Read Online Such Sweet Sorrow by Catrin Collier - Free Book Online

implications of what had happened. It was then she realised that even if Tony had run after her, there was nothing she could say or do to undo the damage to their relationship. The look in his eyes after she had told him that she had been raped had been condemnatory and final. He would never, never, smile at her again as he had done when she’d climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever again. Any love he had felt for her had died the moment she’d told him he wasn’t the first man to touch her. And even if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t make any difference. How could it, when she’d been repelled and sickened by his touch? Why was the filthy act even called ‘making love’ when it involved so much pain and degradation for a woman? Were there any women who actually enjoyed it? Would she have been any different if Tony really had been the first?
    There was no point in even thinking about it, not when tonight’s experience had only served to confirm her suspicions that she’d be repulsed by the touch of any and every man. Ben Springer had marked her as irretrievably as if he’d branded her. She was not only soiled goods, she was damaged. She loved Tony with all her heart and soul, as much as she was capable of loving any man, yet loving him was not enough. She hadn’t been able to bear his nakedness near her own. Kisses exchanged in the comparative safety of a public place, like the street after dark, had been endurable. But only because there was no risk of anything more intimate happening.
    After what Ben and Tony had done, no other man would want her, which was probably just as well now she’d found out she couldn’t be a wife in every sense of the word. Poor Tony! She’d hurt him so much, simply by falling in love with him. He deserved better than her. Hopefully when he left Pontypridd he’d be able to put her and this dreadful night behind him. But where did that leave her? What did she have to look forward to? A spinsterish old age, a dried-up aunthood to William’s and her cousins’ future children.
    She stared down at the white line on the kerb wishing she had the courage to end it. There was no point in living any longer. She had hurt the one man she loved, brought shame on her family by allowing Ben Springer to do what he had to her. She wasn’t even a proper woman. Women made men happy, including the ones who could be bought in station yard, and she couldn’t even offer her man that much.
    ‘Diana or Will?’ Evan Powell opened the kitchen door as Diana stepped into the passage, barely giving her time to pull the blackout curtain.
    She dried her tears in the thick, heavy material Evan’s common-law wife, Phyllis, had bought to shroud the doors and windows, and called back, ‘It’s Diana.’
    ‘You all right?’ he asked, picking up on the tremor in her voice.
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘You don’t sound it.’
    ‘I’m just cold, it’s freezing outside.’
    ‘Is Will with you?’
    ‘No, he went into Cardiff with Tina.’
    ‘You didn’t walk up the hill by yourself in the blackout?’
    ‘Tony brought me home,’ she lied quickly.
    ‘You look half frozen. Come into the kitchen and get warm.’
    ‘I’d rather go straight to bed if you don’t mind, Uncle Evan. I’m tired, and Friday’s always a long day.’
    ‘Have a cup of tea first.’
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘Come on.’
    Her uncle wasn’t usually so persistent. She straightened her skirt as she walked down the stone-flagged passage, wondering if her uncle and Phyllis would guess what had happened to her. But then why should they? No one had guessed what Ben Springer had done to her, and she had been in much more of a state then. Evan was holding the door open. Heat laden with wholesome cooking smells blasted towards her, warm and comforting, and there sitting in an easy chair next to the hearth, was a small, thin woman with a careworn face, who looked smaller, older and more shrunken than she had done behind the