Keep Me Close [181-142-066-4.9]

By: Clare Francis.

Category: Fiction Mystery

Synopsis:

Catherine has become a victim in her own home.  First a string of
nuisance calls, then a vicious attack by a mystery intruder.  Now, as
she struggles to come to terms with her injuries, two very different
men seem anxious to uncover the truth.  There is Terry Devlin,
entrepreneur and fixer, the local boy made good from Catherine's almost
forgotten past.  And Simon Jardine, her husband's business partner.  Do
either of them really want justice?

The police charge a suspect.  But how did he get himself such an
expensive lawyer?

And now Catherine is being watched all over again .. .


Last printing: 08/17/02
`>-3,' Keep Me Close

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Crime

Deceit

Betrayal

A Dark Devotion

Thrillers

Night Sky

Red Crystal

Wolf Winter

Requiem

Non-fiction

Come Hell or High Water

Come Wind or Weather

The Commanding Sea

CLARE FRANCIS

Keep Me Close

MACMILLAN

First published 1999 by Macmillan an imprint of Macmillan Publishers
Ltd 25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NF

Basingstoke and Oxford

Associated companies throughout the world www.macmillan.co.uk

ISBN: 0-5101- 333 75270 8 (Hardback)



The author and publishers would like to thank The Society of Authors on
behalf of the Estate of John Masefield for permission to reprint the
extract from "Sea Fever' by John Masefield.

The right of Clare Francis to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of the publisher.  Any person who does any unauthorized act
in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution
and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.

Typeset by Set Systems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex

For Vonnie

Chapter One

LEADEN SUMMER rain had seized the city.  As the taxi inched along the
humid streets, Simon felt a nervous dread.  To see Catherine at last,
to face the full extent of the damage, to get the whole awful business
sorted out one way or the other!  After the long hours at the hospital,
the calls to the police, the sleepless nights, he felt as though he had
been waiting for this moment for ever, though it was just he knew it
precisely -four and a half days.

The interminable journey also gave him more than enough time to brood
with growing misgivings on the white roses that sat so obtrusively on
the seat beside him.  He had bought them hurriedly from Moyses Stevens
at considerable expense, but now the arrangement seemed too formal, the
roses too white, and he couldn't suppress the suspicion that they would
be seen as glaringly inappropriate, more suited to a wedding or a
funeral.  The realisation irritated him excessively because with just a
little more thought he would never have made such a ridiculous
mistake.

Out of long habit, he reached for his mobile and began to make calls
from the list he kept on the small white cards that fitted so neatly
into his breast pocket.  The list was long, it always was, yet after
two calls he found himself staring blankly through the misted window at
the streaming streets, the phone forgotten on his knee.  A moment later
he switched the thing off altogether, impatient with the cab's
impossibly slow progress.  At this rate there was a risk of getting to
the hospital at the same time as Catherine's family, a prospect that
filled him with dismay.

He called to the driver to try another route, only for the cab to enter
a street that was completely blocked.  As his frustration soared, the
sweat sprang against his shirt, and he felt a familiar flutter high on
his cheek: his certain visitor in times of stress.  Removing his
spectacles, he propped his elbow against the window and, finding the
exact spot and angle, pressed two fingers hard against the dancing
muscle until it subsided.

The cabbie cut down another side street; they began to make progress.
Reaching the hospital at last, Simon resolved the problem of the
flowers by thrusting them into the hands of some fellow arrivals, a
shambling overweight couple bearing chocolates for some unhealthy
relative.  They stared at them with lumpen distrust, but he didn't
waste time with explanations they wouldn't begin to understand.

The hospital was modern and showy, with expanses of steel and glass and
the inevitable atrium.  He followed the now familiar route along a
suspended walkway past intensive care to the ward with the
unpronounceable, vaguely African name.  At the last set of doors he
paused and, setting down his briefcase, peered critically at his
outline, silhouetted in the glass.  He smoothed his hair and flicked a
hand over his lapels and viewed first one profile then the other, and
saw a version of himself that was entirely as it should be:
well-groomed, soberly dressed.

Typical of the shambolic way in which the hospital seemed to be run,
there were unfamiliar faces at the nursing station for perhaps the
fourth time that week, two pudding-faced girls, neither more than
eighteen, both engrossed in paperwork and determined not to notice him.
It was necessary to speak decisively before one of them would look up,
and then in his general agitation he stumbled over Catherine's name,
almost saying Langley instead of Galitza.

"Are you family?"  the girl demanded curtly.

"I'm Catherine's solicitor," Simon explained, producing his card.  "As
well as a close '

"Sorry, family only."

"That's correct," he agreed slowly and calmly.  "But as I was trying to
explain I'm a close friend of the family and I have permission to see
her.  So long as the family haven't just arrived have they?  In which
case I'll wait."

The girl examined the card doubtfully.  "We've no instructions.  I'll
have to check."

"But it was Sister Jones who called me," Simon said with tight lips and
a degree less patience.  "It was she who told me Catherine had regained
consciousness.  She knows I have permission to visit her."

The girl was wavering.  He tried to loosen his expression into
something a little more friendly.  "You didn't say have the family
arrived yet?"

The girl went to check with the other nurse.  "No, but they're on their
way over."

"I'm aware of that.  I was the one who contacted them, you see."

A small exaggeration this Simon had never attempted to contact Alice
and by the time he'd got through to Duncan the old boy had already
heard from the hospital but it was enough to win the nurse over.

The nurse led the way down the corridor to Catherine's room and slipped
inside.  Through a chink in the curtained panel Simon could just make
out the dark outline of a chair and a mass of shadowy flowers, but
nothing of Catherine herself.  He wasn't sure what to expect.  It had
been a couple of days since he'd last glimpsed her in intensive care,
stretched out under bright lights amid a morass of equipment and wires.
She would still be attached to tubes and machines that bleeped, he
imagined, possibly to some even more disturbing apparatus which did not
bear thinking about.  But would she be drowsy or wide awake?  Confused
or coherent?  When he'd made the hurried call to Duncan, the old boy
had been too busy going through the motions of fatherly relief to
provide any useful details.

The nurse reappeared.  "She's very drowsy.  She's not up to much, but
she's agreed to see you."

The L-shaped room was dim, the blinds drawn against a day that was
already overcast.  Closing the door softly behind him, Simon waited in
the angle of the room until his eyes had adjusted to the gloom.  His
nervousness came rushing back.  His tongue felt thick, his shirt clammy
against his back.

Soundlessly he moved forward into the pool of muted artificial light.
Catherine lay flat under a thin coverlet that revealed the slightness
of her body.  He couldn't immediately see her eyes; her head was low,
there was some sort of contraption under her chin and around her head,
and wires and weights at the bed head  Tubes were strapped to her arms,
and two more emerged from beneath the coverlet and looped away through
the bed frame, one to a machine on a stand that showed a green light,
the other to a transparent bag half-filled with he quickly averted his
eyes.

He took a few steps towards her, the tension fluttering like a tribe of
butterflies in his stomach.  "Hello, Catherine.  It's Simon Jar
dine!"

A faint sound: gasp or sigh.

As he advanced into her field of vision her eyes swivelled down,
searching for him, squinting uncertainly.  Her entire head was held in
a rigid cradle, he realised, a sort of surgical collar, but larger, and
sturdier than any he'd seen before, extending from her chin up and
around the back of her head, like some bizarre Elizabethan ruff.

Her eyes narrowed again, she couldn't seem to focus on him, and,
depositing his briefcase on the floor, he forced himself to move closer
still, to the very edge of the bed.

"Simon?"  Her voice was dry and cracked.

"Hello there."  In attempting to smile he felt his cheek give way
again: a sharp shiver.  "How are you, Catherine?"

Her gaze widened, she looked at him with something like fear.  "Ohh ...
Ohh

For a moment he thought his heart would give out, it was beating so
violently.

"Something's happened?"  she gasped with an effort.  "Something .. .
Tell me ..."

"It's all over now, Catherine.  Nothing to worry about.  You're in safe
hands."

She seemed to have trouble in understanding him, and he repeated the
reassurances.

"But Ben?  Pa?"  she whispered.  "Has something ?  Are they ?"

"They're fine.  Really!"  He produced a fiercely cheerful tone.
"Absolutely fine!"

"Fine?"

"Yes!  I promise!"

She closed her eyes and gave a long ragged sigh.  "Ohh ... I thought ..
. Ohh .. ."  Then, with a fresh wave of anxiety, she whispered, "But
where are they?"

"Oh, they'll be arriving any minute now, I'm sure.  I just happened to
be the nearest, that's all!"  He heard himself laugh awkwardly.  "Your
father's definitely on his way.  He'd just popped home for a wash and
brush up.  I spoke to him as I left.  He was just turning round to come
straight back.  And Alice -she'll be in after work, I expect.  So you
see?"

"But Benr

"Oh, bound to be in soon!  Been in twice a day, most days, sometimes
even more."  Covering for Ben again, he thought with a burst of anger.
How often have I had to do that?

She frowned at him.  "So why .. . are you .. . here?"

He blurted, "Oh, I just thought I'd drop by, that's all!"  What a
ridiculous thing to say, he thought unhappily.  I'm sounding like a
complete idiot.  This was his fate, it seemed: always to feel
off-balance with Catherine, always to feel hopelessly awkward.  "No, it
was more that' he selected a more considered tone "I came to help
out."

"Help .. .?"  The idea seemed to add to her general air of
puzzlement.

"To look after all the tedious things that Ben and Duncan don't want to
be bothered with '

But he had lost her.  Her eyes were ranging back and forth in a slow
incessant searching of the walls and ceiling.  Finally she murmured,
"Where is ... this .. . again?"

He gave her the name of the hospital.

"The doctor .. . said ... an accident."

"Yes, you bumped your head.  You had us worried for a while, I can tell
you, but you're okay now.  You're in the very best of hands.  We've
made sure of that!"

The words came faintly, like small breaths.  "My head .. .?"

"A nasty crack."

"But it's not it's .. ."  She lost this thought, or abandoned it, and
after a moment her gaze came back to him.  "A car .. .?"

"No.  It was a fall, a nasty fall."

"Fall..  ."  She took this in slowly, with renewed bafflement.

He thought: No memory, she has no memory at all.  He could hardly
believe it.

He leant over her so that she could look up at him without strain.  He
saw that the whites of her eyes had a jaundiced tinge, from medication
perhaps, or some internal damage, while the irises, which in healthier
times had been such an intense blue, seemed almost bleached of
colour.

There was a terrible intimacy in being so close to her, in witnessing
'her defenceless ness he shuddered softly, with pity and wonder, and
something like longing.

He said gravely, "It happened at home.  You fell from the landing."

"Oh..."

"In fact..  . during a burglary."

Alarm and confusion passed over her face, her mouth moved loosely.
"Burglary .. ."  Then, with another stab of anxiety: "Ben wasn't..  .
there?  Wasn't..  . hurt?"

"Hurt?  No!  He got a couple of bruises, that's all.  Nothing serious.
They discharged him almost immediately.  Four days ago now."

"Four .. ."  She frowned, though he couldn't tell if it was the thought
of the lost days or the burglary that troubled her.

The odd thing was that there was no visible bruising.  Nothing to show
for the fall but the dulled eyes and a deep pallor.  In the sepulchral
light her skin looked so white and smooth and polished that she might
have been an alabaster effigy.  Only the area beneath her eyes revealed
the slightest trace of colour, a faint smudge of violet-blue far below
the surface.  The effect of this terrible perfection was dreamlike,
hypnotic, and he could not look away.

"You wouldn't lie?"

She had startled him.  "Lie, Catherine?"

"About Ben."

"Ben?  Oh absolutely not!"

"You would say?"

"Of course I would say, Catherine!  How long have we known each other,
for heaven's sake?  How long have we been friends?  Good God!"  The
laugh came again, a jarring sound that seemed to jump unbidden from his
mouth.  "No, he's perfectly okay.  Promise.  Tough bastard.  Grappled
with the burglar and got a black eye for his trouble.  And then well,
two stitches.  On the cheek."

The two stitches seemed to provide the authenticity she craved and for
the first time since Simon had arrived she became almost calm.

Bending still lower, Simon whispered, "Catherine, the police have asked
if they can come and talk to you."

Her expression was almost childlike in its incomprehension and it
occurred to him that she was probably dosed up to the eyeballs with
sedatives.

"Police?"

"To ask if you can remember anything about the attack.  But, Catherine,
you don't have to see them if you don't want to.  Just tell me and I'll
keep them away for as long as you like!"

"Attack ..."

"They just want to know if you can remember anything."

"But I- No .. ."

"You don't remember anything?"

"No .. ."

He nodded sympathetically to give her more time.  "What about oh
arriving at the flat?  Nothing about that?"

A faint furrow sprang up between her eyebrows as she agonised over
this.

"Or going upstairs?"

"No."  Then, as if his words had only just sunk in: "Attack?"

He hesitated, wondering how much he could say without planting memories
in her mind.  "Well, we don't know exactly what happened of course, but
it seems that the intruder attacked Ben, then well, who knows, he may
have pushed past you, something like that.  Anyway, somehow or another
-you fell."

"Fell..  ."

He left it for a moment before prompting gently, "You'd just come back
from France."

"France."  It wasn't a memory but a repetition.

"The intruder was already inside the house."

Clearly disturbed at this, she began to breathe in snatches.  "No
nothing nothing '

"It's all right," Simon interrupted hastily.  "It really couldn't
matter less, please don't worry yourself about it.  Plenty of time for
all that later.  Plenty of time!  I'll tell the police not to come.
I'll tell them not to bother you."

"Yes, I ... can't .. . can't..  ."  She stared past him, the confusion
chasing over her face like shadows.

"It's all right.  It's all right."  He repeated the words over and over
again because he couldn't think of what else to say, and because it
thrilled him to be soothing her in this moment of fear and need,
whispering to her like a lover in the night.

Her eyes became opaque, then closed altogether.  If it hadn't been for
the rapidity of her breathing and the slight crease between her
eyebrows she might have been asleep.

Simon straightened up with the sense of a task completed, if only for
the time being.  She could recall nothing.  It was a miracle, a
blessing.  No police, no hassle, no flashbacks, no nightmares.
According to the information he had garnered from various medics
concussion victims rarely recovered lost memories of events immediately
surrounding a trauma.

Waiting quietly, he remembered the time he had first seen Catherine
when was it?  three years ago.  No, he could be more precise than that
two years and eleven months ago at Ascot.  He had understood
immediately why people should talk about her, why they should describe
her as pretty, lovely, striking.  Simon himself had had no hesitation
in calling her beautiful, though then, as now, he would have found it
hard to say exactly why.  She had good eyes extraordinary eyes
-arresting, oval with a slight upwards tilt at the corners, and her
hair, when it wasn't scraped back and dead-looking like this, was a
rich browny-gold; yet her nose was by any standards rather long, while
her mouth was a little on the wide side and very full.  There was no
one feature that could be described as exceptional, and yet taken
together they had what his mother would have called an effect.  From
that first glimpse Simon had found it impossible not to be gripped by
the sheer improbability of that brilliant face.

Later, when he'd had the chance to observe her, he'd become intrigued
by her vitality, the way she moved and talked and held her head, by her
low supple laughing voice and the warm conspiratorial glances she threw
at those around her.  She was the most vivid person Simon had ever met.
He was in awe of this, and envious too, because, though he worked hard
at every aspect of his life, enjoyment wasn't something that came
easily to him.  Watching Catherine sometimes, he was both fascinated
and disturbed by the idea that such enjoyment of life could be acquired
or learnt, that if he could only devote more time to the study of it he
might be able to find the secret.  But in his sombre and lonely heart
he knew there was no secret, no trick, no easy way; it was simply that
some people loved life and others had to take the promise of such
things on trust.

Her hand lay on the coverlet, white and slender and smooth as a
child's.  He stared at it.  He pictured himself taking it, squeezing it
gently, communicating reassurance and affection, perhaps even managing
to leave his hand resting lightly on hers for some moments afterwards.
He imagined it, almost persuaded himself to do it, but in the end it
was too enormous an undertaking, and it was a relief to hold back.

The emergency staff had removed the wedding ring, he noticed.  He
remembered Catherine wearing it for the first time.  The wedding seemed
very distant now, but it was just Simon had to think yes, eight months
ago.  Remembering her then, luminous and vibrant, it seemed strange to
be looking down on this diminished shadowy version of Catherine,
uncharacteristically subdued, confined, devoid of everything that had
made her so alive.

Who would love and value her now?  he wondered emotionally.  Who would
warm to someone so still, so changed?  Not Ben's circle of
acquaintances.  If Simon's understanding of her medical condition was
even half right, Catherine was going to need friends rather more
substantial than that.

He found himself thinking: And Ben won't be much use either.  Love is
not love which alters when it alteration finds.

A mechanical hiss broke the silence: it took him an instant to realise
that it was some sort of device for redistributing air around the
mattress.  When he looked up again it was to find Catherine watching
him through half-closed eyes.

He smiled hastily, inanely.  He felt his cheek tremble.  He glanced
away.  "Amazing flowers."

There were flowers along the length of the window sill, at least six
vases, and several more on the floor, as well as the large arrangement
next to the chair, and, propped between them on every available
surface, cards, several dozen of them.  A few of the arrangements were
striking, with unusual mixtures of flowers, foliage and dried grasses.
From fellow garden designers, presumably, or, more likely still,
grateful clients.  He noted fleetingly but with satisfaction that the
two all-white flower arrangements looked quite out of place.

"Could you .. . move them .. . please," Catherine murmured.

"The flowers?"

The white

He looked at her sharply, thinking for a ludicrous moment that she had
read his mind.  "Yes rather too funereal, aren't they?"  He gave a
bright bark of a laugh.  "Or matrimonial!  Shall I move them away?"

"Nearer."

He felt a stab of heat in his face, as if she were making fun of him.
"Nearer?"

"I love .. . white."

This time he managed to turn his laugh into a sharp cough.  "Of
course."

It was no easy job.  The sill was so crowded that he had to move two
vases temporarily to the floor before he could rearrange everything
satisfactorily.

Catherine's eyes followed him back to the bedside.  "I don't see For
some reason she was suddenly close to tears.

"What don't you see, Catherine?"

"Why' her voice cracked with open resentment "you -came."

His chest tightened, a sharpness burned his eyes.  "Why I came?"

Her face contorted.  "Go away," she cried bitterly.  "I don't want you
here.  I want my family."

Steadying himself, he put a hand to his glasses and settled them more
precisely on his nose.  "I understand, of course .. . But someone had
to liaise with the police, you see.  And I thought it was the one area
where I could be useful.  Give Ben and your father one less thing to
worry about."

A single tear slid from Catherine's eye.  "But where are they?"  she
cried pathetically.  "I want them here."

"They'll be here any moment now."  With Catherine's rebuff still
echoing painfully in his ears, Simon reached for his briefcase.  "I'm
sure you'll want to rest," he said, mustering his dignity.  "You'll
want to sleep."

The door sounded.  Simon braced himself, but it was only one of the
ancillary staff.

"More flowers, Catherine!"  she called gaily.  "What a popular girl you
are!"  She brandished them in the air before plopping them on top of
the television set and sweeping out of the room.

Simon took a step towards the door.  "Well .. . I'll be off then."

They wild?"

"Sorry?"

"The flowers."

Simon gave them a cursory glance.  "I wouldn't know, I'm afraid."

She lifted the fingers of one hand: a summons.  Dutifully, Simon put
his briefcase down again and, fetching the flowers, held them just
above her where she could see them.  They were arranged in a posy, a
mass of tiny blue, white and pink flowers, set in a halo of leaves and
miniature foliage, supported by an outer layer of cellophane.

She touched them, she seemed to lose interest, but just as Simon
thought it would be safe to slip away she gave a soft cry.  "Oh, but
they look like There was an envelope pinned to the cellophane; she
raised a hand towards it.

He undipped it and took out the note.  "Do you want me to read it for
you?"

She blinked slowly in agreement.

He turned the note over and glanced at the signature.  "It's from
someone called Terry."

Her eyes widened, she made a harsh sound of annoyance.  This reaction
was so unexpected that Simon went back to the note for an address or
some other clue to Terry's identity.  There was none.  Then, with
sharpened interest, he realised precisely who it might be.  If it was
indeed Terry Devlin, then the man certainly had a nerve.  According to
Ben, this was the man who, having been shown great kindness by
Catherine's family in his youth, had repaid them by acquiring the debts
on their house and throwing them out.

However, it was another, largely untold story that had taken a far
deeper hold on Simon's imagination.  While it was generally known that
Ben and Terry Devlin had worked on a deal together, the cause of their
falling out had always been something of a mystery.  Certainly it was
not a subject that could safely be raised with Ben.  But if the hints
and rumours Simon had picked up were even half correct, Terry Devlin
had achieved the unique distinction of having played Ben at one of his
trickier games and out manoeuvred him.  Simon had always ached to know
how Devlin had achieved it.

He began to read aloud.  "Dear Catherine, I am so very sorry to hear
that you are in the hospital.  I trust they are looking after you well.
I hope these flowers from Morne will bring a little colour to your
room.  They were fresh picked this morning from the meadow just the
other side of the bridge '

Catherine made a faint sound that he couldn't interpret.

"Shall I go on?"

She closed her eyes.  It wasn't a request to stop.

He continued, "The meadow is completely covered in wild flowers every
May now (last year there was a lot of marsh marigold, this year ragged
robin and cranes bill  I think the land there was always trying to be a
flower meadow and just needed to be left alone for a while."

Simon felt the irritation of having been mistaken.  This was obviously
a gardening crony or former colleague.

Seeing that Catherine was slowly losing the battle to stay awake, he
rattled rapidly through the descriptions of seeding and grazing, and
slowed down only for the last bit.  "Now, you take care of yourself,
Catherine.  We all wish you a speedy recovery.  With fond regards, your
devoted friend, Terry."

He glanced up to find that she had drifted off.  He stood and watched
her for a final moment, transfixed by her helplessness.  With a rush of
feeling, he thought: I will care for you when the rest have drifted
away, I won't abandon you.  But no sooner had he allowed this thought
to fill him with secret pride than it became confusing to him, and he
shrank away from it.

He had been here too long.  Hurriedly he deposited the letter and
flowers on a chair and, scooping up his briefcase, went softly towards
the door.

He was beginning to think he had escaped the family when the door swung
open in his face and he was confronted by Alice, followed shortly by
Duncan.

"What the hell are you doing here?"  Alice hissed.

"Simon, old chap," Duncan murmured, looking puzzled.

"Well?"  demanded Alice.

With an arrow-like gesture of one hand, Duncan cleared a path for
himself and, muttering, "Where's my girl?"  shouldered his way into the
room.  A moment later Simon heard him call in a broken voice, "My
dearest darling girl '

"Well?"  Alice's tone was uncompromising.

Simon gestured her towards the corridor.  It was a perfectly polite
gesture, in fact he inclined his head as he did so, which was about as
polite as you could get, but Alice was not one to let manners or
self-control interfere with her temper, and she stood square, blocking
the doorway with her plump frame, so that Simon had no choice but to
squeeze past her into the passage.  He pulled tight against the wall,
but she moved to block him further or possibly to provoke him because
first her arm, then, as she turned, her breast, brushed against him,
and he had to suppress the urge to thrust her away.

Following hard behind him, yanking at his sleeve, she hissed, "I
suppose this was Ben's idea!"

He didn't answer immediately, which only seemed to enrage her
further.

"How dare you!"  she growled.  "How dare you!"

"Perhaps when you're a little calmer I could explain '

"Explain!  You sneak in here, like you sneak in everywhere, you go and
bother her and you think there's anything to explain?

"The alternative was the police," he replied in measured tones.  "I'm
sure you wouldn't have wanted them to come and bother her."

"At least they would have had the decency to waitl At least they
wouldn't have barged in uninvited!"

Alice was a tall girl and several stone overweight, with a small nose
and thin lips that were lost in the broad fleshy cheeks and frame of
thick dark hair.  Her complexion was the colour of dough and there was
an unhealthy puffiness beneath her eyes.  Her manner matched her
temperament, sullen and irritable.  Now, with her chin thrust out, her
eyes glittering shrewishly, she looked positively ugly.  If she had
been anyone but Catherine's younger sister, Simon would have retreated
without another word.

"Who gave you the right she flogged on.  "That's what I want to know!
Who said you could just waltz in here?"

"It was your father, actually."

He had caught her there, and she didn't like it one bit.  Her eyes
narrowed, her lips formed a jagged line.

Simon pressed home his advantage.  "He asked me if I would deal with
the police and that's exactly what I've been doing.  And why I came
here today, to see if it was necessary for them to bother her '

"But you're a bloody tax lawyer!"

Her voice was strident, it could have commanded a hunting field.
Glancing up the passage, he was aware of people looking in their
direction.

With a conspicuous demonstration of restraint, he lowered his voice to
a murmur.  "That's not right actually.  I'm a commercial lawy '

"But moneyl You deal in moneyl' From the way she said it money might
have been one of the most noxious substances known to man.

"What I deal in are situations.  This is just another situation."

"Ha!"  She wagged an exultant finger.  "Exactly!  Just another
situation you're fixing for someone else!  For Ben, perhaps?"

This was the sort of emotionally charged, illogical argument that Simon
found profoundly unpleasant.  Recoiling, he lifted a splayed hand, in
truce or farewell, however she cared to interpret it.

Alice chose to redirect her ire.  "What I want to know is why Ben isn't
dealing with the police.  He should be the one dealing with them not
you."

"As I've said, your father thought '

"Where the hell is Ben, anyway?  God Catherine's in this place,
desperately ill, and Ben's vanished.  Where's he been for the last few
days, for Christ's sake?"

He put her right.  "He's been dashing in and out most of the time
actually.  But now I can't tell you where he's gone."

"Can't or won't?"

"Actually can't."

She searched his face for the lie, then, backing down, gave a grudging
shrug.  "Well, he damn well should be here."

"I agree."

"When did you last speak to him?"

Simon selected his words with care.  "Not recently."

"It's unbelievable!  He doesn't even answer his mobile.  Not for me,
anyway.  What about you?"

Choosing to interpret this question loosely, Simon gave a minute shake
of his head.  In fact, he'd managed to make contact a couple of times,
but Ben had been so uncommunicative, the conversations so brief that
they hardly seemed worth mentioning, particularly to Alice, who in her
present mood was unlikely to believe anything so obvious as the
truth.

"Just incredible."  Alice gave a harsh contemptuous sigh before fixing
Simon with a cold eye.  "So why have you been dropping in the whole
time, then?  Oh, don't think I don't know the staff have told me.  At
dawn, at night even.  I assumed you were reporting back to Ben, but now
you tell me you're not."

"Actually I've been coming in to find out how Catherine was," he
replied solemnly.

"Oh, have you?"  Her eyebrows shot up in an ironic expression of
surprise.  "Really?  Now why should you do that?"

When he hesitated, she declared, "You always were a creep, Simon. Right
from the beginning.  Wheedling your way in, getting to know people who
might be useful to you.  Oh, don't think it hasn't been obvious She
broke off with a dismissive gesture.

Simon felt the coldness come over him that marked his moments of
deepest bewilderment and humiliation.

"Anyway," Alice went on, 'the point is, you've been talking to the
staff about Catherine!"

He said very quietly, "Only to ask about her health."

"That's what I mean.  Getting information that wasn't any of your
business.  Well, whatever you've heard, whatever they've said, it's not
to be passed on to anyone else.  Is that absolutely clear?"

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"No talk of her condition.  No talk of problems."

"Of course not!"  he retorted, letting his indignation show.  "What do
you take me for?  Quite apart from anything else, I'm bound by client
confidentiality."

Another raised eyebrow.  "Well, that's something, I suppose.  Assuming
you stick to it, of course.  Assuming we have the faintest idea of who
you're acting for."

Simon felt a shudder of rage.  It was only with the greatest effort
that he managed to control his voice.  "I'm acting for Ben while he's
away.  And for your father.  And for Catherine of course, if she needs
me."

"Well, she doesn't need you."  Alice loomed closer and he could see the
faint dampness on her forehead and the darkness in her muddy-green
eyes.  "And you're not to see her again without our permission.  Is
that quite clear?"

My God, he thought savagely, she'll be asking me to kiss her arse next.
He stated stiffly, "I will return if asked to do so.  As indeed I was
today."

"Quite."  She gave a tight little smile, and he had no doubt that
Duncan would be strictly forbidden to issue any more rash
instructions.

"Well, I think I'll go and see my sister now."  She added pointedly,
"If she isn't completely exhausted, that is."

Simon managed to hold on to his expression until he was some distance
up the corridor, when he was overtaken by a shiver that caught his
breath and clouded his vision.  My God, what had he done to deserve
that?

Ben said it was lack of sex that made Alice so spiky, though being Ben
he put it rather more bluntly than that.  In his more unabashed moments
he also said that she resented being fat and plain in a family of
attractive people.  Yet Ben had been referring to Alice's normal
chippiness, a carping banter that could almost pass as humour; he knew
nothing of this particular and malicious delight she reserved for
Simon.  Alice had attacked Simon before twice and, then as now, he had
racked his brains as to why he should provoke such hostility.  He had
never to his knowledge given her the slightest cause to dislike him,
had never overstepped the mark in any shape or form, indeed had taken
care to be polite and pleasant, going so far as to ask after her
interests (she watched polo, was pro-hunting, and went skiing in Val
D'lsere).  No, it couldn't be anything he had said or not said.

As for using people ... as for wheedling his way in ... This thought
stung him to the core.  Was this what Alice was telling everyone?
Worse, was this what they were believing?  Was this what Catherine
herself thought of him?  The idea was especially painful because it was
so unjust.  He had never promoted himself in any inappropriate way, had
never been anything but meticulous in his dealings with other people.
Away from the office, he was like everyone else, he drank with his
friends, went to the races with them, supported their charities, and
now and again dropped in a bit of business.  Everyone did it.  Not only
was he no worse than anyone else, he was a great deal better.  The
suggestion was outrageous!  He had nothing to reproach himself for.

It came to him suddenly that there was something far simpler behind
Alice's attack.  The answer was so obvious he couldn't imagine why he
hadn't thought of it before.  What she really loathed was the idea of
being indebted to him.  She couldn't stomach the fact that he had saved
her father from his own excesses, that by taking control of Duncan's
tin pot wine company Simon had rescued him from financial disaster.  It
was nothing personal at all.

He allowed himself a last burst of indignation and relief before
pushing thoughts of Alice firmly to the back of his mind.  The heat had
gone from him, the sweat on his shirt felt cold on his skin.  He found
a washroom and splashed cold water on his face before going to a quiet
spot overlooking the atrium and dialling Ben's mobile.  As it rang he
pictured Ben squinting at the phone, reading the caller's name on the
display before deciding whether to answer it.

"About to call you," came the laconic voice.  From the background
babble, Simon guessed he was speaking from a large public place, a hall
or concourse.

"Where are you, Ben?"  Simon used a neutral tone.  "Everyone's
wondering.  I'm at the hospital.  Catherine's come round.  She's asking
for you."

"She's come round?  Well, thank God for that!  They said she would,
didn't they?  Still a relief.  And she's okay, is she?  I mean,
cheerful and all that."

"She needs you here, Ben."

"Look, I just can't make it.  Not for the moment.  Just can't.  Cover
for me, will you, Simon?  It's a bit urgent."

"What's so urgent exactly?"

"Plenty!"  Ben snapped in a rare show of nerves.  Then, in a more
subdued voice: "Got to be somewhere, that's all.  Just getting on a
plane now.  Won't get back till late tonight no, at this rate,
tomorrow.  Yes midday, I should think.  Just tell her that nothing,
absolutely nothing in the world would keep me away but wild horses.
Tell her exactly that, will you?  Wild horses.  She'll understand."

"What about a quick word on the phone?  She'd love to hear-'

"No!"  he cut in.  "Look, I would, I really would, but it'd be too
difficult to explain.  She'd only get upset.  Make herself ill or
something.  Better for you to tell her.  Really.  Much better."

Simon said firmly, "I need to know one thing."  He didn't add before I
agree but that was what he meant.  "Is this anything to do with the
business?  Anything I should know about?  Because if it is '

"Course not!  I'd bloody tell you, wouldn't I, if it was."

Summoning all his courage, Simon took a flier.  "Nothing to do with the
Polska CMC deal?"

"No."  He sounded incredulous.  "How could it be?"

In his thoughts Simon echoed: That's right, Ben, how could it be?  "In
that case," he said aloud, 'is it anything I can help out with?"

"No, thanks."

"As a friend, I mean?"

"Nope.  Look got to run.  They're calling the flight."

"Can I at least tell Catherine where you've gone?"  "No," he said in
the brisk disparaging tone he always used to halt discussion.  "Just
tell her I'll see her tomorrow.  Okay?"

The connection went dead.

Pocketing his phone, Simon tried to remember a time when he had known
Ben so rattled.  Not for years, not since they had first started the
business and gambled everything on the Qatar deal.  On second thoughts,
not even then; no, in all this time Ben had never had it this bad.

Avoiding a passing trolley, Simon crossed the corridor to the nursing
station and, taking some blank paper from his briefcase, used a free
end of the counter to write out Ben's message to Catherine.  As he
underlined wild horses, he became aware of a woman marching up to the
desk and casting vainly about for a member of staff.  Simon recognised
the tall, sharp-featured blonde immediately.  She was a girlfriend of
Catherine's called Emma Russell, in advertising, or maybe it was PR
yes, PR for an up-market china shop and her father was the managing
director of an independent Midlands brewery.

"Hello, Emma."

She stared at him uncertainly.  "Oh ... hi."

"Simon Jardine."

Though they had met at least three times before, it was clear she
hadn't placed him.  He suppressed the small flutter of resentment that
was apt to stir in him at such moments.

"Cheltenham Gold Cup, lunch in the marquee," he prompted lightly.

"Oh yesl' she exclaimed, springing to life.  "You work for Ben.  Tell
me-'

"With him-'

"What?"  Blinking briefly at the interruption, she rushed on
impatiently, "But how's Cath?  Is she all right?  Tell me '

"She regained consciousness a few hours ago," Simon reported gravely.
"She's out of intensive care."

"Oh, thank God for that!"  Emma spread a scarlet-nailed hand against
her chest in an extravagant gesture of relief.  "Thank God.  I hadn't
heard anything since Monday, and what with trying to get an earlier
flight and the rush oh, thank God!"  Slowing down a little, she asked,
"But what are they saying?  Is she going to be all right?  Will she She
moved closer and, resting her fingers lightly on Simon's arm, fixed him
with an intense rather disconcerting gaze.  She had large round eyes,
hazel-brown, with brilliant whites and thick lashes.  Despite her
height, or perhaps because of it, she tilted her head forward so that,
though her gaze was level with his, she seemed to be peering up at him.
"Someone told me she'd hurt her back, that it might be serious, that'
her voice faltered 'it might be broken.  Is it true?"

"I don't think the doctors know anything definite about anything yet.
Too soon."

"But it's possible?"

"Really no one knows."

She removed her hand rather crossly.  "Well what are they saying,
then?"

"Her skull's fractured, she was badly concussed, but there are no blood
clots, which are the dangerous thing apparently."

"But are they reasonably happy with the way things are going?  Do they
think she's going to be okay?"

"They won't commit themselves."

Giving up on him altogether, she narrowed her mouth and glanced away.
"Can I see her?  Is it allowed?"

"Duncan's with her at the moment.  And Alice.  Best to ask them."

"Oh, if they're both in there I'd better wait, hadn't I?  It'd be too
much to have me as well, wouldn't it?"  Increasingly fidgety, she
glanced around several times before grunting, "Anywhere to smoke in
this place?  I've just had eight hours on a plane and a perfectly awful
time in New York.  The fascists there scream at you if you so much as
light up in the street."  Another scan of the pristine white corridors
and, with a sharp sigh of resignation and a pursing of her mouth, she
abandoned the quest.

As if to keep her mind off nicotine, she began to speak in a rush that
emphasised her high rather breathless voice.  "I only found out when I
happened to call someone from New York.  They told me she was on the
critical list.  I couldn't believe it.  Tried to phone Ben, left dozens
of messages he never called back.  I realised he must be here night and
day, of course, but that only made me more frantic.  Imagining the
worst.  So I phoned everyone I could think of.  Finally got through to
Jack and Amy Bellingham you know, the restaurant people and they told
me Cath was here, in intensive care, and that she'd broken her spine
and fractured her skull and the doctors weren't sure if she was going
to make it.  Well, you can imagine I was just devastated.  I mean, from
the way they were talking it sounded so desperate.  And when they told
me she'd been pushed well, for God's sake!  is it true?  did this
maniac really push her?"

"All that anyone knows for sure is she fell."

Emma shuddered visibly and screwed up her eyes.  "Where?  How?"

Even now, four days after the event, Simon had to take a slow breath
before he could bring himself to relate it.  "She was found on the hall
floor, underneath that railed landing.  The banisters gave way.  She
fell across a large wooden chest they think it was that which broke her
back.  Her head met the floor."

Emma clasped a hand to her mouth.  "That hall it's stone, isn't it?
God!  It's too awful to think about!  Too ghastly!"  She dropped her
face into her hands amid curtains of hair and gave a long strangled
moan.  Then, lifting her head abruptly, flipping her hair back from her
face, she cried, "And this person this animal, this piece of scum he
did it on purpose, did he?  To get some sort of ghastly kick?"

"There's no way of knowing."

"But how did he get in?  Where was Ben?"

Taking care, as always, to be precise, Simon outlined what he'd been
told by the police.  That there were signs of a break-in, that the
house had been ransacked, that Ben had been found stunned and confused,
that when he'd been able to talk to the police some hours later he'd
told them about finding an intruder.

Emma listened attentively with her head on one side and her arms hugged
tightly round her waist.  She had a slender, narrow-hipped figure,
almost boyish, with a thin face that emphasised the childlike roundness
of her eyes.  She was dressed entirely in black, in a well-cut trouser
suit rumpled from the journey.  Her hair was straight and shoulder
length and very blonde.  Every few minutes she pushed it back from her
face in what was evidently a nervous mannerism.  She was probably the
same age as Catherine though her angular rather pinched face made her
seem older, more like thirty-two or -three.

"I always said it was a dodgy area," she muttered.  "It's not really
Notting Hill, is it?  More like North Kensington.  Anyway, I thought
they were still meant to be in France.  I didn't think they were back
till this weekend."

"Something came up."

She declared disgustedly, "With the bloody business, I suppose!"  Then,
in a voice hardly less contemptuous: "And of course the police haven't
caught this person yet, have they?"

Simon shook his head.

"No, too much to hope for.  The police are uselessl I got robbed last
year right outside my door, and they were completely pathetic.  Didn't
want to know.  Tried to fob me off with Victim Support.  I mean, the
woman was absolutely sweet and all that, but it wasn't tea I needed, it
was transport and rapido.  I ended up missing the most fantastic party
She broke off with a small sidelong glance at Simon and added a little
defensively, "I hope they're making a hell of a lot more effort over
this."

