Free The Backward Shadow by Lynne Reid Banks

back by the hair as hard as I could. He let go of me just long enough to slap my face. I could feel his knee working its way between my legs, and I suddenly thought: well, thank God I’ve got slacks on, anyway, he won’t find those so damned easy to navigate.
    This thought returned me to some faint sense of proportion. No woman, surely, can be assaulted by one man against her will, and the whole enterprise by this time was thoroughly against mine. But since I didn’t fancy a lengthy continuation of this undignified struggle, I decided to try a ruse. I suddenly went limp, rolled my eyes, stuck my tongue out, arched my back, let out a gargling sound, and went limp again.
    It worked. He dropped me like a hot brick and clambered hastily off my apparently unconscious form.
    â€˜Jane—’ he began uncertainly.
    I was on my feet in a second and making for the door. Before he could gather his wits to follow me I was locked in the hall lavatory. I sat down there and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and rotten.
    He knocked on the door. With his fist.
    â€˜Come out, you bitch,’ he said harshly.
    â€˜Not bloody likely,’ I replied in kind.
    â€˜You can’t stay in there all night,’ he said after a moment, in a slightly less vicious tone. I made no reply, but stood up shakily and gave myself a drink of water. ‘Come on out. I won’t make love to you if you really don’t want to,’ he said, merely sullen now.
    â€˜You call that making love?’ I said. ‘You poor ignorant bastard. Go home.’ I always was inclined to stoop to abusive language when upset, as I was now, exceedingly. I always regret it later and wish I had been dignified and ladylike, but by then it’s too late.
    Unfortunately, he had this in common with me, and there followed a perfectly unprintable string of filth from which I inferred that he thought a woman in my position (only he put it more graphically) who invites men into her house and fills them with whisky is asking for anything she gets, and should be grateful to get it from somebody like him and not from some passing yokel who’d probably murder her afterwards. From his description of the poor mythical yokel’s crime, I came to the firm conclusion that Mr. Alan Innes was a none-too-well-sublimated sadist.
    I sat on the John with my plastic tooth-mug of water, feeling more and more ill and appalled as I listened helplessly, wondering how long it would go on and whether I’d really brought it on myself. I suspected I might have done. It was easy to see now what had set Dottie off on the downward path to disillusion and cynicism. Strange she hadn’t mentioned any of this. Perhaps as she was not ‘a woman in my position’ he had treated her with more restraint. I sincerely hoped so.
    At last he withdrew, snarlingly. I heard the front door slam, but I wasn’t falling for that. About ten minutes later I heard it close again, more convincingly this time, and shortly afterwards came the angry roaring of a car engine being revved up with merciless violence. It drove away, and a beautiful silence fell, broken only by the patter of rain on the roof and my own somewhat unsteady breathing.
    I emerged from my haven, and stood in the hall, fighting the desire to bolt and bar every entrance to the cottage. Never had the spectre of the demented chalk-pit worker loomed larger. Eventually I settled for the chain. Then I went to see David. On the threshold of his room a sudden most ghastly fear came over me—what if Alan should have …? But of course he hadn’t. David was peacefully asleep. I woke him up, quite needlessly, and fed him, quite selfishly. I remember holding him tightly and rocking him with tears of wretchedness and reaction running down my face and saying Toby’s name over and over again, like an incantation to hold off the fear.

Chapter 5
    THE next morning I telephoned Dottie long distance