Chapter 181

• Orla didn’t stop to look over her shoulder to see if he was still watching her. Once she was inside her room with her door locked, she leaned back against it, unable to move whilst cold shock and nausea filled her. She started to shiver. What on earth had she done? And, more importantly, why had she done it?
• How had she let that happen, after all these years—years during which she had worked so assiduously to make sure that it did not? Why, when she had so easily resisted the sexual appeal of so many other men, had she behaved like that with this one? What was so special about him that he had so easily broken through the wall she had built around her own sexuality, setting it free to make its demands heard?
• Panic was clawing at her like a wild animal desperate to escape captivity. She couldn’t allow her sexuality to have its voice. She couldn’t allow it to exist, full stop. She knew that. Her great-aunt had warned her often enough about what was likely to happen to her—the degradation she would suffer, the shame she would bring on herself and her great-aunt. Even though Ethel had been dead for nearly a decade, Orla could still hear her voice as she told her what would happen to her if she followed in her mother’s footsteps.