly female body [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف].
When it came, her orgasm was so swift and so intense that for a few
seconds Claudia actually felt as though she might pass out. When Garth
withdrew from her, she was trembling so much that he instinctively
wrapped his arms protectively around her, rocking her gently as he
soothed her back down to earth.
"Do you know what we're going to do now?" he whispered lovingly to her
as he scooped her up in his arms. When Claudia shook her head, he told
her huskily, "We're going to go to bed and I'm going to make love to
you all over again, only this time... this time, it's going to last all
night."
"Garth..." Claudia began to protest and then stopped. She didn't even
have the energy left to tell him they should rest never mind make love
a second time.
Only somehow or other she had found the energy and they did make love
again, and it was only in the early hours of the morning, when she got
up to go to the bathroom, that she suddenly realised what she had done
or rather what she had not done.
Her packet of oral contraceptive pills lay reproachfully on the vanity
unit where she had left them by accident when she was packing to go to
Garth's parents.
Numbly, she stared at them. That was three pills she had missed
taking. Three nights. three days when they had made love without using
contraception. Her heart sank and then rallied. She had only missed
three days. Surely she couldn't. surely that didn't. In the morning
when she told Garth--before she would allow him to make love to her--he
didn't seem anywhere near as concerned as she had expected.
"So you might be pregnant. We are married," he reminded her wryly,
'and we were planning on having a family at some stage. "
"Some stage, yes," Claudia agreed, 'but not yet, not here, not while
I'm still working. We can't bring a baby up here in this flat.
Garth," she told him, shaking her head and grimacing.
"And we certainly can't afford to move somewhere else, not in
London."
"No," he agreed 'but would it really be so bad? "
"They'll be furious at work," Claudia told him.
"I know that Janice doesn't really think I'm up to the job as it is.
She's never really approved of me."
"I know how much being able to work means to you," Garth responded,
'but. " He paused and then put his arms around her, tucking her head
under his chin so that she could hear the rumble of his voice in his
chest and smell the early- morning man smell of him, something she had
missed desperately the first few days after he returned to the regiment
following his leave. Now, instinctively, she drew it deeply into her
lungs to savour and treasure it for the time when she would be alone.
"Are you really happy here... living and working in London?"
Claudia opened her mouth to tell him that of course she was, but
instead, she found herself shaking her head, her eyes filling with
tears as she admitted tiredly, "No... not really. Perhaps Janice ;s
right after all. Perhaps I'm simply not equipped to deal with the kind
of problems I'm having to face. Perhaps all I'm fit for doing is
delivering meals on wheels and opening village fetes."
"Don't be silly," Garth reassured her gently.
"There's just as much poverty and hardship in the country as there is
in a city. It's just that it's a different kind of poverty and a
different way of life."
Three weeks after Garth's leave had ended, Claudia sat up in bed and
promptly felt so acutely nauseous that she knew, even before the
routine doctor's test had confirmed it, that she was pregnant. Even
so, she waited until she had that confirmation before telling Garth.
"It's bad news, I'm afraid," she told him as calmly as she could, the
telephone receiver sticky in her hand as she tried to blink away her
tears.
"I'm pregnant.
Garth. "
As she listened to him asking if she was absolutely sure, Claudia
guessed that he had to be as dismayed by the news as she was herself
for all his reassuring comments before he went back off leave. It
wasn't that she didn't want a child--a family--she did, they both did,
but not yet, not until their lives and their marriage were more
sturdily established.
After she had said her goodbyes to Garth and replaced the receiver, she
squeezed her eyes tightly closed and fought to suppress her tears.
It isn't that I don't want you, she told her baby silently. It's just
that this is too soon. I'm not ready. We're not ready.
Why, oh why hadn't she remembered to take those wretched pills?
Tiredly, she looked round their small cramped flat. It was completely
impossible for them to bring up a baby here--even if the landlord would
allow it, but she already knew he would not. And then there was her
job. Janice had remarked earlier on her pallor and noticeable
lethargy. The work she was doing was both physically and emotionally
demanding, their department too busy to have any room to carry someone
who wasn't up to working at optimum output.
There would be those, she knew, Janice among them, who no matter what
they said publicly would privately believe that she was using her
unexpected pregnancy as a cop-out, a way to save face, which would
allow her to leave a job she simply wasn't up to.
But she was up to it, she defended herself fiercely. It was just that
as yet she hadn't mastered the art of detaching herself enough
emotionally from the people she was dealing with.
