That didn’t make his family’s struggle any easier though, and I got that.Knowing Julian was with me, a twenty-one-year-old girl from the dregs of Worcester, would be a very hard thing to witness in person. It’s one thing knowing it from the sidelines, but another thing entirely seeing it in the flesh.It was almost midnight when the cake finished baking in the oven, and Julian helped me ice it, sticking one solitary candle in the top and lighting it up at the exact moment that the clock struck twelve.I pushed my glasses up my nose, eyes on him as I blew the candle out, and then the emotion came over me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and held him tight before he’d even put the cake back down on the side. I still struggled to believe sometimes that this man, this saviour was mine, and I was going to be his wife.Crenham felt like a million miles away, and had done from the moment we left it behind. The only stairs I climbed to my saviour now were our own, carpeted to perfection.J
Epilogue TWO YEARS LATER ROSIE WHO’D have ever thought i’d be in an upmarket suburb in oxford on the eve of my twenty-first birthday, welcoming in my special day with a fifty-year-old man brandishing a whisk as a sex toy. “Come on,” Julian said, with a smirk. “Call it a birthday present. An early one.” The whisk he was holding was new, and bigger. He tapped it against his palm to make it rattle, and my pussy tightened at the thought. “I’m not using that for the main cake, Julian!” I told him. “No way!” “You’re not making your own main cake, Rosie. You’re making a little prebirthday dessert for just the two of us. Let’s ice it with something sweet, shall we? Something really sweet.” As if I could ever resist him… His eyes were full of filth, and mischief, and I couldn’t help myself. I never could. I shunted my mid flow cake making efforts to the side and hitched myself up on the worktop. The marble worktop. It was cold on my ass when Julian pulled my panties down and o
Just because girls are young doesn’t mean they are innocent. Some are. Some aren’t. I wasn’t.” I paused. “So, maybe you should speak to some of the girls who Julian preyed on and find out how they really feel about the whole thing? I think you might be surprised by their answers.” He didn’t speak. I didn’t move. “Has Grace spoken to any of them?” I asked. “No, she hasn’t. She doesn’t want to dig the disgusting pit any deeper than has already been dug.” “So, you don’t know, do you? Not for sure.” “We don’t NEED to!” “Please, just talk to them,” I continued. “Some of them. Maisie was the first girl he was with. She was messaging him for three months solid behind Grace’s back, begging him to see her when Grace wasn’t around. Then it was Serena from gym class. She used to make sure he could see exactly the right parts of her in her leotard.” “Stop,” Michael said, but I couldn’t. “I know it was Madeline that called him out in the end. She did that because he told her he wa
ROSIEI thought i’d be waiting a lot longer, sitting on the stairs, just out of view of the corridor. I didn’t want to be with Mum and Tom, I wanted to be here, ready for whatever was coming.What ended up coming was Julian’s brother, fighting back sobs with his hand clutching the banister as he stumbled down towards me.He didn’t see me at first, but when he did, he stopped dead in his tracks. I looked up at the tower of him, rising to my feet.“You’re leaving already?” I asked, stating the obvious.“Yes, I am. If you have any sense, you’ll stay the fuck away from him. My brother is a very sick man. I’m sorry for what he did to you.”He carried on walking, but I put a hand on his shoulder as he tried to pass me by.“Please, give me a second. Julian didn’t do anything to me, I swear, other than love me.”Michael’s eyes were like my boyfriend’s. Beautiful in stunning green. He had the same arch of his brows. The same salt and pepper in his hair.“Is that what he tells you? He’s fucked
I put my hand on his arm, wishing I was still the man who’d have curled up and taken on any conditions to get back to my family. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sacrifice the girl downstairs for another pack of lies.“That’s not what I said in the letter, is it? I didn’t say I have problems. I said I’m sorry. I admit, I’ve done some appalling things, and I’ve hurt people more than deserves forgiveness, but that’s what I’m asking for. Forgiveness.”“And what we’re offering you is HELP.”The kettle boiled, but I didn’t make the coffee, just stared at him.“Help?”“YES!” he said. “HELP!” He put the letter down on the side, and held out his hands in a gesture of care that choked me up. “Come with me, now. Come with me and leave this shit hole behind, and we’ll get you sorted, or we’ll try. We can put you into therapy and rehab, and Katreya says she’ll have you back, with an awful lot of conditions, albeit, but it’s a start. That shows how much you mean to us, doesn’t it? That shows how m
JULIANI stood before michael as he held the letter in his hand, and my stomach rolled over. He was suited, fresh from the office, in the same style I’d been wearing myself for years, but he was a lot more muscular than I was. I was still gaunt in comparison, and I felt it. For a fleeting moment I was a shell again, fragile before his stare. Instinct. But no. I wasn’t a shell anymore. I was the total opposite.And that was down to my princess. The girl looking between us with nervous eyes.“I’ll, um, nip down and see Mum and Tom,” she said, and I held out a hand to her, ready to ask her to stay, but she shook her head, pre-empting me. “I’ll be back when you’re ready. Just call.”She dashed off to grab her bag and phone, and I stood aside to let Michael in. It felt surreal to have him in this place, so at odds with every other environment we’d shared in our lives.“I’ll see you later,” Rosie said, squeezing my hand before she went. I pulled her in to kiss her head as she passed me by,