"The guy in charge seems reasonably efficient.  Bright, too."

Emma eyed Simon.  "You've met him?"

"Wilson?  Very much so.  Talk to him twice a day, sometimes more.  I'm
liaising with them, you see.  On behalf of Ben and Duncan.  To take a
bit of the load off their shoulders."  The last comment had sounded
almost boastful and he frowned at the lapse.

Emma was looking at him with new interest.  "Liaising?  I hadn't
realised.  In that case you'll know if they've checked She paused
abruptly, her eyes slid away.  "No," she said after a moment, as if
taking herself in hand.  "No, perhaps .. ."  Then, attempting to strike
a different note, she asked casually, "Where's Ben?  Is he around?"

"He had to go away."

"But he'll be back soon?"

"Not immediately, no."

"You mean away away?"

"Yes."

She gave Simon a mildly resentful glance, as if Ben's unaccountable
absence was in some way his fault.  "But I can get him on his
mobile?"

Simon made a doubtful gesture.  "I rather think he's out of reach.  But
I'm expecting him to call later.  I'd be glad to pass on a message."

Emma exhaled sharply, almost petulantly, and it occurred to him that
she wasn't one to bear the trials of life with good grace.  "It'll
wait," she muttered.

Overtaken by a fresh attack of restlessness, she flicked her hair back,
though now, as before, it fell forward again almost immediately.  "Do
you think they'll be in there much longer, Duncan and Alice?"  she said
fretfully.  "Or shall I put my head round the door?"

"It might be an idea."

But she made no move towards Catherine's room.  Instead, agitating her
hand, she paced off across the corridor.

A wall clock showed a quarter to five.  If he got a move on Simon
realised he might be able to catch DS Wilson at his desk before he
knocked off for the day.

Returning to the message for Catherine, he picked up his pen again and
added "He sends tons of love' and was immediately worried that tons was
too breezy, even by Ben's standards, that much or deepest love would be
more fitting.

He'd just decided to leave the love measured by weight when Emma came
back.  Leaning both forearms on the counter, she said, "It was
definitely a burglary?"

"Sorry?"

"The police they think it was just a burglary?"

Her choice of words made him look up.  "Well yes.  Things were stolen,
the house was ransacked."

"It wasn't a stalker then?"

He stared.  For an instant he thought he must have misheard her.  "A
stalker?  Why do you say that?"

She gave a sharp sigh, as though the whole matter had become altogether
too much for her.  "That's what I wanted to talk to Ben about, you see,
to ask him what he thought -whether the guy could have had anything to
do with well, anything.  Look, it was probably nothing Cath only
mentioned it once, she didn't seem to take it seriously but it's been
on my mind, I kept thinking about it on the plane, that this breather
might have turned out to be a complete psycho.  You know, followed her,
waited for her.  I mean, it often starts with calls, doesn't it?  And
then they go on from there, get obsessed.  But if it was just a
burglary, then '

Simon interrupted, "Are you saying someone was stalking Catherine?"

"No well, not then no, it was just calls.  But that's what I wanted to
ask Ben if anything else had happened, like anyone had started hanging
around, or if this guy was just, you know, a sad anorak in a phone
booth."  She threw up a hand.  "But, look, how do I know?  It was
probably nothing.  It might have stopped weeks ago '

Simon couldn't get to grips with this at all.  "Let me get this
straight, someone was making nuisance calls to Catherine?"

"Yes."

"Threatening calls?"

"Well not quite.  I think Cath said that he only ever spoke once. After
that he never said a word.  That's why she wasn't too fazed."

"There was nothing else apart from the calls?"

She said touchily, "Well... no."

"He never bothered her in any other way?"

"Not that she ever Emma pushed a palm against her head in a gesture of
stupidity.  "I'm crazy, aren't I?  If this guy had shown his face, Ben
would have said something, wouldn't he?  If anything had happened to
frighten Cath, he would have told the police."  She gave a long groan.
"I left my brain on a bar stool somewhere, didn't I?  I really hadn't
thought."

But Simon wasn't listening, he was too busy trying to see how the
police were likely to interpret this information, how it might affect
the course of their investigation.  "Best to be on the safe side," he
said finally.

"What?"

"Best to tell the police.  They should know everything, decide for
themselves what's important."

She shrugged, but she was relieved all the same.  "You think so?  Well,
in that case Her eye was caught by something over his shoulder.  "Oh,
there's Alice!"  She gave a tentative wave and prepared to move off.

Simon put the message into her hand.  "Could you read this to
Catherine?"

Emma waved more strenuously to Alice and mimed greetings.  "Sure."

"And the police may want to talk to you.  Shall I call you '

But she was already hurrying off.  Just when he thought she would leave
without a word she spun round and, pointing the edge of the folded
message at him, sighting along it like the barrel of a gun, called,
"Got it now you're the one into ballerina gear!"

Simon had long since taught himself to arrange his mouth into a smile
whenever this subject came up.  "Ben's little joke," he called back.

But she was already striding off and didn't hear.

Avoiding Alice's distant and frosty gaze, Simon turned away to find the
pudding-faced nurse leaning over the counter, holding out a phone to
him.  "A friend of Catherine's, wanting to speak to someone."

Simon looked at the wall clock, then his watch; time was running out to
see Wilson.  He took the receiver hastily with a brusque, "Yes?"

"Yes, hullo there.  This is an old family friend of Catherine Galitza."
The soft male voice hesitated slightly over her married name.  "I
wanted to know how she was."  The accent was muted but unmistakably
Irish.

"I'm not at liberty to give out information over the phone."

"I just wanted to know if she was conscious yet."

Simon said grudgingly, "She is."

"Ah."  It was a cry of relief.  "And the operation went okay?"

"Operation?"

"Wasn't it yesterday?  To stabilise the spine?"

Whoever the man was, he was astonishingly well-informed.  "Who is
this?"  Simon demanded.

A slight pause.  "My name is Terry."

Simon pictured the flowers and the note, saw Catherine's reaction.
"Terry who?"

A more conspicuous hesitation.  "Devlin."

He'd been right after all.  Simon felt a brief satisfaction before his
thoughts skidded off in several directions at once, all disturbing, all
intriguing.  How in the world had Devlin got hold of this information?
Why on earth should he want it?  Could he be planning to use it against
the family in some way?  Simon couldn't help thinking how furious Ben
and Duncan would be when he told them about this call.

Now he retorted, "The information you want is confidential."

"I appreciate that, Doctor.  I just wanted a general indication of
whether she'd got through all right."

"I'm not a doctor."

"What?"  There was a stunned pause.  "But the girl said Who am I
speaking to then?"

"This is the family solicitor."

Another pause.  "Your name?"

"Simon Jardine."

The silence drew out.  Devlin's voice said very coldly, "I was
misinformed."

A click and he had rung off.

With a glare at his watch, Simon strode rapidly out of the building
into the last of the rain and, failing to find a cab, arrived at the
police station a good twenty minutes after DS Wilson had left for the
day.

Chapter Two

TERRY DEVLIN spent the rest of the afternoon in a state of angry
self-reproach.  The call had been a complete misjudgement, the blunder
with the lawyer nothing less than excruciating.  What had he been
thinking of?  Why couldn't he have waited?  It would only have been a
matter of an hour, two at the most.  The wages of impatience.  Now
Duncan and Alice would know he had phoned, would be appalled at his
intrusion.  Daring to call himself a friend of the family!  Presuming
to ask about Catherine's operation!  Having by some despicable
underhand means managed to find out about it!  They would be deeply
offended, and who could blame them.

Just an hour or two.  Why, oh why, couldn't he have shown a little
patience?

He snapped instructions into the intercom, heard the imperious note in
his voice, and moderated his tone abruptly.  He was leaving, he told
Bridget, would she cancel the rest of the day and summon the car
immediately.  Please this more reasonably.  If she would be so kind
this contritely.

Bridget came in, wearing her uncompromising face.  "You have an
interview with the Sunday Independent starting in two minutes."

"Can't it be put off?"

"I think that would be unwise since the journalist is waiting just
outside and the time and venue have already been changed twice."

He gave in with a shake of his head.  "All right.  But nothing after
that."

Bridget asked if he would like the last two meetings of the day
rescheduled for the morning.

"No.  Tell everyone to go ahead without me."

This was unheard of, not Terry's style at all, and he saw Bridget
hesitate and eye him cautiously, like someone who has found herself in
a cage with an animal of uncertain temperament.

He sighed and raised an upturned palm in a gesture that was partly an
apology, partly an expression of helplessness, and she gave a rapid nod
of understanding.  Terry's daughter had been seriously ill, the
recuperation slow, and during the months of his wretchedness and
inattention Bridget had of necessity become a master of flexibility and
improvisation, as well as a holder of forts, large and small.  Then,
just when his daughter seemed to be recovering and Bridget and the rest
of the staff had thought life was settling down again, this new and
terrible anxiety had overtaken him, a crisis whose cause he couldn't
begin to explain to her, nor indeed to anyone else who found themselves
on the receiving end of one of his unprovoked bursts of ill temper.

"And you mentioned you had a seven-thirty appointment this evening,"
she said.  "Will you still be keeping '

"You bet!"  Terry cried with such ferocity that Bridget's eyes rounded
momentarily.  He repeated more reasonably, "You bet."

She plucked up courage to ask, "Where is the meeting, so Pat will know
what time to pick you up?"

"The Shelbournc."

He saw her eyebrows lift in unspoken surprise.

"Shall Pat pick you up from home, then, at seven ten?"

"Seven twenty."

"You want to be late?"

"I want to be late."

Moving on from this topic with something like relief, Bridget asked,
"Will you want to freshen up?"  This was her way of saying he needed to
comb his hair and make himself presentable.

Obediently, Terry went through to the adjoining bathroom and faced the
glass.  He saw a man who looked weary, unhealthy and overweight.  Since
he had given up all pretence of taking care of himself some four years
ago, these were conditions he richly deserved, though this didn't
prevent him from feeling disappointment at the speed and relentlessness
with which his body had given up the fight.  Three extra stone had
fixed themselves to his midriff and surrounding areas, his knees were
creaking under the strain, his eyes had grown pouches and his skin had
taken on a patchy uneven tone.  His hair was beginning to grey and
recede and if he was being ruthlessly honest there was a bare patch on
his crown which, having been the size of a fifty-pence coin, was
gaining currency by the day.  His doctor told him the usual things
doctors were paid to say, that he should drink less and eat less and
take exercise.  In the meantime, he looked nearer to fifty than forty.
However, it was not his age or weight that preoccupied him as he looked
in the glass, but the unprecedented doubt and uncertainty he saw
reflected there.  Maeve's illness had pulled him up short.  Catherine's
accident had shaken him.  It seemed that fate was trying to bring him
down off his high perch, and for the first time in his life he felt he
had lost confidence and direction.

"It's a feature article," Bridget reminded him when he emerged, washed
and combed.  "For the main body of the paper, to mark the opening of
The Kavanagh.  Being a feature, you're to expect all sorts of
questions."

"I don't want all sorts of questions."

"Anne did warn you."

Anne was the PR girl.  He hardly remembered the briefing, but then
there was no accounting for the things that passed him by these days.

"Anne will be sitting in.  She'll fend off anything unsuitable."

The journalist was a tiny girl clad in tight black trousers and skimpy
top with cropped blonde hair, and so young that she might have been
Maeve's age and straight out of school.

His smile appeared mechanically; he had long since learnt to hide most
emotions certainly indifference and impatience behind a smile. Assuming
the rest of his required role was more difficult, however. From the
time that the business world had started to take notice of him, some
fifteen years back, he had been content to take on the various guises
allotted to him by the press.  First it had been the boy from the bogs
on the up and up, the cheeky chap pie who never missed a trick; then,
following a round of acquisitions, he had become the daring young
entrepreneur with the Midas touch; latterly, by a mysterious process of
metamorphosis, he had grown into a pillar of the business community, a
champion of the New Ireland.  Not that he must ever fail to mention the
rockier moments in his career, nor his humble beginnings, nor his
gratitude for all that life and a booming Ireland had given him.  He
had learnt that so far as the press was concerned no cliche was so
overblown that it should be left unprinted.  Local boy made good.  Rags
to riches.  Golden touch.  Sometimes he felt like a living banality.

From the start it had always been easier to give them what they wanted,
a Terry Devlin who was confident, outgoing, provocative, quick to joke
and quicker to laugh.  Over time this simplistic and distorted version
of himself had become a habit as well as a shield.  But today he could
summon neither the energy nor the will to step into his role, and he
faced the young journalist with an empty smile fuelled by an empty
heart.

The journalist went straight to the large west-facing window at the far
corner of his office to gaze at the view.

"That's why I chose this site," he said, coming up beside her.  "It's
the only place you can look straight along the river for such a
distance a mile in fact.  The only place you can see five bridges in a
row."

Below them, the Liffey was a pale grey beneath an insipid May sun.  The
water had the smooth stagnant look of a canal.  From this vantage point
the bridges, one behind the other, seemed to number more than five and
to crowd the river.

"Wasn't it the land prices that attracted you?  The fact that this was
a derelict area?"

"That too, of course."

"Two birds with one stone?"

He broadened his smile.  "And why not?"

"And you can see The Kavanagh from here, can't you?"

"Just the top storey."

"But gratifying all the same, I imagine."

"Nice to keep an eye.  Know it's still there."

She turned to face him.  "But you're pleased with it?"

"It's the best hotel we could build."

"Was that your purpose, to build the finest hotel in Dublin?"

"Well, it has five stars."

"That wasn't quite my question.  I meant the hotel that would be
acknowledged as the finest in the city?"

"It's intended to be the best you can get anywhere."

She tried another tack.  "Would you describe yourself as a proud
man?"

"Without wishing to split hairs, in what sense do you mean?"

"A man who is proud of his achievements."

"Ah, in that sense yes.  Overall."

"Only overall?  So there are things you're not so proud of?"

"Inevitably."

She smiled ingenuously.  "Such as?"

Scenting danger, the PR girl moved forward, ready to catch his
signal.

"Well, as you will have garnered from the press cuttings I have made a
few mistakes in my time."

"Business or personal?"

He made a gesture as if to award her marks for trying.  "Business.  I
would only count my business mistakes to a stranger."

"But to yourself?"

"To myself?"  He made a show of considering this.  "I think I could be
relied on to count all my mistakes, honestly and without favour."

"You have regrets?"

"Everyone has regrets."

"What are your main regrets?"

"Business or personal?"  And he offered a cautionary smile to show that
this was just part of the game and he had no intention of answering
anything to do with his private life.

"Both."

"In business I would say that I have most regretted misreading
situations.  Misjudging them."

"Does that happen very often?"

"Not often, but occasionally."

"With serious results?"

He shrugged.  "With less than satisfactory results."

"Are you a forgiving person?"

The question took him off-guard and he must have let it show because
she quickly rephrased it more forcefully.  "Do you forgive people who
have let you down?"

"Forgive?  It's usually irrelevant by the time ... I don't concern
myself with holding grudges, if that's what you mean."

"Is that because you can afford to, or because you have a forgiving
nature?"

He thought about that for a moment.  "Rivalry is perfectly natural, and
you could say that rivalry is based on not forgiving or forgetting that
someone managed to get the better of you last time, and making darned
sure that you are the one to get the upper hand at the next
opportunity.  Men are naturally competitive.  It's one of things that
makes the world go round."

"But if someone hasn't played fair?"

"Fair has many interpretations."

"Done the dirty on you.  Tried to cheat you."

Immediately, he thought of Ben Galitza.  "I would not forget," he said
solemnly.  "No, I would not forget."

"Forgive?"

"I wouldn't lose sleep over it.  Life's too short.  One must move
on."

"Indeed?  People say you don't move on.  People say you never
forgive."

"I can't answer for what people say."

"So you don't care what they say?"

"I care very much what certain people say, people I respect."

"And in your personal life?  Do you forgive and forget there?"  She was
fishing unashamedly, though more in hope than expectation.

"By definition, that is personal."

She nodded philosophically.  "Would you say it's necessary to be
ruthless to achieve success?"

He laughed briefly but without humour.  "It's a fine word -ruthless.
The ruthless businessman.  The ruthless operator.  The ruthless
bastard.  Those words always go together somehow, don't they?  But I
wouldn't say they were mutually dependent.  And certainly not something
to aspire to."

"But the description might be apposite none the less."

"It might.  But I don't think it's necessary to be ruthless.  Rather,
meticulous.  Or, if I had to be described by an adjective beginning
with R, resolute."

"So, you never give up."

"I'm single-minded certainly.  So long as I believe the prize to be
worth winning."

"You've never remarried, Mr.  Devlin.  No prize worth winning among the
ladies of Dublin?"

He didn't attempt to answer this, nor to laugh it off.  Instead he
gestured her towards the conference area.  "Why don't we talk about
hotels now?"

The girl had the cheek to answer, "I thought we were."

On the journey home, Terry kept going back over his day and found
little to ease his agony of mind.  At some point after they had crossed
the Liffey, Pat asked him if he would like to go round by The Kavanagh,
a detour they generally made once or twice a week.  But Terry was in no
mood for discussions with the hotel staff, nor with anyone else for
that matter, and told Pat he would go straight home.  So they went on
past Trinity and the Castle, towards the southern suburbs, and he was
aware of little else until they were turning in through the gates and
Pat was confirming that he'd bring the car round again at seven
twenty.

Bridget must have phoned ahead as usual because Mrs.  Ellis was waiting
at the door, one hand restraining Conn, who was struggling to break
free and jump against his chest like the crazy dog that he was.

"Well, here you are again, Mr.  Devlin," said Mrs.  Ellis, meaning that
he was home once more at a reasonable time.  "And will you be wanting
dinner?"

He explained that he would be going out again at seven twenty, he
wasn't sure how long for, and would find something to eat along the
way.  "But for Maeve .. .?"  He knew that Mrs.  Ellis needed no
reminding, but he couldn't help asking all the same.

"She's sleeping now," said Mrs.  Ellis, 'but she said to wake her at
six and that she might fancy some salmon for supper, though to be on
the safe side I've prepared those vegetables she likes, the kind for
stir-frying."

For someone schooled in the Irish-French cookery tradition her own
incontestable description a stir-fry represented something of a
departure not to mention a challenge, and he made a point of thanking
her for taking so much trouble.

Over the last few months whenever Maeve was at home and sleeping like
this he would often go upstairs and look in on her as he used to do
when she was a small child.  Today, however, he headed straight for his
study, partly because she would be waking soon and he didn't want to
disturb her prematurely, partly because Fergal's call, now thirty
minutes overdue, would be coming through on his mobile at any moment
and he didn't want to take it in a place where he might be overheard.

Conn, the black thief, slunk in through the study door before Terry had
the chance to shut him out and limped on his three and a half good legs
to his unofficial perch by the bookcase, where, in an attempt to keep a
low profile, he curled up immediately and feigned sleep.

Terry sat heavily at the desk and thought: Well, what is to be salvaged
then?  What can be done that won't make everything worse?

Duncan Langley would have heard about his call by now, perhaps Alice
Langley too, and would have drawn their own conclusions.  There was
nothing that could be done about that.  But Catherine herself he could
only pray to God that the family wouldn't tell her.  It was too painful
to imagine how she would judge him.  She would think he was prying in
the most gratuitous way, or he flinched at each new thought having the
gall to patronise her, to take some sort of perverse satisfaction in
her tragedy, or most unbearable of all that he still had 'feelings' for
her and in some demeaning way was trying to win her favour.

Four years ago, in a burst of madness, he'd written her a letter, a
foolish outpouring born of loss and loneliness and what he'd imagined
at the time to be love.  The letter had embarrassed her; it had very
rapidly embarrassed him.  She had delivered the only reply she could
have made, also in the form of a letter, which he'd promptly consigned
to the bin, as he very much hoped she had done with his.  His phone
call today had been nothing to do with this particular aspect of the
past.  If Catherine thought otherwise, there was nothing he could do to
put her right.  And yet, and yet .. . the demon pride would not be
subdued.  It pierced him, and he stung.

For a moment he could see no way forward.  He stared at the photographs
on the desk top, cased in bulky green leather frames, and felt that
everything he held dear had slipped away.

Most of the photographs were from way back: a picture of his late wife,
taken a few months after their marriage; a formal shot of the wedding
itself, the two of them looking so young and nervous outside the
church; then a series of Maeve, as a fluffy-haired baby, as a
schoolgirl in uniform with a cheeky spark in her gypsy eyes, and most
recently as a student nurse, looking serene and lovely in her natural
unaffected way.

These pictures stood to the left.  To the right was a picture of his
most successful horse, Hellinger's Dip, a sprinter with three wins to
his credit; and next to this, a landscape photograph of Morne, which
had been Catherine's childhood home and was now, largely by chance or
so it felt, his own, though he could never bring himself to think of it
in that way.  The photograph dated back to the late sixties, a time
when Lizzie, Catherine's mother, had herself been a young woman there,
and Terry, a feckless boy of eight or nine, had passed the gates every
day on his way to school or more likely to snare rabbits, and had known
the place, inevitably, as 'the big house', though by Ascendancy
standards it wasn't big at all, a long way short of a mansion, more a
modest English vicarage.  In keeping with his memories of that time
this was a distant view, taken from a hill a half mile away, the house
a compact oblong sheltering in its verdant demesne, a rolling
upward-sloping landscape of gardens, fields and woodland, which from
this high angle looked larger and more impressive than its thirty
acres.  He had found a print of this photograph in an attic and had it
blown up, partly because it was a fine picture, but also because he was
a nostalgic man and it showed in all its leafy glory a patch of ancient
oak forest to the south-west of the house that had been cut for timber
a few years afterwards and then abandoned to hazel and scrub.

The small snap next to this was taken many years later.  It showed
Catherine and Alice sitting on the terrace at Morne, with Duncan in
riding clothes leaning rakishly against a wall, and Lizzie standing
with a tea tray she had just picked up from the table.  Catherine was
just eighteen then.  Typically, both she and her mother were
laughing.

The tea had begun awkwardly, he remembered.  It had soon become clear
that the invitation had been Lizzie's alone, that

Duncan regarded it as a familiarity too far.  For Duncan, Terry Devlin
was still the ungrateful odd-job man who, at considerable inconvenience
to the family, had stopped turning up with any regularity some four
years before.  Even in the days when Terry had managed to get back
every month or so to do the light repairs, Duncan had failed to grasp
the fact that he was busy running two pizza restaurants and fitting out
three more and could no longer drop everything to fix a loose slate.

Fragments of that day had stayed with Terry.  From old habit, and
perhaps a sense of irony, he had walked round to the side of the house
and presented himself at the back door.  He had an image of Lizzie
welcoming him into the kitchen with a small cry of delight, of the two
of them exchanging news secretively before they could be interrupted.

The weather had been fine enough for them to sit on the terrace, which
neatly avoided the awkwardness of choosing drawing room versus kitchen.
He remembered Catherine appearing from the garden, a figure grown
taller and fuller and astonishingly self-possessed.  Humming some pop
tune, she strode past him into the house with a sidelong glance, a lift
of one eyebrow and a brief careless hello, the effect of which would
have been splendidly sophisticated if she hadn't pulled a larky
schoolgirl grimace at the last moment.  Alice's arrival was a more
muted affair involving a silent approach, a flop into the remotest
chair, downcast eyes and a series of monosyllabic responses.  When
Catherine reappeared, it was to take centre stage, with the recital of
a series of extravagant tales, unashamedly featuring herself and her
escapades, told amid excessive laughter and much twisting of her head
and arching of her neck and other postures intended to beguile.  Some
might have judged her rather too full of herself, and there was no
doubting that she enjoyed an audience, but Terry put her exuberance
down to an understandable excitement at being young and pretty and
fancy-free, and the discovery that in a troubled and gloomy world
vivacity set you apart.

When they had finally exhausted the subject of Catherine,

she fixed him with a challenging look.  "So, Mr.  Devlin," it had
always been Terry before, and now she put a droll stress on the Mr.
'everyone says you're going very well, raking it in with all these
restaurants.  How nice to be rich!"

"Ah.  It's the bank that's rich.  I just keep them in profit."

"You're going to be rich, then!"

He laughed.  "Well, I'm going to avoid being poor, that's for sure."

"So, how will you spend it all?  Cars?  Houses?  Planes?"

"I hadn't thought that far."

She gave a cry of mock horror.  "Of course you have!  Don't be so
ridiculous!  You've planned a Ferrari, a mansion in the country, a
string of horses, enormous parties.  Oh, please say you've got it all
planned!"

Lizzie was eyeing her daughter tolerantly but also a little wearily.

Alice, staring fiercely into the garden, muttered in a tone of disgust,
"Oh, for God's sake."

"I think I've got everything I want for the time being."

"But that's hopeless!"  Catherine groaned.  "I expected bigger and
better things from you!"

Terry pretended to search his mind.  "I do have a new car on order."

Catherine shot forward in her seat.  "A Porsche?  No, no She flapped a
delaying hand.  "A Merc convertible?"

"An Alfa.  And not even the top model, I'm afraid."

Alice murmured, "He's already got an Alfa."

"Have you?  Have you?"  Enjoying this flurry of her own making, not
wanting it to end, Catherine wrinkled up her nose in disappointment.
"And you're getting another"} Oh, how boring!"

It was then that Terry became aware of Duncan.  For most of the meal
Duncan had worn a distant inattentive expression, overlaid by the
slightly glazed smile that was so characteristic of him.  Now he was
watching Terry with a glimmer of interest.

Later, while Lizzie and the girls were carrying the tea things into the
house, Duncan launched into a monologue about European Community grants
and interest rates and business conditions.  "Things are going pretty
well already, of course, and are undoubtedly going to get better, but
I've decided we'd be wise to tie up with an outfit in Britain, spread
the risk, if you like."

Failing to see the logic of this, Terry murmured noncommittally
"Aha."

"People are getting far more confident about wine, you know.  Bulk
buying's going to be the big thing, no doubt about that, and we've got
a real chance of cornering the market.  This tie-in's going to let us
negotiate the best possible terms."

"What sort of volume are you handling, Duncan?"

"Oh .. . pretty large, pretty large."

Terry found himself having doubts about this.  In the same instant, he
had a good idea of where the conversation was leading.

"You offer wine in your pizza places?"  Duncan asked.

"Most certainly.  We try to cover a reasonable price range.  Not just
plonk."

"And who does your buying?"

He described their arrangement with a major wine importer.

"Well!"  Duncan tapped the arm of his chair.  "We might be able to do
something for you, you know.  At least as good as they can, and
probably a lot better.  Why don't we talk?  Never know, could be
something in it for both of us."

"Delighted."  As Terry handed him a card, he couldn't help wondering if
his diplomatic skills were going to be up to the situation.

Duncan smiled magnanimously.  "Glad you're doing so well, Terry. Always
nice to see a local chap getting on."  He stood up and surveyed the
view.  "Well, must go and deal with the horses.  Oh, yes!"  He held up
a forefinger, as if the matter had just come back to him.  "Terrible
trouble finding anyone to repair the boiler.  You wouldn't know of a
good plumber by any chance?  The chaps round here can't seem to handle
it."

When Terry phoned around he discovered that, in company with most other
tradespeople in the area, the local plumbers were not prepared to call
at Morne because of a long-standing problem with unpaid bills.  In the
end he sent one of his contract plumbers down from Dublin at his own
expense.

It was a year later, when Lizzie had her first brush with cancer, that
Duncan touched him for a personal loan.

So, he asked himself again, what is to be salvaged?

With a troubled heart, he drew out some paper, picked up his pen and
began to draft a letter.

He began Dear Cathy, only to cross this out and replace it with Dear
Catherine.  Formality seemed more appropriate in the circumstances.

I trust you will not feel I have overstepped the bounds of our
acquaintance and what I hope, despite everything, to be our friendship,
but I should tell you that I have phoned the hospital several times to
ask how you were, and trust that you will not take this interest in
your wellbeing amiss, but accept it as an expression of my continuing
concern and affection .. .

No, no!  He'd started from entirely the wrong angle!  No, this sounded
terrible!  Crass!  He ran a line through the words and, crushing the
page into a ball, threw it into the bin.

Taking another sheet, he stared at it for some time before starting
again.

Dear Catherine, I trust you continue to make progress.  I hope you will
not mind if I phone the nurses now and again to ask how you are (I have
in fact called once or twice already).  I realise that I may be
overstepping the bounds of what you may regard as .. .

With a sigh, he dropped the pen and slowly tore the page into small
pieces.  Never had he felt the cost of his misspent schooldays more
keenly.  Over the years he had taught himself to write business letters
in a reasonably proficient manner, he could argue contracts and figures
any day, but this how to strike the right note, how to communicate one
thing without letting slip another, to convey regret without guilt,
concern without anger it was beyond him.

Abandoning the letter, at least for today, he called Bridget and asked
her to arrange for another posy to be made from the final flush of May
flowers at Morne, put on ice and flown to London as soon as possible.

"Will there be a note?"

He hesitated.  "Not this time.  Just a card, saying it's from Terry."

"With best wishes?"

At first he said no, thinking that it sounded too impersonal, then
changed his mind: detachment was more appropriate.  "Yes, best
wishes."

Before ringing off he asked for the messages.  He noted there was
nothing from London, no delay to the evening meeting.

On impulse, he said, "Tell Pat seven thirty for the car, would you?"

He would be fifteen minutes late because he could not bear the idea of
having to sit and wait for Ben Galitza for so much as a single second,
certainly not in the hotel that was probably the most public place to
meet in all Dublin, and certainly not in a hotel that wasn't one of his
own and where he wouldn't be able to busy himself talking to the staff.
The Shelbourne had been Galitza's choice, and while Terry was in favour
of neutral ground, he would have preferred somewhere more discreet.

The call had come through to Bridget first thing that morning.
Thoroughly startled, heart in mouth, he had taken it immediately
expecting what, for God's sake?  News of Catherine?  News of the police
investigation?  Fury?  Accusations?  Apologies?  If the call hadn't
taken him so completely by surprise he would have remembered that this
was not Galitza's style at all, that Galitza had a breathtaking
capacity for insensitivity.  The voice had wrenched Terry back three
years, to the joint venture on the west-coast hotel that had gathered
so much speed so quickly that it seemed nothing could stop it.  The
voice was the same: cool, clipped, succinct.  Catherine was
'recovering', Galitza had replied to Terry's enquiry, before going
straight on to the matter in hand.  He would like a meeting.  As soon
as possible.  He would fly over.  Terry had agreed immediately, which
came as a surprise to neither of them.  Whatever else, Galitza knew his
man.

He hadn't said why he was coming of course; but then he hadn't needed
to.  Terry had never had the slightest doubt as to his purpose.  The
question was, how much would he have the nerve to ask for?

At ten to six Terry checked the battery and signal strength on his
mobile and replaced it on the desk before him.  Fergal was now almost
an hour late with his report.  In his general anxiety, he wondered if
something had gone wrong, if Fergal had been caught or warned off.  But
he knew that this was to fall victim to paranoia, to overlook Fergal's
experience and his infinite capacity for caution.

As if on cue a phone rang, but it wasn't the mobile, it was the house
line.  He answered it all the same.

"It's Dinah."  Her voice was smooth and warm as ever.

"Well now, how are you?"  he asked, with as much affection as he could
muster.

"Oh fine, but what about you?"  This was her way, always to turn the
subject round to him, to ask after his welfare.

"Not a great day, I have to say."

"I'm sorry," she said.  "And how's Maeve?"

"Oh, so-so."

"And the food?  Is she managing a bit more?"

"A little more, you know."

"I got the phone number of that doctor everyone recommends so highly,
the one in Howth.  Would you like it?  He's meant to be a marvel."

"Perhaps .. . would you hang on to it?  Maybe in a week or so."

Dinah left it there.  She never pushed her ideas, never tried to impose
on him.  In this, as in so many other ways, he could not fault her.
Terry knew that if he had more sense he would persuade himself that he
loved her, in so far as he understood what he meant by that nowadays;
he would tell himself that she would be a good thing for him, that in
her calm and accomplished way she would make him comfortable and
content.  Yet he retreated from the idea, some deep and stubborn part
of him could not accept it, and this knowledge brought a weight of
guilt.  Sometimes when he stopped to think about it, it seemed to him
that guilt had become the overriding emotion in his relationship with
Dinah.  He felt it now, corroding his thoughts.

She said, "You'll be busy then, with Maeve."

"Yes.  I'm sorry.  Perhaps next week."

"Of course."  Her tone, as always, was light and without reproach. "Now
tell me, do you like the curtains?  You must say if you don't, because
if you don't I can alter them, change the trimmings or whatever."

His mind was a blank.  "The curtains?"

She laughed softly.  "You obviously haven't been into the drawing
room."

"Give me a moment."  He picked up the portable extension and, almost
tripping over Conn who dashed past him to the door, took it across the
hall to the room that she called the drawing room but which he'd always
been happy to call the lounge.  He stared in astonishment at the mass
of drapery bunched around the bay window and adjacent french windows.
The curtains were huge and richly shaded in deep red and cream, with
ornate curved pelmets and long tassels and great loops of fabric caught
back from the windows.

"My goodness."

"Do you like them?"

He had no idea what he liked or might be persuaded to like; no idea
what was appropriate for a house such as this.  In truth, he'd been
quite happy with the way the room had looked before.  It was only when
Mrs.  Ellis pointed out the need for some new chair covers and a lick
of paint, that he'd realised it'd been nine years since anything had
been done, since two years before his wife's death.  Friends had
recommended Dinah for the work, and the next moment, or so it seemed,
he'd found himself dining with her and signing up for a total
refurbishment.

"Well, have a think about it," she said.

"I'm sure they're fine," he declared, though even as he said this he
knew the decor was too rich and heavy for his taste and that if he had
any courage at all he should tell her.  Following on from this came the
knowledge that he owed her other far more important truths, and that
here too he was a terrible coward.  He should tell her what a poor
prospect he was for her, how through no fault of her own he was not
husband material, but the time never seemed right, in these troubled
times least of all.

"You sound rather down," she said.

"I am a little."

"You don't want me to come over for half an hour?"

This offer was made in a spirit of generosity, he knew, but he refused
it none the less.

"Terry," she said with uncharacteristic hesitation, "I hate to mention
it when you've so much on your mind, but the holiday, it's getting late
to book.  Are we still on?"

He had forgotten, or had chosen to forget, that in three weeks they
were meant to be going to Royal Ascot for a couple of days, then on to
the South of France for a short break.  "Oh heavens, Dinah, I don't
know .. ."  She made no sound, but he knew she would have been planning
for it, would have bought a hat, an outfit.  Steeling himself to take
the sensible option, he said, "Look, perhaps it would be safer to count
me out for the summer, until things get clearer."

She said evenly, "Of course."  Then: "We could always keep it to Ascot,
couldn't we?  Just a couple of days."

"Best not.  Too chancy He heard a distant ringing and realised it was
his mobile, back in the study.  "Speak later!"  Cutting Dinah off
without chance of reply, he hurried to answer the call before the
message service picked up.

"Sorry I was a bit delayed," said Fergal in his unhurried tones.

"Nothing wrong?"  asked Terry, clambering breathlessly into his
chair.

"No.  Fine."

"So?"

"So she's regained consciousness."

It was on the tip of Terry's tongue to admit that he already knew this,
but he checked himself.  He didn't want to confess to having made the
call.

"And she's lucid," Fergal continued, 'which is a good indication for
brain damage, by which, of course, I mean lack of brain damage '

"She's talking?"

"And seeing.  There's a question mark over the hearing -may be damage
to one ear.  But the other's fine."

Terry shuddered with relief and anguish.

Fergal went on in his soft educated voice, "They operated yesterday
afternoon, as planned, and they're pleased with the way it went.
They've also done a further round of X-rays and CT scans, so they've
got as clear a picture as they're going to get for the moment '

"What is the picture?"

A moment while Fergal phrased his answer.  "It's as they first thought
the spinal cord is damaged."

"For certain?"

"For certain."

"The operation they couldn't fix it?"

"Spinal cord damage can't be fixed, Terry."

Fergal never referred to him as Terry never called him by any name at
all in fact and the unexpectedness of this only served to drive home
the dread finality of his words.  Terry heard an escape of breath and
realised it was his own.  "Oh dear Lord," he murmured.

"But they can't say what the effects will be, not yet '

"Can't say or won't say?"

"Can't say.  It's a bit complicated, but I can take a shot at
explaining it if you like.  After I got the information I went and
checked it out with a doctor friend of mine.  I think I've got it
straight."

Terry made an effort to clear his mind.  "Okay go ahead."

There was the leafing of paper as Fergal looked at his notes.  "The
spine is damaged in two places, in the neck and in the thoracic region.
The injury in the neck, at what they call C5/6, is a simple fracture of
the vertebra a hairline crack to you or me.  It isn't likely to be a
problem.  The bone should mend itself over time and the scans suggest
the spinal cord is undamaged.  Just suggest, mind you, because here's
where the uncertainty comes in they won't know for sure about any
effects until the body gets over the trauma and the swelling goes down
and any natural healing has taken place.  Then '

"Healing?  I thought you said .. ."

"I didn't say there wasn't any healing," Fergal replied in his patient
way.  "Just that damage to the spinal cord itself can't be mended."

Terry hadn't entirely followed, but let it pass.

"Now the second injury is at the point known as T9.  Here the vertebra
suffered a comminuted transverse fracture.  This means the bone was
shattered and the spine was partially dislocated I'm not sure that's
the right word put out of alignment, if you like.  The operation fused
the spine with screws and metal plates, so no further injury can occur.
It's here that the scans show damage to the spinal cord, but again the
doctors can't tell what the effects will be until the swelling goes
down and the body has had a chance to recover generally.  And that
takes months, sometimes many months.  There are different types of
damage to the spinal cord, like to the front of it, the back of it, the
side of it, and different degrees of damage, partial, complete,
etcetera, and only time will tell what's what.  Oh, they'll be
transferring her to a spinal unit as soon as it's safe to move her, by
the way.  No date yet, but in two weeks, something like that."

"But the outcome?  What are they saying?  What do they think?"

That's what I mean it's too early to say yet, they have no way of
knowing."

"Come on," Terry protested.  "They must have their views.  I mean,
privately."

"Privately?"  echoed Fergal with soft irony, as if the information he'd
already obtained hadn't been exclusive enough.  "The only opinion I got
was sort of third-hand," he said reluctantly, 'a junior source, if you
follow me.  Not to be taken as totally reliable."

"Yes, yes and?"

"There'll be some degree of paralysis."

"She won't walk again?"

"They can't know, Terry that's what I'm trying to say."

"But it's probable?"

Fergal didn't answer and Terry took his silence to be an answer in
itself.

After a moment, Fergal said, "I'm still working on the police side of
things.  That might take a bit longer.  Starting from scratch there, if
you understand me."

