Hell Hath No Fury Read online

  Hell Hath No Fury

  Michelle Morgan

  Copyright © 2021 Michelle Morgan

  The right of Michelle Morgan to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in

  accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  Print ISBN 978-1-914614-27-9

  Contents

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  Also by Michelle Morgan

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the publisher

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  Also by Michelle Morgan

  The Webs We Weave

  This book is dedicated to Charlotte and Leslie –

  For all the ‘banana spider’ laughs.

  Heav’n has no Rage, like Love to Hatred turn’d,

  Nor Hell a Fury, like a Woman scorn’d.

  – William Congreve, 1697

  1

  It was April. The day was grey, bitter and damp, which fitted my foul mood, and made everything seem even worse than it already was. I was in Simon’s car, and despite the rain, he insisted on driving with the window down by three or four centimetres. ‘The windscreen will steam up if I don’t,’ he said, and I didn’t have the energy to argue. Simon explained about condensation or steam or something equally as unappealing, but I wasn’t interested and didn’t understand a word he was saying. Who wanted to know about condensation anyway? Who could think about something so trivial, on a day like this?

  The rain splashed onto the window, and sprayed me with that fine mist that seems to soak you from the inside out.

  ‘Simon, please could you put the window up now? My face is getting wet.’

  My married lover grunted and pressed the button. My window lurched towards the top of the door, and then the rain splattered against it.

  ‘If we steam up, I’ll have to put it down again.’

  ‘Can’t you just put the fan on,’ I asked, but Simon ignored me. I wiped the drizzle from my forehead, and tried to straighten my damp fringe.

  ‘Is it much further?’ I asked, and Simon shook his head.

  ‘About two miles. I’ll drop you off in the short-stay car park, and then you can text me when you’re ready to be collected. But if it’s after three, you’ll need to get a taxi, because I’ll be in a meeting.’ Simon gave a swift glance at me and shrugged. ‘It’s with a big client and I can’t get out of it. Sorry.’

  My breath caught in my chest, and I realised that tears were close to streaming down my face. I held them in because I didn’t want Simon to see them. I didn’t want him to think I was weak, or childish, or both. We stopped at a traffic light, and I turned my head and gazed out at a young couple, holding hands in the rain, and swinging their arms as they laughed at some private joke. They looked around the same age as me, and yet they could saunter down the road together, happy in each other’s company. No seedy hotel rooms for them. No instructions not to call at home or God forbid – go visit. Not that I ever knew his address, to be honest.

  Nineteen years old! I was just nineteen years old!

  I felt like I was fifty-five.

  How had I gone from a happy, innocent acting student, to carrying the baby of my married, thirty-five-year-old lover? It had all happened so quickly that I was still trying to catch up. As the lights turned green, memories of the last three months streamed into my mind. Simon Travis was the marketing consultant drafted in to organise a campaign for my acting school’s performance of Oliver Twist. The play had been done so often that I wondered how anyone but our parents could ever be interested in seeing it. But credit where it’s due – Simon had come in, seen the performance with fresh eyes, and was somehow able to get the public excited about it.

  During the first day he was on set, Simon wandered over as I was sipping warm water from a paper cup. I had a toothache and it took all my energy to give him a smile. He was tall, with thick black hair and broad shoulders, but his legs were a little thin, and didn’t really match the rest of his body. He wore a pale-blue shirt that was unbuttoned at the collar, and untucked from his black jeans. Simon’s nose had a small bump in the middle, and he had a brown freckle below his left eye. I couldn’t take my eyes off it as he spoke to me.

  ‘So, who are you playing?’ he asked. He smoothed his hair, and I noticed his perfect nails and a gold wedding band, glinting under the lights.

  ‘I’ve only got a small part,’ I answered. ‘I’m playing a servant in the posh guy’s house.’ My sore tooth throbbed against my gum and it took me all my time not to wince.

  ‘A servant? I’d have thought for sure that you’d be that girl who’s in love with the evil bloke. What’s her name?’

  ‘Nancy?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her. I could see you playing her.’

  I didn’t know how to react to that. Was he saying I was talented enough to play such a big role, or was he implying that I looked like a life-worn prostitute? Either way, I shook my head and got back to swooshing the warm water around my irritated mouth.

  A week later, Simon was back in the rehearsal room again. This time clutching a bunch of files and photographs that he showed off to the director. The two of them bundled themselves into a corner and yet every time I let my eyes wander over there, Simon would stare back. At one point I could have sworn he even winked at me, though at the time, I put that down to a flicker from the stage lights.

