He stood at the door, holding it open with one hand to steady himself, his other at his mouth. She could see blood oozing through his fingers, and she realised for the first time that he was wearing only boxer shorts. His skin was pale, apart from forearms, neck and face, which had been burned by the sun or weathered in the wind. He was wiry thin, but had well-developed pecs and the hint of a six-pack on his flat white belly. He took his hand from his mouth and looked at the blood on his fingers. It was smeared all around his mouth and beard, too. She had the iron taste of it in her own mouth, and she leaned forward on the bed to spit on the floor.
‘You fucking little bitch!’ he hissed at her, spraying blood into the blinding dazzle of electric light.
Karen was scared. By the attack, by his anger, by what she had done to him. But more than anything, scared that he wouldn’t take her to see Sam tomorrow. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You frightened me. I... I overreacted.’
‘Fucking right you did.’ He put his hand to his mouth and brought it away with more blood. ‘Jesus, you damn near bit my lip off!’
She slipped off the bed, her heart still hammering, and crossed the room to pull his hand away from his mouth. ‘Let me see.’
He submitted like a child, and stood acquiescent as she tipped his head down towards her and took a look at his lip. The blood was coming from the inside. She could see her own teethmarks on the outside, but they hadn’t broken the skin, just bruised it.
‘Do you have a first-aid kit?’
He nodded.
‘Show me.’
He took her through to the kitchen and they found a green plastic box with a red cross on it, tucked away in a drawer. She opened it up to find a roll of cotton wool, a selection of plasters, a tube of antiseptic ointment and various silver-packaged painkillers.
‘Do you have salt?’
He opened a wall cupboard and pulled down a packet of salt, and she immediately took a clean glass to make a strong solution of salt and water.
‘Here. Rinse your mouth with this. Don’t swallow. Spit out in the sink and rinse again.’
Once more, like a child, he did what he was told, and rinsed several times before she drew his head down and gently pulled out his lower lip to see inside. She held it open to slip in a wad of cotton wool, pushing it down between his lip and his front teeth. Then she rolled kitchen roll into a thick wodge and held it under the cold tap until it was soaking, then made him hold it hard against his outer lip. She took him by the arm and led him back through to the sitting room.
‘Come and sit down. And hold the kitchen roll like that for five or ten minutes. The pressure should stop the bleeding. Mouths are great healers, and the salt solution should have disinfected it.’
He sat meekly on the edge of the settee and looked up at her with now mournful eyes. Both his lust and his anger had dissipated. Perhaps, she thought, all he had really craved was the human contact.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘You really did scare me.’
He nodded, but was afraid to speak in case he aggravated the bleeding. But the blood had stopped within a matter of minutes, and didn’t restart when finally he removed the kitchen roll and cotton wool fifteen minutes later. His voice came muffled through lips that he didn’t want to move. ‘Sorry I scared you.’ He met her eye. ‘Just wanted a cuddle.’
It had seemed to Karen in the moment that he was after much more than that. But now she felt guilty, almost sorry for him. Gently, she encouraged him to lie down on the sofa. ‘You should get some sleep,’ she said. ‘The lip will be a bit swollen and bruised tomorrow. But you’ll live to kiss again.’ She grinned, and he returned a pale smile. ‘I’d better get some sleep, too. See you in the morning.’
She walked carefully across the room, as if afraid to break the spell of tranquillity she had somehow managed to cast over his masculine aggression, and turned the light out before she slipped into the darkness of her bedroom, closing the door behind her and turning the key in the lock.
For a long time she stood with her back to the door, listening to the pulsing of blood in her head and allowing her breathing to subside slowly. Then she tiptoed through the shadows to lay herself carefully down on the bed, wincing with the creak of the springs, her body still rigid with tension.
It was going to be a long night, and she had no intention of sleeping.
Chapter twenty-seven
In spite of best intentions, sleep had stolen her away sometime in the small hours, and she woke now with a start, sitting suddenly upright and hearing the sounds of someone moving around outside her door. She rubbed her eyes and blinked hard to clear them of sleep, and swivelled on the bed to put her feet on the floor.
All her fear and misgivings from the previous night returned. How was Billy going to be with her this morning? Would he still be prepared to take her to see Sam? If not, she had no idea what she was going to do. She was stuck here, miles from anywhere, with no transport, completely at the mercy of an unpredictable young man who might or might not have tried to rape her last night. Just how much resentment would he still be nursing after her violent rejection of his advances, and the biting of his lower lip?
Tense and stiff from a night braced on the sagging mattress of her damp bed, she eased herself across the room to the door and turned the key very gingerly in the lock. She wasn’t sure quite why, but she didn’t want him to know that she had locked herself in. She opened the door abruptly and stepped out into the sitting room.
Her first reaction was surprise at seeing sunlight flooding in through windows and a wide open front door, where a startled hen cast a long shadow towards her before clucking away across the clearing. The sun was still low in the sky, and it reached right across the room to the far wall. Her second reaction was pleasure at the perfume of freshly brewed coffee and the sound of cooking that came from the kitchen. Something spitting and hissing in a frying pan, and good smells issuing from the open door. Bacon.
Billy turned as she appeared in the kitchen doorway. He was standing over the stove, breaking eggs into bacon fat. Cooked rashers sat on a plate next to the gas rings. He managed what seemed to Karen an almost cheery smile. ‘The big advantage of keeping hens is the freshest of eggs every morning. You want to grab a couple of plates?’ He nodded towards one of the kitchen cupboards.
Karen retrieved plates and found cutlery, and he served up two eggs on each, along with half a dozen rashers of bacon. She carried them through to the table, and he followed her with the coffee pot and a couple of mugs. The milk and sugar were already out. She looked at him carefully as he sat down opposite. ‘How’s the mouth?’
He shrugged. ‘A bit sore, but I’ll live.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She repeated her apology of the previous night. ‘Don’t be. It’s me that should apologise. I was out of order.’ He nodded towards her plate. ‘Tuck in. Who knows when we’ll get to eat again.’
She almost held her breath. ‘We’re still going to see Sam, then?’
‘Of course. The sooner we get on the road the better.’
It was a stunning morning, cloudless and clear, the dark purple peaks of mountain ranges east and west rising up around them and reflecting on the still waters of Loch Carron as they headed south through Stromeferry and Plockton towards the Kyle of Lochalsh. Across the Sound of Raasay they saw the jagged outline of the Cuillins piercing the blue that framed the Isle of Skye, and the water of the Inner Hebrides lay flat and still in the windless silence.