"Of course."  Terry added, "You've done fine.  Thank you.  And Fergal?
I want to extend the brief.  Can we have a look at Ben Galitza?"

"When you say a look, are we talking surveillance or general
intelligence?"

"General intelligence.  For the moment anyway."

Terry had only the vaguest idea of how Fergal obtained his information,
and took care not to get any the wiser.  Fergal had come from Cintel, a
corporate intelligence agency Terry used from time to time.  One day he
had simply presented himself to Terry and asked to work for him on 'a
one to one' basis because, as Fergal had put it, he wasn't really a
corporate man, thereby implying that he didn't regard Terry as much of
a one either.  By degrees Terry had gathered that in Fergal's more
misty past, before a flirtation with the priesthood, a short-lived
marriage and what might have been a breakdown, he had been a lecturer
in French at Trinity College, Dublin.

By any standards he had done an outstanding job this time round, and
Terry said again, "Thank you."

"Have you had any more thoughts about the best way to play it with the
police?"  Fergal asked.

"I've thought."

"You want to leave things as they are?"

"I do."

Fergal made no comment on this, but the very fact that he'd asked was
enough to send a small wedge of doubt into Terry's mind, and as soon as
he'd put the phone down he sat staring out into the garden, raking over
the pros and cons until he had satisfied himself once more that he had
made the right decision.

Hearing a movement upstairs, he roused himself to go and see Maeve.  He
wondered how it would be with her this evening: whether her day would
have been good or bad, whether she would eat more than a token mouthful
for supper.  Most of all, he wondered how he would present the day's
news to her without giving himself away.  He poured himself two fingers
of Jameson's and, downing them in one, poured another smaller measure
and polished that off as well.  As he started up the stairs he made a
conscious effort to relax his features so that when Maeve looked into
his face she shouldn't read too many of his troubles there.

He met her coming out of her room, and went to embrace her.

"How's my darling girl?"

She came into his arms and said, "Better today, thanks, Dadda."

"There's my girl."

"The iron seems to be doing some good."

"Your mother had the anaemia too.  Runs in the family."  He shook his
head.  "They should have spotted it before."

He held her at arm's length.  She did look a little better.  He thought
he could see a touch more colour in her cheeks, though the flesh itself
was still drawn against the bones, her upper arms were still little
more than matchsticks under his hands.  For once he tried not to dwell
on the doctors' incompetence, on the terrible hours when he thought he
had lost her, and keep his anger focused on more worthy targets.

"Shall we go to Morne at the weekend then?"  he said in a cheerful
tone.  "Get some air into our lungs, take a walk or two in the garden.
What do you say, my darling?"

Her face wore the exhausted look that had become so achingly familiar
to him over the last four months.  Sometimes he wondered if he would
ever see her eyes bright again.

"If you like," she said.

"Oh, I think a little walking would do us both good, wouldn't it?  Your
father most of all!"  He tapped the bulge of his belly, which was
something of a joke between them.  "What does the nurse say?"

She dropped her head abruptly, and his heart sank when he realised that
in his thoughtless way he had said the wrong thing.  "Not too late to
go back to college," he said coaxingly.  "They're keeping your place
'

"I won't go back, Dadda.  I won't."

"But you were made to be a nurse, darling girl.  You'd be the best
nurse in the world."

"No."

"Is it England that's the problem?  We could always find you a college
in Dublin, so you could live at home '

She raised her head and her eyes were brimming.  "No."

He managed a smile.  "If that's what you want."

He linked her arm through his and, covering her hand where it lay on
his arm, walked her downstairs.

"Is there news?"  she asked.

"News?"

"Of Catherine:

"Indeed!  I was going to tell you the minute we got downstairs.  She's
regained consciousness.  I just heard a moment ago '

With a gasp Maeve stopped and turned to him, and for a moment her face
came alive.  "She's going to be all right then?"

"Well, she's talking and hearing and seeing, so it's all looking good
from that point of view."

"What else?"  she demanded hungrily.

"Well..  . she's off the danger list."

"But what are they saying?"

"It's early days yet.  You know very early days.  They need to wait and
see."

Instantly her mood plunged.  "What do you mean, they need to wait and
see?  There's something wrong, isn't there?  Tell me."

"Darling girl, they're investigating.  You know better than anyone that
sometimes they don't always find the problem straight away."

"So there is something wrong!  What is it?  Tell me!"

She was taking great gulps of air and he hastened to calm her.
"Remember, darling, the fall was a terrible thing.  Her body needs time
to mend.  Quite a while.  There'll be rehabilitation, physiotherapy all
the usual things."

Maeve shook her head and murmured, "No, no .. ."

He persuaded her to continue down the stairs.  She moved jerkily.

"I must go and see her," she said.

"When you're better, darling girl.  When you're better."

"I can't bear it.  I can't bear it.  She was so kind to me, Dadda.  So
kind."

Flashes of memory came to him from the long summer at Morne four years
ago: a glimpse of Catherine taking Maeve off to show her something, a
dress or it might have been shoes; then a picnic in the walled garden,
Catherine and Maeve sitting on the grass talking companionably as
though they were of an age, not eight years apart.  Inevitably more
painful and personal memories followed, of the weeks of his folly and
the mortifying letter, but he shut these firmly from his mind.

He walked Maeve into the small sitting room, to her favourite chair
facing the TV.  She pressed herself into a corner of the chair and drew
her legs up under her.  "She was so very good to me.  So good,
Dadda."

Terry heard the crack in her voice and thought: Dear Lord, please don't
let there be tears tonight.

"If they're talking of rehab and physio, there must be something
seriously wrong," Maeve cried.  "I know it.  I know it!"

"Hand on heart, darling, they really don't know."

"But she fell!  She fell!"

"We have to wait and see.  That's all we can do."

"I can't bear it, Dadda."

"You can't take all the worries of the world on your shoulders, darling
girl.  You must think of yourself.  That's your first duty."

But there was no soothing her during these periodic plunges into
despondency and Terry wondered if he should cancel his meeting with
Galitza.  He asked, "You have been taking all your pills, darling,
haven't you?"

But she had turned her face away from him, her head was pressed into
the back of the chair, and he knew he must attempt to cajole her out of
this mood or lose her to anxiety for the rest of the evening. Sometimes
he wondered if he shouldn't try to shake her out of it, literally take
her by the shoulders, if it wouldn't be a kindness, but he couldn't
bring himself to do such a thing, not when she had been so dreadfully
ill, not when he could still remember in every terrible detail the
night in the hospital when she had almost slipped away. Instead, he
perched on the side of the chair and, threading an arm clumsily round
her shoulders, rocked her gently, whispering softly, "There, there, my
darling girl.  It'll all be fine, you wait and see."

She murmured, "I'm so sorry, Dadda, I'm such a nuisance to you."

"A nuisance?  That you could never be.  Never!"  Saying this, he
remembered with a surge of emotion the only time he had felt truly
frustrated by Maeve's dependence, the only time she had actually
prevented him from doing anything he dearly wanted to do, and that was
four days ago when he had longed with every instinct in his body to go
to London and find out what had happened to Catherine and, while he was
about it, to take Ben Galitza apart with his bare hands.

She was quieter now and he dared to hope that the worst might be over.
He talked about the summer ahead, about the things they would do
together, how he was going to take time off, a month or more, and spend
it with her at Morne, how she was to invite friends, as many or as few
as she wanted.  When he finally ran short of words, he hummed softly to
her, a poor rendering of "Some Enchanted Evening'.

The thin summer light began to deepen imperceptibly, bringing the
brilliant yellows and blues and golds that dominated the room into
glaring focus.  In keeping with his schizophrenic existence one
inconsequential corner of Terry's mind was deciding that he really must
ask Dinah to tone the colours down a bit, while another colder and more
determined part was rehearsing the conversation he would have with Ben
Galitza, speculating not only on how much money Ben would dare to ask
for, but how much Terry would agree to give him and the heavy price
that he would force him to pay.

At seven thirty he said quietly to Maeve, "Now I have to go out for a
while, just an hour or so.  But you'll have to promise me you'll eat
something while I'm gone.  Will you?  Otherwise I'll worry about you
the whole time I'm away."

She turned her face to him and fixing him with a beseeching gaze
asked, "You'll make sure Catherine's all right, won't you, Dadda?"

"Why, yes .. ."  He hardly knew what to say.  "Of course I will."

The light in her eyes faded as quickly as it had come.

Terry bent down to embrace her and felt the chill breath of uncertainty
and doubt on his cheek.

Before leaving he turned the television on for her and commanded Conn
to stay beside her chair.  When he paused at the door to say goodbye
Maeve was already staring dully at the screen.

Chapter Three

"IF YOU wouldn't mind."  Simon indicated the unlit cigarette poised
between Emma Russell's fingers.

"Oh."  She looked around her with a show of exaggerated puzzlement as
if a car was a perfectly natural receptacle for cigarette fumes.  Then,
in a tone of sudden understanding: "Oh, it's new, is it?"

"No, I just don't want it smelling of cigarettes."

She made a face and, closing her lighter with a snap, dropped the
cigarette back into the packet.  "You must work incredibly hard to keep
it this way."

"I'm sorry?"  They were crawling through the unlovely end of Earl's
Court in a slow line of early-morning traffic that promised to last all
the way to Notting Hill.  The rain had stopped in the night but the sky
was still heavy, and a dankness hung in the air.  "I'm sorry?"  he said
again.

"Do you ban feet?"

He glanced across at her, not quite sure of the spirit in which this
remark was intended.  "I get it vale ted every week."

Her mouth twitched in a small knowing smile, as if he had just
confirmed an accurate and rather unflattering picture of himself.

Irritated by this, and by the fact that he'd put himself to
considerable inconvenience by offering to pick her up and drive her to
the police station on what was going to be an extremely busy morning,
he said, "I get a man to look after it for me, if you really want to
know.  I have to.  I simply don't have the time for that sort of thing.
I run three companies.  Three very demanding companies."

"Aha."  She was in the midst of an enormous yawn.

"And while we're on the subject of getting things straight," he said in
the slow steady voice he used to explain things to people who weren't
too quick on the uptake, "I don't work for Ben the two of us are
partners in a company that trades with Eastern Europe.  We set up the
company together.  As partners."

"Oh ... right."

He wanted to add crossly: And moreover there is no ballerina gear in my
flat, there is nothing faintly outrageous in my closet, only the
costume my mother once wore when she danced with the Rambert, which Ben
just happened to see hanging in the spare room when he invited himself
to stay three years ago, when, having been kicked out by his then
girlfriend at two in the morning, he was partaking of my hospitality,
the shit.

He wanted to say all this and more, but he'd learnt from bitter
experience that it would do him no good.  If you tried to explain
something like that, something that had grown into a huge joke, people
weren't interested in the truth, they only wanted to roar with laughter
and say how brilliant it was to be a cross-dresser, particularly such a
cultured one ah, the quips came thick and fast when people were having
fun and that he wasn't to be ashamed, not for a moment, not when it was
so fantastically amusing to picture him in pink tulle.  These people
were shits as well, just like Ben.  The secret was not to let it
rankle, not to give anything away, but to rise effortlessly above it.

He did this now, saying smoothly, "I know DS Wilson will appreciate
this very much."

"I still don't see why it can't wait," Emma said peevishly, stifling
another enormous yawn.  "I'm desperately jet lagged  My body's
screaming: Three in the morning!"

Simon felt no remorse for having dragged her out.  It served her right.
She had started grousing as soon as he'd called and told her the police
wanted to see her, had griped about having only just got to sleep a few
hours before, had demanded to know why they couldn't come to her later
in the day, for Christ's sake.  Simon had bitten back the impulse to
say that nobody was getting much sleep at the moment certainly not him:
four hours last night?  five?  and that when it came to Catherine
surely nothing could be too much trouble.  Instead he had explained
very firmly that everything of the remotest importance to the
investigation had to be followed up immediately, that DS Wilson
couldn't get away from the police station to see her, and in an effort
to humour her that her information could be immensely valuable.  Emma
had finally agreed, though not without a series of resentful sighs that
had caused him to grit his teeth.  Devoted to Catherine?  She had no
idea what devotion meant.

Emma's litany of complaint was bringing an unattractive shrillness to
her voice.  "Well, I hope they're not expecting a statement," she said.
"I'm not going to hang around all day."

"They just want to hear what you have to say."

"But that's the point I haven't got anything to say, have I?  Not
really.  Why can't they talk to Ben, for heaven's sake?  He'd be able
to tell them much better than me."

"I'm sure he will, once he gets back."

She shot him a curious look.  "Yes, why is he away?  There's nothing
wrong, is there?"

"Like I said, he had to rush off."

She shook her head and murmured admiringly, "Ben!"

This reaction had a dreary familiarity for Simon, who had yet to meet a
woman who wasn't prepared to forgive Ben behaviour that would be judged
totally unacceptable in anyone else.

They stopped at some lights.

"Why didn't she get the calls traced?"  Simon asked.

"Mmm?"  Emma had leant her head back against the seat and closed her
eyes.

"Why didn't Catherine dial 1471?  Or get an intercept put on the
line."

"Didn't take it that seriously," Emma murmured groggily.

"She told you, though.  She mentioned it to you."

After a while she muttered, "I don't think you can get an intercept on
a mobile, can you?"

They were moving off again and Simon was forced to look at the road.
"The calls came on her mobile?"

"Mmm."

"You didn't say that."

Reopening her eyes, Emma peered blearily ahead.  "I definitely said it
was her mobile."

Letting this pass, he asked, "How long ago did it all start?"

Emma pressed her forefingers into the corners of her eyes, the scarlet
talons like tears of blood.  "November?"

"And they've been going on all this time?"

"Haven't a clue.  You see?  I'm really not the person to ask."

"And Catherine had no idea who this guy was?"

Emma's golden hair swung around as she slowly shook her head.

"Someone who had her number at any rate."

"Oh, that could have been anyone, couldn't it?  You know how it is in
her line of work."

He didn't know, and said so.

"Well, all her clients would have had her number for a start, wouldn't
they?  And all her would-be clients.  And her suppliers.  And all the
little men who lay paving stones and build arbours and plant trees, who
might have got the hots for Cath over the nasturtiums, or whatever it
is that turns garden people on.  And then there's the TV.  Once you're
on TV well, you're inviting weirdos, aren't you?"

Remembering the three or four rather serious-minded programmes on
garden design that Catherine had made for a minority network, Simon
failed to see how this followed.  "Weirdos?"

"Sad people.  Men in anoraks.  People who get fixed on someone they see
on TV.  That's how I got on to the idea of a stalker.  Though come to
think about it, far more likely to be a wanker, isn't it?  An anorak
who wants a quick thrill with a soggy newspaper cutting."

Simon winced.  He could never get used to the way some women talked,
the coarseness of their thinking, the ugliness of their language.  "But
her number how would he have got hold of it?"

"Oh' she spun a hand through the air 'a thousand ways."

"Like?"

"Oh God She couldn't believe she was having to explain something so
obvious.  "Well, he could phone the TV producers saying he wanted Cath
to design this massive park for his stately home and could he have her
number please, or he might phone the owners of one of the gardens in
the programmes and say he was longing for a divine little knot garden
just like theirs and what was the number of that clever little designer
person, or-'

"I think I've got the picture," Simon interrupted caustically, not
taking kindly to being talked down to in this fashion.  Staring
glassily ahead, he maintained a firm silence and when he next glanced
across it was to see Emma fast asleep with her head wedged against the
window.

She groaned when he woke her.  "Shit.  I hope this doesn't take
long."

The lobby of Netting Hill police station was built to withstand the
assaults of an ungrateful public.  The duty officer sat behind
reinforced glass, and when Wilson appeared it was through a heavy steel
pass door that swung shut behind him with a deep thud.

The sergeant was a lean wiry man of about forty with a straight back, a
rapid handshake and an intense manner that suggested honesty, energy
and dedication.  His mouth shaped itself into a brief professional
smile.  "Good of you to drop by, Miss Russell."

"I wouldn't have called it dropping by exactly."

Wilson looked mildly enquiring.  "Weren't you on your way to the
hospital?"

She frowned at him.  "I wasn't on my way anywhere."

"Good of you to come in specially, then."

As the implications of Wilson's remark sank in, Emma threw Simon a
suspicious glance.

Studiously ignoring this, Simon told Wilson he would go and wait
outside in the car.  "Though I'd be glad of a brief word afterwards, if
I may."

"Sit in, if you like," Wilson said.  "I'll find us some coffee."

Simon said appreciatively, "If that's all right.  Thank you."

"Dropping by!"  hissed Emma sarcastically as they followed Wilson to an
interview room.

Seated in front of Wilson with a coffee and a cigarette, Emma went
through one of those transformations that left Simon wondering not for
the first time at women's disconcerting ability to change moods at the
drop of a hat.  The petulant child vanished, replaced by a sympathetic
and amenable woman, Catherine's dearest friend who was anxious to help
in any way she could.

The story was much the same as before until Emma said, "Sometimes he
called twice a day."

"Were these regular times?"  Wilson asked.

"Oh, I don't know about that.  Except ... I think Cath said usually in
the day.  Yes," she declared with greater certainty, 'the day."

"What about weekends?"

She scooped her hair back from her forehead and tapped the ash
thoughtfully off her cigarette.  "She didn't say."

Wilson was about to ask another question when Emma interrupted with a
wave of her hand, a slow dipping of splayed fingers that accelerated
into a flutter as she summoned up a half-buried memory.  "Yes there was
something else that stuck in my mind something I couldn't work out at
the time.  Not sure I can now, really, but anyway she said it was
someone really sad.  No .. ."  She went trawling through her memory
again.  "It wasn't so much sad ... I think she said it was a very
unhappy person.  Yes, a very unhappy person.  Now in one way I thought,
yeah well, it would be an unhappy person, wouldn't it?  But then I got
this feeling she was talking about someone in particular, that she knew
for sure that this person was unhappy, if you see what I mean."

Wilson gazed unblinkingly at Emma.  "Knew for sure?  But you say
Catherine didn't know who this person was?"

"That's right.  I mean not a name."

There was a pause in which Wilson seemed to be waiting for Emma to go
on.  "You're suggesting', he said eventually, 'that though she had no
name for this person, she knew something about him?  Something to make
her think he was unhappy?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying.  Yes."

"The caller only ever spoke once, is that right?"

"That's what she told me, yes."

"So it was from this one conversation?"

Emma raised a shoulder and turned her mouth down in a Gallic shrug.  "I
suppose so."

"Catherine didn't tell you what he said?"

"No."

Wilson went through the motions of asking more questions but it was
obvious he wasn't expecting to learn much else and, winding things up
briskly, he thanked Emma for her time.

When they reached the front hall Simon managed to catch Wilson's eye
and gesture him to one side.  As soon as Emma had gone ahead, Simon
said, "I was just wondering if you had any news that I could pass on to
the family."

"Nothing as yet, I'm afraid."

"No leads?"

"Not really."

Simon wondered if Wilson's air of efficiency was a cover for
ineptitude.  He was, after all, still a sergeant.  "Nothing from the
labs?"  Hearing himself say this Simon thought not without a certain
pride that he was beginning to sound like a criminal lawyer.

"Nothing concrete," Wilson replied carefully.  "However, there is one
thing we are particularly keen to establish, and that is the identity
of the man who called the ambulance."

This was the man Simon had come to call The Good Samaritan.  "A
neighbour?"

"Seems not.  We've checked them all."

"Not Ben Galitza?"  Simon knew that it wasn't Ben, but he needed to
play the part of the dispassionate professional.

Wilson shook his head.  "Barely conscious when the ambulance arrived.
No, we're thinking along the lines of a passer-by.  Saw the open door.
Looked in.  Spotted Catherine lying there."

Simon had a vision of darkness and blood and silence, of a man rushing
into the house and dropping onto his knees beside Catherine, staring
down at her in horror, taking off his jacket and laying it over her.
"You think he might be able to help, this man?"

"Might have spotted a person leaving the scene.  Could have been the
very thing that made him go into the house seeing someone running out
in suspicious circumstances, leaving the door wide open."

Simon nodded sagely.  "The call was taped, presumably?"

"Indeed."

Well, tell me, you bastard.  Don't force me to ask.  "Any clues there?"
he enquired solemnly.

Wilson shrugged.  "Some."  For a moment it looked as though he wasn't
going to elaborate, and Simon had to stifle the cry of frustration that
sprang into his throat.  Then Wilson was saying ruminatively, "An
educated voice decidedly.  Calm sort of type.  Very businesslike.  Very
factual.  And informed on medical matters, in the sense of having done
a first-aid course, I would say.  Something of that nature."

Educated, calm, businesslike.  This image flew around

Simon's mind, seeking shape and substance.  "The ambulance crew saw
this person, presumably?"

Wilson gave a sigh.  "Indeed they did, but according to them he
disappeared so smartish that they can't give a description.  For which
read: they didn't take a real look at him, didn't ask his name, didn't
see him go."

Wilson moved purposefully towards the main doors and Simon was forced
to follow.

"No description at all, then?"

"Nothing worth having.  The three of them might as well have clocked
three different people."

Wilson led the way out into the street.

Simon said, "If this man had seen someone running away, surely he'd
have reported it by now."

"You'd think.  But people don't always realise the importance of what
they've witnessed.  Believe me."

Simon made a gesture, as if to defer to Wilson's superior knowledge.
"You'll keep me in touch?  You've got my number?"

"Yes, indeed."  Wilson turned as if to hurry away, only to think better
of it and strike an awkward pose of informality, hands thrust into his
pockets, face lifted to the sky.  "Ah, sun."

A few yards away, Emma was leaning against the wing of Simon's car.
Seeing her heavy shoulder bag lying on the bonnet, bristling with studs
and buckles, Simon tried not to think of the scratches it would make
when she dragged it off.

Wilson appeared to make up his mind about something.  "Look, there is
one other thing," he said in a low confidential tone, 'but I will ask
you not to mention it to the family at the present time.  No point in
upsetting them, if you understand me."

Simon felt a surge of tension.  "Of course."

Wilson thrust out his chin.  "There would appear to be a somewhat' he
searched for the word 'bizarre factor in all this."

Simon thought: Dear God, what's coming now?  Will I be able to stand
it?  Outwardly he didn't move, didn't alter his expression of grave
concern.

"I can't give you details, of course.  But suffice it to say that we
found some articles that give us reason to believe that the assault had
overtones of how shall I say?  - a sexual or psychotic nature."

Simon felt a rush of heat, his heart seemed to lift in his chest.

"No reason why your average burglar shouldn't be a bit of a psychopath,
of course.  On the side, so to speak.  Or a fantasist, or any of these
things they get off of the videos nowadays.  But there we are, we have
to take it into account."  Simon must have looked as startled as he
felt because Wilson added, "See what I mean best not to mention it to
the family."

"When you say, articles .. .?"

"Well, I can't give details.  You understand."

But I don't understand, Simon wanted to argue.  "Of course," he said.
"I'm just shocked."

Wilson was on the point of leaving.  Desperate to detain him, Simon
almost reached out to grab his arm.  "You're not saying she was
sexually assaulted?"

"No no evidence of that.  It's just that this man appears to have been
a bit well, sick."

Sick?  He couldn't begin to think what he meant by this.  His
imagination roared off in a dozen different directions, all of them
wild and disturbing and hopelessly mixed up.  Found some articles?
Sick?  Feeling his cheek jump uncontrollably, he turned it away.  "So
you'll be looking for someone with a ... record of this sort of
thing?"

"Let's just say we'll be keeping an open mind as to whether this person
broke in with burglary or assault in mind."

Simon almost laughed.  "So these calls .. .?"

"Oh, yes.  Could be very significant."

"I see."  With that, Simon was finally lost for words.

He had intended to drive straight to the hospital and leave Emma to
pick up a cab there, but he was so agitated, his mind so numb, that he
found himself driving her all the way back to her flat in Chelsea.  At
one point she asked what Wilson had told him during their huddled
conversation.  He fumbled for an answer, muttered something that made
little sense and was unable to finish.

"You are in a state," she remarked.  "What is it, for God's sake?"

He said with a break in his voice, "They think he might have meant to
harm her.  Might have intended to, right from the outset."

Emma absorbed this with a heavy sigh and a shake of her head.  After a
while he became aware of her watching him.  She said, "You think a lot
of Cath, don't you?"

He couldn't answer, except to give an anguished nod.

"Ah, Mr.  Jardine.  You've got me into a lot of trouble."  Sister Jones
spoke in the weary tones of someone who is far too tired to get
angry.

Simon looked suitably mystified, though having an idea of what was
coming he felt the first stirrings of injured pride.

"The family say you're not representing them at all.  They say we
shouldn't have let you in to see Catherine.  They say you aren't to be
allowed to see her again."

This pronouncement bore the stamp of Alice's vituperative little mind,
but Simon was wounded all the same because Duncan obviously hadn't
stood up for him.  Even allowing for Duncan's erratic grasp on loyalty,
he counted this an outright betrayal.

"They're under a lot of stress," he said in a forgiving tone.  "I think
everything will get sorted out as soon as Catherine's husband gets
back."

"But he is back."

"Here?"

"Here."

Startled, Simon looked at his watch.  "When did he arrive?"

"Oh .. . ten minutes ago?"

Simon covered his surprise with a brisk nod.  Trying not to think of
the work piling up at the office, he stationed himself by a window
overlooking the atrium, which also offered a view of the passage
leading to Catherine's room, and settled down to wait.  He tried to
work out where Ben could have got to last night that enabled him to fly
back to London, get through the airport and into town by ten fifteen in
the morning.  Not Warsaw Simon knew the timetable off by heart. Zurich?
Paris?  Guernsey?  Not far away, that was for sure.  But it must have
been one hell of a panic to send him rushing all over town for three
days and then off on a plane, one hell of a panic to make him leave
Catherine's bedside.  But listen, he wanted to say to Ben's face,
what's so serious that you can't tell me about it?  What's so
momentous, so overwhelming that it doesn't involve me or the business
in some way?  Times are hard, Ben, remember?  We've had a bad year, we
lost the Polska CMC deal, we're seriously broke, if we're going to be
in a panic about anything it should bloody well be the business.
Listen, Ben at this point he would look him dead in the eye if you
can't trust me who the hell can you trust, for God's sake?  It's me,
I'm your partner, remember?

There were seven messages waiting for Simon on his mobile; with the
fifteen calls already listed on the white card in his breast pocket and
the three meetings scheduled for the afternoon it was going to be a
nightmare of a day.  He needed no reminding that, yet again, he was
shouldering most of the load.  When it came to Duncan's wine company,
this wasn't a problem.  Since Simon had knocked it into shape and
installed a half-decent manager it more or less ran itself.  RNP was a
different matter, however.  RNP was a hands-on company that relied on
vast amounts of time, effort and nurturing.  How often had he said to
Ben, We're in the nurturing business?  Nurturing contacts, nurturing
deals, nurturing the possibility of deals.  In an average year, if he
and Ben gave it their best shot and had a bit of luck, they managed to
pull off four or five medium-sized deals.  The simplest were straight
sales, a shipment of grey-market Levi's from Detroit to Hungary, a
cancelled order for amber from Poland to Singapore.  But more often
they were three-way deals, cash at both ends and a trade in the middle:
a consignment of Laotian teak marooned by bankruptcy in Singapore that
they traded to the Poles for a warehouse of glass, which they sold on,
strictly cash on delivery, to a discount warehouse in Chicago.

They had decided right at the beginning that they weren't going to get
involved in any deal so big that the whole business had to ride on it.
Far too risky; they wouldn't let themselves fall into that old trap.
For the first three years it hadn't been hard to stick to this policy
for the simple reason that nothing very large had come their way.

Then they had got wind of the Polska CMC deal.

Simon thought briefly: I had a life before the Polska CMC deal, a life
that was my own, running smoothly, going my way.  The remembrance of
what he had lost brought a shiver of bitterness.

Like all the best mistakes, they had been lured in effortlessly, by
degrees.  It had begun like any one of a dozen deals.  There was a
tip-off, a contact, they talked their way past the middlemen to the man
in possession of the goods at Polska CMC, they got a feel for the
price.  A cancelled order for generators, twenty 2000-kilowatt machines
originally destined for German hospitals.  Dollar signs flashed huge
and bright.  Suspiciously huge, of course.  But Ben wouldn't listen. He
wanted to give it a go.  What's the harm, he said, we can only lose the
deal.  So they had waltzed off to Warsaw with their double act, Ben the
talker, the front-man, the Polish-speaking ideas man with the
anglicised Polish name and the charming manner, Simon the detail man,
specialist in small print and bank transfers.

Slowly but surely they had got sucked in.  Slowly but surely they had
neglected their other business until the other deals had melted away.
Negotiations had spun out, months and months of suffocating red tape
and back-slapping dinners and rousing toasts and appalling women with
dubious hygiene and slobbering lips looming up in seedy Warsaw
nightclubs; months and months of getting a feel for the way the wind
was really blowing under the vodka-fired camaraderie, months of
fine-tuning the terms and renegotiating the 'special payments'.  All
this while tying up the other end of the deal with the South American
broker who'd found buyers across the continent and probably off it too.
Getting the money in the right place at the right time was always an
art form, but with this deal it was like writing a score for a
hundred-piece orchestra, the web of transfers between Warsaw and
Switzerland and the Caymans, banks and front companies in Panama and El
Salvador and Monaco, the timing of it all, the bonds, the guarantees.

Three months ago it had been in the bag, signed, sealed, first bank
transfers due any day.  But as Simon should have known did know deep
down, but chose to ignore it was precisely when something was almost in
the bag that it leapt out and savaged you.

Now, as he attempted to revive the business, Simon wasn't sure whether
it was his imagination or he was just suffering a general loss of heart
but new deals seemed much harder to find.

He was finishing a call to Bahrain when he saw Ben emerge from
Catherine's room and walk briskly down the passage towards him.  He
noticed Ben was wearing business clothes, a dark blue Armani suit he'd
acquired a couple of months ago in Milan to add to the twenty or more
suits already in his wardrobe, and a dark open-necked shirt.  As he got
closer Simon noticed he was unshaven and that his shirt was not as
crisp as it might have been, which suggested that, against all habit
and instinct, Ben had gone travelling without a change of clothes.

"Oh hi, what are you doing here?"  Ben demanded vaguely, swivelling to
a halt.

"I came to find out how Catherine was."

"Oh, she's all right," he said carelessly.  "So what's the latest?"

Simon shuddered with disbelief, he almost cried out, How can you say
she's all right?  How can you stand there as if nothing's happened?
Then he remembered that they were all in shock, and that Ben simply had
an unusual way of showing it.

Mechanically, Simon began to summa rise events at RNP while Ben stared
past him into the atrium, listening with the inattentive, faintly bored
expression that Simon knew so well.  His face was mending quickly,
Simon noticed.  The bruising around the left eye was still a rather
bright shade of blue-black but the swelling had gone down, and beneath
its strip of transparent plaster the gash on his left cheek, sealed by
the minuscule stitches, seemed to be healing neatly.  In no time he
would be back to normal: unmarked, unblemished, the handsome man with
the winning ways.  Simon found himself thinking, All bloody wrong, and
just as quickly pushed this thought from his mind, because if you
allowed yourself to get consumed by the injustices of life you could go
mad.

"So Bahrain could be a goer?"

As they talked Simon tried to gauge Ben's mood.  With Ben this was
never easy, since it was necessary to separate the person he chose to
show to the world, a Ben who might be engaging, flamboyant, boyish,
provocative, lost he kept the most mawkish of these fronts for women
from the other Ben, the 'real' Ben in so far as this could ever be
pinned down, the person who might be in a quite different and more
prosaic mood, frustrated, annoyed, displeased, bleak.  Simon saw the
real Ben more often than most, saw him in his rare unguarded moments,
between meetings, between phone calls, when for the odd minute or two
he dropped the pretence that every moment of life must be lived to the
full, at speed and with maximum enjoyment, and revealed a side of
himself that was more sombre and altogether less straightforward.

The Ben he saw now the outer Ben was a man bearing tragedy intensely
but bravely, with restraint and a kind of gruff bewilderment.  As so
often, his appearance had somehow come to match his mood, and he was
looking Byronic, with his bruised face and unshaven chin, his grey eyes
narrowed by fatigue, his light brown hair seemingly wavier and wilder
and wind-blown.  Yet for all his suffering, there was a light in his
eye, a glimmer of something that, if not quite confidence, was pretty
close to it resolution perhaps and, unless Simon was very much
mistaken, relief.

Was the panic over, then?  Had Ben, the master escape artist, done it
again?  Simon wanted to laugh aloud.

Instead, seeing an opportunity, seizing it hastily, he said, "The cash
situation's getting to be a real problem, Ben."

"Yeah?"  He was staring out into the atrium again.

"We have to decide.  We could go on half salary until August, we could
'

"Look I don't think I can deal with this now."

"Later then?"

"Not today.  Not this week."  Reading Simon's expression, he protested
in a tone of self-justification, "Got to look after Cath, haven't I?
From now on, that's the only thing that matters.  Look after her
properly, Simon!  Whatever it takes.  Come what may.  The full bit.  Be
there for her, one hundred per cent!"  He nodded emotionally, caught up
by his own fervour.  "It's the whole world for her from now on! Nothing
but the best."

Simon thought: He really seems to mean it.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to fill in for me, Simon.  I mean,
I'll do what I can, when I can you know that.  But Singapore, Warsaw I
just won't be able to make it.  And Bahrain .. ."  He gestured with
upturned hands.

"I can do Bahrain and Warsaw, of course," Simon replied.  "But
Singapore I won't have time, Ben.  It's going to take a week just to
'

Ben cut him short with a rapid jerk of his fingers.  "Well, just do
what you can, eh?  What you can."

When Simon didn't reply Ben made one of those comradely gestures he
usually kept for business contacts, a comp licit touch on the arm
accompanied by a rapid uplifting smile.

"What about the cash problem?"  Simon asked before he could disappear.
"Shall we go for the half salary?"

"Sure, sure."

"But will you be able to manage?"

He appeared to consider this seriously for the first time, he gave a
light-hearted shrug.  "I'll have to, won't I?"

Ben had always been a big spender, living up to his income and
generally well beyond it, getting stuck into his half of the profits
well before the end of the year.  If he had savings Simon knew that
they couldn't be large.  The house had been bought with Catherine's
only inheritance and a large mortgage.

He said, "If it's a problem, I could always look into the chances of
getting the Bahrain money up front."

"Christ, no.  We'd get stinking terms!  No, no let's cross bridges when
we damn well come to them."

A cash crisis was hardly a bridge to leave to the last minute, but
Simon knew better than to push the issue when Ben was in one of his
more impatient moods.

"So, is that it, then?"  Ben asked briskly.

"You got my message about the police all right?  To say I was taking
Emma Russell to see them this morning?"

He pulled an elaborate face.  "What?"

"I left a message at about eight '

"Why the hell did you take Emma to the police?"

"Well, she told me about the nuisance calls and I thought she should go
and tell Wilson '

"What nuisance calls?"

"The calls that Catherine had been getting on her mobile."

Ben screwed up his handsome face still further into an exaggerated
expression of incredulity.  "For God's sake, what are you talking
about?"

"I thought you knew.  I thought you'd just forgotten."

"I've never heard of any calls!  Never!  This is rubbish!"  He was
angry.

"Well, according to Emma, Catherine had been getting calls for some
time, since about November.  Sometimes as often as twice a day."

"Look, you don't know what you're talking about," Ben retorted in a
shoot-the-messenger tone.  "Emma must have gone and got her wires
completely crossed."

"She seemed fairly certain."

"For heaven's sake, Cath would have told me about something like that.
If it was in the slightest bit serious, I mean."  He glared at Simon.
"And you went and took Emma to the police with it!  Jesus, Simon, you
might have waited, you might have talked to me first.  Really!  For
God's sake!"

"You weren't around.  I thought it was the right thing to do.  And the
police do seem to think it could be important.  They're certainly
taking it seriously."

"That's all we need!  Emma making a drama out of a crisis.  Jesus! I'll
have to go and sort it out with the police, I suppose.  Tell them
they've been sold a load of cobblers."  He gave a heavy sigh of
forbearance.  "Oh, and speaking of dramas' he jabbed a finger at Simon
"Alice tells me you barged in on Cath when she was barely conscious.
For Christ's sake, what's wrong with you?  Have you gone mad?"

Simon took a deep breath.  "I didn't barge in on her, as you put it.  I
simply had a very quiet word to establish if she had any memory of the
attack, so that I could keep the police away.  I thought that was the
idea to make sure she wasn't hassled by them.  Now if I've done the
wrong thing, then excuse me!"  He put a hand to his chest, his voice
shook with aggrievement.  "But if I may remind you there's been no one
else around to organise anything, to deal with the police and sort
everything out.  You were very glad of my help at the beginning, if you
remember.  Getting the locks changed and tidying up and everything else
you couldn't deal with.  And that was quite apart from the business.
Now, don't get me wrong I was glad to help, more than glad.  I'd do
anything, anything at all, you know that.  But when you disappeared' he
emphasised the word mercilessly 'and Duncan asked me to deal with the
police, what was I meant to do refuse?  And after all that, what do I
get but a bollocking from Alice!"

"All right, all right, keep your hair on.  It's just Alice being Alice,
you know how she is."

"Incredibly, unbelievably rude."

"Needs a good screw, as usual."  Ben threw out such remarks all the
time, the more outrageous the better.  They were made largely for
effect, but also because for him there was more than a grain of truth
in such primitive beliefs.

"You don't understand," Simon cried, 'it's me she's got it in for.  You
should have seen her.  It was hideous."

"Perhaps it's you she wants to shag."  This thought caused him such
amusement that he laughed loudly and suddenly.

"Oh, for God's sake!"

Simon's explosion of fury was so violent that it startled both of them.
Ben thrust out a quieting hand.  "Look, calm down, will you?  Calm
down.  It was only Alice.  She's a pain, everyone knows that."  Then,
dropping his head and looking at the floor, he muttered grudgingly,
"Listen, I do appreciate everything you've done.  Really.  I'm very
grateful."

Simon thought: And well may you look guilty, you shit.  You should be
bloody ashamed of yourself.

Ben looked at his watch.  "Hell I'm late.  Are we done?  Anything
else?"

"One thing," Simon said.  "There was a call yesterday from Terry
Devlin."

"Oh yeah?"

"He seemed to know an awful lot about Catherine about her condition, I
mean."

Ben was checking the time on the wall clock over the nursing station.

"Medical information," Simon persisted.  "Stuff he could only have got
from someone here."

"Aha."  He was determined not to pay attention.

"Ben, are you listening?  Someone's been talking out of turn, passing
on confidential information."

Ben was combing his fingers through his hair and pulling his shirt
collar into shape.  "Well, it wasn't any of us, was it?"  He was
looking around for some shiny surface in which to check his
reflection.

"Well, if it was any of the staff we should make a strong complaint."

