Tara (54 page)

When she came, she cried, holding his damp body to hers, his fingers still locked in her hair, and she knew he was her whole world.

They drank a bottle of Tizer between them in great greedy gulps, till it spilled down their naked bodies and they licked it off each other. Then, propped up on the pillows, lying in each other's arms, they talked.

Tara told him how she'd always felt like an outcast at school, how instead of trying to make friends she pretended she didn't want them.

'When people started to say I was beautiful, I thought it was some kind of cruel game, really they were still laughing at me.'

Harry looked at her face on his shoulder. The bedside lamp intensified the gold of her hair and the honey colour of her skin. He marvelled at the beauty of her amber eyes, the wide mouth, the small delicate nose and her perfect body. Yet he understood. He'd known her when all she saw was ugliness, remembered the little girl who took a poker to her father to protect Amy and Paul. The little girl who dressed painted pictures of brides, but never had a man standing beside them.

'I always thought I was weird because I didn't have a mother.' He stroked her face gently. 'Like I wasn't good enough to have one, know what I mean?'

Tara nodded.

'I suppose that's why I was always the dare-devil, the kid that went too far. Robbing that warehouse was part of that.'

'Mum and Gran will be wary about you because of it,' Tara reminded him. Her fingers crept up to touch his cheek-bones, tracing round the lines she'd drawn so often when she was a girl. 'They both like you, well, love you even. But they've both got this thing about dangerous men!'

Harry smirked. 'Me, dangerous?'

They're both convinced our family is stuck in some kind of tragic circle we can't break out of,' Tara said softly.

'I'll win them over eventually.' Harry looked right into her eyes and she saw nothing but absolute sincerity.

'Did you ever love anyone else?' she asked. She didn't want to know, yet she had to.

'There's been loads of girls,' he said. 'But you know that, Tara. Sometimes I thought I was in love, especially when I was young. But I knew when I started to fall for you that none of that was for real.'

'So when did you fall for me?' She giggled, snuggling closer into his arms with a delicious feeling of absolute safety.

'I think it got going that day in the cowshed when you kissed me.' He smiled as he pictured her.

'But you were horrible, you told me you had another girl?' She remembered how she'd cried up in her room.

'You were too young.' He kissed her forehead and smiled. 'But if you'd known what I was dreaming after that, you'd 'ave bin scarlet with embarrassment.'

'Tell me now,' she said, doing the old pout.

He bent his head to kiss her breasts. 'These figured in it a great deal,' he whispered. 'I used to imagine stripping off your school uniform and seeing your lovely little bum in tight white knickers.'

She giggled. 'Well, I used to wonder how big your willie was.'

'Is it as expected?'

She looked down at it curled up amongst his dark pubic hair.

'Not at this moment.' She bent to kiss it. 'But if I'd seen it like it was a little while ago it might have frightened me half to death.'

It was dawn before sleep overtook them.

'I love you,' Harry said just as her eyes finally closed, and it sounded to Tara as if he'd never said those words to anyone before. 'I always knew we were meant for one another.'

Chapter 25

'You look brown!' Miranda shouted above the sounds of 'Mony, Mony' as Tara walked into the shop just after ten in the morning. She was arranging some Indian cotton blouses on the central display, but she broke off and came closer. 'I hope you had a good time wherever you were, 'cos Josh is on the warpath!'

Tara gulped. 'You did give him the message that I'd be another day, didn't you?' she asked.

It was too early for customers; the other two shop girls were cleaning and straightening the rails.

'Of course I did.' Miranda put a hand on Tara's arm, green eyes grinning wickedly. 'I don't think it was the days he was upset about, more the nights!'

'Oh, shit!' Tara exclaimed, turning pale. 'Did he phone the farm?'

' 'Fraid so,' Miranda winced. 'He used the shop phone. When he put it down he said, "Fuckin lying bitch"! After that he was like a madman, none of us could do anything right. Where were you, anyway?'

'Between you and me, off with Harry by the seaside.' Tara laughed nervously. 'Looks like I'll have to make a confession!'

