The Fear. C.L. Taylor

runner or one of the dieters in Slimming World magazine who’ve lost four or five stone in a matter of months.

      As Wendy clicked through the photos, a weight settled in her stomach. Lou might not be conventionally attractive but she was surrounded by people in every shot. There were photos of her in dim bars, chinking cocktail glasses with dewy-skinned friends. Shots of her running through the waves on a tropical holiday, not an ounce of fat protruding from beneath her string bikini. Lou on top of a mountain with a cagoule hood pulled tightly around her head with a look of triumph on her face. Lou in fancy dress, one foot cocked behind her like a fifties starlet, kissing a dark-haired man dressed like Clark Gable. She was vivacious, well-liked, well-travelled and content. Everything that Wendy was not.

      Wendy didn’t go back on Facebook for a week after that first discovery. She didn’t even open her laptop. Just walking past it made her feel sick.

      But then curiosity got the better of her.

      ‘I’ll just have a quick look,’ she told Monty as she settled down at her dining room table and opened the laptop lid. ‘Then I’ll stop.’

      That was seven months ago.

      ‘Give me a second, Monty,’ Wendy says now as her dog nudges at her knee. ‘We’ll go for a walk in a minute.’

      She reaches for a custard cream and pops it into her mouth. Outside, storm clouds are gathering in the sky. If they don’t go out now they’ll be in for one soggy walk. One last refresh of the screen, Wendy tells herself as she clicks the trackpad button, and then I’ll get my coat on.

      What she sees on the screen makes her inhale so sharply a tiny bit of biscuit whizzes down her windpipe, making her cough. Lou has just updated her Facebook page.

       I got the job in Malvern and I’m moving in a month’s time. London, I’m going to miss you.

       Chapter 3

       Lou

       Saturday 21st April 2007

      I’ve spent the last month trying to ready myself for this moment but nothing could have prepared me for the cloud of memories that descend as I catch sight of the Malvern Hills, curving like a dragon’s back, as I head down the A4440: buying penny sweets in white paper bags from Morley’s, laughing at the girls from the local boarding school in their brown ‘Batman’ cloaks, walking up to St Anne’s Well with Mum and Dad feeling like I was climbing a mountain, and stepping into The Martial Arts Club for the first time, feeling sick with nerves. An image of Mike, smiling and holding out a hand in welcome, flashes into my brain. I try to blot it out by focussing on the road as I speed past Malvern and along the A4103 towards Acton Green. It’s not a journey I’ve ever driven before – I passed my test in London – but the road is imprinted in my memory from all the times Dad ferried me to and from karate lessons. My phone bleeps on the passenger seat as I pass Dad’s favourite drinking haunt, The Dog and Duck. I snatch it up, hoping it’s a text from Ben, knowing it won’t be.

      I haven’t seen or heard from him since that awful afternoon in Dover four weeks ago. He caught up with me after I fled, half a mile or so along the seafront.

      ‘Louise?’ He abandoned his car on a double yellow line and ran after me, grabbing my hand, forcing me to stop. ‘What’s wrong? What’s the matter?’

      I shook my head, hating myself for what I was about to do.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What just happened?’

      When I told him that I didn’t think we should see each other again, the concerned expression on his face morphed into confusion. Why, he wanted to know. What had he done wrong?

      ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Nothing at all.’

      He searched my face for an answer. ‘Then why?’

      I couldn’t tell him. Not when I’ve spent the last eighteen years pretending that Mike Hughes doesn’t exist. Instead I mumbled something about things moving too quickly. I wasn’t ready for a relationship. We wanted different things.

      I cried on the train back to London, turning my face to the window so the man sitting next to me couldn’t see my tears. Ben didn’t deserve what just happened. Neither did any of the men I’d dumped, run away from and lied to. If I didn’t face up to what happened to me when I was fourteen I was going to spend the rest of my life alone.

      I glance at my phone. The text is from my best friend Alice, asking if I’ve got to Dad’s house safely. I drop the phone back on the seat and indicate left, taking the road towards Ledbury – and Mike’s house – instead of continuing on to Acton Green. I’ve never been to his house before. Why would I? He was a respectable member of the community, a karate teacher who raised money for charity through fun runs and tournaments. And besides, he lived with his wife Dee. Mike was very good at keeping our ‘affair’ secret. Our first kiss was in the changing rooms behind the dojo. I was fourteen and it was almost one year to the day after I first started karate, but we first fucked in—

       Don’t use that word again.

      Mike’s voice cuts through the memory.

       Fucking is sex without emotion, Louise. That’s not something I do and it’s certainly not something we’re going to do. When we spend the night together for the first time it’s going to be because we love each other and we’ll express that by—

      I turn the radio on and twist the knob round to the right. The sound explodes out of the speakers in a fury, making my eardrums pulse, but I don’t turn it back down. It’s a song I barely know but I sing along anyway, shouting nonsensical words as Mike’s voice creeps through the space between notes, demanding to be heard.

      Mike might not have taken me to his house but I knew where he lived. I knew everything about him, or as much as a fourteen-year-old girl could without access to the internet, and I wrote it all down in my diary. I listened in to conversations between the parents and the other senseis. I casually quizzed the older students about him and, during the rare moments I was alone with Mike, I’d listen, enrapt, to anything he told me. This was way before we kissed for the first time. A long time before that.

      As I turn right off New Mills Way – one street away from Mike’s house – my resolve vanishes and empty terror replaces it. What am I doing? My plan was to give myself a couple of weeks to sort out Dad’s house and start work before I tracked Mike down. I googled before I left, to check he hadn’t changed his name or gone underground. But no, he lives in the same house he lived in eighteen years ago and he’s got his own business – Hughes Removals and Deliveries – on the outskirts of Malvern. No karate club though, thank God.

      I park up, then slump over the steering wheel as all the air leaves my body in one raggedy breath. I’ve got no idea what I’ll walk into when I knock on his door. Mike’s wife could answer. One of his children – if he has any. What do I say if that happens? Hello, I’m Louise, the girl your dad groomed. Is he in?

      I don’t know why you’re blaming me for everything. You knew what you were getting yourself into.

      Shut up, I tell the voice. I was fourteen. I had no idea.

       If I did such a terrible thing why didn’t you testify at my trial?

      Because I was terrified of what you might do if you weren’t convicted.

       That’s a lie, isn’t it? You didn’t testify because you loved me.

      No, that’s not true.

       You were the one who said ‘I love you’ first. You said you wanted to marry me and have my children. Do you know why you can’t make a relationship