A Mediterranean Marriage. Lynne Graham

      In her turn, Lily was shattered that her usually mild-mannered father could react in such a disbelieving and unjust way to her trusting confession. She had to get older before she could appreciate that her unfortunate parent had too much invested in the stability of Hilary’s marriage to easily face the threat that Brett might not be the fine, upstanding young man he had believed him to be. And how could she have foreseen that worry over what she had told him would eventually drive her father to make the very great mistake of warning Brett that he had been seen in that car park?

      Faster than the speed of light, for there was nothing slow about Brett’s survival instincts, Brett added two and two together and worked out who had seen him. That same afternoon he picked Lily up from school and frightened the living daylights out of her with his rage and his threats. Then and there Lily’s happy home life and her faith in the adults around her came to a harsh and final end.

      ‘You sneaky little bitch!’ Brett roared at her, after shooting his car into the same car park in an act of intimidation that she soon learned was pure Brett Gilman. ‘From here on in, you’d better mind your own bloody business. Haven’t you ever heard of the three wise monkeys? Speak no evil, hear no evil and see no evil. Tell tales on me again and you won’t have a home any more…I’ll tell Hilary that her precocious little sister has been trying it on with me and she’ll believe me long before she’ll believe you!’

      Lily then learnt what it was to live in fear. Resenting her, and determined to punish her for exposing his womanising ways to Douglas Harris, Brett gloried in his power over Lily and soon worked out the kind of treatment that would make her feel most threatened. Out of her sister’s sight and hearing, he began to look at Lily’s developing curves in a way that made her skin crawl and taunt her with crude familiar comments. He never actually touched her but she lived in terror that some day he might.

      By the time Lily escaped her home to start her teacher-training course at a college a long way away, Brett had turned Lily into a silent, secretive and timid teenager, who covered every possible inch of her body and who went in genuine fear of male aggression and sexuality.

      Surfacing from her recollections of that traumatic period of her life, Lily found a sheen of perspiration on her skin. When she went for a shower in her room, she reminded herself that that nightmare was in the past. Yet her most bitter regret was still that the damage Brett had inflicted had almost inevitably destroyed any hope of her having a normal relationship with Rauf Kasabian when she had first met him.

      Three years on, Rauf was hostile, cold and detached in a way that Lily had never dreamt he could be and she was much too vulnerable. Lily recognised with shamed self-honesty that she would still do just about anything to get a second chance with Rauf. But he had made it clear that he had no intention of getting involved with her again.

      Could she even blame him for that? Lily asked herself as she lay in bed that night. If anything, Rauf had been kind when he’d described what they had had as the affair that never was. With pained hindsight, Lily knew that Rauf might have utilised more hurtful candour. He might have told her that blowing hot and cold with a man was a huge turn-off and that treating a decent guy like a ravenous sex beast was an even less enthralling experience…