"I'll look into it."  It was the tone Ben used to humour people when he
wanted them off his back.

"Aren't you bothered?  I mean, it's none of his damned business."

"Mmm?"

"But why would he want it '

Ben gave the sudden explosive sigh of someone who is being sorely
tried.  "Simon for God's sake, because he's a control freak.  Because
he's got this thing about the family.  Because he can't let go."

When Simon still didn't get it Ben took a long-suffering breath and
spelled it out as if for an idiot.  "Because he's soft -in the head."
He raised his eyebrows, he lifted a palm in the pose of someone
awaiting a sign of comprehension.  "About -Cath:

"You mean ..."

"He had a thing for Cath's ma, Lizzie.  Now he's transferred it to
Cath.  Call it continuity."

"Oh."

"Sort of sick really."

"But I thought he pulled a fast one over the Langleys' house in
Ireland."

"He did.  But then, that's always been his way of showing affection to
shaft his friends.  Though it has to be said that Duncan was easy meat.
Bit off more than he could chew .. ."

In the flow of people along the corridors Simon became aware of a
familiar figure heading towards them and signalled a warning to Ben.

'..  . Out of his league on every front, silly old fool.  Always been
clueless when it comes to Catching the signal, Ben turned and, without
a break in his flow, said easily to Duncan,

"Hey ho, Dune.  We were just sorting a few things out.  So ... I'm off
to Fortnum's now to get some goodies for Cath.  Cheer her up.  Bit of
champagne and caviar."

"Good idea," said Duncan, taking it literally.  "Can't do any harm, can
it?  Just a spoonful."

Clapping Duncan on the arm, Ben gave a delighted chuckle, and for an
instant he was the old Ben, the hard-living, hard-playing rogue with
the appetite for life.  "No harm at all!"

As Duncan watched his son-in-law stride off, his lip trembled, he
seemed to control his feelings with difficulty.  "What a thing for the
poor chap.  Married less than a year!  Just setting out on the road of
life.  What a start!  And being so bloody good about it.  Determined to
do his best for Cathy, you know.  Going to pull out all the stops.
Makes one feel very moved, you know.  Very proud."  His voice
reverberated with such honeyed, almost theatrical emotion that Simon
couldn't help thinking that on some typically ill-judged level Duncan
was rather enjoying the drama surrounding his daughter.

"How is Catherine?"

"Mmm?"  Duncan turned and looked at Simon with faint surprise as if
registering his presence for the first time.  "Oh, coming along. Coming
along.  The doctors are doing a marvelous job.  Under the best chap in
London, you know, the very best.  I made sure of that."

Selective amnesia was a peculiar talent of Duncan's and his memory was
never more uneven, it seemed, than when Simon had done him a favour.
Not only had Simon been the person to suggest they should check out the
consultant, but at Duncan's request he had also been the one to make
the necessary enquiries.

"The operation yesterday was it a success?"

"Oh, absolutely!"  Duncan said expansively.  "Went very smoothly.  Of
course, it'll be quite a while before she's back on her feet.  You know
lots of physiotherapy, lots of rest."

Back on her feet.  Could it be true?  Everything Simon had heard told
him it was unlikely, yet this didn't stop a small bubble of hope from
rising irrepressibly to the surface of his mind.  "So ... is that what
they're saying, that she's going to be all right?"

"Oh in time!  In time!  You know."

Simon's hopes subsided.  He should have remembered that making the
right noises was part of Duncan's stock in trade, like his easy charm
and air of patrician authority.  For this reason it was never easy to
get a fix on Duncan, never easy to tell what, if any, of his utterances
were true.

"And how about her memory, Duncan?"  he asked solicitously.  "Has it
come back at all?"

"Memory?"

"The attack does she remember anything?"

"Good God, haven't asked her!"

"It's just that I told the police that she couldn't remember anything,
and it's on that basis that they're staying away."

Duncan looked blank.

"You did ask me to deal with the police, if you remember."

"Did I?  Well, there we are.  But now that things are quieter '..  ."

"You did ask me to see the police, Duncan.  Very definitely.  And I'd
be grateful if you could tell Alice, so that she doesn't go around
saying that I '

They were interrupted by an apologetic Sister Jones, pausing in a rapid
flight up the corridor to confirm some arrangement with Duncan.
Instantly Duncan produced his ready smile, his twinkling gaze, his
attentive manner.  With his fine even features, his high forehead and
greying hair combed back to reveal a widow's peak, his lean stooped
figure clad in a well-cut summer suit and clubbish tie, he had the
distinguished air of the international boardroom, the embassy or the
judge's chambers.  By background, you would guess county and a
well-trodden path through public school and Oxbridge.  The truth, Simon
knew, was somewhat closer to the Eastbourne suburbs, an independent day
school and a short stint at some non-accredited college in America.
From his father Duncan had inherited a love of horseflesh, though like
his father it was invariably the laggardly and lame that attracted his
money, and barely a month went by that Duncan didn't fret about his
salary, his shares and the scandalous cost of living.

As Sister Jones hurried away, Duncan assumed an industrious expression.
"Before you go, Jardine about Ben.  I'm worried .. . He needs to have
some of the load taken off his shoulders, you know."

"When you say load, Duncan?"  It always got Simon's back up when Duncan
called him by his last name, like some sort of hired hand.

"His workload," Duncan declared as if this should have been
self-evident.  "The thing is, while Ben's got so much on his plate
taking care of Catherine, dealing with the doctors he won't have the
time to run the business as he'd like.  Simply not possible."  He spoke
in the sonorous tone he used for board meetings, the inflated voice of
authority and experience.  "And if I may say so, he shouldn't have to
dash around the place like he did yesterday."  He shook his head
reproachfully.  "Something you could have done, surely, Jardine.  Not
too much to ask, to step in and do the smaller trips."

"He wasn't actually on RNP business yesterday, Duncan."

Duncan frowned, as though Simon were making a rather shoddy attempt to
deflect the argument.  "Difficult for you to deal with the core
business on your own, of course I do understand that.  But I was
thinking that if you liaised with Ben on a day-to-day basis, took
instructions on the main decisions, then you might be able to keep
things ticking over until Ben can get his eye on the ball again.  I
know it's a hell of a gap to fill-'

Simon said stiffly, "I'm filling most of the gaps already, Duncan."

"But you don't speak Polish."

"I speak enough."

"But you don't speak it fluently," he argued triumphantly.  "And then
there are all Ben's contacts.  No, no He shook his head decisively.
"You couldn't be expected .. . not on your own .. . The thing is, what
I wanted to say was that if things threaten to go belly up in any way,
I know this fellow who might be able to step in.  Excellent chap.  Bit
of a linguist.  Excellent contacts '

Simon snapped, "I think I can handle things on my own, Duncan."

"Oh?  Well, if you're sure," he said doubtfully.

"Just like I handled your little crisis."

Duncan didn't like to be reminded that his business had been in need of
rescue.  "Hardly did it on your own, old chap," he corrected him
pedantically.  "A team effort.  That's all I was suggesting Reading
Simon's expression, he broke off with a look of mild injury.  "Never
doubted you would do your bester Simon.  It was just a suggestion,
that's all.  Just trying to help.  Just trying to do the right thing by
Ben."

It was typical of Duncan to back off suddenly, to justify himself with
an air of baffled innocence, but it didn't wash with Simon who had no
time for insincerity of this or any other kind.

"So Alice," Simon said resolutely.  "You'll tell her I was acting on
your instructions?"

"The thing is, I know you meant well, Simon no doubt about that but it
was a bit much, you know.  Going in and bothering Catherine like
that."

"I didn't bother her."

"She was upset."

"She was upset because of what has happened to her, Duncan.  Not
because of me."

"You didn't have to tell her.  It was up to us, her family."

"I'm sorry, she asked me what happened and I told her.  Very gently.
Incredibly gently.  What was I going to do pretend she'd been in a car
accident?"  Simon was unable to prevent his voice from breaking
slightly as he added, "I think the world of Catherine.  I would never
do anything to harm her."

"Oh well, there we are, there we are," Duncan muttered,

with a glance around the hall.  "But, look, Simon, the thing is, Ben
and I will be able to handle everything from now on.  So, er you
know."

"I don't think I do know."

"No longer necessary for you to deal with the police.  And, er, while
we appreciate your concern your support well, we're fine here too."  He
angled his elegant head, waiting for a sign from Simon that he had
understood.  Forced by Simon's silence to elaborate, he said, "No
visitors except family, you see."

"I see," Simon said tightly.  "When she's a little better then?"

Duncan made the sort of gesture that could have meant anything, but
which Simon recognised from long experience to be a rejection.  From
equally long experience, Simon carried off his departure with a
composure and style that even Duncan with his fastidious eye for the
social niceties couldn't have faulted.  It wasn't until Simon reached
the street that he allowed his humiliation and anger full rein.  After
all he'd done!  After all the work he'd put in!  Duncan and Alice had
the nerve to treat him this way, like some paid hand!  Had the nerve,
he thought with a steadier passion, to think they could manage without
him.  Well, he thought grimly, time would teach them otherwise.

He continued to quiver with repressed indignation as he drove home to
Chelsea to drop the car off.  It was only in the cab on his way to the
office in Marylebone that his deeper disquiet about Wilson's words
worked its way to the surface once more, and he again brooded unhappily
on the 'overtones', the 'articles' that had been found next to
Catherine.  He racked his imagination as to what this something could
be, his mind flitted across horrors and obscenities culled from films
and books, and each image distressed and frightened him more than the
last.  He thought with a swell of emotion: I must stay close to her, I
must protect her.  And the thought of the months of guardianship ahead
filled him with quiet joy.

Reaching the office, he got through his own work and much of Ben's as
well, and some of the secretary's too because she was off sick.  He
worked quickly and conscientiously because it was not in his nature to
do anything sloppily, but at some point in that long day a thought came
to him and kept returning until it took on the solidity of a decision.
He would give Ben and the business three months before leaving; he
would not abandon either until they were functioning properly again. He
at least understood the meaning of loyalty.  He searched his
compendious memory for the apt quotation and located it with
satisfaction.  I'll prove more true than those that have more cunning
to be strange.

It was nine when he finally locked up.  He took a cab to a fashionable
media bar in Soho and drank two Manhattans before going on to a club he
knew well, where the pleasures were certain and the price well within
his budget.

Chapter Four

IN THE afternoons Catherine slept fitfully; a way of passing time or of
postponing it.  The interventions and routines of medical rounds were
over, the physiotherapist gone, the family not expected nor encouraged
until after five.  She lay, eyes closed, absorbing the sounds of the
city: the swish of tyres in the monsoon wet, the suppressed throb of
the hot dry days, the rumbling of a stationary bus in the build-up to
the rush hour.  With these sounds came dreamy half-realised images of
umbrellas and scorching sunshine and pallid faces on the number 19 of
her student days.  A life passing her by.

Her sense of detachment was reinforced by listening at a remove, with
one ear only, for while her right ear had become attuned to the world
beyond the window, the other explored an obscure inner world, a
new-found universe in which reverberations and echoes moved secretively
through layers of silence.  The bones of her left ear had been damaged
in the fall.  Oddly, or perhaps not oddly at all, she concentrated her
resentment and irritation on this one deadened ear, which of all her
injuries seemed openly offensive.

Sleep, when it came, was uneasy, filled less with nightmares than a
deep extended anxiety.  Sometimes when she was disturbed by one of the
staff she woke to find another more particular image imprinted on her
mind, of an amorphous shadow blotting out the light, of seeing herself
running, running, though never quite fast enough, so that she felt the
heat of his hand inches from her shoulder.  This scene repeated
endlessly with different variations, darkness, light, doors, corridors.
An anxiety dream.  Or a reality dream.

"Catherine?"

She woke with a beat of alarm.

"Sorry to disturb you."  It was one of the black nurses, a woman with a
rich mellifluous voice.

It was a moment before Catherine regained her bearings.  Late
afternoon.  Hot and airless.  Her last day before being moved.

"There's two police," the nurse said.  "They want to know if they can
talk to you.  One is named Wilson.  He says you know him."

"Yes," she said.  "I'll see them."  And get the whole business over and
done with.

She asked the nurse to bring her a face-wipe, comb and mirror and to
give her a few minutes before letting them in.  Since losing most
rights over her body, tidiness had become excessively important to
her.

She did not realise that Wilson had entered the room until she felt the
gaze of his button eyes.  Behind him came the broad smiling face of
Denise Cox.  When Wilson made for Catherine's deaf side it was Denise
who called him back with a diplomatic "Boss?"  and signalled him round
to the other side of the bed.

"Right," said Wilson, backtracking.

Denise was the victim liaison officer, a big-boned big-busted woman of
about Catherine's age with cropped bleached hair, startlingly blue eyes
and a soft confiding voice.

"So," Denise said, 'off on your travels tomorrow."

"Out of jail," Catherine said.  "Into prison."

Denise chuckled.  "They say prison's an improvement.  Still running a
florist's shop, I see."

The flowers had kept coming, many from names she didn't recognise,
people she and Ben must have met at the races or weekends away, others
from distant friends of the family, or, on Ben's side, emigres and
ancient Polish countesses.  "Don't know half of them," she said. "Don't
know how they heard."

"Catherine, it was in the newspaper."

This startled her.  "Why?"

"You've appeared on television.  It made a story."

"I don't want to be a story.  Why was it a story?"

Denise used her reassuring voice.  "It was just a small piece.  Nothing
since."

Wilson moved forward.  "We have no particular developments to report on
your case as yet.  But we still have several avenues to pursue.  Three
detectives are on the case this week."

Catherine said, "You're putting in a lot of work."

"And will continue to do so," he replied, adding one of his rather
forced smiles.

He had no idea of how little she expected from him.  She had no wish to
know anything about her attacker, no wish to discover any details of
his doubtless miserable life.  While he remained an abstraction he
remained safely in the past, like an encounter with lightning or a
tornado, something which, though catastrophic at the time, would never
touch her again.

"There's one thing we're having difficulty with," Wilson said in his
rather high voice, 'and that's the list of stolen property.  Is your
husband away?  Abroad perhaps?"

"No."

"Oh?"  He looked a little puzzled.  "I see ... He promised us a
comprehensive list of missing items some time ago, but we can't seem to
make contact.  We've left numerous messages."

Automatically coming to Ben's defence, Catherine said, "He's always
very busy.  He works very hard."

"But he's in London?  He's been in to see you."

"Oh yes."

Wilson's mouth twitched.  "Could you ask him to get in touch?  It would
be most helpful."  Lifting his head, drawing himself up as if to
indicate the start of the real business, he said, "WPC Cox informs me
that you have something to tell us."

"I have very little to tell you," Catherine informed him.  "I hope she
explained."

At Wilson's shoulder Denise nodded in confirmation.

Wilson made a concessionary gesture.  "You've remembered something at
any rate."

Catherine persisted, "Nothing useful, really."

"All the same, we'll take it down as a statement and ask you to sign
it, if that's all right."  He half turned to Denise, as if to remind
himself of the right procedure for hospital cases.  "Yes -so long as
you're up to it.  You will stop me if it's too much?"

Catherine told herself, Soon it will be over and done with.

Denise produced a pad and sat down near the foot of the bed, so that
all Catherine could see of her was the crown of brilliant yellow
hair.

Wilson remained standing, hands in pockets, affecting an unhurried air
that was belied by the restlessness in his eyes.  "If we could just get
the matter of these calls out of the way.  For the record.  You say
they were wrong numbers, not nuisance calls as such?"

"That's right.  I'm sorry you were told otherwise."

"How could you be sure they were wrong numbers?"

"A man asked for someone I'd never heard of."

"He asked for the same person every time?"

"The other times he just rang off when he realised he was still getting
the wrong number."

"So in fact forgive me but you had no way of knowing it was the same
caller?"

She explained slowly, "But I do, I did.  The other calls came regularly
after that first call.  And once I got the last call details."

"Last call details?"

"The number.  Off the 'last call' thin gummy .. . function.  It was the
same number both times, not one I knew."

"Did you make a note of the number?"

"No."

"It wouldn't be stored on your mobile?"

"No.  It only keeps the last I think ten calls."

Wilson accepted this with no sign of disappointment.  "Do you remember
if it was a London or country number?  Or a mobile?"

"Really, it's so long ago.  But..  . London, I think."

"And how many calls did you get in all?"

She didn't try to suppress the flutter of exasperation in her voice.
"Oh five?  Six?"

"And all on your mobile?"

"Yes."

"Spread over what length of time?"

"Look, I really can't remember."

"But somewhere around Christmas?"

"I suppose so, yes."

Wilson appeared to absorb this slowly.  "I'm not clear, then, why you
told Emma Russell that you'd been having nuisance calls since
November."

"Emma was there when I got one of these calls.  She got the wrong end
of the stick.  That's all."

"She sounded very sure."

"She always does."

"Ah."

And still Wilson seemed reluctant to let it go.  Did he actively
disbelieve her?  Or did he think she'd forgotten to mention something
whose significance only he could recognise?

"The television series you did, Catherine it came out last autumn,
didn't it?  Did you get any calls as a result?"

"From possible clients, yes."

"Is there a list?"

"It'll be on my desk at home somewhere."

"Could someone find it for us, do you think?"

"I'll ask Ben.  But, really, they were just ordinary people -people
with gardens."

"That may well be so, but we need to check all the same."  He moved on
at last.  "Now the evening of the burglary .. . Why don't you take it
at your own pace.  In your own time."

It was hard to get started.  She looked up at the ceiling and tried to
fix on the fragments of memory that had been coming back to her
mysteriously and haphazardly, like snapshots arranged out of order.

"I remember the journey home from France," she said.  "I remember the
airport, and picking up the car and arriving at the house.  I remember
finding we had been burgled and hearing the sounds of a fight and
running upstairs.  Then this .. . shape rushed at me out of the
darkness.  I'm afraid that's all, from that time anyway.  Later ... I
remember someone being there.  I remember someone saying that help was
on its way."  Catherine pulled a face.  "There you are.  I warned you
that it wasn't very much."

Wilson nodded again, sombrely.  "Could I ask about the trip to France?"
he asked in his rather nasal voice.  "This was a holiday?"

"A short break, yes."

"You were away how long?"

"Three .. . four days."

"You were planning to stay longer though?"

"Yes .. . Ben had to come back a couple of days early, and in the end I
decided to come back with him."

"Who knew about your plans?"

"What?"  She had to think about this.  "My father .. ."  She corrected
herself uncertainly, "No ... I don't think I told him in fact.  I don't
think I told anyone.  Not that I remember anyway."

"The people you were staying with in France," he prompted.

"Oh yes them."

"And your husband, he was coming back for a meeting, I believe?"

"He was going to America for a meeting the next day."

"Ah, so his business associates in America would have known.  Anyone in
England?"

She sighed.  "You would have to ask him."

Wilson made a show of absorbing this suggestion, and Catherine wondered
if he was rather slow or rather pedantic or both.

"Could I ask about when you got to the house?"  he said.  "It was your
husband who unlocked the door, was it?"

"Yes."

"And went in first?"

"Oh yes.  I was still in the car, I was going to park it.  I only
waited till I was sure he was in the house."

"And he got in all right?"

"Eventually."  This picture was strangely clear.  "He had a bit of
trouble.  That's why I waited.  The key ... it took him several tries.
He even looked to see if he was using the right key.  He had to sort of
swing on the lock before he could get in.  Then he turned and waved to
show he was in."

"And how long was it before you parked and got back to the house?"

"Oh five minutes?  There were no parking places.  I had to go into the
next street."

"When you got back?"

"I knew something was wrong immediately.  The house was dark.  And I
heard a strange sound.  I called out."

"What did you hear?"

"A shout," she answered with reasonable confidence.  "Ben .. .
shouting."

"Do you remember what he was saying?"

"Saying?"  Such detail was beyond her.  "No ... I can't remember.  No
.. ."

"You say the house was dark.  Were there no lights at all?"

Reluctantly, she dug deeper into her memory.  "There was one on, I
think.  Maybe two.  But across the hall."

"In other rooms?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, better to see the night.  "Yes."

"Can you remember which?"

"The sitting room, I think.  And the kitchen.  Or it may have been .. .
No, the kitchen.  Down the passage.  Yes, I remember that."

"No light in the hall?"

She thought about this.  "No."

"You didn't try to turn the hall light on?"

She was slow to speak because her answer was going to sound odd, even
to herself.  "I don't think I did, no."

"The kitchen and sitting-room lights," Wilson continued, 'they hadn't
been left on while you were away?"

Again she couldn't think why he should want such detail; again she
answered obediently.  "The sitting room has a light on a time switch. A
small lamp.  I think it may just have been that one light, yes.  But
the kitchen we never leave a light on in there, never."

Wilson shifted his weight and attempted an expression of encouragement.
"Please do go on again.  From the moment you heard the sound and
realised something was wrong."

A pause while she searched through her memory so that she could be sure
to stick to the steadier images, to what was reasonably certain, and
stay clear of the less reliable visions that flickered uncertainly at
the edges of her memory, like unfocused photographs.  "Yes .. ."  she
resumed with an effort.  "I heard Ben shouting upstairs.  I called, but
he only shouted again, so I ran upstairs."

"And you don't remember what he was shouting?"

"No."  But this was Wilson's trick, of course, to make her slow the
action that was spooling through her head, to wind the film back and
replay it if she could.  Following his unspoken command, she took
herself back to the door of the house once again, she stood at the foot
of the stairs.  After a long while she murmured, "He said something
like "Get out, you bastard" or "What the hell are you doing, you
bastard?"  Something along those lines."

As Ben's voice came back to her, she heard the rage in it, the roar of
aggression; behind this, like an echo, she heard herself screaming at
him, she felt the fear stir in her stomach like a reflex.

After a time Wilson prompted, "Did you hear another voice at this
stage?"

"Another?  I don't think so."  Wanting to be clear, she added, "What I
mean is, I only remember Ben's voice.  At that time.  Yes .. ."  She
held up the remnant of memory as if to a strong light.  "Yes," she
confirmed.  "Only his."  But even as she said this another sound
resonated faintly on the periphery of her mind, a sound that seemed to
strike a lower and colder note.  Another voice?  Or Ben speaking in a
different tone?  Or was her imagination simply building on Wilson's
suggestion?  She excavated the moment more deeply and it seemed to her
that the sound resonated again.

"Perhaps you should ask him that yourself," she suggested again.

"Yes, but it always helps to have a story from two different
witnesses," Wilson explained in a speech he had obviously made dozens
of times before.  "It's amazing what comes out.  Things that the other
person didn't notice.  Or simply forgot."  He gave a brief professional
smile.  "You're doing fine, Catherine.  How're you feeling?  Up to
going on?"

Taking her silence as tacit agreement, he took her forward.  "So you
went upstairs?"

She returned to the scene with reluctance.  "It was dark up there.  On
the landing.  I stopped.  I reached across to the light switch and then
... I wasn't sure if it was the best thing to do, to put the light on.
Half of me .. ."  She found herself on the brink of saying wanted to
hide, and realised that it was true, that her sense of danger had been
very strong.  "I wasn't sure what to do.  I remember shouting Ben's
name.  Over and over again.  I thought he might be hurt, I thought
well, I thought terrible things were happening."

"There was noise?"

"Oh yes.  Incredible noise.  Crashing.  Breaking.  It sounded as though
the place was being wrecked," she whispered.

"But no voices?"

"No," she decided, and immediately paused to examine the possibility
again.  "No only my own.  I think I was yelling."

"And where was this noise coming from?"

"The spare room.  Which is our study."

"And you couldn't see anything?"

"No.  No, I couldn't see anything until..."  Her breath locked high in
her chest.

From the end of the bed Denise's head popped up, her eyebrows raised in
silent enquiry.

"Take your time," Wilson said quietly.

The rushing shadow had jumped into dark focus and, with it, the fear.
Catherine took two long pulls of air.  "It all happened very quickly. I
don't remember much.  Just .. . this figure coming from nowhere.
Suddenly.  Suddenly.  Rushing at me.  And Another recollection came to
her so unexpectedly that her first instinct was to distrust it, yet
almost immediately it took on the shape and rigidity of memory.  "I
forgot," she added dutifully, 'there was this silence.  Just before he
came for me.  This .. . long silence."

Why had she stopped shouting?  Why hadn't she called Ben's name one
more time?  If the thief had realised she was there, he might not have
reacted so violently.  Might not have attacked her.  But even as she
agonised over this she remembered the grip of that dreadful intense
silence and knew that she had been incapable of breaking it.

"That's all I remember," she said, though that wasn't quite true.  In
some fraction of time before the shadowy figure struck her she
remembered a shrill unfamiliar sound, which was the sound of her own
scream.

Wilson nodded slowly.  "You can't describe this man in any way?"

"No.  It was so dark.  He was just a shape.  Rushing.  Very quickly."

"Was he carrying anything?  Holding anything?  A weapon?"

She thought about this for some time.  "I ... just don't know."

Wilson turned away to say something to Denise, which she didn't hear.
When he swung back his eyes fixed thoughtfully on Catherine's again.
"And later?  After the accident?"

"Later," she murmured.  "Well, I don't remember much, of course.  A
couple of small things, that's all."  She measured each word, to be
sure of getting it right, but also to give substance to the little she
did have to say.  "I remember being on the floor.  It was like .. .
coming round from an anaesthetic.  I felt sick, totally disorientated.
I knew ... it was bad.  I thought..  ."  What she had thought was that
she was going to die.  Dimly, through the shock and injury, she had
thought: So this is how it feels to die.  "The things I remember
they're pretty hazy."

The door sounded and someone came into the room.  Wilson turned
sharply, there was a muttered exchange and whoever it was left again.

Wilson bent forward over the bed.  "You were saying?"

"Just two things.  I'm not sure which came first."

That's all right."

"In one there were blinding lights.  Well .. . lights anyway.  Perhaps
they just seemed bright.  I knew I was on the floor.  And I knew there
was someone there.  Beside me.  Kneeling or ... I can't tell you who
... or anything about them ... I only know this person was there.  It
could have been an ambulance man, couldn't it?"  she asked, wanting the
reassurance of the obvious.  "Or whoever called the ambulance?"

Wilson nodded vaguely.  "Anything else you remember from this time?"

He already knew the answer, of course; Denise would have relayed it to
him three days ago, when Catherine had told her.

"I remember something close to my face."

"What sort of thing?"

"Something .. . softish.  Fabric."

"Now when you say close to your face I'd like to be clear do you mean
it was being held over your face?"

"Not over, no," she replied firmly.  "No, I was on my left side .. .
well, my head was over to the left anyway.  And this soft stuff was
just ... I don't know, against my face.  Not pressed into it, just..  .
against my face."

"Touching your nose?"

"Well .. . yes."

"And mouth?"

She knew where this was leading and she wanted to put him straight.
"Touching my mouth, but not pushed against it."

"So there was no pressure as such?"

"You mean," she said, 'was this person trying to suffocate me?"

Wilson's button eyes did not waver.  "I just want to be clear."

Catherine exhaled slowly.  "There was no pressure."

"Anything else you recall?"

With a final effort of memory, she stared at the blank screen of the
ceiling and summoned the kneeling figure once again.  This time,
however, the effect was to blur the existing picture.  How had she
known this person was there?  How had she known he was kneeling?  Had
this person spoken, or was it just the later one?  Had there been two
people at all, or had she doubled up one in a trick of memory?  Before
everything became irretrievably confused, she said, "That's all I can
tell you."

"And the second occasion?"

"I think it was later, though I can't be sure.  There was a voice.  A
man's voice.  Calling my name."

Denise's head tilted upwards.  Wilson waited, motionless.

"I was still on the floor.  In the same place well, I assume so anyway.
He said my name and something like, "They're on their way."

"When you say he called you by your name .. .?"

"Catherine."

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"And he said "They're on their way"?"

"Something like that.  And "You're going to be all right."  He said
that several times."

Another phrase came to her, something like rest easy or lie easy.  But
she might have lifted that from a film.

"Did you recognise the voice?"

"I don't think so."

"Do you think you'd recognise this voice if you heard it again?"

She thought about this for a long time.  "I can't say," she answered
finally.

"Anything else you remember?"

"No, I... No."

Wilson turned away and, bending down out of sight, said something to
Denise in a low voice.  Catherine heard a rustling and he straightened
up again.  "Would you look at these items, Catherine, and tell me if
you recognise them?"

"What are they?"

"If you could just tell me if you've seen them before.  This is the
first."

He held up a transparent plastic bag bearing a white rectangular label
marked with some sort of code number.  Inside was a small amount of
lacy fabric that had once been white but was now stained and grubby.
She reached up a hand to bring the bag closer.

"What are they panties?"

"Yes."

She felt a descent into cold.  She whispered, "Are you saying ...
they're miner Her mind raced on, making connections that filled her
with foreboding.

Denise shot to her feet.  Catherine stared at her helplessly.  "No,
no," Denise said.  "No, you were fully dressed when you were found."

"Ah!"

"I swear," Denise reassured her again.  "It wasn't like that."

Catherine gave a short nervous laugh.  "For a moment there I thought
I'd suffered a fate worse than death."  And then she laughed again,
even more strangely, because the real joke was that, given the choice
between sexual and neurological violation, she would have taken rape
any day.

"Can I have a better look?"  she asked.

Wilson had clearly allowed for this possibility because he produced
plastic gloves and slipped them on before lifting the panties out of
the plastic by one corner and holding them up.

The panties were not soiled with dirt, she saw now, but with what
looked like dried blood, lots of it, covering almost every part of the
fabric.

Wilson said, "Take as long as you like."

The panties were bikini style made from ersatz satin with lace trim at
the leg, the sort that were sold everywhere.  "I don't think they're
mine," she said eventually.  "But I can't be sure."

"You have some like these?"

"Sort of ... but I think the lace was different.  I can't be sure.
Sorry."

Wilson pushed out his lower lip in disappointment or resignation.

Catherine had to ask, "The blood is it mine?"

Wilson hesitated as he put the panties carefully back in the bag and
re-sealed it.  "I'd rather not answer that just at the moment, if you
don't mind."

He reached down again towards his feet and produced another transparent
bag.  Inside was a length of skimpy diaphanous fabric, probably silk,
in aqua green, also stained with blood, but not so extensively, just a
series of blotches.

"No," she said without hesitation.  "I've never seen it before."

"You're absolutely certain?"

"It's a scarf, isn't it?"  When Wilson nodded, she confirmed, "No,
definitely not mine."

Wilson seemed neither surprised nor disappointed.

"Where did you find them, these things?"

He took his time before saying, "At the scene.  Thank you," he added
quickly, as if to curtail any further questions.  "You've been very
helpful."

"I don't think so," she said.  "I don't think I've helped at all."

She had come to look forward to the evenings.  The family usually left
by eight, and by nine the corridors were falling quiet as the last
visitors to the surrounding wards drifted away.  After Sister's rounds
the night staff would come to check her mattress and lines and collar,
and if they weren't too busy would chat for a while.  When she was low
she liked to talk to the Filipinos because they were practical and
without sentiment, they did not share the universal reverence for the
brave front; they believed in God striking you down and yours not to
reason why and shifting for yourself by all the means at your disposal.
When she was in a lighter mood she'd hope for an Irish nurse and some
talk of men and parties and pubs.  They could be offhand, even abrupt,
these women from Limerick and Donegal, with their cutting tongues and
acid wit, but she liked that too, because they expected nothing in
return.

By ten there was silence over the floor apart from the click of an
occasional door and the murmur of the traffic beyond the window.  Then,
with Walkman and headphones on, adjusted for mono listening, eyes
closed, she would put on some baroque music and take a walk on strong
striding legs into a garden.  Sometimes it would be a garden from the
past, one she'd seen through to completion, but more often than not she
would walk her way through her current commission, a traditional
country-house garden in Gloucestershire.

Her journey to the garden could be unpredictable.  Sometimes it was
like trying to cling to a fast escaping dream in the moment after you
wake up; she scarcely made it to the gate before she found herself
slipping back into reality and having to begin the journey all over
again.  Sometimes she never made it at all, and then the night seemed
long.

Tonight, however, aided and abetted by two long swigs of brandy
extremely medicinal and some Scarlatti cantatas the journey was a
doddle, just a quick flight, and she went straight to the large walled
garden at one side of the Gloucestershire house.  This was the part of
the garden she saw most clearly.

Once the derelict fruit cages and cold frames were removed, it would
make a perfect ornamental garden, half vegetable, half flower garden;
with secluded arbours and long vistas that drew you forward to the next
turning, the next composition.  There would be geometric beds
containing decorative vegetables, purple- and silver-leaved, such as
chard and artichoke, interspersed with red-leaved and exotic salads. In
the centre there would be a fountain encircled by festooned plum trees,
and against the walls espaliers of apple and pear and peach, while
around the perimeter the wide flower and shrub borders would be themed
by colour.  Naturally there would be a white border she was famous for
her white borders also a blue one, a pinky-mauve one, and what she
called a "Spanish' border, containing the passionate crimsons and
inky-blues that went so well together: blood and death in the arena. 
She would bring in plenty of autumn and winter interest too, with
winter honeysuckle and viburnums and early camellias.

The garden would be divided into seven areas, each with its own
geometry.  In the salad area there would be squares formed by the wider
paths and edged in box.  Within the squares, however, she had yet to
decide between running the paths diagonally to make triangular beds, or
at right angles to make smaller squares, or in two concentric circles
intersecting a cross, in the style of a Celtic labyrinth.

In the real world someone touched her arm.

She opened her eyes with a start to see Ben.  She pulled off the
earphones.  "You gave me a shock."

"A shock?"  he cooed with sham sympathy.  "Thought you were awake,
Moggy.  They said you were."

Catherine didn't have to catch the wine on his breathy kiss to realise
that he was on his way back from dinner: his voice rang with
affability, his eyes were heavy-lidded, his smile was addressed to the
world at large.

"How's my girl, then?  How's my Moggy?"

For the first week Catherine had not known how to answer this question,
but now she said, "Fine."

"What, here on your lonesome?"  Ben looked around with a show of
surprise.  "I thought Alice was going to be here.  Where's Alice?"

"She went ages ago.  She had a date."

"Not a date date?"  He gave a mock leer.

"She didn't say."

He hovered indecisively, as though in the absence of other people he
might only stay a minute.  She knew he found it easier when the family
were there, or Emma, who was the only friend Catherine allowed to visit
her, because then the burden of conversation was shared, the tone
light-hearted.  Whenever they were alone, his manner became rather
forced, his talk wild and rambling, and then she had to remind herself
how hard it must be for him, for all the family: the strain of seeing
her stretched out like a piece of medical meat; the fear of mentioning
the p-for-paralysis word; the need to put on a cheerful front.

"Good dinner?"  she asked.

"Oh, you know, the usual blow out.  That's what they always want."

It had been a business do, Catherine remembered.  Some Poles in London
for a couple of days.

"A surprise for you!"  Lifting his briefcase onto the bed, he pulled
out a small package and brandished it aloft, like a conjurer producing
his best trick.

Another present.  She said, "I wish you wouldn't."

"What do you mean, wish I wouldn't?"  The lightness of his voice didn't
conceal the note of rebuke.  "Open it!"  He thrust it into her hands.

The wrapping was well sealed and it took her a moment to find a way in.
Pulling the paper off at last, she held up a miniature television
designed to fit into the palm of one hand.  She couldn't imagine when
she would use it.  "Thanks."

Her tone must have sounded less than enthusiastic because he made an
expression of offence that was half-serious.  "Thanks?  But you haven't
even looked at it yet.  Turn it on see what a great picture it's got."
When she failed to find the switch he plucked it from her grasp and
riddled with the controls.  "See?"  He held it close above her face.

"It's amazing."

Like a boy with a new toy, he showed her every channel and button,
looking to her expectantly for suitable expressions of wonderment and
appreciation.  She realised he'd had more than just a glass or two of
wine when he swayed gently and put out a hand to steady himself, though
he managed to fuse it into one seamless movement that to anyone else
would have appeared deliberate.

Putting the television to one side at last, he declared, "It's for when
everyone's driving you nuts!"

"All the time, you mean?"

He liked it when she showed the right spirit.  "All the time," he
echoed with a warm chuckle of approval.  "Absolutely!"

She felt a burst of love for him, for his quirky smile, his mischievous
eyes, for the marvelous familiarity of him, and the novelty too,
because however hard she tried her memory could never quite do him
justice.  Close behind this came a plunge of anxiety, which brought her
up with a hard jolt.  Would they ever survive this?  Could any marriage
survive this?

She asked, "How's work?"

A lazy shrug.  "Got a lot of catching up to do.  Sort out some non
senses

"Nothing serious?"

"No, no."

"Simon can't do it for you?"

"Ha!  I wish!"  Still in expansive mood, he asked, "So, my darling
Moggy, how are things?"  Neither of them could remember how or why he
had come to call her Moggy they weren't cat lovers but somehow the name
had stuck.

She didn't attempt to list the various indignities of her day, nor
describe the auditory tests that had showed almost no hearing in her
damaged ear; like her moments of panic, anxiety and dread, these were
things she had learnt not to talk about.  "Emma packed for me."

Faint puzzlement flickered over his face and she knew that for a moment
he'd forgotten she was being moved to the spinal unit the next day.
"Oh, right," he said airily.  This was Ben's way, to ignore the more
unsettling things in life and concentrate on the positive.  It was one
of the things that had drawn Catherine to him, this belief that life
could be lived in a permanent state of confidence and enthusiasm.

"There's an awful lot of champagne left over," she mentioned.  "Could
you take it home?"

"What, haven't we drunk it all?  Hell!  We'll soon put that right when
you get to the new place!  Lots of people coming to see you, Cath.
They're all queuing up."

"I don't want to see anyone.  Please, Ben, tell them to stay away. Will
you?  Please."

"Might cheer you up, you know."

The thought of small talk appalled her, but what appalled her most of
all was the thought of their curiosity and pity.  "No.  Absolutely not.
I would really hate it."

"But they love you, darling heart.  They want to come and dish out all
the gossip.  Give you the latest."  Catching her expression, he shook
his head reprovingly and his voice took on a mildly exasperated edge.
"Mad to cut yourself off, Moggy.  Got to have a bit of light relief
sometimes, you know!"

When she didn't reply his eyes drooped, he gave a slight shrug and,
reaching for a chair, pulled it up to the bed.

"Can't see you down there," she reminded him as he sank down onto it
with a sigh.

"No?"  he murmured lazily.  He stood up again and, having shifted
indecisively once or twice, perched on the edge of the bed, which had
long been established as the only place where she could see anyone
properly.