  That evening, we both happened to leave the building at the same time, and Simon offered to give me a lift home. I should have said no, but it was cold and late and I was desperate to get to bed. Besides that, in our conversations between scenes, he had proved to be rather fun with his quick wit and jokes. Despite the age gap, I was growing to like him.

  A lot.

  I slipped into the car and ten minutes later we were parked in a lay-by in a country lane. As Coldplay rang out from Simon’s CD player, he slumped in his seat, and complained that he hadn’t slept with his wife in two years. I wasn’t sure how that had anything to do with me, but I smiled and responded in all the right places, and concentrated on listening to the music.

  ‘I plan on speaking to a solicitor soon
,’ he said. ‘My wife and I haven’t been a real couple in years. It’s time to let go, but I’m just worried about the kids, that’s all.’

  I knew where the conversation was going, but it didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. In normal circumstances, I’d have wished I had taken the bus home after rehearsal, or maybe even phoned my dad. But instead, I felt special that this older man had turned his head in my direction, though I also knew that I was entering dangerous territory.

  I may have been flattered, but I wasn’t stupid.

  Or at least I didn’t think I was.

  ‘You’ve got kids?’ I was surprised because I had never thought of him as a dad, but why would I? In all the times I’d seen him at rehearsals, I’d never thought of his private life at all. Why would I?

  Simon smiled and turned on the interior light.

  ‘Yeah, two of them. My son is thirteen and my daughter is ten.’ He reached into his pocket and sprung open his wallet. I couldn’t help but notice the shape of a condom, stuffed into one of the pockets. ‘Here they are. Great kids. Must take after my side of the family.’

  I didn’t know if he was serious or joking, so I didn’t laugh, just in case.

  ‘They’re very nice,’ I said, and then regretted saying something so trite.

  ‘Thanks. I’m going to check out an apartment next week, so that I can make the break from the wife. We’ll see how it goes. It would be nice to move forward at last.’

  He turned off the interior light, and stuffed the wallet back into his pocket. Then he twisted his body round to face mine, and brushed my knee with his hand.

  ‘How old are you, Lottie?’

  ‘My name is Charlotte.’

  He laughed, and bit his lip.

  ‘Okay… How old are you, Charlotte?’

  I’d like to think that I was grown-up enough not to fall for his patter, but the way he said my name stirred something inside of me. I knew that whatever was about to happen in that car, I had no resistance or strength to stop it.

  ‘I’m nineteen.’

  He whistled through his teeth.

  ‘Nineteen! Wow! I’m thirty-five, but it doesn’t seem two minutes since I was your age. I’m still wondering how I got so old.’

  ‘You’re not old.’

  ‘I’m not?’

  I shook my head, and two seconds later, Simon’s lips were pressed down on mine, and his hand had left my knee and was heading up my thigh and under my panties. I felt his fingers enter me and I gasped. I had never been touched this way by an older man, much less a married one, and while I knew I had not given direct consent for this to happen, it didn’t feel as though he was taking advantage of me. Nobody had forced me to get into the car, and I hadn’t protested when he pulled over in the country lane. I wasn’t a virgin, and as his tongue entered my mouth and his hand pushed up inside my bra, it didn’t feel wrong at all. In fact, it felt nothing but good.

  At the time.

  Over the coming months, Simon and I met in a variety of different hotel rooms around town. He was much more experienced than any man I had ever been with, and he taught me everything I wanted to know about my body and his. Most of the time Simon wore a condom, but sometimes he ‘forgot’ to put one on. After the first time it happened, he told me not to worry; that he was free of disease, and his children were born via IVF because he had a low sperm count.

  ‘I’ve been told that I’m unlikely to father any children naturally,’ he told me, with a shrug of regret. ‘Slow swimmers. Had to use a sperm donor for the kids, which was fine, because they’re still my kids, despite the biology.’

  I didn’t care to hear about his struggles with fertility, but I listened because I wanted to be the girl who empathised with his failures and celebrated his successes. I’m ashamed to say that I never felt sorry for his wife, because Simon told me that they were together in name only. As far as I was concerned, he wanted more than anything to leave, but found it hard because of his children. I found it endearing how much he loved them, and how despite everything, he never wanted them to be hurt.

  Simon made his wife sound like the ultimate bitch: a cold narcissist; frigid and incapable of loving anyone but herself. I decided I would be the woman he left her for, and while I knew I had not been raised to treat another human being so badly, at that moment I didn’t care, because she didn’t love him, and I wanted him more than I’d wanted any other man in my life.