"You're too involved," Janice had warned her again only the other
evening when she found Claudia folding some old blankets into the boot
of her car. Having coaxed them out of her own and Garth's mother,
Claudia intended to give them to the growing group of homeless vagrants
who took [محذوف][محذوف][محذوف][محذوف]ter every evening under the disused railway arches that
Claudia passed on her way home.
"They won't thank you for playing Lady Bountiful," Janice had warned
her once she had cross-questioned Claudia on what she was doing.
"I don't want their thanks," Claudia had returned quietly, ignoring the
older woman's taunt.
Tiredly, Claudia pushed away the keyboard on which she had just been
finishing up a report. The clock on the wall showed that it was just
gone six o'clock. Most of the other staff had already left, although
it wasn't unusual for any of them to work into the evening. Claudia
was so exhausted it almost made her feel sick. Even the effort of
pushing her chair back and standing up made her grit her teeth. Why on
earth should carrying a baby, so small as yet that it scarcely
qualified for the term, so small, in fact, that she, its mother, had
actually lost weight rather than gained it, demand such an intense
concentration of energy that it left her as physically depleted as
though she had climbed Everest?
Wryly, she made her way back to the spot where she had parked her small
car and unlocked it. Ten minutes later as she let herself into the
hallway of the flat, she looked at the stairs in dejection and then
slowly started to climb them.
By the time she had reached the flat, she felt sick and dizzy. As she
put down the shopping she had collected during her lunch hour, she
opened her bag for her key. Suddenly, the flat door opened and Garth
was standing there.
"Garth." She blinked at him stupidly.
"What are you doing here?"
"I live here," he told her cheerfully. Then with a grin, he reached
out and plucked her off the floor, swinging her up into his arms.
"I
managed to wangle a twenty-four-hour pass," he explained.
"You sounded so fed up on the phone that I-Hey... what on earth are
those for?"
he demanded gently as she started to cry.
"I'm sorry... I don't know..." Claudia sobbed, then added between
hiccuping tears, "Yes, I do. I'm frightened. Garth. I'm not ready
for this. We didn't plan--' She didn't get any further because he was
holding her tight, kissing her forehead and then her mouth before
telling her with loving firmness, " Now you listen to me. Everything's
going to be fine. We may not have planned for this to happen quite so
soon, but now that it has. " He paused and when Claudia looked
uncertainly into his eyes, he told her softly, " I love you so much,
Clo. -even more than ever now if that's possible. I love you both,"
he said passionately, placing one hand possessively on her stomach,
then adding teasingly, 'and if it turns out to be a boy, I think we'll
call him Hector."
"Hector? No... never," Claudia objected, outraged, asserting
determinedly, "Anyway, he, it... is going to be a girl." Her laughter
faded quickly, though, as she shook her head and protested, "You really
shouldn't have come home." She knew how difficult it was for him to
get extra leave, but Garth stopped her.
"I wanted to be here with you, with you both, and anyway... let's have
a cup of tea and then we can talk," he suggested.
"You go and sit down. I'll make it ... you look whacked."
Claudia tried to smile but it was a distinctly wobbly attempt.
Five minutes later as they sat cuddled up together on their small sofa.
Garth told her quietly, "I've decided to leave the army just as soon as
it can be arranged."
"Oh, Garth," Claudia protested.
"I know we've been talking about it, but not yet. You--' " All right,
yes, perhaps I will be leaving sooner than I'd planned," Garth agreed,
'but that doesn't matter. I'm going to give Nick Forbes a ring and see
if he was genuine about that offer of a job. I think on balance that
he was."
"Oh, Garth."
"Look, this baby is as much my responsibility as yours, probably more,"
Garth told her ruefully,
thinking about the weekend the baby had been conceived. The tour of
Northern Ireland had been even more stressful than he had expected and
the release of tension had caused a sexual urgency to burgeon within
him, had sparked such a need to be alive so that perhaps in some ways
it was inevitable that the creation of a new life should be the
result.
There had been such a fear of death on that tour that it would have
been extraordinary if they had not been affected by it and by the sense
of having escaped from underneath its weighty, oppressive shadow with
the need to celebrate life.
He could understand now why those who had completed several tours there
said they got to a state where they felt they were involved in a
macabre game of Russian roulette, wondering with each fresh tour if
this would be the one from which their return would be in a wooden
box.