"Now, what have I got to tell you?"  he said abruptly, coming alive to
the need for news.  "Yes!  Got a call from Sam Blake.  You know Sam and
Livvy?  Want us to go and stay with them in Barbados next Christmas.
Bit of a wild child in his City days, of course, old Sam.  Sailed close
to the wind, so they say, but one hell of an operator, no doubt about
that.  Running an investment company now.  On his way to a second
bloody fortune, jam my bastard!  But a fantastic place they've got in
Barbados, apparently.  Her family has pots of moolah, of course '

Catherine found herself listening but not listening.  This was the
trick, she had learnt: to disconnect herself from such moments, from
such conversations, from Ben's life, from her own too, though quite
what her life involved now she couldn't have said.  The only world she
could focus on was small and contained: this room, this bed, this body,
and the unit they were transferring her to in the morning.  If she
listened too closely to what Ben was saying it was like touching some
terrible heat, the pain made her pull away.

Finally, when the word "Barbados' filtered through yet again, she could
bear it no longer and interrupted him in a voice that was too loud and
too sharp.  "I forgot," she said, 'the police were here."

"Oh."  His smile had a glassy veneer.  "Wilson?"

"And the WPG."

"The blonde job with the big boobs?"

"Well, it was the same one as before, anyway."  She heard the note of
criticism in her voice and thought: This is no way to go, I'm sounding
difficult.  "Yes, the blonde job.  They said they'd been trying to get
in touch with you."

He rolled his eyes.  "For God's sake, I called them!  Yesterday?
Monday?  They're never there.  Hopeless!  What did they want, anyway?
Let me guess," he jeered languidly, 'to tell us they've found
nothing."

"More or less."

"I knew it.  And they came and bothered you just to tell you that?
Sorry, darling, I should have got hold of them, shouldn't I?  Should
have told them to get lost.  Forgive me?"  He rolled towards her with
an endearing boyish smile.  "Poor Moggy.  Poor darling."  His voice had
a bleary sentimental note.  He squeezed her hand, then after a moment's
hesitation reached out a second time and, still not entirely at ease
with the role of bedside companion, laid his hand rather awkwardly in
hers.  He asked, "What did they say?  They've given up on the stupid
phantom caller, I hope."

"Yes.  There's no way of tracing the calls."

"Of course there isn't!  And it wasn't anybody who had anything to do
with anything you said so yourself."

"That's right," she murmured.

"That's exactly what I told Simon!  He should never have made such a
big thing about it with the police.  Never have encouraged Emma to make
all those ridiculous statements!"  With a final press of her hand he
withdrew his own and in the process of settling himself more
comfortably on the edge of the bed turned away slightly so that his
face was partly in shadow.

She said, "Wilson wanted a statement."

"But I've given him a statement."

"No, from me."

He turned down his mouth in an expression of mystification.  "But why?
To say what?"

"Just what I remember."

"But, darling, you don't remember anything."

"I remember going into the house."

He shook his head firmly.  "No, no, you said you didn't '

"But I do now.  I remember now."

His eyes narrowed almost to the point of invisibility, she sensed a
sudden alertness in him.  "Since when?"

"Oh, I don't know.  Things have been coming back to me in bits and
pieces."

"But are you sure?"  he asked easily.  "It couldn't be' he rotated a
finger next to his temple, signalling brain problems' you got a bit
mixed up?"

"No, I remember moving into the driving seat to go and park, I remember
you taking the cases up to the door."

"You didn't say anything."  It was an accusation.

"It didn't seem terribly important."

"Didn't seem important!"  he jeered, flashing cold shark eyes at her.

She realised her mistake.  It was like pressing a button, this route to
Ben's insecurities.  He couldn't bear the thought of being excluded in
any way, of having even the smallest item of information kept from him.
His mother had walked out when he was twelve and no one had given him a
word of explanation, not then, and not later, certainly not his mother
herself, who'd gone to America and barely been in contact since. He'd
been brought up by a profligate and largely absent father who, among
his other notable acts, had twice forgotten to pick Ben up from school
at the end of term, and had once left him to find his own way back from
France after taking up an invitation to go and stay with a minor
principessa on Lake Como.  Not surprisingly, Ben hated to feel he
wasn't being told the full facts, or, worse still, that decisions were
being made behind his back.

"Sorry," Catherine said.  "I didn't realise I'd remembered anything
very significant until the police asked me."

Ben forced enthusiasm into a voice that was still cool with injury.
"So!  Memory all coming back!  That brain of yours!  All there!  All
working!  That's great!"  Then, thinking this through, he leant towards
her with an unfocused look of concern.  "Haven't remembered anything
upsetting though, have you, my darling?"

"No."

"Nothing about that man?

"No," she lied again.

He straightened up.  "Good!  Can't have you upsetting yourself!"

This was the official family line, she had realised some days ago.
Everything must be done to make sure she did not get upset, though this
strategy rather awkwardly ruled out discussion of the immediate past
and indefinite future.

She said reminiscently, "But tell me -I can't quite remember

when you were at the door, trying to get in, you called something back
to me.  Something about the lock.  Something .. ."  She gave up.  "What
was it?"

He was cautious suddenly, or slow, or distracted.  "What?  Oh, I said
the lock felt strange.  Stiff."

"Ah," she breathed.  It came back to her now.  "Yes .. . And the lights
I'm not going mad, am I?  You didn't put any on, except for a couple at
the back of the house."

Ben drew his head back with a frown.  "No, darling, where on earth did
you get that from?  No, I put the hall light on, then when I realised
the alarm wasn't set I went off on a hunt saw the mess in the living
room did a complete round.  No, I turned on every light in the place!
Of course I did!"  He shook his head firmly.  "But, Moggy darling, why
go into all this now?  What's the point?"

"I want to get a picture, I want to get it clear in my head, so that I
can forget about it.  That's all."

He shrugged as though he was being persuaded against his better
judgement.

She continued, "What about when you went upstairs?  Did you leave the
hall light on?"

"Of course!  And I put the landing light on, and then well, I would
have put the study light on, but the bastard was waiting for me, wasn't
he?"

"I thought it was dark when I came in."

He scoffed, "No, darling.  Now I know you've got it all mixed up!"

"Oh ... well, then."

"For God's sake, the lights were definitely on!"  he insisted as if she
had argued against him.  "Is that what you told the police, that the
place was dark?"

"I said I thought the only lights were in the kitchen and the sitting
room.  But I must have got it wrong."

"Totally!"  He shook his head firmly.  "That's going to be great, isn't
it?  You saying it was dark, and me saying it was lit up like a
Christmas tree.  Ha!"  He was annoyed certainly, but also rather
amused, as if the idea of being an unreliable witness rather appealed
to him.

"Sorry."

He brushed it aside with a lift of one hand.

"One last thing."

His attention was fading fast.

"Upstairs when I got upstairs someone was shouting.  Yelling.  It was
you, wasn't it?"

"I should think so," he said without hesitation.  "Well, I was bloody
furious, wasn't I?"  His eyes gleamed briefly.

"Did the man speak?"

"Mmm?"  He had heard all right, but either he was thinking about it or
he didn't know the answer.  "What a question, Moggy."

He would have left it there if she hadn't pressed him.  "Did he say
anything?"

Realising some effort of concentration was expected of him, Ben screwed
up his eyes, he pushed out his lip, he exhaled slowly before shaking
his head.  "Can't remember now.  All lost in the mists."

She was silent.

"Is that it?"  He looked tired, or possibly the worse for alcohol.

"I think so."

"Got your pictured

"What?"

"You wanted a picture, you said.  To get it clear in your head."

"Yes, got my picture."

"Good!"  He lumbered to his feet.  "So, what time would you like me
here in the morning?"

"Ten, if you wouldn't mind.  I'm rather nervous."

"Nervous?  Why nervous, Moggy?"

"The thought of being moved."  She was aware that in showing this loss
of nerve she was failing to show the kind of doughty spirit expected of
her.

"Hey!"  He pressed his palm tenderly to the side of her face.  "Not to
worry.  There's my girl!"

He bent down to kiss her and rest his cheek against hers, and she
closed her eyes, better to draw in the warmth of him, the scent of him,
the texture of his skin.  She felt a rush of memory, an amalgam of the
hundreds of nights they had spent together.  In a surge of feeling, she
put a hand around his head to bring his face still closer to hers, but
just as her fingers tightened against the thick silky hair he pulled
away.

"I miss you," she whispered.  Saying this was like breaching a dam,
just a trickle for the moment but one sudden move and there'd be a
torrent.  The urge to give way to it was very strong.  Her throat
swelled, she felt all the pressure of her grief and self-pity.  Yet
something warned her against expressions of anguish.  Partly, she had
an irrational fear of voicing her terrors, as if this alone could give
them the dread solidity of fact.  More practically, she feared Ben's
revulsion and dismay.  Having no use for displays of emotion himself,
he looked on them with mistrust and embarrassment.

In the end she said simply, "Miss you so much."

"Miss you too," Ben said breezily.  Then, clearly feeling that
something else was expected of him, he added in a suggestive growl,
"Won't be long now!"

She managed to maintain her expression until he had gone, and then she
began to weep, slowly at first, a trickle of hot silent tears that
slipped coolly into her ears and hair.  When these failed to take the
edge off things, she cried with a sense of anger.  Finally she
remembered the brandy bottle.  Reaching for it, she managed to knock it
to the floor and had to call the nurse.

The bell was answered by an Irish girl named Kathleen: "But you can
call me Kate'.

"There's a bottle of brandy on the floor."

She laughed.  "A nightcap, is it?"

"Have one yourself."

"Trying to get me fired!"  She found the bottle and, pushing a straw
into the neck, held it to Catherine's mouth.  If she noticed
Catherine's un dried tears she didn't mention them.  When one sip
stretched to four she exclaimed in mock disapproval, "Steady on!"

"I'm leaving tomorrow."

"So you are."

"I'm frightened."

"No need, I'm sure.  They'll look after you better there.  They'll be
able to give you a lot more time than we can."  Capping the brandy
bottle she put it back in the locker.  "Anything else I can do for
you?"

"Give me another drink?"

"You're a devil!  As bad as a Paddy."

Catherine didn't want to be left alone quite yet.  "There're some
letters on the locker," she said.  "Would you read them to me?"

"Only one I can see."  She moved chocolates and tissues and
paraphernalia.  "No, only one."

"Well, that one, then."

She saw Kate baulk at the length of it, five pages or so, but, perching
on the edge of the bed, she began to read without complaint.

"Dear Catherine, I hope you're continuing to make progress and that the
flowers arrived safely.  The roses were the last from the climbers on
the west wall, which have blossomed so profusely though alas so
briefly.  I do not of course know their name my ignorance would be
laughable if it were not so shameful.  However, I'm taking myself in
hand, so far as common names go at least I think it would be
unrealistic to aspire to Latin at my age when I've still trouble enough
with the spelling of the English language.  A Mrs.  Kent is coming to
tell me what's what.  She is said to be an expert on gardens hereabouts
(she's done quite a few gardens in Wicklow) '

"Wicklow!"

"Careful my mam was a Wicklow girl."

"Wicklow's got poncy gardens."

"Poncy?"  Kate laughed.  "Poncy.  Now there's a word!"  Still laughing,
she went back to the letter.  "Where are we?  Ah yes, Mrs.  Kent..  .
I'm hoping she can tell me what's here and what Mick should or
shouldn't be doing to keep everything in fine shape.  I have a
suspicion that Mick has done damage again -the shrubs down by the
stream are looking hacked about and forlorn.  But of course it's hard
for me to say anything from a position of horticultural iliteracy."
Kate looked up with a quick smile.  "He's misspelt illiteracy.  Now is
the time to come clean and admit that the rhododendrons met with an
unfortunate accident last year.  Someone said that they were a menace
and strangling the trees, so I told Mick to deal with them.  The
result, I'm afraid to say, was nothing short of slaughter.  Mick got a
bulldozer, although it may have been a JCB - I found it too painful to
ask which particular weapon of mass destruction he had been let loose
on.  Not only did he uproot the rhododendrons around the trees to the
north of the house (the ones I meant him to deal with) but also managed
to lay waste to those on either side of the drive.  I have not yet
recovered from the shock of seeing the devastation, my stomach is still
somewhere out by the gates, where it dropped through the bottom of my
boots, but it taught me that Mick was not be trusted with shrubs and,
apart from those down by the stream, I have curbed his worst impulses
to slash at vegetation with a blunt instrument."

"For heaven's sake.  Why does he write?  Why does he bother?"

"What's that?"

"I wish I knew what he was after."

"Why would he be after anything?"

"He has to be."

"Are we stopping or are we going on?"  She examined Catherine's face.
"Shall I just whisk through the rest?  So when Mrs.  Kent comes I will
ask her what she recommends for the drive, whether to replant rhodies
or to try some other shrubs.  Aware of my responsibilities to Morne, I
am determined to go cautiously and to obtain advice from every possible
quarter.  Of course I would dispense with all such opinions if I
thought there was a chance of you coming and advising us on how to
restore the gardens to their proper glory.  I know that you must be
thinking only of recovery at present, but once you see your way clear
you would only have to give the smallest indication that you might
consider it and I would keep all other ideas on hold.  There is nothing
more precious to me than the thought of restoring Morne to its former
glory, as your mamma would have wished it to be, for as you know I hold
her memory most dear."

"Really!"

"The idea doesn't appeal?"

"What idea?"

"The garden."

"I'd rather die."

"Sounds a nice job."

"That's my home he's talking about.  He stole it after my mother died.
Got hold of the mortgage.  Forced my father out.  Everything's a deal.
Everything's an opportunity to make a killing."  She remembered the
expression her father used.  "He'd as soon sell his grandmother."

"Ah," Kate said heavily.  "I see.  It couldn't be that he's got a
conscience about it?  Trying to make amends."

"I doubt it."

"A guilty conscience can strike us all," Kate offered solemnly before
returning once again to the letter.  "I am safer with trees or should I
say that trees are safer with me?  I have been doing serious homework
in the last couple of years and have discovered what you will know
already, that there are some remarkable trees at Morne the Irish yews
around the hollow, surely older than the house itself, the oak on the
south lawn, which Old Patrick from the village estimates to be 300
years old (do you think this is possible?), and the beeches, which seem
to reach beyond the sky, but which I am told may go any day in a storm
because they have shallow roots.  It is a terrible thought, that they
may go, so I have had some new beeches planted, ones of good size,
already some twenty feet high, so that there will be some equally
majestic trees in fifty years or so:

"That's enough, thanks."

"There's only a few more lines.  Just' she scanned the page 'news of
Maeve, who's been unwell but is now recovering '

"Chuck it in the bin."

"Why don't I just put it on the side here?"

"I want it in the bin.  If I could move from this bloody bed I would
put it in the bin."

"The bin it is, then."

Despite the brandy, it took Catherine a long time to get to sleep, and
then it was to dream all night, or so it seemed.  She revisited the
scenes she had described to Wilson, re-enacting them time and again,
but with variations and additions that might or might not have been
borrowed from other times and other dreams.  In the morning two images
remained intact.  In one, which was recognisably a nightmare, she was
in a dark place, making her way towards a series of rooms with
half-open doors that radiated brilliant light.  The floor was littered
with what she took to be debris, but which turned out to be the heavy
glutinous leaves of some vigorous plant whose tendrils wrapped
themselves tighter and tighter around her legs, pulling her slowly to
the floor.  When she was completely immobilised something soft brushed
against her face and clung to her nose and mouth and eyes, threatening
to rob her of air.  She would have fought the soft thing off but she
couldn't move her arms.  Someone who was Alice and then not Alice was
somewhere close by, weeping and wailing softly.

In the other scene she replayed her arrival from France.  She ran
upstairs as before but, instead of stopping on the landing as she had
described to Wilson, she ran on into the room where Ben and the man
were fighting and found herself caught up in the struggle, though
mysteriously unaffected by it.  It was dark, but this didn't prevent
her from seeing a weapon in the man's hand, a long baton that she
identified as a baseball bat.  In the instant she saw it, she realised
that the man had finished with Ben, or perhaps Ben wasn't there any
more, and was coming for her so fast that she didn't have time to raise
her arms and ward off the blows.  In the next instant she was back on
the landing and the man was looming over her.  As she cowered before
him she saw the bat raised above his head, ready to strike.

In the morning the image of the baseball bat stayed with her and she
decided to ask Ben if he thought the man might have used it in the
attack.  While she was about it she would also tell Ben what for some
reason she'd failed to tell him the night before, about the
blood-stained panties and scarf the police had asked her to identify.

In the event she mentioned neither.  Ben arrived late, just behind the
ambulance men, and by the time they had the chance to talk she'd
realised that the baseball bat was probably a trick of her mind.  Ben
had always kept a baseball bat under the bed in case of intruders and,
by association, her subconscious had in all likelihood transposed it
into the dream.

She decided against mention of the blood-stained clothing for a very
different reason, because despite police reassurances to the contrary
Ben might believe she had been sexually assaulted, and that was one
burden he didn't need.

Chapter Five

TERRY WAITED impatiently while Fergal arranged his long limbs untidily
in the chair opposite, arms at every angle, legs skewed out to one
side, like an abandoned marionette.  Settled at last, he began to speak
in a soft unhurried voice.  "I am giving you the dry bones of the
situation as they see it.  You follow me?  No interpretation, no
perspective.  This is the official version, pure and simple."

Terry could only nod.

"In essence, they have no suspects and no prospect of any suspects."

"They're still thinking in terms of a straight burglary?"

Fergal hesitated, which wasn't like him at all.  "I'll come to that in
a moment, if I may.  It would be simpler if we could leave the
questions till the end."

Suitably corrected, Terry slid his elbows onto the desk and propped his
chin on clenched fists.  Thereafter he did not shift his gaze, did not
move, as if to will Fergal forward by the intensity of his attention.

"The forensic people have found nothing obvious in the house," Fergal
began again, his accent belonging more than ever to some uncharted
point midway across the Irish Sea.  "No known fingerprints, nothing of
that nature.  Signs of forced entry on the front door, but a neat
professional job, a drill on the mortice, a pick on the latch.  As for
the alarm ... Here, I have to say, my contact was short on
information."  From his time-worn expression of forbearance he might
have been a lecturer again, in receipt of a sloppy essay.  "He could
not say if the alarm was linked to a security company, so we do not
know if an automatic alarm call was sent, nor for that matter if one
was received.  All he could tell me was that the neighbours do not
remember hearing an alarm bell ringing.  Not of course that this means
a great deal.  False alarms are two a penny in that part of London."

Terry remembered that Fergal had lived in London during his Cintel
years, and perhaps at other less accountable times.

"However, if the exterior bell did indeed sound, it would have switched
itself off after fifteen minutes.  That is the law -no more than
fifteen minutes.  The ambulance people did not report hearing an alarm
ringing when they arrived, nor was an alarm audible on the call to the
emergency services, which suggests that if the alarm was triggered it
occurred more than fifteen minutes before Catherine was .. .
discovered.  It's equally possible, of course, that the alarm was never
set."

By an effort of will, Terry remained silent.  He tried to see this
information through a police investigator's eyes, tried to find a
pattern that would steer a thinking mind in the right direction.

Fergal twisted around in his seat.  Any movement for Fergal was a
performance: limbs drawn in, tall frame realigned, arms and legs
uncoiled haphazardly.  He turned his eyes to the thin Dublin sun,
revealing the punishment of fifty-five troubled years, a poor diet and
sixty a day, only recently abandoned.  His sad intelligent face was
long and thin, with a nose to match and a flop of lank greying hair.
His skin was crisscrossed with deep lines, his eyelids heavy and
drooping at the corners, while his forehead was set into a perpetual
frown, as if to warn strangers away.

When he began to speak again, there was a rare tension about him which
filled Terry with foreboding.

"The place was ransacked.  Their word.  I'm trying to obtain details.
To find out whether every room had been searched, every cupboard,
whether papers were rifled, or clothing, or everything.  At any rate,
things were stolen, though they don't yet have a complete list of what
is missing.  It seems that Ben Galitza has been somewhat difficult to
pin down on that score.  However, so far as they can tell it was mainly
light stuff.  Jewellery, ornaments, some silver.  There was a small
strongbox containing a few hundred pounds in cash, which was forced
open.

"Just cash?"

"That is what has been reported to the police."

"Yes, yes," Terry gasped apologetically.

"They're not sure what sort of weapon was used to attack Ben Galitza.
Some sort of cosh, they think.  They haven't found anything resembling
a weapon, at any rate not in the house, not in the surrounding
gardens."  Fergal's voice took on an abstracted tone.  "They are no
nearer to discovering who made the ambulance call either.  The
ambulance crew didn't get a proper look at the man and he wasn't seen
leaving."

"Presumably, though, they would recognise him again if they saw him."

"I have no information on that."

Terry drew in a sharp breath.  "All right, but was anyone else seen
leaving?"

"No reports of anyone, no."

"Go on."

Fergal fixed his sombre gaze on a point just below Terry's line of
sight, and Terry knew that the bad news, whatever it might be, was very
close.

"So, we have a burglary, we have a professional break-in.  However, the
police have reason to think that there was more to it than that.  They
think the intruder might have selected the Galitzas' home purposely,
that he might have wanted to ... get close to Catherine."  Fergal's
eyes met Terry's alarmed gaze and continued stolidly, "There had been
calls for some months, silent calls to her mobile telephone, which
cannot be traced.  Also' the hesitation again 'certain items were
discovered with Catherine.  Close to Catherine."  He proceeded yet more
slowly, weighing each word.  "There was a pair of panties .. . found
under her head '

"Her own, you mean?"

"Possibly.  But not the ones she was wearing at the time.  Her clothing
was intact.  No, the police are thinking that these panties might have
been acquired from upstairs.  Part of the burglar's haul, if you
like."

Terry repeated incredulously, "His haul..  .?"

"We have an unbalanced person here," Fergal informed him sternly.
"Someone who has broken in with the intention of thieving no doubt
about that but also of getting some vicarious thrill from being near
Catherine, from acquiring her underclothing.  Are you with me now?"

It was several seconds before Terry managed a feeble nod.

"It was one of the ambulance crew who noticed these panties under her
head.  He pushed them aside when he fitted the collar to her neck and
the police picked them up later.  If you can imagine her lying on the
hall floor with her head over to one side, to the left, then the
panties were found between her ear and the floor.  The thought is that
these panties were placed against her ear to staunch the bleeding."  He
held up an index finger as if to admonish himself.  "I should have
mentioned that she was bleeding from her ear when they found her.  I
didn't mention that, did I?  No ... Well, she was bleeding quite
profusely.  Subsequently, tests have established that this blood on the
panties was indeed Catherine's."

"So it could simply have been someone trying to stop the bleeding?"
Terry argued hopefully.  "Nothing sinister at all?"

"It could have been, yes."  But his tone suggested a very different
tale and Terry prepared himself for whatever was still to come.

Fergal's expression darkened.  "Later on, when she arrived at the
hospital, a scarf was found.  A lady's silk scarf."  He looked down,
his voice grew flat and urgent.  "It was found bundled up inside her
skirt.  Between her legs.  This scarf had more blood on it."

Terry stared at Fergal, groping for understanding.  "You mean she was
attacked?"

"There was no evidence of that, no.  There was no obvious source for
the blood, you see ... in that place.  Besides which -most
significantly the blood was not Catherine's."

Again Terry was floundering.  "Not Catherine's?"  he repeated stupidly.
"But..  . You mean .. ."  Fear lurched in his stomach.

"The blood was old.  It belonged to a woman.  They are thinking that it
might have come from another victim of this attacker."

It was all too much for Terry.  Shuddering, he pushed himself back in
his chair and pressed his hands over his face.  "Jesus, Jesus."  Among
the conflicting thoughts that collided and jostled in his mind, one
terrifying notion came roaring to the fore.  Dropping his hands, he
began urgently, "Have they considered the possibility that '

"No, we are not having random thoughts on this.  This is the police,
remember?  They only know what they know.  For the moment it has
occurred to them to check the scarf, to find out if it belongs to
Catherine.  It does not.  And if they have not already done so, they
will check the DNA on the scarf against the national DNA data bank.
They will check known offenders, discover who might have been in the
area without an alibi.  Then .. ."  He lifted his shoulders, he spread
his hands.

"But where will it lead, Fergal?  That's the thing.  Where will it
end?"

He blew out his cheeks.  "At a guess?  I would say that it will go
nowhere.  That in a month or so when they have failed to find a suspect
they will wind the investigation down."

Terry asked unhappily, "And what will we do when that happens?"

Fergal's steady gaze contained a warning.  "We will do nothing."

Terry wrestled with this idea, and finally submitted with a long sigh.
"If we must."

With a last cautionary frown, Fergal pulled a small notebook from his
breast pocket and flicked through it.  "So .. . the rest.  Nothing more
on Ben Galitza.  He's generally regarded as a bit of an operator, but
good for his debts.  A big spender, but not thought to have any serious
money worries.  Seen as on the up and up, destined for bigger and
better things, though likely to sail close to the wind with the
regulations, tax laws, etcetera.  Some people regard him as a one-man
band seem to be unaware of the partnership with Simon Jardine.  Others
say it's the link with Jardine that's the key to Galitza's success,
Jardine being the money man, the steadying influence."  He looked up.
"That's about it.  Unless you want a deeper look."

Again Terry was uncertain.  "What about surveillance?"

"That all depends on what you are expecting or hoping -to find."

"I don't really know."

"I think that rather answers your question then.  Surveillance is very
expensive and if you're not sure what you're after, then you could be
talking weeks and weeks."

Terry was already nodding rapidly.  "You're right.  Forget it."

Fergal produced a sheet of paper and slid it across the desk.  "The
address of the spinal unit.  I don't yet have the room number."  He
looked at his watch, keen to get away.  He had an invalid mother in a
nursing home somewhere near Malahide whom he came back to visit once a
fortnight.

Terry indicated one last question.  "I'm using Cintel for a job in
Warsaw.  Their man there is called Malinowski do you know him?  Is he
all right?"

If Fergal was curious about Terry's interest in Poland he gave no sign.
"In my day Malinowski was a freelance," he said.  "Mixed Cintel work
with journalism.  But solid, I'd say.  Yes, solid."

After he had gone, Terry went and stood at the window that overlooked
the Liffey, his habitual retreat in times of crisis or distraction. The
sky was dark with unshed rain, the water had taken on a benign silvery
sheen, and on O'Connell Bridge two garishly painted tourist coaches
were caught in the traffic.  His eye strayed to the south bank and the
top storey of The Kavanagh.  Built from the shell of a former bank
headquarters appropriately the bank he himself used the project had
consumed his life for over two years.  He had been obsessed by the
determination to get it finished on schedule.  In the event it had
opened only two weeks late, which was no mean achievement in boom-time
Dublin.  But already the struggle seemed remote, the obsession curious
and the duty he now owed the place oppressive, like a marriage after
the passion has died.

Restlessly he went back to his desk and scooped up the Cintel report.
He went through it once again, but found nothing he hadn't gleaned at
the first two readings.  Ben Galitza had been involved in protracted
negotiations to buy some generators but the deal had collapsed for no
apparent reason.  One of the leading Warsaw-based speculators claimed
to have been cheated over the lost deal but, coincidentally or not, he
was locked in a power struggle with a rival for control of two vodka
distilleries.  Was this struggle connected?  Who had ownership of the
generators, or actively controlled them?  Were they still for sale, or
had they gone to another buyer?

Terry drafted a fax to Malinowski.  He began with three questions:
Where are the generators?  If they've been sold, who bought them?  If
not sold, why were they withdrawn from sale?  He knew there was
something else he should ask but uncharacteristically it took him some
minutes before he pinned it down and added a fourth question.  Has
Galitza got involved in some other deal?  And still he wasn't ready to
hand it to Bridget for transmission.  There was something more,
something obvious, which hovered stubbornly out of reach.  He nursed
several ideas and rejected them before it finally came to him.  He
grunted with satisfaction.  He extended the last question to: Has
Galitza got involved in some other totally separate deal?  Or has he
done a secret back-door deal for the generators?

For lunch he stayed at his desk and had a chicken salad with oil-free
dressing and a glass of mineral water: part of a new regime to smarten
up his waistline and his life.  To the same end, he phoned Dinah and
apologised for not having been in touch.  She was sweet and
understanding as ever; from her tone he might have dropped out of her
life for two days rather than two weeks.  He felt humbled by her
seemingly endless capacity for forgiveness, and perhaps rather daunted
by it too, though he quickly rejected this thought as negative and
unworthy.  No, he was lucky to have her, and it was high time he
realised it.  She would be good for him, he was mad not to grab her
while he still had the chance.  Feeling a little happier at this
thought, he invited her down to Morne for Saturday evening with the
understanding that she would stay on until Sunday night.

In the afternoon he chaired two meetings whose proceedings he first
hurried along mercilessly then virtually ignored, so that no one was
certain that the decisions he'd forced through with such despatch would
survive the week.

It was a Thursday and, though Terry had decided to take a long weekend
starting at four, he was till in his office at ten past, journeying
back and forth through Fergal's report in his mind, one minute
tormented by the possibility that he had missed something, the next
racked by the possibility that he had not.

Finally he snatched up the phone and called Bridget in.  "Three years
ago when I had dealings with Ben Galitza he had a girlfriend called
Rebecca Child," he told her.  "We all went to the Curragh together."

"I remember.  It was the Derby," Bridget confirmed.

"I need to speak to her.  Can we find her number?"

"Do we have an address?"

"London, I would think."

Bridget pursed her mouth.  She liked a challenge but only when she
thought she could pull it off.

Terry said, "I think she married."

Bridget lifted one eyebrow.  "Well, that narrows the field."  "There
might be something in a British newspaper.  If I remember, she married
into a prominent Jewish family."

Terry took the slow road to Morne because the main road would be busy
and he liked the idea of driving Maeve in a leisurely fashion, with the
radio on and Conn's broad head blocking the rear-view mirror, just like
a regular family.  The rain that had been threatening all day finally
came on at six but obligingly fell all at once, so that by the time
they were entering the Slaney valley the clouds were evaporating fast
and shafts of golden light were brushing the slopes of the Wicklow
Mountains.

Maeve sat quietly for most of the journey, only stirring to change the
radio station or take her homeopathic hay fever remedy and blow her
nose, but as they approached Morne he noticed that her hands were
clenched against her legs and she seemed to be holding her breath.
"Dadda?"  she whispered as he glanced across at her.  Have you thought
about..  ."

But her soft words were lost under the music.  Hastily he reached
forward to turn the radio off.  "Say again, my darling."

She hesitated, as though she had suddenly thought better of the idea,
and he laid an encouraging hand over hers.  "Have I thought..  .?"  he
prompted.

She took a deep breath.  "Have you thought about .. . who might have
done this thing to Catherine?"

Now what in heaven is all this about?  he wondered.  What on this earth
is going through her head?  Deliberately choosing to take the question
at face value, he said, "It'll be a habitual thief.  Young, probably on
drugs, undoubtedly from a deprived background.  In fact, your average
criminal."

"You don't think ... it was someone who was trying to harm her?"

"What?  You mean, intentionally?"  He swept this idea aside with a
sharp exclamation.  "No, I don't!  No!  Goodness!  Why would anyone
want to do that?"

"Or Ben?"

"What do you mean EenT

"Setting out to harm Ben but ending up hurting Catherine instead."

"No, my darling!  There's nothing to give an inkling of a thing like
that.  Goodness!"  His laughter sounded unnatural.  "No, it was this
fella barging his way out, that's all!  In a panic at being discovered.
A thief who found someone in his way!"

Maeve was frowning.

"No," he hastened to reassure her again, 'it was a truly terrible thing
to happen, of course it was!  But it was an accident, my darling girl.
Just an accident.  Now, don't go thinking anything else.  Don't go
worrying yourself."

She looked down at her lap, she flexed her hands.  He sensed some deep
reservation.

"There's no doubt about it, my darling.  Cross my heart."

Her eyes came up to his face.

He declared again, with a false laugh, "Cross my heart!"

He was aware of her watching him for some time before she nodded, just
the once, very slowly.

He cried brightly, "Now, look we're almost here!"  They were entering
the lane that twisted up through pastureland and tall hedgerows towards
the groves of oak and beech that concealed Morne from the east.  "Just
look at this summer!  Just look at the trees!  Have you ever seen them
so heavy and so green!"  He laughed with a joy that was only a little
forced.  "I do so love this place!  I do so love it here!"

"I loved Creagh," Meave said in the voice of a child.  "Why didn't we
stay at Creagh?  Mamma had made it so fine."

He kept a judicious silence.  Creagh was the small house in an
unprepossessing Dublin suburb that he and his late wife had bought in
the first years of his success and subsequently built on to a couple of
times with less than satisfactory results, before giving up on the
place and moving to Foxrock.  If Maeve felt a sense of loss he felt
sure it was not for the house itself but for her mamma, who had died of
a thrombosis when Maeve was thirteen, and for the difficult motherless
years of her adolescence.

"Creagh was a good house," he said at last.  "It did us well, no doubt
about that.  But you just wait until Morne's finished.  Wait until the
garden's planted and the decorating's done.  It will be the finest
place you ever saw."

"Oh, Dadda," she said with a weary shake of her head, 'but you'll never
finish it, will you?"

This accusation took him aback.  "Good heavens, of course I will!"

"You've hardly started as it is."

"The roof is insulated.  And the windows all repaired."

Maeve continued to shake her head.  "You'll never finish."

He was still smarting at this curious and unwarranted remark when they
turned in through the latticed iron gates of Morne.

With the demise of the rhododendrons the narrow winding drive had lost
much of its capacity to tantalise and enthral; the house was now
clearly visible over the inglorious tangle of roots and stumps.  Yet,
for Terry, it remained a stirring sight.  Architecturally the house was
nothing exceptional, indeed many would judge it excessively plain
compared to the other landed houses in the neighbourhood.  It was a
two-storey oblong, two windows either side of the front door and five
above, with a grey pebble-dash exterior and grey slate rdof, and at the
back, a small wing, two-up two-down, while across a cobbled courtyard
were a number of dark outhouses and stabling for four horses.  For
Terry, the excessive simplicity of the frontage was redeemed by the
long sash windows that reached almost to the ground, and the pillared
portico that guarded the glass-panelled door, and the flowering
creepers that adorned the grey facade, the whole given life and
grandeur by the frame of splendid trees, yew and cedar to the left, oak
and beech to the right.  The house had four bedrooms, including one in
the wing, and two ancient bathrooms with large-bore plumbing that
rattled and sang, and a kitchen that had been poorly modernised in the
sixties.  It was a modest house for a rich man, but grand enough for
him.

Would he ever finish doing it up?  Did he want to?  Had Maeve touched
on some unexpected truth?  Standing in front of the house, he surveyed
the unkempt garden, the nettles footing the courtyard wall, the
brambles fanning out from behind the outhouses, the weeds peeping
through the gravel on the drive, and tried to picture the place as it
would be once he'd got to grips with it, and though he couldn't quite
visualise the flowers and shrubs that might come to be planted, he had
no trouble in seeing the garden as an ordered place with neat beds and
clipped hedges and smooth grass.  It would happen in good time, once
there was a plan.

"We'll see!"  he said to the garden in general.  "We'll see what Mrs.
Kent says!"

Inside, the house had a musty unused smell, and he was the first to
admit that the paintwork was shabby, the walls peeling in odd corners,
and one of the kitchen units was losing its door.  But he'd held back
on repainting, just as he'd held back on the curtains and carpets,
until he'd decided how to tackle the house as a whole.  This was
reasonable surely?  This didn't imply a lack of will?  The Langleys had
left nothing behind, not a curtain, not a scrap of carpet, not a
working light bulb.  Having to start from scratch in this way it would
have been easy to employ someone like Dinah, to give the place a
'look', but while he wasn't bothered by the tar ting and titivating
being visited on the Dublin house in the name of interior design, he
baulked at the thought of imposing such ideas here, where such luxury
and artificiality would be an affront.  He wanted everything in the
house to look natural and the word came to him timeless, and when he
saw a way to achieve this, it would be done.  If that was a sorry
motive, he was guilty as charged.

So for the moment rugs covered odd sections of the floor boards, while
the windows relied on shutters or cheap curtains.  For furniture he'd
bought a few antiques through a dealer employed on one of his hotels,
he'd picked up an old pine table and chairs for the dining room from a
shop in Cheltenham, and had chosen two new sofas and easy chairs to
stand in the long living room which ran the depth of the house.  The
sofas and chairs weren't right, he knew that.  For one thing, they
looked too modern; for another, they all matched, something you never
saw in old houses.  But, as with everything else, he wasn't in a mind
to do anything about them quite yet.

He might have been slow with the decorations, but he was quick to
maintain the fabric, and while Maeve went to the kitchen to unpack the
food he made a round of the place, inspecting stone, brick, pointing,
slates, gutters, paths; anything that might be in need of the odd spot
of repair.

This was an old routine; it had been his job as a kid, to fix
everything at Morne.  It had started when he was thirteen and Lizzie,
alone for much of the time with one baby and another on the way, had
needed someone to clear the snow.  He'd resisted going, he'd found
every excuse these were Anglos after all, and Mr.  Langley the worst
sort but he'd needed the money and it was only the once, he'd told
himself, on account of the snow.  Ten years later he was still turning
up almost every Saturday, even after he'd established his own building
company, and started the first of his pizza restaurants.

It had been Lizzie he'd kept coming back for, of course.  Her talk, her
reading, her encouragement, her joy in friendship, which, he understood
much later, was underscored by the strains of her marriage.  It was she
who'd bribed Terry to go to school, who'd cajoled him to do his
homework, who'd declared him capable of conquering the world, and at
some level he must have believed her because here he was, somewhere
near the top of the muck heap.  Why had she chosen to have faith in
him?  Why had she bothered?  She used to say it was the challenge, but
really it was the goodness of her quiet and unassuming heart.

Nowadays the study was the one room at Morne where he felt a little
less like a visitor.  It was a small west-facing room in the back
extension, looking on to the terrace and lawn, with the avenue of yews
beyond, and pasture and woodland in the distance.

Two years ago when he'd first acquired the house, he'd installed a
desk, a chair and a couple of side tables in here with the idea of
making it his workroom, a study in the strict sense of the word.  Then,
finding that he was spending much of his time here, he'd had the
chimney reopened and added armchairs on either side of the fireplace.
In no time a television and books had followed and, though the room was
cramped and the desk squeezed into one corner, it was at least a cosy
space that he could call his own.

Now he opened a window to let in the evening air and poured himself a
stiff Jameson's while he picked up the messages that Bridget had left
on his answering service.  Her voice hummed with satisfaction when she
announced that she had found a phone number for Rebecca Child, whose
married name was Wiseman.

Terry settled himself at his desk and took several more sips of whiskey
before dialling the number in London.

It rang for some time before an answering machine picked up with an
announcement delivered by a cool female voice that he did not
immediately recognise as Rebecca's.  He was just about to put the phone
down with the idea of calling later when the tape was interrupted by a
sharp "Hello?"

"Is this Rebecca Wiseman?"

"It is."

"This is Terry Devlin."

"Well, well!"  she laughed.  "Hello, Mr.  Terry Devlin.  Where are you
Ireland?"

"I am."