Miranda's eyes opened wide in alarm. 'You haven't got long to think up a good one.' She picked up the phone and shrugged her shoulders. 'He told me to ring him the second you walked through the door.'

'Act dumb,' Tara said quickly. 'I'll think of something before he gets here.'

She felt faintly sick as she walked upstairs. Reason told her she could spend her time with whoever she chose, but given Josh's sympathetic manner at hearing her gran was ill, she had every reason to feel guilty.

Mum and Gran wouldn't like it either. When they discovered she'd been with Harry, they'd probably freak out!

They had stayed a second night at Southend because they couldn't bear to part, and left early this morning to get her back to work. Her face was sore from Harry's stubble, she was tired from so little sleep, weepy because she wanted to be with Harry, and now this.

As she got up to her flat it began to rain, huge drops that sent the people out on the street scurrying for shelter. She put the kettle on the gas, lit the grill for some toast, then went into her room to change. She was buttering her toast when she heard Josh's feet on the stairs and, for the first time since she moved in here, she wished she had a place of her own with a proper front door.

'Want some tea and toast?' she called out, trying to behave normally.

He didn't answer but stood outside the kitchen door glowering at her.

'Well?' Tara put her hands on her hips question-ingly. 'Do you want tea or not?'

The kitchen was long and narrow, with no room to sit. She felt cornered with him in the doorway and nothing but a window behind her.

'You managed to get back then? Gran wasn't at death's door after all?'

'OK, I give in,' she said lightly. 'I didn't go home, only said that because I didn't want the third degree about where I was going.'

When Josh smiled he could pass as handsome. Scowling did him no favours at all.

'And where was that?'

'None of your business.' She tossed her hair back and took a bite of her toast.

'None of my business?' he roared. 'You take two days off just when I wanted you to work on these wholesale designs, and then you say it's not my business!'

His face was red with anger. Josh wasn't an entirely reasonable man. She'd seen him sack girls for taking five minutes extra on their lunch hour. She was sure he wouldn't actually sack her, but bearing in mind his tender words to her just three days earlier, he was bound to flare up if she told him she'd been with Harry.

'Josh, you owe me so many days off I'll never catch up with them.' Her tone was crisp. 'Most nights I'm still working gone ten. There's never been a time I didn't have samples ready for a deadline, even if I've had to stay up all night to hand-stitch the hems. If I can't have a couple of days off when the sun's shining, I think it's time I found myself a new job.'

'Who were you with?' he shouted, taking a threatening step towards her.

'What's it got to do with you?' She turned her back on him and put another slice of bread under the grill.

'Off modelling for another porn magazine, were you?'

She had the boiling kettle in her hand, ready to pour it into the teapot, but her hand stopped in mid-air.

'You what?'

He didn't look normal at all. His pupils were so tiny she could hardly see them, his thick lips had flecks of foam at the corners. Could he have had an overdose?

'I said, were you off modelling somewhere for a porn magazine?'

'Don't be ridiculous,' she snapped, slamming down the kettle. 'If you've been taking drugs, go somewhere else and wait for it to wear off.'

'I'm as straight as an arrow,' he said haughtily. 'Which is obviously more than I can say for you. Don't I pay you enough? Aren't you getting enough glory? And to think all this time I've fallen for the timid little virgin bit.'

She realised then something else had happened. His anger went far beyond catching her out in one little lie.

'Look, Josh, I don't know what this is about. Come on down to the workroom. Sit down, have a cup of tea and tell me what I'm supposed to have done.'

She could hear the girls from the shop going in and out of the stockroom on the ground floor, and doubtless their ears were pinned back.

'I could put the modelling down to a lark,' he shouted. 'But blackmailing me! That's just the end.'

Tears glittered in his dark eyes, and suddenly she realised he was really wounded.

'Josh, I don't know what you think I've done.' She put her hands on his shoulders and propelled him towards her room. 'But we're going to talk about this properly, sitting down.'

He seemed shell-shocked, and he let her push him into a chair.

'I don't know how you could do this.' He sat on the very edge, rigid with anger.

The smell of burning toast made her run back to the kitchen. She turned off the grill and opened the window, then went back to him.

'OK, I lied about where I was going, but that's all.' Tara knelt down beside him. 'Now explain yourself!'