But he made no mention of any of this to Claudia. They had, of course,
talked about the fact that he was a serving soldier. She knew the
risks--she was, after all, a soldier's daughter. But he could see
quite clearly how vulnerable the pregnancy had already made her--had
heard it in her voice when she had rung him with the news. His first
instinct was to protect her and the new life they had created together,
and so far as he was concerned the best place, the only place, for him
now was at her side.
He would leave the army and hopefully get a job with his father's old
school friend; they would buy a house in the country but within
commuting distance of the city. The future, if not rosy, certainly
looked reasonably bright. In his arms, Claudia started to relax.
You've changed. There's something different about you. What is it?
"
Claudia sucked in her breath sharply as Katriona fired the fierce
questions at her.
Surprisingly for someone with the extent of the drug habit that
Katriona possessed, she could be very intuitive as Claudia was quickly
learning.
"Nothing..." Claudia began, only to instinctively place her hand
protectively across her belly as the youth who had been lying in the
corner of the room on a piece of filthy sacking got to his feet and
started to lurch towards her.
"Leave off, Oz/ Katriona told him.
"She's my probation officer not a supplier."
To Claudia's relief, the youth turned away from her, stumbling towards
the stairs instead, pausing to retch nauseously in the doorway as he
did so.
"He took a bad trip last night," Katriona told her emotionlessly,
shrugging her shoulders dismissively as he clattered down the stairs.
"He won't be around much longer." Graphically, she drew a line across
her throat and then laughed when she saw Claudia's expression.
"I
suppose you think the same thing about me, don't you?
Don't you? " she demanded, her earlier good humour giving way to
sullen anger.
Her lightning changes of mood were as much part of her personality as
her drug habit, Claudia observed, responding to her quietly.
"Katriona " You're pregnant, aren't you. aren't you? " Katriona
suddenly demanded wildly, ignoring Claudia's attempt to talk
objectively to her.
"How does he like that, your fine army husband? I bet he's not too
pleased. They never are " As a matter of fact. Garth is delighted,"
Claudia interrupted her sharply, then realised her mistake. She could
see from Katriona's triumphant expression that she knew she had got
under Claudia's professional guard.
"Garth," the girl mimicked mockingly.
"So Garth's delighted, is he?
Well, aren't you the lucky one. I got pregnant once. The father
wasn't delighted. He told me to get rid of it. " She heard the
betraying sound Claudia made and laughed.
"There wasn't any need in the end. I lost it, didn't I? Just as
well.
Not that the likes of you would ever know anything about that. Planned
it all beforehand, had you? What did you say to him? Come on, darling
Garth, please fuck me now so that I can get pregnant and then I won't
have to go and see that dreadful Katriona any longer. Of course, your
baby will have every thing, won't it? A delighted mummy and daddy.
everything of the best. I expect Mummy is getting the christening robe
down from the at tic already, isn't she? The same one that you wore
when you were christened, the same one she wore. "
Claudia saw the bitter resentment clouding Katriona's eyes as she
mocked her. The girl's anger and jealousy were so intense Claudia
could almost feel and taste them. For the first time in Katriona's
presence, she felt a sharp thrill of fear--not for herself but for the
baby, and for the first time since she had discovered she was pregnant,
she felt the deep stirrings of real maternal love, the maternal
instinct to protect her unborn child. For the first time, she realised
how much she did want her baby. Their baby, hers and Garth's.
"Have you thought any more about this rehab programme?" she asked
Katriona firmly, ignoring the girl's taunts.
She wasn't three months pregnant yet, but just as soon as she was, she
intended officially to tell them at work she would be leaving.
Garth had approached Nick Forbes, who confirmed that he meant every
word he had said about wanting to employ him; and he had even mentioned
a salary that far exceeded anything Garth had hoped for.
"With that, we'll be able to afford to buy something pretty decent as
long as we look outside London," Garth had told Claudia
enthusiastically.
Both sets of parents had been given the news that hopefully they were
to become grandparents and they had responded with natural excitement
and enthusiasm. They were an extremely fortunate young couple as
Claudia was the first to acknowledge.
Garth was going to be a wonderful father. His reaction to her
unplanned pregnancy was showing her a side of him that made her love
him all the more deeply--and allowed her to show her love for him all
the more uninhibitedly.
"Being pregnant suits you he had told her one night after they made
love.
"It makes you very sexy."
"You don't think we might have harmed the baby, do you?" Claudia had
asked him in some alarm, the darkness hiding her blushes as she
acknowledged that her response to him had been more passionate and
intense, more womanly, as though her pregnancy somehow conferred on her
a new and more sultry adult status.
