Shilo's Secret (16 page)

He held her close and the unspoken dread of their inevitable separation overwhelmed them both.

CHAPTER 9

   They parked in a clearing in the forest. Stratt built a roaring fire, which, he reassured her, would frighten off any wild animals. They sat down on a blanket facing the crackling, orange-blue flames. He poured her an Amarula liqueur on ice in a stainless steel camping cup.

“So you’re leaving,” he mused. “I’m going to really miss you.”

“You know I have to go, but I’m sure I’ll see you again before I leave for England. But, Stratt, maybe it’s for the best… you know,” she looked down, suddenly aware of what was bound to happen again.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this,” Stratt said softly. “People come to the Lodge and then they leave and are soon forgotten – but you’re different… there’s something about you… something you do to me, something that I don’t want to lose. Something I’ll never be able to forget. I didn’t want to get involved and now I am … and it is going to hurt when you go … God! It’s going to hurt … not knowing if I will ever see you again. Not knowing if I will ever feel this way again … about anyone.”

   He dipped his finger in his liqueur and gently traced the outline of her mouth. She opened her lips, and took his finger in her mouth and sucked off the creamy fluid. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the mouth, his tongue followed the line of her lips. His kisses became urgent and passionate and for an indiscernible period, time appeared to stand still. He fell backwards onto the blanket, bringing her down with him. He caressed her neck, her cheeks, and her shoulders until he again found her mouth. Their bodies were moulded together. She felt his hulking form beneath her, his muscular arms embracing her. She yielded to him. His hands were beneath her shirt and he stroked the silky skin of her back, her stomach. By invitation he undid her bra and kissed each breast sensually, until she groaned, and then he was unbuttoning her jeans and pulling them down, and then slipping his fingers under her black, lacy g-string and into her and expertly bringing her to a climax as an hors d’ouvre to the evening that lay ahead. She gasped as the ripples of pleasure jolted through her.

“Oh, Stratt, I don’t want to go away,” she sighed, “I don’t want to leave you.”

   He silenced her with a kiss. And then she felt her hips begin to move instinctively to some internal drumbeat. She felt an uncomfortable hardness and she pressed herself against it.

   Just then, as if on cue, there was a low, guttural growl very nearby and they both sat bolt upright.

“What was that?” she gasped, drawing her knees up to her naked chest.

“I’m not sure,” Stratt said, and lifted the rifle that lay on the grass just off the blanket. “Sounds a little like a…”

   The noise recurred to their immediate right, and they both turned to face it. Stratt shone his flashlight in the general direction and they saw two red eyes staring back at them, floating ominously in the suffocating darkness outside the circle of light cast by their campfire. Shilo froze, her mouth suddenly felt dry. Was it a lion? Stratt carefully cocked his rifle and aimed it at the dark shape that could not have been more than eight metres away.

“Don’t panic, it’s a warthog,” he lied. “They can be dangerous if they charge, but I’ll scare him off before he has the chance.”

   The eyes, reflecting the orange flames, seemed to bob about as if kept buoyant on an angry black sea, as the animal moved its head and let out another deep growl. Suddenly an explosion resounded in the night, and Shilo practically jumped out of her skin. The animal fled at the sound of Stratt’s warning shot, which reverberated off the trees and rocks and in the vast emptiness around them for several seconds.

“Now where were we?” he said laying the gun down, and gathering Shilo in his arms once more. She was ice-cold and shivering uncontrollably.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, “the animal has gone.”

“Oh, God, I’m so frightened,” she gasped. “I haven’t been so frightened since…”
 

“Since what, Shilo?” he asked.

“Never mind, just hold me, please.”

   He held her close and she could hear his reassuring heartbeat as her head rested on his chest. He stroked her hair softly, and rocked her gently back and forth.

“It’s okay,” he crooned, “Everything is fine, I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She clung to him, and he knew it was time. She would open up to him now.

“Shilo, what is the terrible thing that happened to you so long ago. Michaela said it was the cause of your nightmares, and you hinted at it again
at the hospital and just now. Is it really such a dreadful, dark secret that you can’t tell me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Nobody knows except the immediate family. Why should I tell you?”

“Because I care. Because I’m falling in love with you. Because, even if you are leaving tomorrow, I want to know every single thing about you,” Stratt said. “I want to understand you completely.”

“You’ll never look at me the same way again. You’ll think I’m dirty and cheap and tainted,” she said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he replied, “how can something that happened so long ago affect the way I already feel about you?”

She decided she would tell him, if nothing more than to stop him nagging … and prying. But she sensed it was the next logical step in their relationship, as short-lived as it was going to be.

“I was raped, Stratt… when I was seven years old. There, I have told you. Now you see why I don’t want to talk about it?”

“By whom?” Stratt asked, still holding her close. She wasn’t going to get off that easily.

“By someone I really trusted. It was the gardener of our country estate up in Yorkshire, an old guy called Bill Moffatt. He used to play with me around the farm. I really liked him, trusted him… because he was the only adult I knew who would took the time to play with me … but then one day he played catches like always, and tickled me like always… and then I was pinned down on the floor of the barn… and then...”

