Dark Summer Dawn

It would be hard, but it had to be done. Either that or she would have to run away again, and she couldn’t run for ever.

She drew a long quivering breath and went slowly back to the bar. Dane was standing talking to the landlord’s wife. He was smiling, and as she looked at him Lisa was again reluctantly aware of the tug of his attraction. No woman could be proof against it, she thought. And yet she had to be. Because she could never, never let herself forget that two years ago Dane had violated her, body and soul.

It began to rain just south of Doncaster, big icy drops which battered against the windscreen with more than a hint of sleet. It seemed like an omen. Lisa thought, looking out of her window at the lowering skies, but she was only being fanciful.

They had travelled for the most part in silence. Dane had addressed a few brief remarks to her, usually connected with her comfort. Was she warm enough? Did she want the radio on? After a while, Lisa had pretended to doze. It was easier than sitting rigidly beside him, fighting to think of something to say which would not evoke any disturbing memories, or re-open any old wounds. Not that Dane had ever felt wounded, she thought bitterly.

She would be glad to get to the house now. The car she was travelling in was the last word in comfort, but she felt cramped and cooped up. A cage however luxurious was still a cage, she thought, and she had to share hers with a predator.

Once off the motorway she began in spite of herself to take more interest in her surroundings, to look about her for long-remembered landmarks. So many place names on the signposts struck answering chords within her, and most of them had happy associations—Wetherby with its race track where Chas had called her his mascot because she’d picked three winners for him on the card—Harrogate where she and Julie had been at school—York with its gated walls and towering Minster, and the little winding streets which seemed like a step into the past. She hadn’t realised until that moment just how much she had missed it all, and a wave of pure nostalgia washed over her. She had been homesick, but she had managed to keep it at bay by reminding herself how impossible it was that she should ever go back.

Yet now she was back, brought by the man who had driven her into flight in the first place. And again she thought, ‘I must be insane.’

The motorway was far behind them now, and it was getting dark, too dark to gain more than a fleeting impression of the surrounding countryside, the dale where Stoniscliffe was situated.

But she could remember it, could imagine the sweep of the moor, the tall rocks which pressed down to the very verges of the road, the splashing waterfalls, the march of the dry-stone walls, and the sturdy grey houses set firm against all the wind and weather could do to them.

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