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It was soon clear that this was neither. After only a moment's hesitation, Ailsa was on her feet and moving for the doorway with the sort of speed you wouldn't expect from a woman of her size. Slower in mind, if not in body, I was half a stride behind.

We weren't alone in recognising an emergency in progress. Doors were opening all along the hallway, and up on the landing as well. There were already half a dozen women in the hall itself, clustered round a dark-haired girl in her late teens or early twenties. She was slumped on her knees by the bottom of the stairs, clutching at the ornate newel post like a drowning swimmer, and wailing.

“Oh God,” Ailsa muttered. She hurried forwards and bent close to the girl. “Nina, love, what is it? What's happened?”

The girl turned her face in the direction of the voice, but her eyes had that thousand-yard stare of deep shock.

“O-outside,” she managed at last. She swallowed a couple of times, her throat working convulsively. “There w-was a man. Outside.”

Ailsa threw me a single pleading look over her shoulder. I gave her a slight nod, knowing immediately what she was asking of me. This wasn't the time to argue, and besides, the girl, Nina, had started to shudder and shake. I thought there was more than a fair chance she was going to throw up, which didn't make me eager to hang around here.

I stepped round both of them, heading for the open doorway, and the darkness beyond it. The group melted back to let me through. Nobody offered to walk with me, but then, I hadn't really expected them to.

I went down the stone steps and moved quickly to the side of the house. I stood there for a minute or so, out of the sweep of light flooding from the un-curtained windows, waiting for my eyes to adjust, and my nerves to steady.

The pause gave me chance to listen for the sounds of movement, but there was nothing apart from the rattle of wind across bare branches, the hum of traffic from the main road, and the jump of my own heart.

I was mildly surprised to find that I wasn't scared, though. Not that mind-numbing fear that freezes your blood. Instead, I could feel my senses dilating, my instincts reaching out into the night. Rather than dulling my responses, apprehension was serving to give me a sharper edge.

I had no doubts that if the girl said she'd seen a man lurking out here, she was probably right. His intentions might be sinister, but I was determined that I was not afraid of him, whoever he was.

I'd been down that road once before, and had returned coated with the bitter grime of pain and experience. I had so nearly not come back at all. It was interesting to know some good had come of the journey.

I eased myself away from the wall and tried to walk quietly across the gravel, which was an impossibility even in bare feet, never mind in the heavy-soled bike boots I'd changed into after the class. Every few strides I had to pause to clear the echo of my own footsteps from my ears.

I spent a quarter-hour moving as silently as I could through the area surrounding the drive. I wasn't stupid enough to force my way deep into the undergrowth. It would have been asking for trouble.

Even so, I found no trace of an intruder. Nothing.

By the time I got back into the hallway, the crowd had mostly disbanded. One or two of the hardier ones were lurking on the stairs. They asked me if I'd spotted anyone, and took my negative answer with sceptical smiles. Whether that was because they doubted there was anyone to find, or because they thought I was just trying to allay their fears, I couldn't be sure.

I found Ailsa back in the sitting room, squeezed onto the sofa with her arm round Nina, who still seemed as distraught as she had been when I'd gone out. Tris had appeared by this time, and was perched on a chair on the other side of the room, hollow-eyed and anxious.

Ailsa glanced up at me sharply when I came in, but I shook my head. She looked relieved.

I moved round into Nina's line of sight, and crouched in front of her. “Whoever he was, Nina,” I said, speaking carefully, “he's gone now. You're OK.”

Nina had her arms folded round her body, and was rocking gently back and forth. “It's my fault,” she mumbled. “It's all my fault.”

Uncomprehending for a moment, I caught Ailsa's sorrowful glance, and I understood then why Nina was at the refuge. She'd been raped.

I remembered Ailsa telling me a few details when the girl had first arrived. She'd been raped by a friend of the family, and when she'd told her parents, their first reaction had been of disbelief, and denial. Betrayed, Nina had run, ending up at Shelseley.

I put my hands on her shoulders. “Nina, listen to me,” I said, my voice sharp enough to cut through the layers. “It's not your fault. Nothing that has happened to you is your fault. Don't let it destroy you, or he's won. Do you hear me? Is that what you want? To give up?” I ignored Ailsa's murmur of protest and plunged on. “Come out fighting, Nina, come back stronger. Stop giving him this power over you, otherwise you'll never be rid of him.”

She twisted weakly in my grasp. “You don't know what it's like,” she moaned.

“Oh yes I do, Nina,” I said, and my voice was grim enough to register. “Trust me, I know exactly what it's like.”

There were certain similarities. I'd also known the men who had raped me, all four of them. Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay. The names ran through my mind like a mantra. They'd been on the same military training course and while they hadn't exactly been my friends, I was supposed to have been able to trust them with my life.

I still don't know why they picked me. There were only two other girls on the same course, so I suppose that cut down the odds a little. I spent months afterwards wondering what weakness in me they'd recognised. What had marked me out as a victim.

Eventually, I'd realised that I was not special, nor fatally flawed. I'd simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sometimes, it's easier to believe in fate. That the story lines of our lives are already written, you just follow the script. But maybe I just didn't want to believe that my whole reason for being was to be raped and beaten by a group of drunken squaddies.

People told me I'd been lucky to survive, but it took me a long time before I could begin to view that state of affairs with any sense of happiness. Fear had evolved very slowly into anger. A desire followed first to learn self-defence, and then to teach what I'd learned to others. It gave me back control of my own existence.

I stood up, letting go of Nina's arms, and watched the top of her bowed head. She'd stopped caring much about her appearance since the attack, never wearing make-up and letting her hair grow unstyled. It hung lankly around her face, so fine that her ears stood out through it. Her shoulders were rounded. I don't think I'd ever seen anyone look more utterly defeated.

Ailsa made “leave now” motions with her eyes. I nodded silently, and headed for the door, picking up my helmet and rucksack as I went. Tris got up to show me out.

“Don't you think you were a little hard on her?” he said quietly, once the living room door was closed behind us.

I shrugged my way into my rucksack. “She's had months of hand-holding and sympathy,” I said. “She's physically recovered, the memory's fading. What she needs now is pushing until she starts to push back. She needs to face what she's been through and deal with it, not bury it under layers of cotton wool and hope it all goes away.”

Tris considered that for a moment. “Not everyone responds the way you expect to that kind of stimuli,” he pointed out gently. “Not everybody has the strength of character to cope.”

“They have to,” I said, glancing at him as I turned to go. “What else is there?”

Despite my words, I looked around me carefully as I walked down the steps again and across the gravel to the bike. The screen of rhododendron bushes looked quiet, but to be truthful, for all I could see through it, it might as well have been one-way glass. I jammed my helmet on, feeling suddenly vulnerable as it cut down my peripheral vision.