Beautiful Read online

  Beautiful

  Anita Waller

  Contents

  Also by Anita Waller

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Book Two

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Book Three

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Epilogue

  A note from the author

  A Note From Bloodhound Books

  Copyright © 2015 Anita Waller

  The right of Anita Waller to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2015 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Also by Anita Waller

  Angel

  (sequel to Beautiful)

  * * *

  34 Days

  * * *

  Dark Minds

  * * *

  Strategy

  * * *

  Winterscroft

  * * *

  Captor

  * * *

  Game Players

  Dedicated with all the love in the world (as always) to Matthew Waller, Sian Waller and Kirsty Waller, my inspirational children.

  BOOK ONE

  1952 – 1964 North Cornwall

  1

  July 1952

  She wheeled her shiny blue dolls pram across the grass; he watched. His eyes narrowed to slits as he struggled against the brightness of the sun’s rays. He followed every movement she made, wondering what it would feel like to touch the long blonde hair that he had sometimes seen in a tight pony tail and at odd times long and flowing, swinging loosely around her shoulders.

  That’s how he preferred to see her, hair long and free, thistledown soft. He imagined it tumbling gently, lightly, through his fingers as she smiled innocently up into his face, the slow motion effect of his dream adding to his anticipation.

  And then he would take her, throw her small immature body down on to the grass; use her. Not love her - no, he didn’t want to love her, just hurt her, hurt her, hurt her and hear her scream.

  Sometimes, in the dark hours of the night when his brain would search frantically for answers, when he felt almost sane, he would wonder why it had to be a little girl rather than a woman he would find release with.

  He knew why it had to be that particular little girl. She was beautiful, the prettiest of all the children who played in the park. Once or twice she had even smiled at him. Those blue innocent eyes had rested on his face, the rosebud mouth lifting at the edges - and he knew she was offering herself to him.

  She stopped and bent over the pram, laying the hood flat with a gentle push of her hand. Pulling back the covers she lifted out the doll and put it over her shoulder, patting its back and talking to it. Using one hand she carefully placed a small yellow cover over the handle, straightened the sheet inside the pram and began to hum softly.

  Then she bent its legs to replace it in the pram in a more upright position, all the time carrying on the one sided conversation. Words drifting on the breeze told him that she had named the doll Patty but then her voice was lost to him as she continued to walk across the grass heading for the thicker undergrowth.

  He stood. He knew he would never get a better opportunity.

  2

  Words collected, lingered around her; words like uterus, sterility, rape, fading in and out of her consciousness as she slowly began to wake up to a world that, for her, had changed forever. The watchers around her bed saw her occasionally shake her head. They had no idea that the words they were saying were hovering around her like buzzing insects that wouldn’t go away.

  Her mother’s tear-stained, ravaged face was always there at her bedside along with the dozens of teddies and dolls that assorted well-wishers had sent. None of them took the pain away. She couldn’t understand why her mother was crying - it was her tuppence that hurt so much so why did her mother have to cry? Surely her tears were enough?

  She wondered what “ruined for life” meant but soon dismissed the thought. There were so many other words. All she really wanted to do, at least for the first four days, was sleep. Sleep obliterated the horror, stopped her smelling the beery breath, the fetid odour of him as he had crushed her young body into the bracken in the woods surrounding the playing fields. Sleep stopped her tasting the rough skin of his hand that reeked of cigarettes, the hand he had held across her mouth as he had pushed some huge part of him into her tuppence. She hadn’t been able to cry then; not then.

  When her eyes eventually opened and stayed open she realised that everything was white. The walls, glaring in their white brilliance, the nurses in their stiff white aprons and stiffer white caps, the doctors in their white coats; everything was painfully white to her distraught young brain. She hated it. She wanted to go home to her own little flowery bedroom, to the familiarity of the sloping roof, her bed with its bedspread that matched the curtains - she didn’t want this awful blankness. They gave in to her every wish except that one, saying she couldn’t go home; she had to get better first. She raged inside that they couldn’t see that she would get better at home.

  She didn’t know what they had done to her, just how much of her had had to be removed.

  They finally got around to telling her the man had been caught in an empty house.

  ‘Amelia, sweetheart,’ Brenda Andrews began, the tremble in her voice telling her husband that what was to come would not be easy. ‘The man who hurt you – the police caught him and shot him.’