"Pity!  Otherwise I'd say let's meet for a drink!"  The merriment in
her voice, the slight blur to her words, made him suspect that she had
started the party without him.  "Now how are you, Terry?"

"I'm not complaining.  And how are you, Rebecca?"

"Ahh."  The sound drew out into a lingering lament.  "Married on the
rebound, repenting in the lawyer's office.  I'm getting a divorce."

He tried to think how long it had been since she married.  Two years?
"I'm really sorry to hear that."

"I told myself I was doing the sensible thing, Terry, getting married.
I told myself we had everything in common.  Background, religion,
interests.  There was only one problem."

"You didn't love him?"

"No passion either.  And at the end of the day, there's got to be love
or passion.  If you don't fancy someone, you can't pretend.  At least I
can't."

"No sticking it out?"

"I wish.  But we can't all be good Catholics, Terry, not like you lot.
For me, it's a case of one life, one chance.  I want another shot at
it.  All or nothing."

"Well... I wish you the best of luck."

"Not free yourself?"  There was a raunchy note to her voice.

He laughed.  "More trouble than I'm worth."

"It was Ben," she said in a voice suddenly drained of humour.  "If he
hadn't dumped me quite so massively ... I wanted to show him, you know?
I wanted him to realise I could find someone else, snap of the fingers,
no problem at all.  Oh She pulled up short.  "You've heard about his
wife?"

"I've heard."

"Terrible."

"Yes."

"I only met her the once, you know."

"Yes."

He needed no reminding of that day; it was emblazoned on his memory
perhaps even more vividly than on Rebecca's.  It was the day of the
Irish Derby, the day that Ben had met

Catherine for the first time, and Rebecca had lost him.  And, God save
his soul, it had been Terry who'd introduced them.

"In fact it was Ben I was calling about," Terry admitted.

"Ben?  Oh for God's sake, Terry I haven't seen him since we bust up."

"Ah.  I thought maybe .. . You're not in touch with anyone who knows
him?"

"Hardly," she scoffed.  "I made our friends choose when we split up him
or me.  There was no fence-sitting, not the way I felt about things.
No, if I hear about Ben at all nowadays -which I try not to it's
third-hand."

"Ah.  In that case .. ."

"Why're you asking, Terry?  Come clean!"

"I just wondered how things were with Ben, that's all.  What he was up
to."

"What-work?  Money?"

"An overall picture anything, everything.  Money.  Work.  Life."

"Life .. .?  Oh."  It was a knowing sound.  "You mean, is he playing
away?"

"I suppose that too, yes."

"Shit, Terry, you're asking me what men like Ben get up to when their
wives are unwell?  Like I'm an expert or something?"  She guffawed at
the thought.  "But you still haven't told me -why the interest?  He
hasn't gone and got himself on the wrong side of you again, has he?"

"Something like that."

"Well, welll You'd think he'd have learnt the first time round.  You'd
think he'd know it was mad to tangle with you, Terry!  But then he was
never too bright about that sort of thing, was he?  Look, I wish I
could help .. ."  He could almost picture her lifting her shoulders in
one of her more expansive gestures.

"Well... if you hear anything."

"If I hear!  You're a funny one.  But I'll say yes to dinner when
you're next in London."

"I'll call you."

"Promise?"

"It's a certainty, Rebecca."

Ringing off, he poured himself another whiskey and saw again the day
three years ago when he'd invited Ben and Rebecca to the Derby. Strange
the details that had stayed in his mind: the stillness of the air, the
sunshine falling on the women's hats, the pretty blue dress Maeve had
been wearing.  He remembered thinking what a fine couple Ben and
Rebecca made, how well suited they seemed, how much he liked her. Over
lunch, mellow with champagne, he remembered feeling something close to
contentment, with his business going well, and Maeve by his side, a
picture at seventeen and not a care in the world.

After the second race the four of them had decided to wander down to
the paddock.  Had it been his idea?  It hardly mattered now.  There was
quite a crowd below the stand, Terry took the lead as they eased their
way through the mob.  He paused to greet one or two people, turned to
wave to someone in the distance and swung back to find Duncan and
Catherine standing in his path.  It was the first time he'd seen
Catherine since the episode with the letter more than a year before.
Time had done nothing to protect him from the lurch of mortification he
felt at the sight of her.  Somehow he managed a smile, a greeting; he
bent to kiss her cheek.  By some miracle of social programming he
remembered to introduce everyone, and without muffing their names
either.  Ben and Catherine shook hands, said all the mundane things
that people say when they are meeting for the first time on a beautiful
day at the races.  For Terry, the awkwardness seemed to have passed.
The two parties moved on, the day sparkled, Terry felt a little easier
in his mind.  There was nothing to suggest that anything momentous had
happened, nothing to suggest that Ben and Catherine's meeting was in
any way significant, yet in those few minutes the world had shifted for
all of them: by such insignificant events is one's whole future
determined.  Terry often wondered what direction their lives would have
taken if he hadn't invited Ben and Rebecca to the Curragh that day, if
instead of going to the paddock the four of them had chosen to visit
one of the many boxes to which he had an invitation.  But thoughts of
that sort were a whip for one's own back, and there was no sense in
meting out more punishment.

It was the next evening near midnight, when the whiskey was roaring and
chasing through his veins, that Terry began a new letter.  Morne, he
wrote carefully at the top, and Friday because he couldn't remember the
date.  Dear Catherine, I hope you will not mind me dropping you a line
in your new place, but I thought I should report on the visit of the
celebrated Mrs.  Kent.  First, may I say that I hope your new place is
to your liking and that the staff are looking after you well.  If the
food is half good and the other inhabitants do not speak unless spoken
to I always think one is in with a chance .. .

So, Morne received a visit from the illustrious Mrs.  Kent..  . I have
to say that things did not get off to the best of starts when Conn took
exception to her.  Under normal circumstances Conn is not a partial dog
he would as soon lick an intruder's face as bite him but for some
reason he took against Mrs.  Kent.  Perhaps it was her voice
commanding, I think, would be a fair description perhaps she had the
scent of a Rottweiler on her we will never know but he bared every one
of his rickety teeth and shivered and shook and generally carried on
alarmingly until I hauled him back into the house and locked him up.

This counted against me with Mrs.  K, along, so it appeared, with much
else.  She is a forceful personage, not so very old in years (forty?)
but mature in manner, who carries her knowledge like an encyclopedia. I
went to the bottom of the class because I knew no plant names, had not
rooted out the Russian vine that is growing through one of the yews,
and had failed to realise that half the fruit trees had canker or would
it be fungus?  As for the shrubs that bore the marks of Mick's blunt
machete, she said that it didn't terribly matter since they should
never have been planted there in the first place (the soil?). She said
it was a pity the garden had fallen into such neglect, since some of
the best things would be difficult to save.  Like what?  I asked.  Like
the avenue and the lavender garden and the rose arches, she said.  It
was then I began to wonder if we were going to see eye to eye, Mrs.  K
and I. I love the lavender garden, you see.  And the avenue, for that
matter.  And even the rose arches, though I'll admit that they're a
little thin and scrawny.  Be that as it may, after much tut ting and
sucking in of breath and looking at the angle of the sun (another black
mark I could not fix on south, let alone east or west), she decided she
might, on reflection, advise on a grand plan.  She began to describe a
few possibilities, but I couldn't take them in -I think I was still
smarting from the accusation of neglect (your mamma loved the place a
bit wild, didn't she?  and I'm sure she was right). However, I've said
yes to an outline plan and a few drawings, and we'll see where we go
from there.

He read this through in despair.  What would she make of this nonsense?
He thought of tearing it up and starting again, but after pouring
himself another whiskey he fell asleep in the armchair, to be awoken
several hours later, cold and stiff-necked, by the sound of his own
snoring.  The next morning he signed the letter without reading it
through, and posted it in the village before he had the chance to think
better of it.

Chapter Six

THE MATCH flared in the darkness, illuminating Julie Basing's plump
face.  Holding the hand-rolled smoke like a peashooter, she lit it with
a short puff quickly followed by a second lingering drag.  "Hey," she
murmured contentedly, 'truly vicious."  She held it out to Catherine.

Catherine hesitated before taking it.  This hesitation was as much a
part of the nightly ritual as her acceptance.  Inhaling, she felt her
head swim almost immediately.  "Help."

"Dunno what you been missin' till you get good stuff."  Catherine
passed it back.  "A bit strong for me."  They sat side by side in a
corner of the unit garden, on the farthest loop of the farthest path.
From behind them, the lights of the wing cast a feeble glimmer.  The
night was warm and still.  Above the horizon, the sky was tinted a hazy
orange from the town, but high over their heads one or two stars were
showing through, faint pinpricks in the velvety dome.  Catherine
watched the steady unblinking dot of a satellite moving mesmeric ally
across the sky towards the mass of nearby trees, which stood like giant
sentries, tall and silent and heavy, bowed down by the last heat of the
long summer.  Even before the first trees began to turn, it seemed to
her that she could smell mouldering leaves and woodsmoke.  "I used to
love autumn," she said.

"Nah," scoffed Julie, 'summer, Spain and sangria for me."  "In autumn
you can plan for the next season.  Move plants that aren't thriving.
Make good your mistakes."

"No sortin' my mistakes," laughed Julie, who at twenty-five had two
children by different fathers and no man to support her.  "You know,
this stuff is truly great.  Why don' I roll you a couple of joints for
tomorrow?"

For an instant Catherine was tempted.

"Or you gonna stay ratted all weekend?"

Catherine gave an ironic laugh.  "Why not?"

"Shove some vodka in an Evian bottle, then you can take nips mornin'
and afternoon."

"There'll be champagne, I expect."

Julie was unimpressed.  "And?"

"My sister's doing the food so ... smoked salmon, I should think."  At
the thought of the party Catherine felt a fresh stab of apprehension
and, against routine and instinct, accepted a second smoke.  She took a
deep pull, savouring the workings of the drug, the languor, the sense
of lightness, most of all the blunting of anxiety, which was like a
small but perfect miracle.

Julie leant across and tapped her arm.  "Hey, it'll be okay."

"I told Ben I didn't want a party."  Catherine saw again his closed
expression, the distracted smile, the narrow unresponsive eyes.

"Look at it this way, it's your birthday, and they're just tryin' to
make you happy."

"They'll fuss, I know they will.  I'm dreading it."

"I did, didn' I, first time back."

"But you knew what to expect."

"You're kiddin'.  Me nan ran about like a strangled chicken, pushin'
food at me.  Me dad, he kept talkin' to me brother about the Cup, 'cos
then he didn' have to look at me an' the big bad wheelchair.  And me
mum, she just went and cried her eyes out in the kitchen."  Julie had
been riding pillion on her boyfriend's motorbike when they'd collided
with a lorry and she'd been thrown thirty foot onto a low wall.

Catherine said, "At least they didn't give you a party."

"Yeah, well they're all gonna say the wrong thing.  Right?  They're
gonna treat you like a child.  Right?  They're gonna say' she put on a
Knightsbridge accent "We think you're so marvelous!  We think you're so
brave!  They can' help it.  They dunno no better.  Just sink another
dose o' champagne, get wasted, have a laugh."

Julie's creed was simple.  You made the most of everything life had to
offer and ignored the rest.  While this approach left out too much, it
perfectly suited her own stubborn nature and the philosophy of the
spinal unit, which was pragmatic and upbeat.  As if in echo of this, a
distant shout of laughter floated across the garden on the torpid air,
followed by a ripple of good-natured jeers.

On her arrival, Catherine had been quietly appalled by the
quasi-military camaraderie, the blind devotion to sports and team
games, the institutional humour.  For some weeks she had resisted the
pressure to join in everything from quiz nights to group discussions
and counselling sessions, where, against all instinct, you were
expected to offer up your most private and painful thoughts to
strangers.  Yet before long she too had succumbed, as all but the most
stubborn must succumb, because in the end it was a relief to fight on
only one front at a time, to be carried along by the routine, the sense
of shared experience, the knowledge that, for what was probably the
last time in your life, no explanations were due.  She had responded to
the atmosphere of, if not mutual support, then mutual resistance, a
unifying scorn for the preconceptions and mawkish sympathies of the
outside world, and learnt to joke loudly and laugh falsely at a great
many things that by most standards were not very funny.

Her family had greeted this flippant mood with transparent relief and
renewed attempts to get her back into the swing, as they liked to call
it.  The birthday party was one of their more obvious tactics.  They
seemed to believe that social contact, no matter how superficial, was
like good medicine, hard to take at first, but immensely beneficial in
the long run.

"Ben comin' to get you?"  Julie asked.  "He could chat up that
boot-faced hint across the corridor again, then we might get a few more
laughs."

"He's coming at nine."

"Been away again, has he?"

"Just very busy."

"He works like crazy, don' he?  Least you got that.  A bloke who brings
home the bread."

Catherine murmured, "I'm not so sure."  She said it softly but not so
softly that Julie couldn't hear.

The pale disc of Julie's face turned and peered at her in the darkness.
"Not sure, how?"

It was a while before Catherine answered.  "I'm not sure if I've got
the bloke, and I'm not sure if we've got any money."

Julie drew in a long thoughtful breath.  "Ooops.  You think he's
playin' away?"

Catherine chose her words carefully, and each still felt like a small
betrayal.  "I think there are things we need to talk about that we
don't talk about."

"Yeah, well, men never talk, do they, not unless they've got a gun to
their heads."  She glanced around again and said in a tone of
friendliness, "Wanna talk about it now?"

"Not much to say really," she lied.

"Talked to the shrink?"

"He says that Ben's showing the classic symptoms of survivor guilt.  Or
rather, double survivor guilt, because he didn't manage to protect me,
and because it was me and not him who was severely injured.  Something
like that."

"What's that got to do with playin' around, for Chris'sake?"  Julie
declared in a combative tone.

"Ah, well how did he put it?"  Catherine went through the motions of
recalling the psychiatrist's argument, though she remembered it
perfectly well.  "Dr.  Fellowes said that when a man's failed in his
most basic role as protector it leaves him feeling unworthy and
emasculated.  And that if he feels bad enough he may go and do things
that are out of character."

"Oh, p-l-ease!"  Julie gave a hearty groan.  "So they feel guilty,
these men, so it's okay for them to go and fool around.  I tell you, if
it was a woman they'd say she was a load of rubbish.

Shit, Cath what I mean is that men get all the breaks.-That's what I
mean.  So ... ol' Shrinko what's he suggest, then?  Therapy?"

"He says I should make it clear to Ben that I don't hold him
responsible in any way.  That I still respect and esteem him."

"Yeah, well so?  That's what men want all the time, in nit  Respect and
no bother."

Sometimes in her bleaker moments Catherine remembered how Ben seemed to
avoid contact with her new body.  Occasionally, when she really wanted
to torture herself, she thought he was actively repulsed by it.  But
then, as the group discussions had taught her, there was no state of
paranoia from which the newly disabled were immune.

"That Shrinko," Julie muttered, 'he's a case, if you ask me."

Catherine said, "He doesn't rate my own guilt much."

"What's wrong with it, then?  Not good enough, or what?"

Catherine began slowly, trying to make sense of it all over again. "Ben
and I had a terrible row in France.  Our first really serious row. I
felt it was hanging over us I still feel it's hanging over us.  I keep
thinking that if it hadn't been for the stupid row the accident would
never have happened."

"What?"  Julie gave an exaggerated sigh of disbelief.  "Now, how in
God's heaven do you work that one out?"

"I was going to stay on in France while Ben went to America, but at the
last minute I came back with him.  Because of the row.  You know trying
to make amends, hating the thought of parting badly.  But all I managed
to do was stir it up again.  We had another tiff on the way in from the
airport.  So stupid about something so unbelievably trivial '

"Like what?"

"Oh, about whether these friends we'd been staying with had taken
offence at this nickname Ben had given their child."

"What name d'he call it?"

"Raucous."

"And was it?"

"Well, yes, it was, but then all small children make a racket,

don't they?  The point was, it became an issue.  So ridiculous!  It
just made everything worse again.  And I just can't get it out of my
head that if we hadn't been arguing then Ben would never have stormed
up and tried to fight it out with the intruder.  He would have called
the police or got a neighbour or ... well, something else."

"Wan' my opinion?  Sounds like a load of complete bollocks to me.  Men
fight.  It's in the blood.  Can' help it.  Every bloke I've ever known
has been a fighter, and I'm not just talking push and shove either.
It's in their terosterone, or whatever you call it."  She took a second
equally unsuccessful stab at it.  "Trerosterone?  Anyway second bloody
nature."

"But he was angry.  He was tense.  He wasn't thinking straight.  If
he'd been thinking straight..  ."

"So this makes it your fault?  Give us a break, Cath!  You did nothin'
that no woman ain' done through history you had a bar ny with your old
man.  What was the big row about the first time, anyway?  What was the
big tangle about in France?"

Music came on somewhere, a tinny jangle that pulsated across the
darkened garden.  "Oh," she sighed, 'money."

"Well, that wouldn' be a first either, would it?  Men spend, women
mend."

"It was awful.  I've never seen him so angry."

"They never like bein' told they're not safe with money, do they?  Can'
take it.  Never have, never will."  Julie performed her nightly ritual,
pinching off the burnt end of the joint and stashing the tiny stub in
her tobacco tin.  Then, matter-of-factly: "So now you think you're
broke?  Broke, like no Caribbean this year?  Or broke, like no rent
money?"

An aircraft flew so high above that it might have been at the same
altitude as the satellite, on the very edges of space.  Catherine
looked up and thought of the intense phone conversations that took Ben
out into the garden for up to half an hour on end when he came to
visit, the way he prowled up and down and gesticulated as he talked,
and the tension in his face when he returned.  She could think of
nothing that could put that sort of fear into him but money.  "I don't
know.  Could be no rent money."

"You can earn, then," said Julie sweepingly.  "Go an' do yer
gardens."

"No money in gardens.  No real money."

"Skip away to Ireland, then.  That Terry keeps asking' you to do his
garden, don' he?  An' he's hyper-rich.  Sting him for a deadly sum, why
don' you?  What've you gotta lose?"

This was a subject they had covered several times before.  Julie, who
was far more sentimental than she liked to pretend, had fallen for the
dubious charms of Terry's weekly epistles to the glories of dogs,
gardens and rural life, which she stole as soon as Catherine had
discarded them.

"I've told you," Catherine repeated, "I'll never go to Morne while
Terry Devlin's there."

"But his letters he's tryin' to be friendly."

"Ah, but why?  That's what you always have to ask why."

"Goodness of his heart?  Tryin' to make amends for what he did toyer
dad?"

"I think not."  She spoke in a tone of great certainty, but in truth
she still couldn't make up her mind about the letters, which arrived
with unerring regularity every Tuesday and which she had come to read
with rather more enjoyment than she liked to admit.  Was Terry really
trying to say sorry?  Or was he completing the reversal of fortunes by
taking a paternalistic and patronising interest in her welfare?

"Well, he can' be all bad, not if he's stinkin' rich," Julie declared
with her own unanswerable logic.  "Play him at his own game, I say.
Take the jobi Get him to lay on the private plane, the cars, the whole
bit.  Make it champagne all the way.  Take the money and Julie broke
off abruptly and turned her head to some distant sound that Catherine
had missed.  "Someone callin' for you, Cath."  Swivelling her chair,
she added waspishly, "Well, well, if it isn't your secret admirer."

Catherine turned herself around and saw a man silhouetted against the
french windows.  Even before he began to walk towards them she
recognised Simon's lean upright figure and stifled a guilty sense of
dismay.

Julie said in a low voice, "Mr.  Dark Horse."

"What?"

"Hidden depths.  But murky, I'd say."

"He's been a good friend," Catherine hissed reprovingly before calling
out, "Hello, Simon."

"I'm off then," sang Julie and pushed herself rapidly away.

As Simon stooped to kiss Catherine on the cheek she caught the scent of
his aftershave, which still managed to take her by surprise because it
was so spicy.

"How are you, Catherine?"

As always he had brought flowers; as always they were white, exotic and
almost certainly expensive.

"Thank you," she said.  "How lovely."

"And .. . this."  He thrust a slim volume into her hand and said in a
breathless excited tone, "I managed to find a copy!"

She couldn't think what it was, and in the dark it was impossible to
read the title.  "Thank you."

"It's a new edition.  They've taken out some of the minor works and
added a few more in the name of revisionism.  But it's still got the
best ones."

She realised it was a book of poetry he'd talked about, and she in an
unthinking moment had said she'd love to read it.  "That's very
kind."

"I hope you don't mind me turning up out of the blue, without letting
you know," he said in his soft deferential voice.

"Not at all."

It was almost nine and a Friday.  Unless he was abroad Simon usually
came on Sundays first thing in the morning and on Wednesdays in the
evening.  Before leaving he would punctiliously arrange the day and
time for his next visit.

"So .. ."  Catherine stalled immediately.  For no reason she could ever
identify conversation with Simon did not flow easily.  "Why this
unexpected surprise?"

"Have you spoken to Ben today?"  he asked.

"No.  But then he's picking me up at nine tomorrow.  I'm going home for
the weekend."

"Of course.  I forgot."

Simon was not someone to forget anything, however small, and this,
along with his unexpected appearance, made her ask, "Nothing wrong?"

"No, no.  I was just passing."  The attempt at casualness didn't come
off.  "And .. . well, I've got a bit of news."

"Good news, I hope."

"Shall we go inside?"

"Simon!  You're making me nervous."

"Nothing bad, really.  It'd be nice to sit somewhere, that's all. Shall
I..  .?"  He was offering to push her along the path.

They went to a corner of the smoking room, an airless box of a room in
the style of an airport lounge with rows of chairs along the walls and
bright overhead lights and coffee tables patterned with rings and
cigarette burns.  The place was empty except for a couple of girls
puffing greedily under an anti-smoking poster.

Simon moved a chair round, positioning it at a precise angle to her
wheelchair before sitting on the edge and leaning forward with his
elbows on his knees.  As always he was smartly dressed, wearing a light
grey Italian suit with a deep blue shirt and silk tie.  His dark hair
was sleek and newly combed, his small rimless spectacles flawlessly
polished, his tapered hands exceptionally white and soft-looking.  She
had long since guessed that he spent time grooming himself in the Gents
before coming in search of her.

"Well?"  she prompted lightly.

"First, how are you?"  he asked, his eyes fixed hungrily on her face.
"How's the physio going?"

"Oh, I've finally understood how one can be driven to kill.  The
physios are deaf to shouts of pain."

He examined her face carefully to gauge her mood before deciding to
smile.  "But..  . progress?"

"It's better than sitting on my bum all day."

Catherine had been lucky, her spinal cord was only partially severed.
On a good day, which meant a day when the physios managed to goad her
sufficiently, Catherine could manage one or two uncertain steps on
callipers and crutches, rolling along like a caricature of a peg-legged
sailor.  The physios had promised that with 'just' a few more weeks'
work she'd be able to manoeuvre herself quite a distance, still with
callipers and crutches of course, and on surfaces that were hard and
level.  For uneven surfaces however, pavements, shops, the outside
world in general, wheels would have to remain what they termed the
'chosen' form of transport, at least for the moment.  Either from
ignorance or tact, no one had suggested how she was going to get around
gardens yet.

"And the new callipers?"  Simon asked conscientiously.  As always he
forgot nothing.

He listened to her report with a loyal smile, and she remembered how
strained his smile had been when he'd started visiting her almost three
months ago, how his cheek used to flutter so violently that he would
turn away to hide it, and how very wearing she had found him in those
days, with his overwhelming attentiveness, his intense desire to
please.  At some point, thank heaven, he must have puzzled over the
tension he seemed to engender in her and finally understood that he
must pull back a little, he must have realised that even the
best-intentioned concern must have its limits, because as the weeks had
passed he'd moderated his attention, or at least concealed it.  He'd
learnt to laugh with something like spontaneity, to give the appearance
of being at ease, he'd learnt not to scrutinise her every move, though
nothing, it seemed, could ever quite dislodge the watchfulness from his
dark steady eyes.  It was as though he felt the need to remain
constantly alert to the dangers of misunderstanding or misjudgement.

At first she could only get him to talk about his social life, the
films and plays he'd seen, the charity dos he'd attended.  He took
peculiar pride in these activities, he talked about the famous names
he'd met, as though this proved his credentials as a gregarious member
of a racy crowd, which only made her suspect that he was rather lonely,
an impression borne out by his mention of numerous girlfriends, but no
one in particular.

Having exhausted his social life the conversation would often flag, and
once, when the silence had stretched out longer than normal and
Catherine was feeling unusually irritable, she'd turned to the subject
she had been warned to avoid.  She asked him about his background.

The effect had been unexpected.  It was as though he'd been waiting for
her question, had even prepared for it.  With a slow nod and a glimmer
of anticipation, he'd proceeded with solemnity to tell her that his
paternal grandparents had been German Jewish immigrants, who'd settled
in Manchester before the war.  Simon's father had been the youngest of
their six children.  Simon had lost contact with him years ago, but
believed he was running a business up north somewhere.  Simon's mother
was living with a sister who ran a clothes shop in Chigwell.  His
mother had grown up in Ilford in Essex, the daughter of a trade union
official.  She had gone to the Royal Ballet School on a scholarship and
become a star of the Ballet Rambert - a fact Simon recounted with
immense pride until she gave up the touring life to have Simon, her
only child.  She and Simon's father had split up when Simon was four
acrimoniously, Catherine gathered and Simon had lived with his mother
in a small flat in Islington - 'not the smart end' until he won a place
at the City of London School, when they had moved out to a flat in
Manor Park.  Reading between the lines, Catherine guessed that the move
to Manor Park had been forced on them by lack of money, and that for
Simon's mother life as a jobbing dance teacher had been an unwelcome
comedown.

In a further show of confidence, unprompted but not, she felt,
unrehearsed, Simon had told her with a kind of offhand bravado that did
not sit easily on him that he'd been unhappy at school, unhappy at
university and only started to enjoy life when he'd qualified and begun
to make money.  "I realised money was the way out," he'd declared. "The
greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty."  He'd laughed,
though she'd sensed that for him it wasn't much of a joke.

Over the weeks, Simon continued to volunteer more particles of his
history like precious gifts, given willingly but also with some anxiety
as to how they would be received and safeguarded.  She couldn't imagine
why he was so sensitive about his past.  It couldn't be his origins,
not in an era when it was entirely fashionable to have poor immigrant
grandparents, nor his schooling, which had taken him to Cambridge and a
law degree.  His parents, then?  If so, Catherine guessed it was his
mother, whose life story seemed to have stopped some ten years ago when
she'd gone to live with the sister in Chigwell.  Though Simon clearly
loved and admired his mother, he never talked about her in the present
tense, nor explained how she passed her time, except to say 'quietly'.
Catherine imagined Alzheimer's or mental illness.

This, then, was the uncertain basis of their unlikely relationship:
medical updates, social reports and occasional confidences.  She would
have hesitated to call it a friendship, she wasn't even sure why she'd
let the visits drift on week after week.  Possibly because he made few
demands on her, possibly because for all his awkwardness she felt oddly
comfortable with him.  If she'd stopped to wonder why he should want to
come and see her quite so often, she would have put it down to his
nature, which would always search out some cause to which he could
offer his rather dutiful brand of devotion.

Only once had he unnerved her.  "Do you believe in fate?"  he'd asked
one evening.  "I don't mean in the Buddhist sense.  Rather the
coincidental sense.  The belief that coincidence signals and determines
our destinies."

"That depends on the kind of coincidence.  Nice ones, yes.  Nasty ones,
it's all a horrible plot."

"I mean certain .. . bonds.  Certain connections.  You don't think
they're significant?  That they indicate a predisposition for two
people to meet?"  He was strangely agitated, his voice breathy and
rushed, his mouth jerking slightly as he talked.

"It all seems like chance to me, how people meet."

"But take MS!  You don't realise, there's no way you could know there's
a bond between MS!"

"There is?"

"I've never told you before!"  He almost lost his nerve then.  He said
with a false laugh, "You're going to think it's stupid."

"Try me."

As so often before, she felt that it took an enormous effort of faith
for him to voice his more private thoughts.  "My family," he said at
last with a gasp.  "When they came over from Germany well, their name
was Gartenbauer!"  He watched eagerly for her reaction.

Catherine got half way there.  "Garden.  Garden-something."

"Garden builder!"

"Oh."  Now she was beginning to see.  "You mean like me."

He nodded happily, with a wide almost ecstatic grin.  "Both of us
garden builders!"

"But you became Jardine?"  she asked, more to move the conversation
along than from any real curiosity.

"Oh, my grandfather was all for anglicising the name to Garden, but my
grandmother thought something French-sounding would be more
distinguished."

"Coming from Germany, was your grandfather interned during the war?"

She had startled him completely.  "Yes," he whispered, and again the
strange ecstasy came over his face.  "Yes .. . You knew."

"I guessed."

"That's what I mean you're intuitive."

"I wish," she said, making light of it.  "Most of the time my intuition
is precisely nil."

"But there's intuition between MS, isn't there?  That's what I mean a
bond.  Garden builders!"

She smiled and looked away.

"I can't talk to anyone like I talk to you, Catherine."  When she
looked back, his eyes were hard and bright and needy.

"What about girlfriends?  Isn't there someone special?"

A defensiveness came over his face.  "No one special, no."

"One day, though."

"I don't know.  I think my standards are too high."

"Ah, women don't suit pedestals.  Too easy to topple off.  I come off
mine almost instantly.  With Ben I think it was the third time we met
when he found me picking some rough bits off my feet."

With that, the strange intense moment had passed.

Watching him now, though, she saw the same tension in him, like a
charge of electricity.

"So, what's this news?"  she asked.

He sat upright and fixed her with his dark damp eyes.  "I wouldn't
bother you with this, not tonight, but I wanted you to hear it from me
before you heard it from anyone else.  I couldn't bear it if you
thought the wrong thing, Catherine.  I really couldn't bear it."

It was the hint of supplication in his voice that always jarred
slightly, the invitation to be liked.  She smiled quickly to reassure
him.

"You see, I wouldn't want you to hear anything that wasn't entirely ..
. accurate."

She urged him forward again with a nod.

"The thing is ... with enormous regret ... I've made the decision to
leave RNP.  The fact is that Ben and I have ceased to pull in the same
direction.  In fact, it's been wrong for a long time.  It's got to the
stage where we'd be better off on our own.  I'm deeply sorry,
Catherine.  Believe me."

He had spoken in the hushed tones of someone imparting momentous news,
and Catherine found herself replying with equal gravity.  "I'm sure Ben
will be very sorry to lose you."

The dark eyes did not leave hers.  "Obviously, if there had been any
way of avoiding it, I would have moved heaven and earth.  You know
that.  Heaven and earth, Catherine."

"These things happen."

"It wasn't lack of trying."

"No, I understand."

"Really?"  His anxious gaze searched her face, looking for confirmation
or reassurance.  "And I'd like you to know that it was no split-second
decision.  It's been obvious to me for a long time that it couldn't be
made to work.  But of course I wasn't going to do anything while Ben
couldn't get away, while he was needed here with you."  His voice
trembled slightly, his expression softened, as though the very mention
of her was enough to move him.  "But now that he's back at work, now
he's travelling again, I feel that I have no choice, I can't leave it
any longer."

"It's good of you to have waited.  I'm sure Ben's very grateful."

"Good of me?"  He recoiled fastidiously at the suggestion.  "It wasn't
a question of good.  It was the right thing to do, Catherine, from
every point of view.  The right thing."

She thought what a strange unfathomable person he was, so racked by the
proprieties of life.  There were moments when she felt in awe of his
old-fashioned rectitude.

"But now," he stated with a break in his voice, 'the time has finally
come.  I do hope you understand, Catherine.  Believe me, if there'd
been any other way .. ."

"You must do what you must do, Simon."

He gave his odd breathy laugh, which seemed to jump out of his throat
at the most incongruous moments.  "I have to say Ben's pretty angry
about it."

"He probably needs time to get used to the idea."

"I'd like to think so, Catherine, I really would, but he's saying that
I'm in breach of our agreement, that I'm not leaving him enough time to
find someone else.  But that's absolutely not true.  I'm following the
terms of our agreement to the letter.  I want you to know that,
Catherine.  You have my word."  He examined her face again, searching
for whatever it was he feared to find there.  "He's also accused me of
leaving him in the lurch.  He says I couldn't have chosen a worse
time."

"There's a lot on?"

"Nothing unusual.  No, what he's complaining about is money.  Saying
we've got no money.  But it's simply not true!"  he argued vehemently.
"Completely the opposite!  Catherine -I've been working flat out for
the last four months to get us out of the woods, and now we're there.
We're actually there.  He's talking nonsense."

"When you say there .. .?"

"Oh, the extra loans have been paid off, the extra overdrafts we took
out in March.  And we've enough left over to make up our back pay."

Catherine prompted cautiously, "But there was a bad patch?"

"Yes, but way back in the winter.  Now .. . well, we haven't made a
packet this financial year, but we haven't done badly either.  I don't
know what he's on about, Catherine, I really don't."

"I see," she said, though all that she saw was that Ben's worries must
lie outside the business.

"What caused the glitch in the winter?"  she asked after a while.  "Ben
never really explained it to me."

"Ah."  Simon exhaled heavily.  "It was the deal with Polska CMC. Twenty
generators.  A million quid each.  We spent months setting it up and
then it just..  . evaporated."  His voice rose at the memory.  "We
never knew why.  I tried to find out what had happened, I did
everything I could to resurrect it, but it'd gone stone cold."  He gave
a slow shrug, a lift of the shoulders, an upturn of both hands.  "We
put everything into it.  The set-up costs were huge, we lost a packet.
It's taken all this time to claw our way back.  Finally got there with
the Bahrain contract.  I tell you, Catherine, I've been eating,
sleeping, breathing the goddam Bahrain contract.  But now, at long
last, we're there.  By the skin of our teeth, I have to say.  But we've
made it."  He added in renewed indignation, "And now Ben's saying I'm
leaving at a bad time."

There was nothing she could say to this.

"It's really not fair, Catherine."

Was he really expecting her to take his side against Ben's?  She said
noncommittally "I'll be sorry if you and Ben part on bad terms."

He leant forward again, his moist eyes glowing with a passionate light.
He reached out to touch her hand and she noticed that his own was rigid
and trembling slightly.  "I couldn't bear it if you thought I was
abandoning Ben at a bad time."

It was at moments like this that Catherine remembered why she could
find Simon rather trying.  She gave a minute shrug.

"I rate loyalty above everything, Catherine.  If you abandon your
friends well, it's all meaningless, isn't it?"

She nodded in the hope that he would drop the matter, but Simon was not
someone to leave a subject before he had made his point.

He said, "You do understand that I've tried to do everything possible
to avoid this?"

She replied with heavy emphasis, "I do understand, Simon."

"Really?"

She held up both hands.  "Really!"

"It was just that '

She shook with sudden anger.  "You don't have to go on!  Please don't
go on!"

He pulled back sharply as if she had struck him and looked quickly down
at the floor, but not before she had seen the dart of injury in his
face.

She sighed inwardly.  This was the way with Simon, to push too far and
then be astonished by the reaction.  She muttered, "I'm tired.  It's
been a long day."

His face tightened with remorse.  "Of course.  I wasn't thinking.  Of
course.  How stupid.  It's late.  I should never have .. ."

They both took a moment to recover.

Catherine said, "I'm sorry.  I'm glad you came to tell me.  You've been
such a good friend .. ."

"No, my fault.  My fault entirely."  He offered a soft unhappy smile.

Letting the last of her anger go, she touched his arm briefly and
declared brightly, "Well, then pastures new for you and Ben!"

He said, "There's one other bit of news."

When he hesitated, when his cheek fluttered and jerked, she thought he
was still smarting from her rebuke.  Nothing in his manner prepared her
for what he was about to say.

"The police are questioning someone."

She stared at him.

"Since yesterday.  That's why I asked if Ben had called.  I thought he
might have told you."

And still she couldn't speak.

"But, Catherine, he's not the guy.  He's just someone who's got caught
with some of your property.  They'll do him for receiving."

"Receiving?"  she echoed stupidly, as if she were unfamiliar with the
term.

"He had a piece of your jewellery on him."

Catherine had never thought that any of the stolen property would turn
up, had never allowed herself to imagine seeing it again.  "What sort
of jewellery?"

"A brooch, I think."

She had only ever owned one brooch, a sunburst in malachite and amber
given to her by her mother.  She had kept it in her jewellery box in a
chest of drawers in the bedroom.

"Who is he, this man?"

"Oh .. ."  Simon made a dismissive gesture.  "The police gave minimal
details.  Mediterranean appearance, aged twenty-eight, I think."

"And ... is he known for this sort of thing?"

"They didn't say.  But, Catherine," Simon insisted in his most
solicitous tone, "I really wouldn't worry about it."

But I do, she thought.  This man had handled her mother's brooch, this
man had touched her life and brought the burglary back into focus.

Simon leant forward and rested a hand on her forearm,

then after the tiniest hesitation and a quick upward glance, shifted it
onto her hand.  The coolness of his touch belied the faint dampness on
his forehead.  "I'll keep a watch on everything, Catherine.  I'll make
sure there's nothing for you to worry about.  Really you mustn't give
this man another thought."

She did, though.  She thought about him for the rest of the evening and
between disturbing dreams and when she woke early the next morning to
face her twenty-ninth birthday.

Chapter Seven

"NEARLY THERE," Emma cried rousingly.  She was perched in the back of
the car, sitting forward with her elbows resting on the two front
seats, her head at Catherine's shoulder, a cigarette brandished aloft,
within an inch of Ben's head.

Ben drove silently, with concentration.  Catherine stared steadfastly
ahead.  They were passing along Holland Park Avenue, through air hazy
with dust and fumes and heat that had gone on too long.  On Campden
Hill a chestnut drooped in the moisture less air, its outer leaves
shrivelled like brown paper, in declaration of an early autumn.

For no apparent reason Emma squeezed Catherine's shoulder.

"We did tell you Jamie and Sue were coming, didn't we, darling?  We
couldn't leave them out they just insisted on coming.  Wanted to pop in
for a quick drink, but in the end -well, we felt we couldn't not invite
them to lunch.  Could we, Ben?  But we're still only ten.  Oh maybe
it's twelve.  Is it twelve?"  This addressed to Ben.  "Anyway, darling,
it's still nice and small, like you wanted."  Making a futile attempt
to blow smoke backwards over her shoulder, she cried, "But you must
tell us exactly what you want to do, Cath.  Just tell us!  We'll kick
them all out at two thirty sharp if you need to lie down and rest.
Quickest lunch in history.  Honestly, darling the lot.  You must just
tell us."

They turned into Ladbroke Grove and, cresting Notting Hill, sped down
the other side before turning east and crossing the fruit-and-vegetable
end of the Portobello Road, which was thronged with stalls and shoppers
and bands of shuffling tourists.

"God.  Bloody Saturday," Ben sighed.  "Bloody parking."