  I told Simon that I loved him, about a month into our affair, and he smiled and kissed me on the forehead, and told me that he was fond of me too. Fond of me! The words rang in my ears for weeks, until one afternoon when we were lying in yet another hotel bed. My lover’s hands traced their way up and down the curve of my waist, and he looked me dead in the eye and smiled.

  ‘I love you, Lottie,’ he said. ‘I’ve never felt this way about anyone in my entire life.’

  I believed every single word he said, because I needed to. If he’d told me he was a rocket scientist who flew to Mars in his spare time, I’d have believed that too.

  After that, whenever we spent any time together, I’d smile and thank God that Simon was mine now. It had been so long since he’d had sex at home, that I felt as though I was doing him a favour. I was compliant with every sexual idea he had, and I was convinced that we’d be together for the rest of our lives. Just as soon as his unloving wife could let go, we’d be able to settle down, have our own family, and buy a home… One of those big houses with the long driveway and the fancy cars parked outside. We’d have dinner parties for his colleagues, and they’d congratulate Simon on his amazing taste, and ask how he managed to win over such a perfect, young woman…

  It makes me cringe when I think about what a bloody fool I was. I’m ashamed of the person I became while I was with my married lover, but at the time I couldn’t help myself. It was as though he had control of everything in my head. He just had to push a button, and I ran to him, ready to do anything he asked me to.

  Because I thought I loved him.

  And I believed he loved me, too.

  Maybe he did. In his own way.

  After a while, we started to alternate the hotels we went to, because Simon said that way nobody would know what we were up to. I may have been a besotted teenager, but even I knew that was ridiculous. Everyone knew what we were doing. The cast and crew of the play would give each other sly looks every time we ‘discreetly’ left the theatre together, and even the director raised his eyebrows whenever Simon arrived at rehearsals.

  At first, I wondered how anyone could have known about our affair, but then it struck me – no businessman in history had been that committed to a crummy student play. Didn’t he have other work to do? Other marketing projects to organise? Probably, and yet every day he’d find some reason to visit the rehearsal room, even if it was a poster to drop off, or a form to sign. Documents that could be delivered via email, were handed over in person, and a quick text became a long, face-to-face conversation. Afterwards, we would leave separately, and then I’d hop into his car when nobody was there to notice.

  But they did notice, and my friend, Sophie, was the first to comment on it.

  ‘You know some of the other students are calling you the college whore, right?’

  I swung my head and gave her the dirtiest look I could manage. Sophie threw her hands in the air.

  ‘Hey, it’s not me who’s saying it. I told them to cut it out, but you know what they’re like. Everybody loves a good gossip.’

  ‘Tell them to mind their own business,’ I said. ‘Simon and I are friends, that’s all.’

  Sophie didn’t believe me, and neither did anyone else in the cast. They continued to talk, but I was too blinded by Simon to care. As far as I was concerned, soon we’d be together full-time. We would rule the world!

  Things changed two months later, when I saw two pink dots appear on a pregnancy test. I sat alone in the bathroom of my parents’ house, and my heels bounced off the floor as I studied the results. P
regnant! I was pregnant! But how could I be? Simon had been so sure that he was infertile – or at least that is what he’d convinced me of – that it had never crossed my mind that we could make a baby together.

  As I headed to meet Simon for a date in yet another hotel, I couldn’t help but allow a little bit of excitement to creep into my heart. Okay, so it wasn’t something that was planned, but we were in love, weren’t we? We’d have wanted a family sooner or later anyway, and this might just be the push he needed to break free from the shackles of his loveless marriage. I had to keep telling myself that.

  But things didn’t quite work out the way I thought they would. When I told Simon that I had a surprise for him, his first thought was that I’d bought some slinky underwear or kinky sex-related toys. He waggled his eyebrows and laughed, but his excitement soon disappeared when I held the test out to him. Instead of being happy, or even accepting of the fact that we had created a child, the first thing Simon did was snatch the test from my hand, and stuff it into his pocket.

  ‘We can’t risk anyone seeing this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get rid of it later.’

  A ripple of sadness engulfed my heart. When my married older cousin found out she was pregnant, she kept her test in a fancy box, along with the baby’s first booties, lock of hair and other items of memorabilia. I had hoped to do the same, but now my pregnancy test was destined for the trash. Simon paced around the room; straightened pictures, adjusted curtains and played with those little sugar sachets that come on the tea tray. But not once did he look at me.