   She withdrew from him, and sat facing him. She was going to tell him everything.

“He was old and dirty… he stank. He had yellow teeth and hair growing out of his nose and ears … He was … utterly repulsive.” Her voice caught in her throat, the ache of unshed tears burning in her oesaphagus. “I couldn’t get away as he was too heavy and I was so small … I couldn’t scream as he kept on smothering me with that awful foul-smelling mouth…” she flinched, as the memory of the moment was vivid in her mind, “… those yellow teeth…”

“Poor baby. Shilo, I’m so sorry,” Stratt breathed, and he grabbed her hands. He had not realized it was going to be this bad … this traumatic.

“Let me finish,” she said, withdrawing her hands and wrapping her arms around herself. “Even if I’d been able to scream, no one would have heard me. The barn was too far from the house. And then he tried to shove his… his…his…”

“Dick?” helped Stratt.

“Dick…” she whispered, “… inside me… but I was only seven… He bruised me and … he ripped me open. It felt like someone was sticking a red-hot poker into my guts.”

   Tears were brimming in her eyes. Stratt wanted to hold her again, comfort her, but she needed to get this off her chest … and she was not finished yet.

   “I managed to wriggle one of my arms free, and I felt a hard object in the straw on the barn floor. I managed to get a grip on it and picked it up. I brought it down as hard as I could on the back of his head… the only place I could reach… He rolled off me and I ran. I ran one mile back to the house with blood pouring out of me, with my legs feeling like jelly. They buckled a few times, sending me sprawling… but I picked myself up and carried on running as I was convinced he was chasing me. I thought I could hear his footsteps on the path just behind me, and his groaning. I don’t know how, but I made it. My father and the butler went in search of Bill Moffatt… and I was safe…”

  She paused, and wiped her eyes.

“Did they find him?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“And was he arrested?” Stratt asked.

“There was no need, Stratt… He was dead. I had killed him. They found a hatchet in the back of his neck at the base of his skull. The groaning and the footsteps I had heard were probably my own. But they literally “caught” him with his pants down, as it were. He also had my skin under his nails and strands of my hair on his clothes … and of course… my blood. He was also apparently very drunk on whisky. So you see, Stratt, that’s my dark, secret. I think the worst thing was that the whole sordid episode was brushed under the carpet … kept out of the press to save the precious family name …  so it was always a dark and dirty secret that no one ever wants to talk about. That’s why, they say, I am like I am. I felt so worthless because of what that bastard did to me and so, according to those that dealt with my case, I built up a resistance: I act like I’m not worthless, that I’m better, richer and more important than anyone else… to compensate … I went to psychologists and therapists until two years ago. I hated what that man did to me… but the fact that I actually killed him was also a difficult burden to carry. It’s like ‘Hello, my name is Shilo and I’m an axe murderer.’ It’s not easy to live with that.”

She was shivering uncontrollably, and the tears were brimming.

“And then there were the police investigations and medical examinations. You know they left me alone for three hours before anyone could clean me up so they could at least see if any damage was done. I needed stitches. It was degrading and humiliating … and as I said before, no one ever wanted to talk about it afterwards. It was a huge family embarrassment, like my brother’s car accident – which you probably don’t know about - like Michaela’s baby, and my father paid to keep it off any records and out of the papers, so it wouldn’t be dragged up by prying reporters searching for dirt on me or the Delucci family. So it wouldn’t rise up to bite me later in life. Can you see why I don’t want to tell anyone? Can you understand why I have kept this from you all this time?”

Stratt stared at her in disbelief. “My poor, poor baby.” He said, and his voice was thick with emotion.

“You can hold me now,” she sobbed.

   He gathered her in his arms and held her until the shivering and sobbing had subsided.

“Do you think any less of me, now?” she asked.

“Oh, no, Shilo,” Stratt said soothingly, “No, I think more of you, because I understand where you’re coming from now. I have more insight into your whole personality. I’m the one that’s feeling a little sheepish about not seeing the real you through that façade… Your sister had already told me right on the first night that you really were a lovely person, I
just couldn’t see it then
.
Thank God you killed that bastard otherwise I would have hunted him down and done it myself. Men like that are sick and perverted paedophiles. You must not blame yourself. Children are supposed to trust adults… and what you did was purely in self-defense. You don’t think for one minute that he was going to leave you alive to tell the world what he did to you?”

“I went through all that in the therapy… but you are the first person I’ve told this to since then … besides the police, the therapists and my parents. I don’t even think Michaela knows everything – not the whole story, anyway. Fortunately they managed to keep everything out of the papers …It sometimes pays to have rich parents. And Moffat had no family.”

    Some animal cried into the night and Shilo started.

“Can we go back, Stratt?” she asked, feeling a little embarrassed by her cowardice, “I’m not going to relax here now.”

“Sure,” he said, “let’s go.”

   He pulled her to her feet, wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and helped her get her clothes back on before he ushered her back to the Jeep. Stratt climbed up next to her.