"I found a space in All Saints Road last week," Emma responded.  "The
far end."

And still Catherine looked ahead.  Last Saturday Ben had not come to
see her, neither had Emma.  Ben, she remembered, had been tied up with
a meeting.

"I can go and park the car, if you like," Emma volunteered.

"Sure," Ben murmured.

Nearing Westbourne Park, they made the last turn into the street of
small stuccoed villas.  Catherine registered the bunch of brilliantly
coloured balloons attached to someone's front door and dimly attributed
them to some kids' party.  It was only when they got closer and she
picked out the house that she said in cold anger, "Could you remove
them, please?"

Ben slowed the car and double-parked outside.  There was a pause in
which no one moved.

Catherine stated quietly, "I'll wait here until the balloons have
gone."

Emma scrambled for her door.  "I'll do it."  She ran up the short path
and began to pick at the ties holding the balloons to the door
knocker.

Ben offered a rueful expression.  "Not my idea."  He looked her full in
the face, and in the harsh sunlight she noticed that his eyes had grown
a web of small lines at the corners, an unhealthy puffiness beneath,
and whites that were red from lack of sleep or strain, or both.

She said, "You look so tired.  Have you been overdoing it?"

He gave a short smile and ran his fingers lightly over her hand.  "No
more than usual, Moggy.  Just a bit hectic, that's all."

"The business?"

He made a soothing gesture, a slow weave of his hand from side to side,
to suggest that he didn't want to bother her with such things.

"You must tell me."

"Oh, just a small glitch."

"Is it Simon leaving the partnership?  He told me last night."

"God, no!"  he exclaimed derisively.  "No that's a blessing!  He's been
a complete pain.  A real old woman.  No it's not Simon!"

Then .. .?  Tell me."

He seemed to come to a decision.  Taking her hand, he lifted it
solemnly to his mouth and kissed it.  "Nothing I can't manage if you're
there to help me through, Moggy.  Nothing we can't battle together."

"But what is it?  A deal?  A contract?"

He flinched slightly and offered a brave tortured smile.  "Sort of."

It was a show of defenceless ness so uncharacteristic of him that it
filled her with alarm.  In the same instant it came to her that this
had been the reason for the barrier between them.  There was no
estrangement, it had all been in her head, it was just this bad deal,
they were going to be all right.  At this realisation something
overturned inside her, she felt a wrench of love and longing.  "What is
it, darling?  You know I'll do anything to help."

He gave his same forlorn smile.  "Later.  We'll talk about it later. As
soon as we get a quiet moment."

"Whatever it is, I wish you'd told me before.  Why didn't you tell
me?"

He grimaced and gestured impossibility.  "Couldn't, could I?"

"But if you can't tell me .. ."

"Didn't want to worry you, Moggy."

She shook her head gently.  "Oh, Ben.  Far better to know .. ."

He would have climbed out then if she hadn't reached across and touched
his arm.  "We'll get rid of everyone as soon as we can, won't we,
darling?  Be on our own?  So we can talk.  I feel we never have the
chance to talk."

Reaching for the door again, he said, "Sure."

Like a child, she called after him, "Promise?"

"Promise."

While he retrieved the wheelchair from the back, Catherine watched Emma
remove the last of the balloons from the door and take them inside. She
had loved this house from the moment she and Ben had first seen it. It
was narrow and red and gothic, a garish interloper in a sedate
low-built terrace of stucco and grey brick.  Built in 1896 for the
pastor of the Methodist chapel that had once stood in the adjacent
street, the house wasn't much bigger than its humble two-up two-down
neighbours, yet it dominated the street by the stridency of its red
brick, the height of its leaded windows and the precipitous
barge-boarded gable end that rose above the smooth line of slate roofs
like the prow of a ship.  Seeing it again after all these months, a
number of images spooled through Catherine's mind: of the rain-soaked
day she and Ben had moved in; of the weekend she had planted the tubs
with early geraniums, now parched and bent; of a day just before the
wedding when she had stood opposite the house and thought: This is
where I will live as a wife a wife!

Darker images crowded in from another time, only to vanish as Ben
wrenched the door open and reached in to lift her out.  He had set up
the wheelchair as close as possible to the door, in the gap between two
parked cars.  Since the road was heavily cambered, the gap between the
parked cars not all it might be and this was a piece of choreography
they had never tried before, she arrived in the wheelchair at an odd
angle with one hip in the air and without her cushion, and with the
brake off so that the chair began to roll backwards towards the gutter.
In the process of lunging out to grab the chair, Ben lost his balance
and, teetering precariously on one foot, almost fell across her, only
saving himself by twisting his body round in an awkward jerky motion
and throwing his other foot to the ground.  For an uncertain moment he
hung all his weight on the chair arm.  The chair rocked, jolted back,
trembled, and was finally still.  Ben, pinioned against a Jeep, pushed
himself upright, panting hard.

Catherine had long since forced herself to find irony in such
situations.  She gave a raucous bray of laughter.  "Fuckin' Ada!"  she
yelped in mimicry of Julie.  "Almost a gonner!"

Ben glared at her in shock and what might have been rage, his skin
white, his lips drawn back against his teeth.

"Hey, it's okay," she said placatingly.  "It's okay."  This was what
she always failed to take into account how even the smallest
humiliation cut him to the quick.

Still breathing furiously, Ben squeezed rapidly between the chair and
the Jeep and hauled her backwards onto the pavement.  As he spun the
wheelchair round to face the house Catherine murmured again, "It's
okay," and reached over her shoulder to touch his hand, but either he'd
removed it from the handle or she didn't reach far enough because she
couldn't seem to make contact.

A cry and Alice hurried from the house.  "Sorry on the phone!"  She
stooped to give Catherine a small hug, a show of affection that by
Alice's standards was decidedly effusive.  "Happy birthday!"  she
cried.

"You look fantastic," Catherine said.

A small smile of satisfaction twitched at Alice's mouth, she bowed her
head in acknowledgement.  "Why, thank you."

Until now Catherine hadn't appreciated quite how much weight Alice had
lost.  She was dressed in clothes she wouldn't have dreamt of wearing a
few months ago, a skimpy top and tight trousers that emphasised the
shape and curves of her new figure.  She must have lost two stone,
maybe more.  Her hair was different too, newly cut and subtly
highlighted with hints of amber.  Her make-up, rather haphazard in the
past, was dramatic and flawlessly applied, as though she'd been taking
lessons from a professional.  Overall, the effect was of
transformation.

Catherine said, "You're still eating now and again, I hope."

"In restaurants," Alice replied archly.  "Still got half a stone to go,
though."

"Don't overdo it."

"No danger of that," she declared drily.  "Never too thin, never too
rich."

"You're having a good time, then?"

Out of old instinct Alice bristled slightly she had always resented
family enquiries into her social life before submitting with an
expression of magnanimity.  "Mmm," she smiled.  "A great time,
actually."

As Alice caught some signal from Ben and stepped back to let the
wheelchair pass, Catherine thought: She's feeling good about herself.
She's probably got a man.  She's going to be happy after all.

Ahead, Emma was standing on the threshold, one hand resting on the open
door, a broad smile on her face, and now Catherine was overtaken by a
more disturbing thought, that Emma was welcoming her into her own
home.

Inside, there were rapid discussions about cars, parking and luggage.
People hurried about and dispersed, and for a moment Catherine was left
alone in the hall.

Flowers stood on the side table, and, propped against the vase, a batch
of brightly coloured envelopes, addressed to her.  On the wall beyond,
a new picture had appeared, a pen-and-ink drawing of a mediaeval street
that might have been Prague or Warsaw.  In the far corner the work to
widen the loo door was evident in the bare patched-in plaster work and
primed but unpainted woodwork.  The sixteenth-century blanket chest
from Morne that used to stand tucked into the bend of the stairs had
been shifted around at right angles until it stuck out beyond the newel
post into the hall.  It didn't fit in that position, it looked all
wrong, but she supposed it had been put there to spare her feelings.
According to whoever worked these things out, it was the front edge of
the chest that had broken her back, although, in one of the more
interesting ironies, it had also in all probability saved her life by
breaking her fall and preventing her skull from meeting the stone floor
at full force.

Finally she looked up the stairs, which rose with two turns to the
short stretch of railed landing at the top.  There was no sign of her
fall.  The weak rail had been replaced, the splintered banisters
repaired.  Directly below, the stone was smooth and unblemished.  A
little closer, however, she noticed a faint mark on one of the flags, a
large irregular splodge the colour of tea.  Blood?  Or an old mark she
hadn't noticed before?  A memory tugged at her, she looked back towards
the still-open door, and, in a faded image like sepia, she saw herself
lying here at this spot, her cheek pressed against the flagstone,
looking along the distance of the grey surface, out through the door
towards the street.

"Champagne?  Coffee?"  Alice asked brightly, bending forward with her
hands propped on her knees.  "Loo?  Wash and brush up?"

Catherine usually asked people not to bend over her in the same way
they bent over prams and push chairs because, subconsciously or
otherwise, they were apt to speak to her in the same over-precise
over-loud tones they used for small children.

"Or guided tour?"  Alice continued, like an energetic scout mistress.

"Guided tour?"

"Your new bedroom."

"I think I can manage that myself, thank you."

Catherine must have spoken more sharply than she meant to because Alice
stiffened and shot upright.  "Of course.  I'll leave you to it."

Catherine hesitated at the door of what in the house's clerical days
would have been the front parlour, but which from the first day of
their occupancy she and Ben had agreed could only be a dining room.
North-facing, noisy and dusty from the street, starved of sun except
for a few fragile rays that slanted in on midsummer evenings, it had
become a room for late dinners and candlelight, with its dark polished
floorboards, rich terra cotta walls, large splashy paintings and matt
black woodwork and fireplace.

There had been alterations since her accident, but Ben's description
had been sketchy and as she wheeled herself in she still wasn't sure
what to expect.

The table and chairs had gone into storage.  In their place was a bed,
a bedside table with phone, and a television on a trolley.  The black
woodwork had been painted white hastily by the look of the finish the
floorboards had been covered by a fitted carpet in deep parchment laid
recently from the amount of fluff while the windows had been hung with
muslin day curtains.  But it was the bed that drew Catherine's unhappy
gaze.  It was what the English have the nerve to call a small double,
but which by any reasonable standards cannot hold two people in harmony
unless they sleep facing the same direction and turn in unison.
Catherine told herself that this bed had been chosen because its head
fitted neatly against the only available wall space while leaving room
for the bedside table on one side and wheelchair access on the other.
She told herself that nothing bigger would have been practical, since
the window took up much of the second wall, the fireplace the next, the
double doors to the sitting room the fourth.  Yet even as she tried to
persuade herself of this, she saw again the white melamine bedside
table, the ugly utilitarian trolley, and, what she hadn't noticed
before, tucked away behind the television, a cantilevered table on
castors for taking meals in bed, and it came to her in a burst of
humiliation that the place had been fitted out for an invalid.

Her mood did not improve when she realised that the rich terra cotta
walls that had seemed so atmospheric for suppers with wine and
candlelight were going to look saturnine and claustrophobic in the cold
light of morning, and if worse were needed Alice's voice suddenly rang
through from the sitting room, each word audible, and she realised that
the double doors were going to provide almost no barrier to sound.

In the hall Ben was calling her name.  Sweeping in, he cried, "There
you are!  Well, what do you think?"  Stationing himself in front of the
fireplace he surveyed the room as an estate agent might inspect a
property that with just a little more attention might yet come up to
scratch.  "Not too bad, is it?  What do you think about the walls?
Could do with a different colour perhaps."  He cast her a hasty smile,
which to Catherine in her new mood seemed evasive.  "What do you think?
Cream?  White?  Or maybe some sort of wallpaper?  God, I'm hopeless on
these things," he added with the perverse masculine pride that men take
in their deficiencies at renovations.  "What do you think, Moggy?"

In the instant before she answered, it occurred to her that she could
do this gently, with tact, she could put it in such a way that he would
come to understand her slowly and with less chance of taking offence;
it occurred to her that only moments ago everything had been mending
between them and this might set them back; but it was too late, her
anger was too fierce, it carried her forward in a red-hot sea and she
said bitterly, "I hate it!"

"Well, that's what I'm saying it can be changed '

"No," she cut in sharply, 'the room.  I hate the entire room!
Everything about it.  Everything!  I don't want to stay here I don't
want to be in here at all!  I want to sleep upstairs."

Ben's eyes darkened, his mouth curved downwards.  "But Moggy .. ."  He
gestured helplessness.  "How?"

"You could carry me!"

"You mean, just for tonight?"  The lightness in his voice betrayed a
premature relief.

"No, I mean, always," she snapped, trembling.

He took a long laboured breath.

"Why not?"  she cried, hating the petulance in her voice.

"Well, I could carry you up sometimes, of course I could."  Appearing
to realise how grudging this must sound, he repeated with more
enthusiasm, "Of course I could!  But what if I wasn't here?  You'd be
stuck."

"What about a st airlift  I don't see why there can't be a st airlift

"I told you, Moggy," he explained in a tone of great patience, 'it'd be
a complicated business.  All the bends, the landings .. . And if we
decide to move well!"  He threw up a hand as if the argument were
self-evident.

Her heart gave a tight thump.  "But we're not moving.  We decided." She
heard her voice rise.  "I thought we'd decided.  Hadn't we?"  When he
still didn't answer, she demanded unsteadily, "Hadn't we, Ben?"

He muttered testily, "Sure."

"Well, then."  She forced a note of reason into her voice.  "You do
see, darling, don't you, it'll be hopeless if I can't get upstairs."

"Stairlifts are expensive, Cath."

"Well, how expensive?"

"A lot."

"But how much exactly?"

He dropped his gaze and his jaw tightened.

As the silence drew out, her throat seized, her eyes burnt hotly.  "You
said you were getting a quote."

He didn't like being caught out.  His gaze sharpened, his lips
compressed.  "There was no point.  It was going to be something like
six or seven thousand, and the fact is, Cath' he tipped her an unhappy
glance "I can't manage that sort of money right now."

She stared at him.  "You mean .. . that's the reason?"

"Yup."

"Money?"  she asked stupidly, as if he hadn't made the situation
perfectly clear.

"If I'd had anything to spare, Moggy, anything..  ."  He gestured the
whole world.

"But I thought..  . Simon said you'd managed to claw back the money, to
pay off the overdrafts.  He said you were back to where you were before
this thing in Poland '

Ben's anger was very sudden.  He held up a splayed hand that trembled
visibly, he said in a furious voice, "This is nothing to do with Simon!
How dare he try and interfere!  Christ!"

"He didn't.  I mean, he just told me that RNP was back on its feet.
That's all.  Nothing else."

"He knows nothing about anything!"  Ben cut a swathe through the air.
"Nothing!"

She slumped a little in her seat.  "Okay, okay .. ."

For a moment he stood still, locked into his anger.  She called his
name.  When he didn't reply she called a second time and held out a
conciliatory hand.

He turned at last and, seeing her hand, came and crouched beside the
wheelchair.  Wrapping his hand around hers, he smiled with a touch of
the old tenderness.  "The thing is, Moggy..  ."  He sighed as if he
hardly knew how to go on.  "I would have preferred to talk about all
this later when we've got more time but since it's come up ... You
don't mind?"

"Don't mind?"

"Talking about this now?"

"No, no," she said eagerly.

The thing is," he said, "I'm not just a bit short."

"You mean .. .?"

He hated having to spell it out.  He said sharply, "I'm broke!"

She felt a pull of dread.  "When you say broke .. .?"

"Spectacularly.  Incredibly.  Completely."

She gripped his hand more tightly.  "Tell me.  How much?"

He gave an odd snort and muttered under his breath something that could
have been, "Bled dry."

Her bad ear seemed to ring with the effort of trying to hear him.  "Did
you say bled dry?"

He held up a hand as if to withdraw the remark, then, rising from his
haunches, swung round and sat down on the bed, his elbows on his knees,
his hands clasped tightly in front of him.  Behind the faint smile that
was his mask against all eventualities, his face was pitted with
anxiety.

"Got into this agreement," he said at last.  "Can't get out of it.  Got
to pay.  No choice."  He shook his head slowly from side to side as if
he still couldn't believe he had got himself into such a mess.

"How much do you owe?"

"Ah, there we are.  It's a nice round two hundred thousand."  He gave a
broken laugh.  "No half measures, Moggy!"

There was a long silence broken only by the sound of Emma calling to
Alice in the next room, asking about a bowl for the olives.

Catherine was very still, as if this might help her to absorb what he
was saying.  She must have been holding her breath because she had to
exhale suddenly and take a gulp of air.  "God."  And still she couldn't
take it in.  "God," she gasped again.  Eventually she managed to say,
"It can't be put off, this debt?"

"No."

"It can't be renegotiated?"

He gave a small shake of his head, and there was a glint of brilliance
in his eyes.

"But the overdraft the one you paid off after the Poland thing can't
you go back and rearrange it?  Can't you '

His fury reared up as rapidly as before.  The blood rushed into his
face, he shook slightly.  "I told you Simon doesn't know what the hell
he's talking about.  Overdrafts!  For God's sake!  Stupid bloody
idiot!"

"Can't it I don't know be paid in instalments?"  She hadn't spoken
particularly loudly but Ben flicked his eyes towards the double doors
and shot her a furious warning.  Catherine closed her eyes for a
moment.  "What about instalments?"  she repeated in a whisper.

Still in the grip of his indignation, he said tightly, "No."

The front door banged, a phone started ringing, voices sounded dimly in
the hall.  Catherine thought she recognised her father's laugh.

She said, "But surely they'd agree to '

"No," he insisted with a small shudder.  Then, almost by way of
apology, he said bleakly, "It's already in instalments, you see."

She felt the blankness come over her that was her protection against
bad news.  "You mean .. . there's more to pay?"

"Been paid."

She went on asking questions mechanically, unemotionally, like an
investigator who must collect the facts.  There've been other
instalments?"

He made another attempt at black humour.  "Ah just a few!  Three,
actually."

"Three," she echoed dully.  "And this one ...?"

"Is the last."

"The earlier payments, were they .. .?"  Seeing the answer in his face,
she turned it into a statement.  "They were for the same amount."

He held her gaze: it wasn't a denial.

Out in the street a child gave a sudden wail and a father's voice
called out wearily.

Some part of her was in free fall, she had to hold herself steady.  The
money so far, how did you raise it?  Where did it come from?"

"Oh, here and there."

"Here and !"  She pulled herself up short.  Tell me where?"

"I don't know.  Cash.  Loans.  Overdrafts.  Anything I could get my
hands on."

Her calmness finally deserted her.  "But so much, Ben!  Six hundred
thousand!  How was it possible to borrow so much?

"Never mind how I borrowed it," he said ominously.  The point is, I did
it.  I've managed to pay off three quarters of the bloody debt.
Something to be congratulated on, I would have thought!"

There was a pause like darkness.

"But it'll have to be repaid, won't it?  How will we ever repay it,
Ben?  So much."

"Oh, it'll only take a couple of years, maybe less," he said
dismissively.  "I've turned over far more than that before now.  I can
do it again."

She was finally reduced to a bewildered silence.  He'd never mentioned
this sort of money before.  He'd always told her that cash was tight.

"In the meantime, I've got to find this last bloody payment," he said.
"And that's the problem, you see.  Run out of people to lend it to me."
He gave a grim chuckle.  "Not much to be said at the end of the day, is
there, Moggy?  I've really fucked up this time."

Knowing how proud he was, realising how much this admission must have
cost him, she avoided anything that might be taken as a reproach and
said carefully, "There must be something.  What about going bankrupt?
All sorts of people go bankrupt.  In fact, rich people seem to do it
all the time."

"Not an option."

"But it's not such a dreadful thing nowadays," she argued lightly.
"It's almost '

"Just can't."

She left this alone for the moment.  "All right.  So what happens if
you don't pay?  They can only sue you, surely.  And in the time it
takes to get to court we might have found some money '

"No."

"I don't see why you can't stall them.  There must be a way."

He reverted to a flippant tone.  "Ah, well, you see they're threatening
to tell.  Have me locked up."

"Locked up?  How do you mean locked up?"  She laughed nervously.

He threw her an irritated glance, as if she were being exceptionally
dense.

There was a rap on the door.  Even as her father called her name, she
cried, "Later!"  in a fierce voice.  She heard his steps shuffle a
little before moving away.

She turned back to Ben.  "You mean that they could get you into
trouble?"

"They think so."

"Who are these people?  How can they threaten you like this?"

He gave a defiant shrug.  "Just people who have come across something
that how shall I put it?  could be misinterpreted.  They reckon I owe
them some money and now they want it back.  And if I don't give it to
them, they'll drop me into what you might describe as deep shit."  He
spread both hands, he tilted his head to one side: the storyteller
reaching the end of his tale.

She stared at him blankly.

"For God's sake, don't get all disapproving on me, Moggy.  I didn't do
anything very terrible.  Really!  Lots of people have done the same.
It's just that well, technically speaking, it wasn't quite .. ."  He
sucked in his breath.

"Legal?"

He rolled his eyes a little roguishly, like a schoolboy who has been
caught out in a misdemeanour but, given half a chance, would commit the
same offence all over again.

"What you're saying is that these people are blackmailing you?"

He turned this idea over in his mind and agreed without rancour, "If
you like."

"But who are they, for God's sake?  What sort of people?"

"Oh .. ."  He brushed this aside.  "Doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter?"  she whispered incredulously.

In one of his rapid switches of mood, he shot her a look of sudden
resentment.  "It's complicated!"  he snapped.  Scrambling to his feet,
he paced restlessly off across the room.

She bit back her thoughts with difficulty.  "So what's to be done?" she
said.

He came and stood before her, his arms hanging limply at his sides,
back in the role of the lost boy.  He made a show of hunting through
the possibilities, but she knew what was coming, she knew there was
only one option.

In the end it was easier to say it for him.  "The house," she
murmured.

His gaze, the small regretful outward turn of his hands, gave her his
answer.

A knock at the door again.  Alice's voice said, "Catherine?  Ben?  The
police are here to see you."

Ben's head jerked up.  He muttered, "Christ."  Meeting Catherine's
eyes, he gave a nervy laugh.  "Thought we'd seen the last of them."

Chapter Eight

"I HAVE to notify you," Denise began formally, 'that last night we
charged a man in relation to your case.  The charges are aggravated
burglary and grievous bodily harm."

There was a moment of complete stillness.  At some level, far removed
from this news, Catherine took in the changes to the living room, the
way the sofas had been pressed back against the walls, the arrival of a
table lamp she'd never seen before and didn't like, with a tall
entwined-metal base and a Japanese crushed-paper shade.

Ben, perched on a chair arm beside her, broke the silence with a sharp
explosive hiss, a sound of disgust or dismay.  "Christ!"  he muttered
weakly.

Catherine was simply lost.  "I thought it was just my brooch.  You'd
found someone with the brooch."

Denise's reply was deflected by Ben's insistent: "Who is this guy?"

"His name is Jan Pavlik, commonly known as Johnny Pavlik."

"Pavlik?"  Seemingly unaware that this had sounded like a trumpet of
recognition, it was a moment before Ben answered Catherine's searching
gaze with a brusque indignant shrug.  "Strange sort of name," he argued
irritably.

Denise said, "He came from the Czech Republic originally."

"Don't tell me," Ben scoffed, 'an illegal immigrant down on his
luck."

"He's an illegal immigrant, yes."

"Ha!"  Ben exclaimed, half surprised at the accuracy of his own
prediction.  "How did I guess?  And what else can we surmise?"  he
demanded sarcastically.  "Seeking asylum?  Fiddling the welfare
system?"

Quietly ignoring this outburst, Denise looked to Catherine for
questions.  But Catherine had no questions and no curiosity.  The
impulse to keep her distance was very strong.  It was a matter of
self-preservation born out of fear, not of Pavlik directly, but of her
own feelings towards him: the fear that she might grow to feel
something as exhausting and worthless as hate.  Even allowing his name
to imprint on her memory was like a small descent.

She would have left Ben to talk to Denise then, but something held her
back and she realised she had a question after all.

"Has he done this sort of thing before?"  she asked.

"Not as far as we know."

"He's never attacked anyone?"

"Not that we're aware of."

"No stalking or anything like that?"

"No."

Ben interrupted in a tone of aggrievement, "You never said you'd got a
suspect."

"We thought we just had someone for receiving.  Then our investigations
led us to realise that we had our man."

"When did you realise?"

"Two days ago."

"Two days,"I he echoed accusingly.

"There was no point in saying anything until we were sure."

Ben let this go with a sharp frown before asking in a more reasonable
tone, "How long's this Pavlik been over here then?"

"He's lived in London for approximately five years."

"Age?"

"Twenty-eight."

"Drifter?"

"No.  He had regular work."

"What sort of work?"

"As a waiter."

"A waiter!  Where?"

"Various places," Denise said, clearly not wanting to be drawn.

"Into drugs?"

"Not that we know of."

"But theft and robbery and crime, presumably."

A faint frown sprang over Denise's broad forehead.  "He has no form."

"But he's not going to be a beginner, is he?"

Denise didn't attempt to answer this.

Again Catherine decided to leave; again something held her back.

Ben asked almost crossly, "Are you sure you've got the right guy?"

"We feel confident that we have enough evidence to support the charges,
yes.  We feel confident that the CPS will take the case to court."

"But what evidence have you got?"

"It's forensic.  That's all I can tell you at this stage."

"You mean fingerprints, DNA, that sort of thing?"

"Well..  ."  Denise struggled on that one.  "Loosely .. . yes."

"And what does this guy say?  Does he admit anything?"

"He's denying it, basically."

"Don't tell me he was at home with his girlfriend that night."

"It may well be something along those lines, yes."

"He's got a lawyer, I suppose."

"Everyone's allowed a lawyer."

"But one who knows all the tricks."

"Most of them know all the tricks, I'm afraid."

In the small pause that followed, Catherine asked quietly, "So he was
found with my mother's brooch?"

"Yes."

The thought of avaricious hands on the unassuming amber brooch that her
mother had given her at the end of her life was repellent.  "It was
worth nothing to him," she said.  "Not to anyone in fact.  Twenty
pounds, if that."

Denise made a sympathetic face.  "You'll get it back after the
trial."

"I won't ever have to see this man, will I?"  Catherine said.  "I won't
have to go to court?"

"That'll be up to the lawyers to decide, Catherine.  Not in our
hands."

Catherine looked away towards the small courtyard garden that she had
rebuilt in the early spring, with York stone, raised beds along three
walls, and a wall fountain.  When she and Ben had left for France the
first climbers and perennials had been coming into flower, the garden
was showing what Catherine liked to call the first flush of promise.
Since then, however, either the watering system hadn't been working
properly or Ben had inadvertently turned it off, because many of the
plants were missing presumed dead while the remainder were showing all
the symptoms of drought and neglect.

"I'm rather cold," she said.  "I think I'll go and get a cardigan."

But before she could move, Ben cried, "I'll go!"  as though he'd been
itching for just such an opportunity.  He was on his feet and out of
the door before she had the chance to tell him where to look.

Denise sat forward.  "I know how hard it is to face the business of
court and giving evidence, Catherine.  But if you do have to attend,
I'll be there to see you through.  If you like, we can go and look
around the court in advance, work out where everyone'll be sitting,
what'll happen when you arrive."

Even before Denise had finished, Catherine had decided she would resist
all but the most powerful arguments to give evidence.  There was
nothing she could say that Ben couldn't say better.  He would make a
good witness, clear and concise.  What was almost as important, it
would give him a role.  The shrink's words reverberated in her head.
Try to make him feel protective of you.

Denise added, "It's hard to face an attacker, but most crime victims
find it a lot harder when the offender never gets apprehended, when
they have to live with the fact he's still out there, a threat to
someone else."

Catherine thought: Well, if most victims are like that, then I'm the
odd one out, aren't I?  She said, "How long before the trial?"

"Hard to say.  But months rather than weeks."

"And until then?  He'll be in jail?"

Denise faltered momentarily.  "Could be given bail.  Depends on the
sort of lawyer he has and the magistrate on the day.  The CPS may well
oppose bail, but when it's a first offence they don't always win that
argument, I'm afraid.  I'd be lying if I said they did."  She added
hastily, "If we thought he was likely to be a threat we'd give you
protection, Catherine."

"But you don't think he will be?"

"Nothing to suggest it.  DS Wilson and the lads have been through his
room.  Nothing to show he was a stalker.  Nothing to show he'd ever
heard of you.  So they're pretty confident it was a random attack."

The dark shadow flickered across Catherine's memory, she saw the
advancing figure, the arm swinging rapidly upwards to come down with
all its force, and a powerful but unwelcome thought sprang into her
mind: He was waiting for me.  He meant to come for me.  This thought
had come to her before a couple of times if she was honest, maybe a
dozen times but she'd always rejected it, as she rejected it again now,
because it was based on nothing more than fear, the irrational rangings
of an overcharged imagination.

Denise stood up.  "Well..  ."

Dutifully, Catherine said, "Thanks for everything.  Will you tell the
rest of the team that we're very grateful?"

"Sure."  She hesitated in the doorway.  "Nothing else you want to tell
me, Catherine?"

"What do you mean?"

"Anything else you remember?  Any thoughts?"

"No," Catherine said warily.  "Why?"

"The phone calls.  There's nothing more you can remember about them?"

Catherine maintained her expression.  "There is nothing to remember."

Denise gave a sudden smile.  "Fine.  Sorry to have interrupted your
birthday, Catherine."

"Denise?"

She stopped in the doorway.

"The calls weren't from this man.  I promise you that."

Denise greeted this statement with a quick nod.  "Of course."

Duncan must have shown her out because soon after the front door
sounded he put a tentative head into the room and, eyes lighting up,
greeted Catherine as he had always greeted her, with a show of joy and
unconcealed pride.  Like an Italian father, he stood with his arms
outstretched, his head at an angle, his face creased into an
emotionally charged smile.  He bent to kiss her.  When he pulled back,
his lower lip was trembling slightly.  "Darling girl!  The happiest
birthday in the whole world to my darling girl!  And to be home.  At
last.  Home."  He took a rapturous breath, his expression see-sawed
between elation and other more lachrymose emotions.  Abruptly, he
cried, "Champagne!"  and threw a hand into the air, as if to summon a
wine waiter.  He beamed conspiratorially.  "Nothing less than bubbly
will do, eh?"

This rallying cry had reverberated throughout Catherine's childhood,
for her father had never needed much of an excuse for a celebration. He
loved the ritual of champagne, the weighing of the bottle in his hands,
the appraisal of the label though as Catherine had got older the labels
had got brasher and less worthy of reverence the extracting of the
cork, and the pouring of the first glasses.  He was never happier than
when he was master of ceremonies, setting the whole household into
motion, as he did now, calling out to Emma for glasses, to an absent
Ben for the ice bucket, to Alice for general unspecified assistance.

Catherine laid a hand on his sleeve.  "I need to find my cardigan, Pa.
I think it's in the front room.  Would you take me through?"

"Of course, darling!"  He went about the task with all the gallantry of
the military man he was frequently taken to be, opening the door with a
flourish, skirting back round the wheelchair to push her carefully
through into the hall, and executing a neat turn into the terra cotta
hospital room.  Diligently, he asked where the cardigan might be.

"Pa?"

"Darling girl."

"I was wondering .. . I'm a bit short of money."

He threw out a hand: a problem easily solved.  "Got plenty!  Just been
to the cash machine.  How much do you need, darling?  Thirty? Fifty?"

"No, Pa."  All sort of thoughts went through her mind, of his
generosity in small things, of his lifelong difficulties with larger
sums, of his old age, not so far away.  "No, it's more capital.  Ben
and I find we're rather in debt.  It's all been a bit much recently,
with all the extra expenses.  I was wondering if you could manage a
loan.  Just for a year or so.  Until we can pay you back."

"Darling girl, you know I'd give you the earth ..."  His eyes travelled
the floor.  "The earth."

"Whatever you could manage, Pa."

His mouth moved soundlessly, he made a hesitant gesture.  "Would five
thousand be any good?  I might be able to stretch to six."

Somewhere, in a foolish and optimistic part of her brain, she'd hoped
the restructuring of the wine business might have changed things, that
he might have managed to put something substantial in the bank, but
history and experience should have taught her otherwise.  She mustered
a grateful smile.  "That's very kind, Pa."

He brightened.  "Just wish I could manage more, darling, but you know
how it is ... first the recession, then the pound, then these blasted
day-trippers bringing wine in by the van-load.

Company's struggling a bit.  But it'll help, will it, the odd five
thousand?"

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"Thank you, Pa.  In fact, we might not even need it at the end of the
day.  But it's nice to know it's there."

"Darling girl anything."  He creased up his face into the endearing
smile she knew so well.

Seeking reassurance where she could find it, she asked, "You're all
right for money generally, are you, Pa?"

"Me?  Oh yes, darling.  It's never easy, of course, managing to do
everything one wants to do in this life.  But I'm perfectly content.
Got to count one's blessings."

"No debts hanging over you?  No mortgage?"

"No, no," he cried resoundingly.  "Not a thing."

He lived in a flat on the southern borders of Belgravia, in what the
pedantic might describe as Pimlico.  The place was overlooked and dark,
the rooms poky, but it was handy for evenings spent at his club in Pall
Mall, or as the spare man at dinner parties, for which he was in great
demand.

"That business with Terry Devlin, it's all over and done with, is
it?"

His face darkened a little.  "Thank God.  Horrid little man."

"What happened exactly, Pa?"

He viewed the question with faint disapproval.  "Darling .. . best
forgotten, believe me."

"I'd like to know."

His expression slowly shifted through one of suspicion to profound
alarm.  "You're not thinking of ?  You wouldn't ?  You don't need money
that badly, darling girl?"

In attempting to shrug it off, she heard herself laugh falsely.  "No,
no.  I was just curious, that's all."

"For a dreadful moment..  ."  Grimacing, he relaxed again.

"You always said he'd cheated you.  I wanted to know how, that's
all."

"How?"  he repeated, looking unsettled again.  "Darling, very briefly
very simply he called in the debt when I couldn't pay it, when he knew
I couldn't pay it.  Insisted on taking Morne.  What could I do?  How
could I save it?  Had to let it go.  Broke my heart, as you know.  Poor
Mummy I felt I'd failed her, that I'd betrayed her last wishes, to
leave it to you and Alice.  To sell if you wished!"  He held up a hand
as if to deny suggestions to the contrary.  "Oh yes, you could always
have sold it she was quite clear about that.  But it was to be your
decision after I'd gone."  His voice shook.  "But what could I do?  He
had the deeds of the house as security and when I couldn't pay he made
me sign them over to him.  It wasn't in the spirit of the agreement.
Wasn't cricket.  But then, what could you expect?  That's how he's got
where he is today, isn't it?  By never missing a trick.  By taking
every advantage, and to hell with who gets hammered along the way."

He turned his old soldier's face to the window, stoic in defeat.  "And
after all we did for him," he mused sadly.  "You would have thought,
wouldn't you?"

He patted her arm, he smiled his most uplifting smile.  "Enough of
unpleasant things.  It's your birthday!  We're celebrating!  Now
where's this cardigan?"

The search for her overnight bag was carried out with a brisk
efficiency that took him round the room and out into the hall, where
she heard him calling for Ben and Alice.

Alone, Catherine was soon oppressed by the dark musty room and the
mockery of the narrow bed, and soon followed her father out into the
hall to find that he had vanished.  Hearing clattering from the back
extension, she looked down the passage and saw Alice silhouetted
against the kitchen window, chopping with a vigour that would have done
credit to a com mis chef.  Energy was not something one readily
associated with Alice, and again Catherine thought: She's happy.  She
must have found a man.  On the heels of these thoughts came the worry
that Alice would set her hopes too high too quickly, that her
uncertainties would drive her to smother the poor fellow with
unreasonable demands.  Alice had long professed a disdain for men,
mainly because over the years she had thrown herself at a whole series
of unsuitable and unwinnable men who, in rejecting her, had reconfirmed
her views both of the male sex and, fatally, of her own unworthiness.
Catherine only hoped that the new figure marked a new confidence, that
she would break through the ceiling of distrust and discover some
self-belief.

From another part of the house came more elusive sounds.  Turning her
head to catch them, she traced hushed voices to the upstairs landing.
Wheeling herself across the hall into the angle of the stairs she
craned her head up and saw through the banisters Emma's back and,
barely visible beyond, the top of Ben's head.  Emma said something in a
soft murmur.  Ben responded in a voice pitched equally low.  Catherine
was about to call up when Ben moved forward and touched Emma's
shoulder.  It seemed to Catherine that what followed was relayed to her
at two speeds, that each move was enacted both rapidly and in slow
motion.  Ben dropped his hand from Emma's shoulder and, looping both
arms around her, pulled her close and leant his head against hers.  It
might have been Catherine's imagination but it seemed to her that his
eyes were closed, as if with strong emotion.  Emma, meanwhile, had
raised her arms to embrace him around the waist.  They stood locked
together for what seemed a long time but was probably only seconds.  As
they began to pull apart, Catherine pushed herself swiftly away out of
sight.

It was barely twelve when Duncan poured out the champagne and the
family raised their glasses to toast her birthday.  Catherine drank the
first glass quickly and accepted a second in the full knowledge that,
this early in the day, it would make her rapidly and irretrievably
drunk.

Alice proclaimed, as though from the battlements, "They will be gone in
five minutes!"  and described an enormous arc through the air as if to
direct a cavalry charge towards the front door.  "Even if I have to
throw them into the street with my bare hands."

Catherine announced, "I need a man."

Alice grinned delightedly.  "Don't we all!"

"Preferably strong and sober."

"Oh, too muchr she chortled.

"To get me upstairs."

"Upstairs?  Right upstairs] No sooner said."  Alice waved an imaginary
wand.  "Who would you like?  Ben?  Hugh?  Charlie?"

"So many men to choose from!"  For no particular reason, Catherine
found this thought terribly funny and grinned ludicrously.

Alice's smile faded.  She crouched at her side.  "You all right,
Cath?"

"I'm fine."  This was far from the truth, since Catherine was not only
several glasses the wrong side of happy but for the past four hours had
been neglecting her bodily chores, the hated tasks, large and small,
that averted pressure sores and bladder infections and spasms, sins and
omissions for which she would doubtless pay dearly.  Already she felt
the prickle of sickly heat in her face, a trickle of cooler sweat
against her shirt.  "Just need to go upstairs."

Alice hovered uncertainly before murmuring, "I'll get Ben."

"No Hugh."

Hugh, an accomplished horseman when he wasn't being a lawyer, was fit
and strong and picked Catherine up as if she were a bundle of rags.  He
grinned leerily down at her.  "I think you're wonderful," he said,
breathing wine and smoked salmon over her.

She laughed a little.  "Why, thank you."

"We all think you're wonderful."

Catherine turned her head sharply away so that he shouldn't see the
scorn in her face, and asked Alice to fold the wheelchair and bring it
upstairs.

