Read Online Helpless by Marianne Marsh - Free Book Online Page B

buggy.
    I never noticed the time slipping away as I lost myself in my dreams of another era until I returned home and my mother scolded me for my lateness.

    The man next door was the only person I shared those stories with, but I was not to know how he stored them up in his memory ready to use.
    It took until after the end of the holidays for him to put that information to good use. Over the months since we had moved he had worked at perfecting his role as the perfect neighbour.
    ‘Do you want anything fetching from the shops?’ was his question every time he went into the village on an errand for Dora. My mother always responded with a smile of thanks.
    ‘Such a kind man. His wife’s a lucky woman,’ she said repeatedly.
    Whenever there was something she wanted he would invite me to go with him.
    ‘Bring Stevie for the ride,’ he would say. ‘Give your mum a bit of a break.’ And, of course, my mother never objected.
    ‘Let’s stop for a moment,’ was his frequent suggestion when we reached the wooded area. His arms would go round me and tiny kisses rained down on my cheeks.
    ‘Do you like that?’ he would ask as his hand stroked my back gently, and to begin with I did.
    Gradually, just a little bit at a time, the nature of his kisses changed. There were no more fairy kisses of eyelashes brushing across my cheek; instead there were more of the ‘Let me show you how grown-ups kiss’, and I already knew that I did not like the way grown-ups did it.
    When his tongue forced its way through my lips it felt so huge, so slimy, that I was scared. ‘What would happen if it slid deeper into my throat and made me choke?’ was the question I asked myself as I wondered if I would be able to breathe if that happened. I felt my body tense when his hand moved to my legs. I wanted them to stroke my back but they never did any more; instead they crept under my dress and slid up my skinny bare thighs. I would feel his fingers getting closer and closer to my knickers and clasped my legs together as tightly as possible, but his determined fingers always managed to creep under the elastic before he stopped.
    ‘Do you like that, Marianne?’ he would ask each time and I was too frightened of his displeasure to tell him ‘No’.
    If I delayed in answering him correctly a look of disappointment would appear on his face and, wanting to please him, I would do as he asked, throw my arms round his neck and whisper ‘yes’, then kiss him on the cheek.
    That was the second step taken.

Chapter Fifteen
     
     
    S omehow hearing the words that I was hungry for, words that told me I was special, were no longer enough to halt the unease I was beginning to feel. I wished there was someone whom I could ask if it was true that what we did was right. Or maybe I wanted someone to make him stop because I knew I couldn’t without making him angry and making him stop liking me. But who? I asked myself despairingly. Of course my dilemma was always whether I wanted to lose his companionship, for then I still believed he was my friend.
    Instinctively I understood that this was not something to be talked about. And whom could I go to in any case? What I decided to do instead was avoid him.
    Naively I believed that those words he had whispered to me for so long were genuine: that I was special to him, that he missed me when he did not see me, that I was his little lady. Believing that, I thought withholding my company from him would make him miss me. Then he would want to make me happy again and stop making me do things I did not want to.

    But I was only just eight and did not understand that my wiles were useless when pitted against a man in his mid-thirties, and to my chagrin he appeared completely unperturbed by my absence. I had expected him to knock on our door and ask me how I was, or if I wanted to help polish his car, go for a walk with his dogs or just bring my brother over to play, but he did none of those things. I watched him from my