"No way," Garth had reassured her, adding softly, "After all, that's
how he or she got there in the first place, isn't it?"
Cupping the back of her head with his hand, he very slowly drew her
down towards him until she could feel the warmth of his breath against
her skin.
"Have I told you lately how much I love you and how very sexy you are
like this?" he asked her in a whisper as his free hand stroked the
curves of her body.
"I'm going to get fat," Claudia protested.
"You're going to get sexy. You are sexy," Garth corrected her.
"It's fashionable to be thin," Claudia reminded him.
"All the models--'
"All the models are bags of bones," Garth told her extravagantly.
"They can't hold a candle to you. Being pregnant suits you." As he
bent his head to kiss her, Claudia relaxed into his embrace.
During her lunch hour earlier in the week, she had been tempted into a
store special ising in baby things. Garth had already insisted that he
wanted an old-fashioned, easy-to-steer, as he put it, traditional
coach-built pram.
"For when I take him out on a Sunday morning while you're preparing
lunch," he had told her teasingly.
Claudia had laughed back. Now that she was over the initial shock of
her pregnancy, she was as thrilled at the prospect of becoming a mother
as Garth was a father. It was, after all, what she had always wanted.
Having children, a family, for her was a very important part of what
being married was all about and she could now understand and accept far
more reasonably the words of one of her tutors that she had taken as
criticism.
"Your maternal streak is very strong," he had cautioned her, 'and
you'll have to guard against letting it take control and lead you into
making incorrect assessments of situations.
"Mothers tend to be notoriously blind to the faults of their
offspring."
"I'm due to see the CO soon," Garth told her. Hearing the tension in
his voice, Claudia raised her head and looked anxiously at him.
"Are you sure this is what you want to do, leave the regiment?" she
asked him.
"I know I
said that I didn't want our children to be army brats like I was, but.
"
"No, I feel exactly the same as you do. If I'm honest, one of the main
reasons I went into the army was because I didn't really have any
stronger idea of what I wanted to do. After going through public
school and then university, I suspect that, psychologically, it felt
safer opting for a career that echoed the same familiar, organised type
of routine."
Gravely, Claudia nodded her head.
"It does tend to make you feel slightly institutionalised, our kind of
education," she admitted.
"Institutionalised!" Garth gave her a wry look.
"Oh, thanks. Once I've spoken to the CO, though, we're going to have
to get busy thinking about where we're going to live."
"Somewhere in the country," Claudia suggested promptly.
"I'll be working in London," he reminded her, 'but, yes, I agree. And
preferably somewhere with a bit of land, close enough for both sets of
parents to visit, but not too close. "
"No, not too close," Claudia concurred.
"I'll start making enquiries with a few estate agents, shall I?"
"Mmm..." Garth agreed, nuzzling the delicate and so sensually
responsive spot just behind her ear.
"But remember to tell them we want plenty of bedrooms."
"For when we have people to stay? Whom are you planning to invite, the
whole regiment?" Claudia teased him.
"No, not for guests," Garth returned before warning her huskily, "You
don't think we're going to stop at this one, do you? Not now I know
how easy it is--and how enjoyable. Do you know... you actually felt
different the night this--' his hand covered her stomach
'--happened?"
"Garth," Claudia protested, "I forgot to take my pill for three nights
and--' " No," Garth interrupted, shaking his head.
"I know exactly when it was--it was the evening we came back from my
parents, when I... when we--' " You were very deep inside me that
time," Claudia broke in, her voice as husky with emotion as his.
"Very deep," Garth agreed, adding as he drew her fully into his arms,
"God, but we're lucky."
*******edly, Claudia snuggled up against him. She couldn't imagine
being any happier than she was right now, but instinctively she knew
that she would be, once their baby was born. A feeling of such intense
excitement and joy welled up inside her that it made her wriggle
slightly against Garth, an expression of sheer bliss illuminating her
face.
"Now, what brought that on?" Garth asked her. He moved against her
and she felt the hardness of his arousal.
"This...?" he added hopefully.
"No, not that," Claudia answered truthfully.
"I was thinking about the baby. Oh, Garth, I'm so happy ... we're so
lucky..."
"Mmm.. / Garth agreed, reaching for her hand and placing it firmly
against his body.
/MmrnL . Isee. "
Having come to the end of his speech informing the colonel that he
intended to leave the regiment, Garth watched as his commanding officer
stood up and went to stand in front of the window, hands clasped behind
his back.