For a moment he just sat, staring at the floor. He was wearing a light blue suit, and a cream shirt which looked none too clean. He hadn't even shaved, he smelled sweaty and his clothes reeked of tobacco. His hand disappeared into an inside breast pocket and pulled out a foolscap-sized brown envelope.

'You explain those!' he snarled and threw the envelope at her.

Tara pulled out the contents – photographs with a letter folded round them. As she removed the pictures she gasped.

'Come on, now,' Josh needled her. 'Don't tell me you've got a twin and that's her!'

One glance at the picture of the schoolgirl sitting astride a chair masturbating was enough. She knew exactly who had taken it, and where. She sat back on her heels and covered her face in her hands.

Back in that little cottage it had seemed a bit naughty to let Simon catch her in that pose, something to giggle about. But now it sickened her.

'Oh, Josh,' she whispered. 'No wonder you're upset.'

'When were they taken?' he asked in a shaky voice.

'Not recently, if that's what you thought,' she said weakly. 'And not to be sold. I was just sixteen. It was down in Somerset, he talked me into it. I thought it was just for him.'

'Who is this he?'

'A man called Simon Wainwright, he's an actor.'

'Was this before I met you?'

'Yes, of course. He was the man I ran to London to be with, but everything went wrong.' She stopped suddenly as the full horror of what this meant washed over her. 'Is he blackmailing me?'

'You?' Josh gave a hollow laugh. 'No, me! Read the letter, why don't you. Either I pay him a thousand pounds or he sends these prints to
The News of the Screws.
He reckons it will ruin me!'

Tara read through the letter. It was typed, with no address at the top, but its style and content suggested an articulate, well-educated writer.

'Dear Mr Bergman,

I enclose some photographs of your designer Tara Manning. Recently in the press there was an article about this young lady's talent and how her designs have brought you fame and fortune. A quote I found particularly entertaining was 'Tara brings her own innocence and romanticism to her clothes'. These prints do not show either romance or innocence, surely?

I am fairly certain a man like yourself would not knowingly employ a girl who modelled for shots like these and I'm sure you would be frightfully embarrassed if such news should get out to the press or these prints sold on to them. We all know that the parents of your many young girl customers would be nervous about allowing their children into your premises once this got out.

Fortunately I am in a position to help you. I can locate the negatives these prints were taken from, round up the spare prints and return them to yourself and give an undertaking that the matter of your designer's modelling career in pornography is over. If you would be so good as to put a thousand pounds in ten-pound notes in a box and bring it to the Leprechaun on the Uxbridge Road at Shepherd's Bush, it will be exchanged for your photographs. Please do this within the next seven days, otherwise I will have no alternative but take them to
The News of the World
who will pay more than I am asking you for. As you approach the bar with the box, just say to the barman "Would you please exchange this for the envelope you have addressed to Patrick Mulligan".

I do hope you will take up this limited offer, needless to say should you try alternative methods to recover the negatives I will be forced to teach you and your company a lesson in obedience!

Yours

Patrick Mulligan'

'Oh, Josh!' She felt sick, but despite the embarrassment to herself, her first thoughts were for Josh and his business. 'It's just a try-on. This man Mulligan must have got them off Simon. Tell him to stuff himself. Why should you pay him?'

'Don't be naive!' he exploded. 'It's a well-documented fact that you've worked for me for almost four years. No-one will believe I'm nothing to do with this. He's quite right about the young girls. Do you think parents will want their daughters coming in here once these have been bandied around?'

'What do you suggest we do?' Tara asked later.

She had made him a cup of coffee, drunk two herself to try to calm her nerves, and told him the whole story. She had tried to make Josh see that the man was an actor and he could hardly try to get these published without smearing his own name. But Josh didn't see it that way.

He pointed out that Simon Wainwright wasn't a name anyone had ever heard of. Anyway he might not even be involved but merely passed on the pictures to this man Mulligan. If Josh was to march into this pub demanding the negatives it would probably only be minutes before either his head was kicked in, or the newspapers had the story. Then of course there were Tara's mother and grandmother. What would this do to them?