The Bonds Are Drawn Tight
It was all kept secret from those she knew on her course, even from her mother with whom it was often difficult to talk of personal matters, about the most intimate of subjects. She had been wounded by going through an acrimonious divorce and it had only been in recent years that Flynn Morgan had filled the space in her life that Bryn Kendrick had brought upon her by leaving them.
The people in the university's medical centre were told, but she resolutely refused to consent to the matter being reported to the police. What good would that do when she had been ravished in her room and by someone that she knew? The need to end Gaven's taking of her, so selfishly, had been sought on whatever terms she could achieve and with minimal physical harm. But erasing the memories of her ex-boyfriend's actions would take her a little longer to achieve.
Yes, what would play out in her mind was quite another matter.
Her mother Catrin, and Flynn, who was like a stepfather to her in his encouraging and concerned ways, had not been told, and in the hope that she could deal with what had happened in her own time, and ways, and as best as she could. The first step had been taken in breaking up with Gaven.
The only too physical pain on the insides of her thighs and the bruises on her breasts, also to her body's most sensitive place, had healed or were on the way to doing so. No, it was the mental scars, however, that remained as raw as ever, and most of all her submission to what had happened and the longer her ravishment had continued. The assault upon her had not been rape but had been rough and consensual sex, submitted to and to save her from harm at the hands of someone whom she thought cared for her. After all, she had become complicit and thus deepened her sense of shame for what had happened to her.
So, troubled by her experience, she went through with her studies at Cardiff University as if she lived in another body, but she needed someone to talk to and recover her sense of worth.
A few days, which would pass for a half-term in the summer semester, would be the time to get away and go home, and there to talk to her mother and Flynn.
She held her iPhone to her ear as the number rang.
"Hello Anwen, darling....it's my girl," her mother told Flynn. "How nice to hear from you! How is everything?"
Anwen paused for only a moment.
"It's like this, mother. I had to call as I need to talk to you, or you both. Something's happened that I cannot deal with on my own anymore...or I would do so. You know me well enough by now."
"Whatever's happened?" Catrin asked, doubt clear in her still heavily accented voice. Years of them all living in Bristol had not lessened that trait in her.
"I want to come home, over half-term, and talk to you," she said, hesitantly, the rest of her confession on the tip of her tongue. "It's serious and I want to tell you about it face to face, mother."
"Tell me now, please! I have to go away for three days of business from the end of the weekend...the one when you're here. So, I want to be prepared, to think what to say ...so, tell me now."
"I want to do it face to face," she answered, her voice faltering. "And I can't be free of seminars and lectures until Friday! Then I'll catch a bus to you, it's not so far."
'No, you won't do that!" Flynn intervened, his face, which had a reassuring smile for her to see, framed in one corner of her iPhone's screen. "I'll come and collect you."
"That would be so helpful," she answered in a low voice, and on the verge of tears. "I cannot tell this in any other way. I was assaulted, sexually, and submitted...by my boyfriend, my loathsome ex. How I hate him, now!" she blurted out with a sob.
"When was that?" her mother asked directly.
"That was just over a week ago..."
And you tell us this now?"
"Yes, Mother! Everyone will say it was consensual, even if I didn't like or encourage it, and I can't handle the thought of what happened, the memories of it. So, I need to get away and I need to feel loved again."
♥
The day for her to take a break had finally dawned.
Flynn rang to say that he had arrived and was parked out in the street only a few car lengths away from her red-brick Victorian apartment house. The day was bright, but breezy, with the clouds scudding and billowing across the sky in unseasonal weather for the time of the year.
Now he stood on the step of the front door, common to all in the house, and she saw his outline through the frosted glass set within it. She tugged it open.
"At last!" she called out and fell into his arms unashamedly. Flynn eased her hold on him.
"Your carriage awaits," he teased on taking in her appearance, Anwen's undoubted loveliness that she had inherited from her mother. "And you look like a princess."
He was being kind and understanding she thought, and blurted out the first thing she could say in reply to that. "Make me feel like one again, then."
She gave him a wobbly smile and reached out to take his hand. Flynn looked so darned cool in his tan suit and a navy-blue cotton shirt that was open at the neck. The man never let his standards slip, and she could understand what had drawn her mother to him some years ago. Their affair had endured. He still had his neatly trimmed stubble beard, only his wavy hair that was brushed back from his forehead had gone a little greyer than before.
There was nothing but concern for her to be seen in his eyes and the set of his lips. She'd made an effort to put on washed-out grey denim jeans that hugged her hips, the button fastening to be seen whenever she moved and her white tank top rode up, a grey summer cardi a finishing touch. She'd forsaken all jewellery save for a thin beaded band on one wrist and her hair was braided in a way that she knew that he liked to see.
"I'm glad that you're here with me, really glad." She kissed his cheek and clung to him for a moment, breathed in his familiar, musky, body scent that was so ragingly different from Gaven, the young guy whom she felt had defiled her and taken away what had been the order in her life. "I'm all packed with what I need, so we can go. I don't want to be here a moment longer than I have to."
"Come on then, the car's only a house or two away. I was lucky to find a slot so close to your place. It's all locked up is it?"
"Yes, it is. I seem to do nothing else but check that it is," she sighed, her words soon resonating with him. She met his considerate look and tender smile and knew that he would help her get through to a better place again.
'Leave it all behind you, for a while. I'll help you with that."
"I know you will, and don't keep looking at that, please?" she asked in a trembling voice and clutched his arm in an attempt to pull him away as he looked up at her bedroom window.
"Sorry, but your mother will only ask me what I saw while I was here to collect you."
"Let's just go home, please?" she implored, her voice insistent as she tugged on his jacket's sleeve.
She clung to his arm possessively, even for the few steps it took to reach his gleaming, yellow, Jaguar F-type. He was ragingly successful in the companies he ran and yet he had made the time to collect her. She wondered how it would look, a young woman getting into a handsome, and rich, man's car as he was seen putting her bags in the trunk. She dismissed the thought, of a young woman off for a weekend with her older lover, but perhaps that was just what she needed, caring love and attention of a very different kind..
"Come on, let's get home and have supper. We can talk as we go or do you want to wait until we get back?"
"We wait. I just want the time to talk to you about anything and everything."
She knew that her voice held uncertainty, that her emotions were there for him to hear and see, but she just wanted to be with a man who showed her respect and concern, just as he had always done, along with the loving affection that he was unashamed to show her mother, even when she was present. She wanted some of that back; in fact, all that had been taken from her in that room he had been seen gazing at.
"I wonder how I'll ever go back there," she whispered as she took one last look as they passed the house.
"If you do, it will only be for a short while. I have a plan and your mother will have to agree to it."
She touched his hand and then gripped it, unashamedly. Her mother's man seemed to have time and concern for her too, and not just empty words.
"Thank you. That is what I wanted to hear."
♥
They all had tense moments as she recalled everything that had happened, down to the smallest details, her mother shuddering from the images of what Anwen's words conjured up. Flynn was visibly angry and held out a hand to her that she gripped fiercely as they sat at the kitchen table and talked. Catrin was relieved that she had him by her side to help her through the ordeal of hearing her daughter speak of her sordid adventure. Even at such a moment, in the calm of their home, she could not believe what had happened.
And then, in the days that followed Flynn revealed that he was already intent on buying her a small apartment, with a secure entrance lobby and a secure, camera-monitored front door.
"I've already put a name down for a two-bedroom place...so that you could have a trusted friend to live with you. Some rent could be charged to them to help with running the place. When you're through, and graduate, we sell up and we go from there."
