Chapter 14: Rosanne Whips Lisa Again and Again

"LISA! Your face! What a mess. I never saw you that bad. I won't ask who won! Never mind! You couldn't have been expected to give your best, not with all you have on your mind right now. You'd better go to bed and stay there a week! I'll get the doctor to see to you. Get upstairs at once and prepare to be an invalid!"

"Stop fussing, Samantha! I'm fine! In fact I'm on top of the world! And, despite what that other cow did to me, I still have my one hundred percent record and you should have seen what I did to HER! She'll need reconstructive surgery! As for going to bed at this early hour - forget it!"

Lisa did disappear upstairs and shed her minute shorts and top. Soon she reappeared in her usual state of undress. Samantha had a chance to see all of the damage, to her body as well as her face! That wonderful athletic body was covered in bruises where the hard leather had crashed into her ribs and pounded her belly.

"Is there anywhere I can touch you without it hurting?" asked Samantha in horror. She had seen Lisa get hurt many times before but this was something else! She was torn between sympathy and a regret that she had missed what must have been a magnificent duel!

"Not one solitary square millimetre was left unpunished, my dear! But come and be hugged anyway!"

Samantha obeyed, trying to embrace Lisa gently but finding herself crushed in the familiar bearhug.

"And where is my brother today?"

"He's off to Birmingham, Lisa. He's singing in Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. You'd never have believed how excited he was when he got the offer. They're a very good choir and usually get really well-known soloists. I bet you're proud of him, Lisa! I'd have gone, but I didn't want you coming back to an empty house - not if you'd been badly knocked about - which you obviously were, you brave girl! Are you sure you don't want a rest? We could get into bed together and chat! Come on!"

Truth to tell, Lisa was dog-tired after all that had happened. She was about to follow Samantha upstairs when she had an idea.

"Sammy! Lets pile a few cushions on the lawn and sleep out in the warm! It's such a lovely day and who wants to be inside with the sun just begging us to soak it up?"

As soon as Sammy had prepared a makeshift bed outside, the pair settled down. Lisa told Sammy about her chance meeting with Rosanne. She was resting her head on her friend's breast and getting more and more sleepy. Samantha was not sleepy, though, and her mind was racing.

"That was no chance meeting, Lisa! People don't just bump into each other by accident in a big place like London. You could both have been there for weeks wandering about and never seeing each other. She was looking for you! It sticks out a mile. She probably traced you to your hotel and they told her you were running in Hyde Park. I wonder why she came all this way just to see you again. Probably got continuing designs on your bum! She wants to whack it again, Lisa! Do you feel it tingling?"

"Yes. Of course she was looking for me! She left her job soon after you left the country to come here. Now she claims to have got hold of evidence clearing me. Not only that but she says she has the wherewithal for creating a scandal of Watergate proportions - biggger, even!"

Then Lisa fell asleep, resting her head on Samantha's generous bosom. In time Samantha herself fell asleep. Then, as the sun was beginning to lose its strength, she was jolted out of her slumber by a man's voice.

"Something to sign for, Miss! Sorry to break up the party!"

It was a courier company and Samantha, who was not wearing any more than Lisa, got up and signed for the package. She tried to ignore the eyes boring into her. Lisa was not too far away and she would soon deal with any predatory male who got the wrong ideas! The courier got back into his van and his colleague drove off. He soon became alarmed.

"Keep your eye on the road, Jimmy! We don't want an accident! What a pair of lovelies! And all laid out to view, bare-arse naked like the day they were born. And one of them was standing just inches from me as she signed for the package. She actually touched me! But did you see her mate - the one who was asleep? She'd really been worked over! Maybe they'd had a lovers quarrel or something! "

"I don't know who did that to the Sleeping Beauty, but she's too big a girl for it to have been the other one. That was a body you don't often see on a girl, let alone a pretty one! All muscle! I wonder what the story is behind those two?"

The package Sammy had signed for was the promised evidence from Rosanne. It took the two a while to fathom it all out. Lisa could read none of the language and Sammy only a little, but the letters from and to the US Embassy proved beyond doubt that poor Lisa had been no more than a scapegoat. One letter from the UK Ambassador showed that he knew of Lisa's innocence and had agreed not to make a fuss in exchange for some trade concessions (which never materialised).

And the most damning evidence of all was Gloria's confession! This cause of Lisa's many miseries had not died in Solitary. She had indeed passed out a few days before her time was up and been thought to have died. But when the camp doctor and Rosanne had taken her from the cell, they had discovered that she was still - just about - alive.

Rosanne later told Lisa how she had kept Gloria in a deactivated cell in the Solitary Unit until she was well enough to be moved. The doctor had agreed to provide a fake certificate of death and all three had left the country for Singapore, where the doctor and Gloria still were.

In the coming weeks the whole world was to learn the story behind Lisa and Samantha. Despite Rosanne's refusal to take a penny, Lisa determined that she would do something for this ex-guard who had helped her clear her name and rescued Giles from ruin and worse. The scandal was just about dying down, with a Minister of Justice in jail, the US Ambassador blowing his brains out and the UK government driven from office by universal rage that a sweet girl like Lisa should have suffered so horribly because of their complicity in a squalid cover up at the behest of a so-called ally.

Photgraphs of a happy carefree Lisa taken shortly before her arrest were shown side by side with Giles's portrait of the shaven headed victim in prison, and the rage was universal. With elections just months away only a miracle would save the government from defeat. Lisa grew her hair for the benefit of the press, then shaved it off again as soon as the case against Giles had been thrown out by the jury.