  Jack took hold of his daughter’s small hand but she pulled it away from him. He looked towards Brenda and then moved behind her chair.

  Amelia stared for a moment at her mother. ‘Shot him?’

  ‘Yes, love, he’s dead.’

  Brenda sent up a silent prayer to the God she had always believed would keep her daughter safe, asking for forgiveness for the lie. They had talked late into the night about the best way to handle the problem. Treverick pleading guilty and giving a full confession meant Amelia never needed to kn
ow what had happened to him.

  ‘Dead like Spot?’ she asked.

  ‘Dead like Spot,’ Brenda echoed, breathing a sigh of relief that they had explained that they would never see the little dog again.

  She stared at a poster fixed to the wall for long moments. ‘Good’. Her eyes closed and she once again slept.

  She didn’t want her daddy near her in case he wanted to push his thingy in her just like that man had. She liked the nurses but they quickly had to replace the male doctor with Doctor Jane, as soon as they realised his approach signalled an eruption of tears..

  The nurses were the ones who changed her name. Until the assault, she had been Amelia; the nurses called her Amy and she liked it much better.

  ‘Can I always be called Amy, Mummy?’ she asked her mother. And so Amy it was.

  When Amy left hospital, stitched back together by surgeons skilled in repairing adult women and thankful they didn’t normally have to do the same for a child, it seemed that all the nursing staff were on the hospital steps to wave her off. Many were in tears, all aware of what the young body had had so brutally inflicted on it - and just how much of her was no longer there. She would never have a daughter of her own to duplicate her prettiness, never experience the pain and thrill of childbirth.

  She had been a good patient, a real hit with the staff with her long blonde hair and eyes that were sometimes blue, sometimes green. As her parents left with her in the taxi, they hoped the mental scars would heal as fast as her body was healing.

  ‘Amy, sweetheart, we think you should go back to school next week.’

  Her mother looked tentatively at her unsure how to handle this potential problem. She wasn’t the same little girl and they had been warned to expect that but it was still hard not to hold her, cuddle her - and Jack felt it most of all. He wasn’t allowed to carry her up to bed at night fireman fashion over his shoulder, read her a story, do any of the things they had done before the attack. Brenda knew he felt shut out completely from their normal life and she didn’t know what to do about it.

  ‘Give it time,’ the family doctor had said, ‘she’ll come to accept him again.’

  Amy lifted her head from the colouring book and looked at her mother. ‘Okay.’ No emotion, no disagreement.

  Brenda sighed. Why them? Why Amelia? Their daughter had always been a free spirit, lively, extrovert - now she was a shell of the little girl she had once been. Amelia would have said, “Aw, Mum, do I have to?” Not, “Okay.”

  ‘You feel ready to go back then?’

  Amy nodded.

  ‘My tummy doesn’t hurt anymore. I suppose I’ll be okay.’ Her eyes remained fixed on the colouring book, the picture of the parrot completely coloured in black. Brenda leaned over.

  ‘Parrots aren’t black, sweetheart. That’s ravens and magpies. Look, let me show you, he needs lots of colour.’

  ‘No!’ Amy slammed down the black wax crayon. ‘Everything’s black!’ she said angrily, running from the room.

  Even the weather was black on Monday morning. Overcast, with no break in the skies. Brenda held firmly on to Amy’s hand all the way to school.

  The journey seemed shorter than it had in the past. Brenda didn’t want to leave Amy. Her footsteps became slower and slower until Amy was pulling her along.

  ‘Now you’re sure you feel okay?’ she asked several times on the fifteen-minute walk that should have been only ten minutes. Amy looked at her mum without speaking. Of course she would be okay - they were all lady teachers at her school. All except Mr. Mawson, of course, and he didn’t count because he was the head teacher. She didn’t really have anything to do with him. Ladies didn’t stick thingies into tuppences because they didn’t have thingies so she would be safe at school. Her mum didn’t need to worry at all.

  Mr. Mawson, standing in the doorway of his room with his bald head shining in the glare of the overhead electric light, held out his arms.

  ‘Welcome back, Amelia.’

  She moved behind her mother, furious that she had brought her to the office instead of taking her to her classroom.

  ‘It’s Amy,’ she muttered.

