Hell Hath No Fury Read Free Page A

aureen Flynn tried desperately to get to sleep. She tossed and turned, plumped up her pillows, buried her head under the bedclothes, all to no avail. No matter what she did she was unable to blot out from her mind the humiliation and despair she felt following her revelations to Philip Harmer.
    She still couldn’t believe she had taken such a risk with her own future. She must have been mad! It was like winning the Lottery and then screwing up the ticket instead of collecting the winnings.
    Would she ever be able to forget the look of distaste on his thin face when she’d told him that she had once been raped, or was it going to haunt her forever?
    To have guarded her shameful secret all these years and then to have blurted it out like she had done was unbelievable! And to Philip Harmer of all people!
    What could she have been thinking about? Such utter stupidity! It was bordering on a death wish. He was the first man who had ever penetrated the hard shell she’d built around her feelings. The only man she had ever met who appealed to her as a prospective partner.
    The only man who had ever proposed to her!
    It wasn’t like her to blab about her past. That was a closed book. She’d buried it deep in her subconscious many years ago. Something she’d been determined to forget for ever. Now it was all floating on the surface again.
    Her mind seethed with memories as the harrowing experience flooded back into focus. She was back there. In that dank, dirty shed with its cobwebs and dirt floor. She was being jostled by the boys, pushed and pawed, slobbered over.
    It had started with wet, beery kisses. First one, then another. Then they were all over her, scrabbling like pigs in a trough. Pushing their wet mouths against her throat and neck.
    She’d felt sick and frightened when they’d started pulling at her clothing. Ripping off her school blouse they grabbed at her breasts, squeezing, licking, sucking. When she’d cried out in pain one of them had stuffed a grubby handkerchief in her mouth. She’d kicked and fought, trying to get free, but the more she’d struggled the more frenzied they’d become. They’d behaved like vicious animals
    Sandy Franklin had been unspeakably cruel. Tall, raw-boned with a wild shock of red hair, and big, bony hands, he’d been the most callous of them all. He’d been the first one to rape her, goaded into doing so by taunts and jeers from Dennis Jackson.
    Jackson had been the oldest of the gang. Head boy. A natural leader. Brainy. Scheming. Sinister, with a vicious streak of cruelty in his make-up.
    He’d egged Sandy, and the others, into action. Ordered them to hold her down, to strip off the rest of her clothing. There’d been a gleam of enjoyment in his green eyes when she’d begged him to tell the others to stop.
    He could have put an end to them molesting her. They both knew that. One word from him and the others would have held back, but he chose not to. It was obvious from the look on his face that he was experiencing a vicarious thrill from what he was witnessing.
    He’d waited until last for his turn.
    Maureen felt herself breaking out into a cold sweat as she recalled the unspeakable indignities she’d suffered at his hands. Afterwards, along with the others, he’d taken to his heels. They’d left her lying there in the shed, sobbing.
    Bruised and shaken she’d stumbled home. Her parents were shocked and outraged when they heard what had happened, but they told no one, not even the police. So great was their shame that they had refused to even call a doctor!
    Trembling and tearful, her mother had bathed her and tended to her cuts and bruises. Then she’d put her to bed with aspirins and hot milk, almost as if nothing untoward had happened.
    Next day, when her mother changed the dressings, she refused to discuss the matter. Her father had also ignored the incident, but he had insisted that she