A tall, spare man in his fifties, the colonel came from a long line of
military men, but even he was not completely immune to the cultural
changes taking place in the current decade. His own son, ex-Eton and
destined to follow him into the regiment, had decided that he preferred
to travel to India and sit at the feet of some guru. There had been
arguments about it, of course, but nothing could persuade the boy to
change his mind. The boy, in his father's opinion, looked more like a
girl with his long hair and peculiar clothes, and the colonel wasn't
alone. Only the previous week he had been with a fellow Etonian whose
own son had been due to follow him into the Guards;
instead, the boy had joined a pop group.
"The regiment will be sorry to lose you," he told Garth, turning to
face him and adding, 'and so shall I. "
Silently, Garth expelled his pent-up breath. It was no secret in the
regiment that the CO had been a bit sticky recently. Word had it that
the disappointment he had suffered over his son had put a distinctly
sharp edge to his always somewhat choleric temper. But he was a fair
man,
honest and just, and Garth liked and respected him.
"I'd like to leave before the baby arrives," Garth requested. The
regiment was due to be home based for the following six months, which
would allow him to take sufficient leave to sort out his and Claudia's
house move and it made sense to Garth that he would have at least a
couple of months to settle into his new professional life before their
son or daughter arrived, and it was for that reason as he told the
colonel that he had hoped to quit the regiment in three months' time.
"I don't see any reason why not. You're coming to the end of your term
with us and we can't force you into signing on for a further period of
time," the colonel remarked.
It was a matter of honour for Garth, both as an individual and as a
soldier aware of his rank, not to leave when the regiment was about to
be posted overseas or sent into the field. He was only glad that the
regiment was not due for another tour of duty in Northern Ireland for
some time--not so much for the danger that this entailed, at least not
for himself. No, it was Claudia he was thinking of. She had dealt
calmly and practically with his recent tour of duty in Belfast, but
even so he had sensed her anxiety and concern and he knew how much
greater that would be now that she was carrying their child.
After she was over the first shock of discovering her pregnancy, he
could see how much her forthcoming role as a mother thrilled and
delighted her. It wasn't just her body that had ma and Betray 173
tured, ripened with the conception of their child. Claudia herself had
grown, too. Some women seemed by nature more maternal, more nurturing
and caring, more suited perhaps to be mothers than others and Claudia
was most definitely one of them.
Even now. Garth sensed that their child, once it had arrived, would
automatically lay claim to Claudia's loyalty and love--and she would
bestow these un stintingly--but he didn't see any reason to feel
threatened or dismayed by the idea. Why should he? He, too, shared
Claudia's joy, enjoyed the glow of fulfilment that prospective
motherhood had brought her.
Claudia had never felt happier. She hadn't told them officially at
work yet that she would be handing in her notice, but she suspected
that they must know. Not even Katriona's acid sniping had the power to
affect her any more. She had even suggested to the girl that since she
seemed to have nothing but criticism for the way Claudia was handling
her case, she might prefer to be dealt with by someone else, but
Katriona, who seemed to have developed a love-hate relationship with
her, flatly refused, flying off the handle and accusing Claudia of
wanting to walk out on her and not having time for her any more now
that she was pregnant.
The time would come, of course, when Claudia would have to hand over
the case to someone else, but at the back of Claudia's mind was the
knowledge that despite her ferocity, de n spite the fact that Claudia
knew that Katriona deliberately tried to needle and upset her, the girl
was very vulnerable. Claudia didn't want to be yet another person who
had turned her back on her, and besides. Furiously though she might
deny it, Katriona was becoming increasingly dependent on drugs--and
increasingly at risk physically.
"She'll be dead within a year," Janice had remarked brutally the last
time she had accompanied Claudia on a visit to the squat.
"You mark my words. I've seen it happen with her type before. For a
long time, they seem to be able to withstand the abuse they're
subjecting their bodies to, and then suddenly, they're gone."
Claudia's footsteps quickened as she hurried down the street. She had
a lunch appointment with one of the estate agents in the city who also
had branches in the country.
A happy smile curled her mouth. Garth had warned her that they
wouldn't be able to afford anything grand, but something grand wasn't
what she wanted. What she wanted was a house that would be a proper
home, a house with a large, comfortable kitchen and a big garden for
their children to play in. Their children. Blissfully, she closed her
eyes. She was just so. so. happy.
Even her morning sickness brought its own peculiar sense of pleasure,
reaffirming as it did the reality of her pregnancy.