  He looked at Brenda, his eyebrows raised in query.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Mawson,’ she said quietly, feeling quite desperate.

  ‘She…won’t tolerate men under any circumstances.’ The tears threatened to spill down her cheeks. ’Not even her dad. And she wants to be called Amy from now on, not Amelia.’

  ‘Soon arranged, Amy,’ he said cheerfully. ’We’re just glad to have you back.’ He turned to her mother. ’Are there any special problems we should know about?’

  Brenda wanted to scream. She wanted to say yes, the fire in her has died. Instead she said, ’Just don’t let her do games or PE for at least six weeks. Her own body will tell her how much running about at playtime she can do.’

  He nodded feeling as helpless as Brenda. As soon as the news of the rape had broken, he had kept in close contact with the family and now felt like a fish gasping for air. Never in his thirty-five years of teaching had he had to deal with such an enormous dilemma. He led the child and the woman from his office and escorted them to Amy’s classroom.

  Using a repeat action of Henry Mawson’s, Claudia Carey held out her arms and Amy ran swiftly to her.

  ‘Aw, Amelia pet, it’s good to have you back.’ Her soft Teesside accent, mellowed slightly now by the infiltration of a Cornish lilt, was like music to Brenda’s ears. She looked at her daughter in Claudia Carey’s arms and felt more at ease - she could safely entrust Amy to her until half past three.

  ‘Mrs Carey,’ Brenda said quietly, ‘it’s Amy now, not Amelia.’ Claudia Carey lifted her eyes to the woman who was almost exactly the same age yet looked ten years older now, and nodded. She tried to smile and wanted to cry.

  The boys and girls in the class room sat in silence, watching the scene before them. Most of them knew that a man had attacked Amy but just as Amy couldn’t comprehend the word rape, neither could they. They searched for physical evidence of the attack but saw nothing. The bruises to her face, arms and legs had healed, the wounds across her abdomen were almost knit together and no-one would ever see the gashes inside her vagina. She was exactly the same little blonde haired blue-eyed girl they had always known. She didn’t look sick, not like their parents had told them she was.

  ‘Amy,’ Mrs Carey said, smiling at the little girl who had always been a favourite with her, ‘would you like to sit at your desk?’

  Amy nodded and moved towards the centre of the room. The children’s eyes followed her and she could feel herself going red. Immediately her mind closed down and a mutinous expression crossed her face. Why did they have to look at her? She was no different, only her name had changed. She was still Amelia Rose Andrews and always would be.

  She watched her mother and Mrs Carey talking before her mother blew her a kiss and left the room, surreptitiously wiping away a tear.

  Brenda felt as though a knife had lodged in her heart as she stumbled away from her only daughter, not seeing the peeling green paint in the corridor or hearing Mr. Mawson’s goodbye.

  ‘Right,’ Claudia Carey said brightly, ‘Now we all want to welcome Amy back to class, don’t we children?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Carey,’ they said in unison. She smiled at Amy.

  ‘Amy, the other boys and girls have all made you something.’ She clapped her hands. ‘Right, everyone take out their cards and hand them to Amy.’

  With much clattering of chairs and excited chatter, the children began to leave their desks and move towards Amy. Each one left a card on her desk, welcome back cards they had made as soon as Claudia Carey had learned of the impending return of the little girl. Some children smiled, some stared at her as if she had two heads and some whispered,

  ‘Play with us at playtime?’

  Amy suddenly began to feel better as she looked through the cards. It would be good to get back to normal, to play whip and top, hopscotch and sevens again
.

  Mrs Carey allowed her a few moments to look at her cards, moments in which she too had to mentally adjust. Amy looked the same but she obviously would have changed. She wondered how this would show itself, remembering a child at her previous school who had suffered a severe beating by his father. The man had later died from a brain tumour, which, in retrospect, explained the abnormal behaviour but the boy had never recovered mentally from the unprecedented attack. He had become morose, difficult to handle and a bully. She wondered how he was now – he must be thirteen and unless things had changed dramatically he would be a real problem for whichever school he now attended.

  The chatter in the classroom subsided instantly as she clapped her hands.

  ‘Right, children, writing books out please,’ and she turned to her blackboard to the accompanying sounds of desk lids opening and closing. Amy was back at school.