Free 7191 by Unknown

obliterate the sound of the man’s voice, but his words persisted in coming through.
    ‘I mean you no harm, understand. But we must, talk.’
    Janice’s eyes shifted to her purse and saw it shaking in her hand. She was trembling all over, visibly, violently, clearly betraying her fear to the man, admitting his power over her. She tried to will the trembling to stop, but it refused to obey. She must move, she thought. She must find the energy to walk away from the man before he noticed the shaking and took advantage of her weakness.
    The sleet stung her eyes as she found herself in motion, taking mincing steps down the slick pathway. She walked on her toes, as Bill had taught her to do on icy pavements, for to slip and fall now would be disastrous, encouraging a further relationship with the man, who would naturally rush to her assistance.
    ‘Tell your husband that I’ll call him tonight.’
    The man’s words were fading behind her, which meant, she was thankful, that he was not following her.
    Janice thought how proud Bill would be to learn that she never once looked at the man, or said a word to him, or acknowledged his presence in any way.
    *
    ‘Come.’ Janice spoke the word with all the heat and force of a rebuke.
    Ivy quietly gathered up her books and outer garments and followed Janice into the waiting elevator. Ernie, the relief elevator operator, gave Janice’s soaked, mud-spattered garments-a fleeting once-over as they rode up in silence. Ivy cast nervous, surreptitious glances up at her mother, knowing full well the cause of her anger and dreading the moment of confrontation which was only three floors away.
    ‘I waited till three twenty-five, Mom,’ Ivy said the moment they were alone in the ninth-floor corridor, keeping her voice at a soft, ingenuous level, striving to crack the armour of her mother’s hostility. ‘I didn’t know what time you’d be there, so I walked home. A man helped me cross the streeTs,’ she added proudly, innocently.
    Janice opened the door of the apartment and, grasping Ivy’s arm, ushered her across the threshold with a sharp tug. After slamming the door shut, Janice spun the frightened child around to her own lowered face and shouted, ‘You do not leave without me! You do not go with a strange man! You sit in the office and wait! And wait! And wait! And wait! Do you understand me?’ Janice was screaming and shaking the sobbing child with all the force she could muster.
    ‘Yes, yes!’ shrieked Ivy. ‘Mom, you’re hurting me!’
    Janice quickly let go of Ivy’s arms and took a step back, appalled by her own cruelty, as she saw red welts begin to form on the delicate white of her beautiful daughter’s skin. Oh, dear God, she thought in utter anguish. I am truly going mad.
    ‘Go upstairs, please,’ she told Ivy in a small, stunned voice.
    Choking, racking, tormented sobs assaulted Janice’s ears as the child dashed down the narrow hallway and rounded the bend of the living-room, the sobs gradually fading as they followed the route of her escape up the staircase and into her bedroom, where they lingered distantly.
    ‘Oh, God. Oh, God,’ Janice mumbled again and again as she staggered into the living-room and fell crying across the sofa, vaguely aware of the soggy, muddy garments staining the black silk upholstery, and not giving a damn, letting it all pour out over the expensive Schumacher fabric, all the pent-up feelings, the hidden fears, panics, hurts, horrors of the past three days -Dear God, has it only been three days?
    The telephone rang.
    Janice’s first reaction was to let it ring. But then the knowledge that their bedroom extension was susceptible to Ivy’s curiosity forced her to pull herself, sobbing across the sofa, to pick up the receiver.
    ‘Janice?’ It was Bill’s voice. ‘Darlene says you called before. What’s up?’
    Bill’s steady, assured voice finally broke the dam. ‘Oh, God, Bill!’ Janice cried, unleashing the full torrent of