What she felt was impossible to describe or explain. What she felt was
a sense of . of rightness,
of completeness, of fulfilment. What she knew was that the prospect of
motherhood made her feel that she had suddenly discovered the true
purpose of her life. She loved Garth, of course, but instinctively she
knew that the love she would have for their children would be the
strongest and most powerful emotion she would ever know.
Bleakly, Garth stared out across the silent barracks yard. It was a
good hour since they had heard the news, a shock that still hadn't
fully sunk in. The enduring conflict in Northern Ireland had claimed
many lives, both Catholic and Protestant, and now another tragedy had
occurred.
A coach load of British soldiers on their way to their depot had been
ambushed on an isolated Northern Irish road. Out of the fifty-odd men
travelling in the coach, there had been only eight survivors, and all
of them so badly maimed that even if they survived. Impossible not to
suffer that churning stab of dread to the stomach coupled with a guilty
relief that it was not oneself lying dead on that country road or, even
worse, lying on a hospital bed with what was left of one's shattered
and destroyed body. It would take much more of a miracle than modern
medicine could provide to piece back together a body whose limbs had
been blown off.
He hadn't known personally any member of that other regiment but that
didn't matter. They might have their regimental rivalries and
jealousies, but underneath them, they were all army. They were all
vulnerable; it could have been any of them.
"They'll have to bring back the rest of the regiment now," one of the
other officers had commented to Garth when the news had broken.
"They can't leave them out there after this. It would be bad for
morale.
Heaven help whoever they send out to take their place. I hope to God
it isn't us. Anything like this makes the men damned jittery and
that's when. "
He didn't say any more. He didn't need to. Garth was aware of the
psychology of good morale as any other responsible and intelligent
officer.
"You don't think we will be sent out in replacement, do you?" he asked
instead, frowning at the prospect.
"Hard to say. We've got the training and the experience, but it isn't
that long since we completed our last tour of duty."
Garth frowned again, recalling their conversation. In a matter of
weeks he would be leaving the regiment, his intention being to view
some of the houses Claudia had weeded out of the possibilities sent to
her by the estate agents and then spend some time getting to know the
ropes of his new job before the birth of their baby.
Claudia was now four months pregnant but her stomach was not yet
beginning to show. Garth's frown changed to a smile as he remembered
how the last time he had been on leave she had proudly showed him the
maternity clothes she had bought. He hoped they weren't being sent out
to Northern Ireland. If they were, he would feel honour bound to go.
"But... but you said that you weren't due to do another tour in
Northern Ireland," Claudia faltered as they sat side by side on their
small sofa.
When Garth had telephoned to say he was coming home unexpectedly, her
first thought was that now he could come with her to see the pram she
was thinking of ordering; the very last thing on her mind was that he
would have the kind of news for her that he had just given her.
"We weren't," he agreed quietly.
"But there's been a change of plan."
No need to remind her of the month-old tragedy that was now, in media
terms at least, stale news, but Claudia wasn't an army daughter for
nothing.
"It's because of the bombing, isn't it?" she guessed immediately.
"They're sending you out because they've had to recall that
regiment."
"Yes," Garth replied, his tone sombre.
"Oh, Garth, but surely you don't need to go. You've only got a few
weeks left and--' " You know better than that, Clo/ Garth reminded
her.
"I can't let the men down, and if I don't go..."
"Yes, I know," she conceded heavily.
Northern Ireland. Claudia shivered with foreboding. Every army wife
dreaded hearing the news that her husband's regiment had been posted
there, but normally Claudia would have tried her best to keep her fears
to herself. This time, though, it was different. This time. She
forced herself not to break down completely and beg Garth not to go,
remind him that it wasn't just her he had to consider now.
But Garth it seemed had read her mind.
"I know what you must be thinking," he told her gently, 'and don't
think I haven't thought it, too, but this is something I have to do,
Clo. "
Numbly, she nodded her reluctant agreement, swallowing hard before
asking him, "When... when do you leave?"
"The end of next week."
Claudia closed her eyes.
That night after they had made love, instead of turning over to lie on
her side as she normally did, she remained curled up against Garth,
clinging to him even in her sleep, afraid to let him go.
"Look, darling, why don't you come to us for the weekend?" Claudia's
mother suggested when her daughter telephoned her to tell her the
news.
"We could do some shopping together for the baby."
Claudia agreed, and Garth, when she told him about the invitation, was
pleased that she would have something to help take her mind off
worrying about him.
25-09-07, 09:15 PM
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