As soon as she was safely ensconced on the upper landing,

she whispered to Hugh in a tone of complicity, "If anyone asks, could
you tell them I'm sleeping?"

"Certainly!"

Beckoning him closer, she whispered, "Unless you'd like to join me?"

He laughed too loud and too long, he couldn't quite conceal the look of
embarrassment that crossed his face and when he retreated down the
stairs his chuckle had the phoney ring of a stage comedian's.

While Alice went down to fetch her bags from the terra cotta room,
Catherine wheeled herself into the main bedroom and found not the
untidiness and scattering of unwashed shirts she had been expecting but
order and a neatly made bed.  Before she had time to wonder if Ben had
found a cleaning lady, the sweat started from her forehead, she
shivered with cold or fever and pushed herself hastily towards the
bathroom.  Some weeks ago, when the st airlift had first come up for
discussion, Ben had measured the upstairs doorways and pronounced them
adequate, but his measurements must have been out somewhere because the
bathroom door proved to be a tight squeeze, and she had to grasp the
doorframe and drag herself through, scraping the wheels against the
woodwork in the process.  Sponging her face with cold water, she didn't
feel much cooler.  She closed her eyes but reopened them as her head
spun and her stomach tightened with the nauseous acidity that comes
from too much champagne and too little food.  If she wasn't careful she
was going to have a vicious hangover.  It was too late to make herself
sick, the only thing was water and antacid.

The medicine cabinet was out of reach on the wall and she had to wait
for Alice to come back to find aspirin and Resolve.  As Alice rummaged
through the stock of medicines something on the upper shelf caught
Catherine's eye.  Light-headed with fever or alcohol or both, it was a
moment before she understood what it was.  Among the antibiotics and
home remedies was a bottle of perfume.  Pale amber in smooth glass.
Gold top.  Not her own.  ,

When Catherine emerged from the bathroom five minutes later, Alice was
waiting for her, smiling brightly.

"Anything else, Cath?"  she asked, following her into the bedroom.

"A new head?"

"Did you have that much?"

"However much, it was too much."  Catherine waved a hand towards the
wardrobes.  "Some time you're going to have to go through my clothes
for me, Ally.  Sort 'em out.  Chuck 'em out.  Everything tight or
vaguely tight.  Ruthless.  To hell with how much it cost."  Realising
this was presuming rather a lot, she remembered her manners.  "If you
wouldn't mind."

Alice gave a stiff smile, her eyes shone with a fierce indecipherable
light.  "You can't wear them?"

"Too hard to get on and off.  Not likely to fit either.  My world has
gone pear-shaped in more than one sense of the word words, excuse me.
Everything has rather settled, you see, around my bum."

The bed was a low one and Catherine eyed it wearily.  "Now, if I get
onto this bloody bed, will I ever get off it again?  More to the point,
do I care?"

Alice's face had taken on an increasingly appalled expression.

Wondering dimly if she had caused offence, too muddled to work out what
it might have been, Catherine held out an appeasing hand, her second of
the day.  Stepping forward to grasp it, Alice seemed to keep coming, to
be falling towards the wheelchair, and instinctively Catherine
flinched, pulled her head away, before she understood that the arms
which reached out to envelop her roughly, the cheek that bumped
awkwardly against hers, were proffered with intense emotion.

"Oh Cath," Alice cried in a ragged voice, 'any time you need me.  Any
time at all."

Catherine felt the absolute stillness, the freezing of sensation, that
was her defence against pity.  The sympathy she'd received today had
brought home to her with dismal clarity the depressingly pessimistic
view that the able-bodied held of disability.  This, they were implying
with their relentless compassion, is the end of life as you knew it,
the end of almost everything that made it worthwhile, the end of all
you had hoped to enjoy in the future, the end of beauty and physical
attraction and their first thought, though they would vigorously deny
it the end of a fulfilling sex life.  To them she was now
indistinguishable from her condition: paralysed Catherine, wheelchair
Catherine, poor sad tragic Catherine.  She used to have it all, you
know.  Each pitying smile, each hand laid tenderly on her shoulder,
each compassionate hug was like a slap in the face.  We think you're
wonderful actually translated as You are nothing now, except in terms
of the heroic role we have chosen to bestow on you.  They would not be
denied their right to pity her; they insisted on it, because then they
could face themselves in the mirror with a small glow of
self-congratulation.

And now her sister: Alice who knew better than most the indignity of
finding herself an object of pity.

Catherine thought: The drink's making me bitter.

After Alice had helped her onto the bed, Catherine said, "I'll be fine
now, thanks."  But as Alice left the room Catherine called her back.
"Last thing.  Would you look under the bed for me?"

Alice made a comical frown.  "Under the bed?  What am I looking for?"

"A baseball bat."

Dropping to her knees, Alice made a thorough search.  "Nothing here,
Cath."

"You're sure?"

Alice crawled round to the end of the bed and looked from there.
"Nothing."  She got breathlessly to her feet and laughed, "What's it
for bit of self-defence?"  She started and gave a sharp groan of
horror, knuckle pressed histrionically to her mouth.  "Sorry, Cath, I
didn't mean to ... Oh, God, God of course!  You're worried about being
here on your own!  Is that what it is?  Do you want me to stay?  I'm
happy to stay!"

Catherine wasn't quite ready for Alice in this protective role and
spoke a little more sharply than she'd intended.  "Don't be ridiculous.
It's nothing like that."

"Sure?"

"Sure.  Now, go away," she growled.  "And leave me to rest.  Everyone's
so bloody keen on me resting.  Well, tell them I'm bloody resting like
a good girl, will you?"

When she'd gone, Catherine turned herself onto her side and, with her
arm stretched across Ben's half of the bed, as though in her dreams she
might find him there, fell into the leaden sleep of alcohol and extreme
tiredness.

She woke groggily to full darkness and the rocking of the mattress as
Ben sat down heavily on the edge of the bed at her back.

"Didn't realise you were up here, Moggy."  His voice was thick and
unreadable.  "Thought you were resting downstairs.  Why on earth did
you come up here?"

She turned onto her back.  "It was too noisy downstairs."  Reaching for
his hand, she added, "And I wanted to be here, in our own bed."

The light from the landing was too faint for her to see his face but
she had the impression that his expression had hardened.  She heard him
exhale, a long slow breath.  His hand was loose in hers.

She asked, "Has everyone gone?"

"Except Emma.  She's cooking supper.  Pasta, I think.  Do you want to
come down?  I can't say I'm entirely happy about carrying you, Moggy,
not down those stairs, not when I've had a drink or two.  But if we go
slowly, I suppose .. ."

"I promise not to fall."  If Ben thought she was making a poor attempt
at humour he didn't say so.

For a fraction of a second their conversation about the debts had
seemed to belong to another time and place, but now it came crowding
back through the steady beat of her headache, like an emotional
hangover.

"How are you doing?"  she asked.

"What?"

"Not worrying too much about the money?"

"Of course I'm worrying about the money," he said testily.

"We never finished talking.  The house I'm not clear," she said with
dull dread.  "Are we going to have to sell it?"

"Sell it?  God, no."

"There's another way then?"

"A second mortgage.  It's all arranged."

"All arranged?"

"I've got the papers downstairs."

Something inside her smarted a little at the realisation that he had
arranged the whole thing and gathered the paperwork without telling
her.

He said, "We can get Emma to witness our signatures."

"You mean, tonight?"

"Well, she's here.  Might as well make the most of it."

"Can't we leave it till tomorrow, darling?"

"But Moggy, she's here," he repeated doggedly.  "And nothing's going to
be different tomorrow."

"I'd rather leave it, if you don't '

He shot to his feet.  "You're not listening, Moggy!"  His voice was
pitched dangerously low.  "Nothing's going to be different tomorrow!
And I need to be sure I'm getting this money -otherwise I might as well
go and slit my bloody throat!"

"I'd just like to feel we'd talked it through properly, that's all.  To
be sure it's the best way."

His voice rose suddenly.  "I am sure!  And I'm telling you there isn't
any other way!"

She'd only seen him this angry once before, during their big row in
France.  Among their friends he was known for being imperturbable, a
reputation that perfectly suited his view of himself as a person who
conducted his life on his own terms.  It hurt her to see him like this
because she knew how much he hated it.

When she finally spoke again it was soothingly.  "Darling, I

didn't mean to suggest you hadn't looked into it properly .. . of
course I didn't.  It's just I'd like to know how big this mortgage is
going to be.  And what happens if we can't keep up the payments."  He
was very still and she couldn't make out his expression in the
darkness.  "Could we lose everything?  That's what I want to know.
Because I've no other money, nothing at all-'

"Ah, so that's it!"

They had got onto dangerous ground.  He didn't like to be reminded that
it was Catherine's money that had paid for the deposit on the house.

"Couldn't we buy a tiny flat?"  she asked.  "Have some security at
least, and use the spare cash from this place '

"Christ!  No time!  No time!"

On old ground one is destined to take the same turnings, and she heard
herself say, "I just think of Mummy.  It was all the money she ever
had.  Everything she'd worked so hard to keep She had been about to say
to keep safe.

"So it's your money now, is it?"

"Of course not.  It's ours, of course it is.  I'm just worried about
what'll happen if we lose it."

"We'll rent, we'll save for another place God, I don't know!  All I
know is that if I don't get this cash together I'm bloody sunk!  And
now you're talking as if we had a whole bundle of options.  Well, I'm
telling you there are no options!"  He paced the room, he came to a
halt in the light of the doorway and clasped a hand to his forehead in
a final gesture of exasperation.

Catherine felt the future close in on her, dark and cold.

Appearing to calm himself with an effort, Ben came back and sank onto
the bed with a long and heartfelt sigh.  "Oh Moggy .. ."  He bent over
and rested his cheek against hers.  "If there was any other way .. .
We'll be all right, once we're through this.  Promise you.  We'll be
fine."

But she had lost the simple capacity for optimism.  Before the
accident, she might have looked on the prospect of hard times as a
challenge, a fine test of commitment and loyalty, but now it frightened
her.  Now, she had special needs, not the least of which was
security.

"Hey," Ben murmured into her ear.  Pulling back, he placed his palm
against her cheek.

Heart heavy, she heard herself say, "You can count on me."

"I knew you wouldn't let me down.  I knew it."  He kissed her briefly
before scrambling to his feet again.  "Supper?  Do you want to come
down?"

"I'm not sure I can eat anything."

"I'll call Emma up, then.  I'll go and get the papers.  We'll get it
all over and done with."

"Ben?"

He paused in the door.

"What happened to the baseball bat?"

A short pause in which the atmosphere seemed to sharpen.  "Good God,"
he exclaimed, "I don't know.  Why do you ask?"

"I thought it might have been used in the attack."

"What?"  He gave a small incredulous laugh.

"I thought I was imagining things, and then I wasn't so sure, and now
well, it's gone."

He moved back to the side of the bed.  "Moggy, you've been having bad
dreams.  I moved it ages ago."

"Moved it?  Where to?"

"Hell, I don't know," he said airily.  "Somewhere out of the way.  The
cupboard under the stairs, I think.  Or the study.  Maybe the study."

"Why?"

"Why?"  he echoed as if the question were absurd.  "Because it was too
dangerous to leave under the bed.  They always say intruders grab a
weapon and use it against you, don't they?  Thought it'd be safer."

"You don't think that this man' she couldn't bring herself to say his
name 'could have found it, then?"

"No!"  he scoffed dismissively.  "I moved it ages ago!"

"And it's still there, wherever you put it?"

He rolled his eyes and shook his head and completed the show of
disbelief with a heavy sigh.  "I'll go and get it if you like!"

"Oh, don't bother now ..."

"No, no!"  he said with a weary half laugh.  "Never let it be said." He
was already on his way out of the room.  She heard a cupboard door
being opened in the study, followed by a clattering, then the sound of
his feet thudding down the stairs, followed by faint rattling in the
hall.  He must have run up the stairs much more quietly than he had
gone down because the next thing she realised he was striding back into
the room, holding the baseball bat up like a trophy.  In a
juxtaposition of light and dark, time and memory, she saw the attacker
freeze-framed, as if lit by a flashbulb, the weapon high in his hand.
The image vanished as quickly as it had come.

"There," Ben declared, offering the bat up to her.

"God.  I was so sure .. ."

"Think you had a few too many, Moggy.  You were certainly well away
down there!  But you're feeling better now, eh?  Slept it off?"

"I wasn't feeling well."

"I'm not surprised," he said in the same knowing tone.

Swinging the bat lightly in one hand he strode out of the room, leaving
the door open.  She saw him hesitate and, with the faintest glance back
in her direction, take a right turn into the bathroom.  A minute later
the lavatory flushed, the plumbing hissed as the cold tap was run, and
it may have been her imagination, it may have been a trick of an
overwrought mind, but she thought she heard the click of the bathroom
cabinet.

She saw him cross the landing and head downstairs.  Within a couple of
minutes, he was back with the documents in his hand.  Emma appeared
shortly afterwards, wiping her hands on an apron.  She would have
chattered, but Ben cut her short, and she made a comical face over his
shoulder, a schoolgirl rebuked for talking in class.

"Shall I sit you up a little, Moggy?"  Ben asked.

He fed the documents to her one by one, then took them to Emma and
stood over her while she witnessed them, alert for any misaligned
word.

"There!"  he said, smiling.  "How about some supper, then?"

Catherine repeated, "Not for me."

Ben hurried off with the documents while Emma helped Catherine into the
wheelchair for a trip to the bathroom.  Once inside, Catherine ran the
tap to disguise any noise and levered open the medicine cabinet with
the lavatory brush.  The bottle of perfume had gone.

Seeing her back to bed, Emma waved conspiratorially and whispered that
she'd be back soon.

It seemed a long time before she returned.  By then Catherine's brain
felt heavy, there was a clamminess on her skin like the beginnings of
fever.

Emma drew up a chair and began to chat.  As she illuminated some
comment with a sweep of one hand Catherine found herself trying to
catch her scent, and thought: This way misery lies.  Even as she tried
to banish the idea from her mind, she interrupted Emma with, "What's
that perfume you're wearing?"

"Perfume?"  She had to consider for a moment.  "Help.  It's Givenchy, I
think.  Yes Givenchy.  Why, darling?  Do you like it?  Shall I buy you
some?  Let me buy you some.  An extra birthday presie."  With a flick
of her hair she leant forward excitedly.  "Thought we might go to
Harvey Nicks when you're next home, eh?"  She rolled her eyes, she
lifted both shoulders, she hugged her fists together like a small
child.  Breaking off only to light a cigarette, she hurried on.
"Starting on the first floor where else.  Then on to raid the cash
meres what do you think?  Yeah?  Then a boozy lunch on the top floor.
Then'she thrust her head forward, she gave a wild grin 'a facial?
Haircut?  God, we could spend the earth!' Her smile died slowly,
overtaken by a look of concern.  "You okay, Cath?  You look so tired.
Do you want me to go away and let you sleep?"

"Tell me something first."

"Of course!"

"Ben .. . has he been okay?"

Emma hesitated, as if to make sure she'd understood her correctly.
"Ben?  You mean recently?  Generally?  I think he's been fine.  I mean,
working hard.  Terribly hard.  No one ever gets to see him.  And
worried about you, of course.  Fretting about getting the house
adapted, getting the things you need.  It's all he ever talks about,
you know how he wants to get everything right for you.  How he wants to
care for you."  At this, two thoughts sprang unbidden into Catherine's
mind, that a caring role was not one that Ben would have chosen in a
dozen lifetimes, and that even in the most dedicated of carers a sense
of obligation didn't always sit easily with love and desire.  Emma cast
around for any last ideas before declaring firmly, "But otherwise no,
fine."  She added tentatively, "Why?"

"No one gets to see him, you say?"

"Absolutely not.  Hasn't made a single party since I can't think when.
Not the Hamilton wedding, not even Dunny's birthday, and you know how
he adores Dunny.  Oh he did get to Jack's do you know, his annual bash.
Had a great time, the life and soul of the party."

This was what Catherine always failed to allow for Ben's skill at
concealment, his ability to put on a front, especially for his friends,
who doted on his irreverent sense of fun.  In times of stress, there's
a certain comfort to be gained from cliches, and now she heard herself
ask, "If there was something I should know, you would be the first to
tell me, wouldn't you, Emms?"

Emma made a gesture of bewilderment, an arc of her cigarette.
"Something you should know?  What do you mean, darling?"

"You know that old saying about the wife being the last to know."

Emma's mouth dropped open, she rounded her eyes in a show of
astonishment and incredulity.  "Darling..  ."  She was momentarily
speechless.  She gave a short nervous laugh.  "No .  I've heard nothing
like that.  Really, darling.  Nothing at all!"  She took a deep breath,
as if getting over the shock.  "Where on earth did you get that
idea?"

Catherine closed her eyes.  "Nowhere, I expect."

"No, Cath, really," Emma argued again.  "Haven't heard a thing.  And
you know how everyone is with the gossip.  They can't wait!"

"Tired now," Catherine murmured.  "Leave the door open, would you?  And
the light?"

"Of course, darling."  She stood up and paused uncertainly before
creeping out of the room.

Long after she'd gone, Catherine heard laughter downstairs and felt the
worm of doubt turn once again in her stomach.  After another fifteen
minutes or so, the front door sounded and the house was quiet.

She dozed and waited, but it was an hour before she heard a stair creak
and watched Ben steal into view.  Seeing that she was awake, his body
sagged into a stance of disapproval, he came into the room with a shake
of his head.  "Thought you'd be asleep, Moggy.  You must get your
sleep, you know!  Look, I'm going to work for a while, make a few calls
to Singapore.  Bound to finish late, so I'll crash downstairs.  Don't
want to disturb you."  When she didn't reply, he busied himself pulling
the curtains more closely together and fetching water she didn't need.
"Now are you all right?  Got everything you want?"  He cast a critical
eye over the room before turning the bedside light off.  "Night,
Moggy."

His kiss was dry and firm.

"Don't sleep downstairs," she said, hating the note of entreaty in her
voice.  "I don't care how late it is."

A minute hesitation, like death.  "Of course," he said lightly.  "If
that's what you want, Moggy."

It was three when he crept into the room and slid into the far side of
the bed.  When she shifted herself close to his back and reached an arm
around his waist he squeezed her hand briefly and murmured good night.
A few minutes later his breathing had settled into the slow steady
rhythm of sleep.

She was woken at seven by a dull pain in her kidneys and the scorch of
fever on her skin.  She was alone in the bed and when she called out
there was no reply.  It was eight before she heard him moving around
downstairs and managed to make him hear her.  When the doctor came he
measured her fever at over thirty-nine and, after dosing her with
antibiotics, recommended she go straight back to the unit for
specialised treatment.

Chapter Nine

SIMON ORDERED the cab to stop a prudent fifty yards from the
magistrates' court and walked the rest of the way at a pace that was
neither so leisurely nor so hurried that it would attract attention. He
observed the people loitering outside the entrance in the skirring
wind: a slick youth with a loosened tie, shouting into a mobile phone;
a group of slovenly women with rounded shoulders and sour mouths,
sucking on cigarettes.  From the opposite direction a couple of lawyers
appeared, striding along in the rapid ostentatious manner of the
professional, briefcases clutched like proof of office.

Beyond the metal detector and security check, in the halls and
passageways, were more families and defendants in various postures of
anxiety or hostility.  Again, Simon's quick glance took them in; again,
no face was familiar.  The daily list showed that Pavlik was fourth in
Court 2. Simon slipped into the public gallery and sat in the back of
the two rows.

The building was solid Edwardian but the courtroom had been refurbished
in pale wood and day-bright lighting.  The public gallery was not as he
had imagined, on a higher level and set well back, but down on the
floor of the court, separated from it by a tall screen of wood and
glass.  The bench was just to the left, giving the public a close and
unexpurgated view of the law, personified this morning at one minute
past ten thirty by a rotund stipendiary magistrate with a dyspeptic
frown.  To the right was the dock, with, at the rear, steps leading up
from the basement cells.  Finding his.  first choice of seat rather
exposed, Simon moved back to a seat hidden by the corner of the
screen.

The first case was a remand for assault and took a bare five minutes.
The second was a drug-dealing offence that had been held over for
pre-sentence reports.  Reams of paper had been produced by probation
officers, social workers and psychiatrists.  The magistrate asked
questions and the probation officer spoke.  Simon counted the
professionals involved, calculated their time and costs and thought
savagely: No wonder the system's in a state of collapse.  All this to
administer justice to a hopeless youth who will take the first
opportunity to reoffend because it wasn't his fault he was addicted to
heroin and cocaine and had to undertake the arduous chore of dealing to
pay for his habit.  Nothing was anyone's fault any more, not by the
time the social workers and pseudo-psychologists had pleaded their
liberal rubbish.  It made him furious just to listen to it.

The drug dealer was given six months and the third case called, a
bag-snatcher seeking bail.  Some noisy relatives lumbered into the
gallery.  A woman with a heavy cold and a filthy handkerchief sneezed
her way out.  Simon paid no attention when the door sounded again.  It
was only when an expanse of cream trouser suit appeared at his side and
a hand touched his arm that he jerked his head up.  Even then, it was a
full second before he comprehended that the lips ticked smile, the
short hair, the polished make-up belonged to Alice.

He gasped an unintelligible greeting.

Before he could think of anything to say, she squeezed past him into
the row and sat down.  "I haven't missed anything, have I?"

He tried unsuccessfully to push the astonishment out of his face.  "I
didn't know you were coming."

"Wanted to see what he looked like," she whispered.  "Wanted to be able
to report to Cath."  She seemed chatty, even friendly, but, deciding
not to take any chances, Simon gave the smallest of nods before turning
his attention back to the proceedings.

Alice put her mouth to his ear.  "She's been ill, did you know?"

"Yes, I heard."

"A kidney infection.  But they caught it in time.  She's better now."

He made an expression of relief and felt her gaze linger on his face
long after he had looked away again.

In his shock at her arrival, he realised that he had forgotten a simple
and terrifying fact.  It came to him now with a spring of cold sweat
that her presence could ruin everything.  Usually his mind was a clear
one, he could see his way through most problems, but sometimes when he
met a situation he had failed to foresee a strange panic would overtake
him.  He felt it now, a sort of mental gridlock in which his only lucid
thought was that he was unable to think.

"What's going to happen today, then?"  Her mouth was so close to his
ear that he could feel her breath.

"He'll be remanded again, probably for a month."

"Oh."  She sounded disappointed.

"And he's likely to apply for bail."

"But he won't get it, will he?"

"It's more than possible."

"What?  And let him go and terrorise other women?  How can they allow
that?"

"They get more rights than their victims, I'm afraid."  The panic had
eased a little, his mind was beginning to clear.  He needed to explain
his presence.  Steeling himself to meet her gaze, he whispered, This
charge was a surprise they thought he was just handling stolen
property, didn't they?  So I thought I'd better come and see what was
happening.  Let Ben know, keep the family in the picture.  I didn't
realise you were coming, otherwise I'd have left it to you In danger of
gabbling, he broke off abruptly.

If she thought his argument less than convincing, she made no sign.
"Oh, it's good of you to come," she declared without hesitation.  "And
good of you to be such a support to Catherine.  She won't let anyone
else visit her, you know.  Apart from Emma, of course.  It really
worries us."

"Oh, it's a pleasure to see her.  An honour."  Immediately, he wished
this rephrased.  It had sounded too abject.

Again, mystifyingly, Alice seemed entirely pleased with him.  Dropping
her head a little, she cast him an upward glance and said, with a brief
bite of her lower lip, "I'm sorry I was so defensive before."

Her soft voice, her smile, flustered him.  He couldn't make out if this
friendliness was a trick or a game, if she would suddenly turn on him.
Her face seemed very close.  He could see every detail of the make-up
around her eyes, so cleverly applied, of her glossy pink lips, her
hair, which had been cut in a short bouncy style.  He felt the tension
come into his cheek.  That's all right."

"I was just overreacting.  You know shock."

He made an ambiguous gesture, he smiled blandly: nothing that could be
taken as a judgement.  Seizing the opportunity to forestall
difficulties later, he said quickly, "In case you think I'm rude, I'm
going to have to dash immediately after the case."

"Oh?"  Her quick eyes appraised him openly.  "Perhaps we could meet
later?  After work?"

He couldn't make out why she was suggesting this.  Did she want to
compare notes?  Discuss Pavlik?

The puzzlement must have shown in his face because she whispered, "Just
a drink."

His cheek gave a jerk that almost caused his left eye to close, like
some ghastly wink, and he lowered his head furiously.  "I might be late
at the office.  I'm not sure when I'll finish."

"Why don't we make contact later?"  She reached into her bag and gave
him a card, then, producing pen and paper, waited for him to scribble
his mobile phone number down.  "I'm free from about seven," she
smiled.

There was sudden movement in the court and his panic resurfaced, he
felt the heat rise into his face.  The bag-snatcher, having got bail,
was strutting out of the court with a smirk on his face, followed by a
lawyer with an armful of papers.  The usher called Pavlik's name and
the warder disappeared down the steps to the cells.  There was a pause
in which there was no movement save for the clerk's pen as she wrote up
her notes.  Simon shrank back a little as the warder reappeared,
followed at last by Pavlik.

It seemed to Simon that everything in his mind and body tautened as he
watched Pavlik saunter up the last few steps and take his place in the
dock.  He appeared relaxed to the point of unconcern; he didn't look
around the court, didn't look towards the gallery, but kept his eyes on
the bench.  Simon tried to read his expression, to guess at his state
of mind, but his face was devoid of emotion.  He might have been up for
a parking offence.

"Is that him?"  hissed Alice.

Without removing his eyes from Pavlik Simon gave a sharp peremptory
nod.  Pavlik was short, something like five four or five, but, standing
next to a warder who must have been well over six foot, he looked
positively stunted.  However, his broad, well-shaped shoulders, his
thick neck, revealed the body of a man who kept in shape.  He was
wearing a light blue shirt, well-pressed, no tie, and dark blue chinos.
His black hair was newly washed and very shiny.  Simon thought: So much
for the deprivations of jail.

Alice leant close again.  "He's not what I expected!"

But Simon had transferred his gaze to the lawyers' tables, where a new
face had appeared, a short rather moth-eaten man with an unhealthy
pallor, collar-length white hair and pebble glasses, wearing an ancient
pinstriped suit purchased in slimmer days.  When the usher announced,
"Number four on your list, sir, represented by Mr.  Gresham," he stood
up and nodded to the bench and made an application for bail.  The woman
from the CPS objected on the grounds that the charge was a serious one,
that the police had not had time to make full inquiries as to
suitability for bail and, last but not least, the accused was an
illegal immigrant who would have every possible reason to abscond.  The
pinstriped suit lumbered to his feet again and stated that, though
Pavlik had entered the country illegally, he had in fact applied for
political asylum.  Since the members of his family who remained in the
Czech Republic were suffering considerable persecution as gypsies, he
had every reason to believe his application would be successful.  He
had been in this country for five years during which time he had never
been in trouble with the law in any shape or form, had held down a
steady job as a waiter for four years, had been resident in the same
area for two years.  Given bail, he had every intention of resuming his
normal life, residing in his home and, if his job was still open,
returning to his work.  Furthermore, surety could be provided if
necessary.

The magistrate commented crossly, "It would have to be a substantial
surety."

"Yes, sir, that would be no problem."

"Who's offering surety?"

"A friend of my client who has every faith in him."

"And who is this friend?"

"Mr.  David Frankel, a retired solicitor."

The magistrate looked over his spectacles.  "Mr.  Frankel is offering
this surety in a personal capacity?"

"He is indeed, sir."

"Is he here today?"

"No, sir, but I have authorisation."

"How long has he known your client?"

The pinstriped suit referred to his notes.  "Two years."

"Is he fully aware of all the circumstances?  Not least that your
client is an illegal immigrant?"

"He is, sir."

Behind the magistrate's perpetual scowl, it was clear he was soft.
"Docs Mr.  Frankel live close to your client?  Will he keep in regular
contact?"

"Mr.  Frankel lives in Hendon, sir.  My client lives in West Kilburn,
not so far away.  And yes, Mr.  Frankel will be in regular contact."

"And where would your client live while on bail?"

The pinstripe read out an address.  "It's the room he's been renting
for the past six months."

The magistrate considered.  "This is a serious charge.  The accused is
an illegal immigrant.  I must ask for surety of fifteen thousand
pounds.  Is Mr.  Frankel prepared to stand surety for that amount?"

"He is, sir."

The magistrate gave a small sigh.  "In that case .. . unless the CPS
has other grounds for refusing bail?"  The woman from the CPS bobbed up
and shook her head.  "Bail is granted on a recognisance of fifteen
thousand pounds and on condition that the accused reports to his local
police station once a day and lives and sleeps at his address.  Does he
have a passport to surrender?"

"Sir, his only passport is a Czech passport, which is out of date."

"And they're letting him out?"  hissed Alice.  "I don't believe it!"

Simon cupped a hand to his ear, so as not to miss anything.

"Do you fully understand the conditions, Mr.  Pavlik?"  the magistrate
asked.

"I understand."  The words were strongly spoken.

"And you must report back to this court on the date that will be
notified to you.  Any failure to follow the conditions of the bail or
to appear when notified and you will find yourself charged with a
separate offence and go straight to prison.  Is that clear?"

"It is, sir."

The pinstriped suit ambled `>-3,' across to the clerk to lodge the surety
while a warder directed Pavlik back towards the cells.  Pavlik appeared
to argue, or at least to question this, and the warder paused to
explain something to him before Pavlik acquiesced with a nod and made
his way down the stairs.

Retrieving his bag from the floor, Simon got hastily to his feet.
"That's it," he said."

Alice exclaimed, "You mean, he's out?  He's free?"

Simon was already on his way to the door.  "He will be shortly."

"That's outrageous!"  She hurried after him into the hall.

Halting, Simon held out a hand to make it clear that he had to hurry
away.

Tilting her head to one side, she said, "But where are you going?  Why
don't we share a cab?"

"I've got an appointment out in the sticks."  In a moment of
inspiration, he added something approaching the truth.  "But I thought
I'd try and find out one or two things about Pavlik first."

Before she had the chance to say anything else he lifted a hand in
farewell and walked briskly over to the gaolers' window to confirm that
Pavlik was being returned to Brixton for release.  Looking back, he saw
the pinstriped suit emerge from court and shamble arthritically across
the hall in the direction of the main doors.

Back on plan, Simon thought exultantly.  Nothing amiss, nothing to give
him away.  Only his own stilted movements and the sweat like rain
inside his shirt.

He thought of Catherine, as he often did in times of stress or rapture,
and this steadied him.

It'll be fine, he spoke to her.  Leave it all to me.

An hour later he sat in the back of a parked minicab in a quiet road in
Brixton.

"How long we wait?"  The driver was Turkish or Lebanese.  His eyes in
the mirror were black as treacle.

"As long as we have to."

"One hour?  Two hour?"

"I'm paying, aren't I?  I told you, I don't know."

They were parked in a small residential road with a view back across
Brixton Hill to Jebb Avenue and the barriers to the prison.

Simon had already slipped off his suit jacket and tie and,

folding them carefully, had lodged them in his bag with his shoes. Over
his shirt he had put on a casual zip-up jacket and on his feet a pair
of trainers.  Ready on the seat beside him was a baseball cap and in
his pocket some dark glasses, a weekly travel card, and cash in varying
denominations should he need to take another cab and pay it off
hurriedly.  Finally, he had attached a strap to his bag so that he'd be
able to carry it over his shoulder, just like a tourist, a student, or
a waiter on his way to the evening shift.  If nothing else, he owed
himself the satisfaction of having prepared fully.  He ran through the
details again in his mind, but could think of nothing he'd forgotten.

While he watched the comings and goings from the prison, he made calls
on his mobile, marking each one off on the card that he had prepared
the previous night.  After an hour he was able to tick off the last
call a deal he was setting up in Argentina and to place the card in the
inner pocket of his jacket, where it lodged with such gratifying
exactitude.

As two o'clock came and the time dragged on, he allowed himself to
daydream gently of Catherine.  In so far as such a thing was possible,
he tried to ration his thoughts of her.  When he'd discovered she was
ill and not seeing visitors, he'd sent her a card and some Belgian
chocolates from Fortnum & Mason because he thought she would appreciate
something a little frivolous for a change.  He imagined her face on
receiving them, he saw her smiling a little as she read the card.  He
was amazingly sure of this smile, just as he was sure that she spoke
warmly of him to other people.  She was a steadfast person, Catherine,
she would never speak unkindly behind his back.  When he thought of the
way their friendship had grown over the months, the warmth and devotion
she had shown him, he felt a piercing sense of pride.  If they could
continue as they were, he would be more than happy, though when he
allowed his daydreams full rein he couldn't help imagining the two of
them living in a beautiful flat together, an airy modern place, high up
with lots of natural light and a large terrace with a roof garden and a
view, so that when he was away Catherine could look out over the city
and tend her plants.  At other times this vision was transposed to the
country, to an eighteenth-century house, possibly a barn conversion,
with an abundant garden and wonderful antiques.  In both of these homes
he could see each room, the decor, the colours, the china they ate off,
the food they served, the lunch parties, the quiet dinners a deux.
These images were so perfect, so richly formed that the contemplation
of them caused him an exquisite suffering.  He didn't need to be told
that he was feeling the terrible joy of the unattainable.

The sight of the tall white-sided prison transport coming up Brixton
Hill and slowing to turn into Jebb Avenue jolted him back to life.  He
checked the time: barely three.  This could be the one: only the
magistrates' courts disgorged their prisoners this early.

Adding another hour to the driver's time, he calculated the fare and
paid, with the firm instruction that the driver was to wait the full
time.  In the unlikely event of Pavlik having transport, Simon didn't
want to be left standing by the kerb.  Pulling on the cap and
sunglasses, stringing the bag over his shoulder, he climbed out and,
crossing the main road, waited at a point where he could see along Jebb
Avenue to the side of the prison but, with just two steps back, could
move rapidly out of view.

After ten minutes, a youth clutching a brown-paper bag stepped out of
the wicket gate.  Five minutes later came an old man, puffing on a
cigarette.  Then, after another ten minutes, Pavlik.  From the way he
strode up Jebb Avenue he was not expecting transport.

With a lurch of excitement, Simon began to walk away from the prison in
the wrong direction for town.  When he glanced back, Pavlik had turned
into the main road, heading north.  Doubling back, Simon followed at a
distance.  Obligingly, Pavlik was wearing a bright blue jacket, which,
with his dark hair and distinctive build, made him stand out like a
beacon.  Once, he paused for no apparent reason and looked round. Simon
had to force himself to keep walking naturally, but it seemed Pavlik
was only checking the route advertised on an approaching bus because,
once it got close enough to read, he lost interest and resumed his
earlier pace.

On reaching the bottom of Brixton Hill, he made for the underground.
Closing up, Simon was four treads behind him on the escalator.  A train
drew out as they came onto the platform.  For a time they were the only
people waiting.  Simon sauntered up to a chocolate dispensing machine
and, hunting for some coins, selected an Aero bar.  Other people
dribbled onto the platform.  Glancing back, he saw Pavlik waiting
patiently, staring at the advertising hoarding on the other side of the
track, apparently unaware that he was being followed.

When a train drew in, Simon got into the next-door carriage and kept an
eye on Pavlik through the glass windows of the communicating doors.  At
Green Park, Pavlik got off and transferred to the Piccadilly Line.
Again Simon took the precaution of getting into the next carriage, but
as this train was far more crowded he didn't attempt to keep Pavlik in
view but stuck his head out of the open doors at each stop.  He didn't
have to wait long; the bright blue jacket emerged at Leicester
Square.

The walk up through Chinatown was rather pleasant in the weak sunshine.
Simon began to relax a little.  This whole business was proving far
easier than he'd expected, although, as he hastily reminded himself,
this was due not to any skill on his part but to Pavlik's total lack of
suspicion.

Pavlik crossed Shaftesbury Avenue into Dean Street and, just when Simon
was wondering where he might be heading, he disappeared into a pub on
the corner of Old Compton Street.  A stiff drink after a week in the
clink; Simon didn't blame him.  Simon rounded the opposite corner and
leant a shoulder against the plate-glass window of a pasta restaurant
that offered a view of the pub door across a table of gobbling
tourists.

Pavlik didn't drink for long he must have kept it to a quick double
before he was on his way out again, and coming straight for Simon.
Simon hastened off ahead of him down Old

Compton Street and walked briskly into a sandwich bar.  After Pavlik
had passed, he came out again and followed him round the next corner
into Frith Street.  Pavlik slowed up now, going at a pace that was
almost thoughtful, before stopping and smoothing his hair in the
reflection of a glass shop front  Apparently satisfied, he went a few
more paces and stepped in through a door.  Getting closer, Simon saw an
old-fashioned Italian restaurant with pot plants and straw-clad Chianti
bottles in the window.  La Rondine.

The workplace, presumably.  Would the management have kept his job open
for him?  If Gresham was to be believed, Pavlik had been in the same
job for four years, a veritable old-timer in the flighty world of Soho.
But Simon suspected that a few months would be more like it, and plenty
of moonlighting after hours.  Did illegal immigrants pay taxes?
Presumably not.  Asylum seekers got benefits, though.  A beneficiary of
the black economy twice over, then.

It was almost five and nearing the start of the evening shift.  Simon
was beginning to think he had an exceedingly long wait in front of him
when Pavlik reappeared, heading back the way he had come.  Turning
hastily away, Simon found himself standing next to two slack-mouthed
men, staring into a dark cavernous doorway lit by garish photographs
advertising the bloated breasts and brassy attentions available in the
basement beneath.

Following again at a safe distance, he had to hurry to match Pavlik's
pace as he turned west along Old Compton Street and down into
Shaftesbury Avenue.  He was walking so much faster now that Simon
almost lost him in the crowds near Piccadilly Circus, only picking him
up as he bought an Evening Standard at the top of the subway steps.
Three minutes later Simon was safely ensconced in the next-door
carriage to Pavlik on a Bakerloo Line train, heading north.  It was no
surprise when Pavlik got off at Queen's Park, on the northern edge of
West Kilburn.

As Simon followed him into the maze of residential roads that must
surely mark the end of the trail, his exhilaration was overtaken by
doubt.  What next?  Where was this really leading?

Pavlik stopped at a Pakistani corner shop, emerging a few minutes later
with a full carrier bag.  Simon judged his distance carefully now,
staying far enough back not to be noticeable but not so far that he
couldn't identify the house once Pavlik finally got home.

In the event, he needn't have worried.  When Pavlik turned in through a
black metal gate in a long street of identical two-storey villas he
didn't disappear immediately but paused for several moments in the
porch, giving Simon plenty of time to mark the precise doorway.
Striding briskly past a minute later, Simon noted the brass number on
the door, and a single bell.  He'd been expecting two or three bells,
denoting rooms or flat lets but unless they had been placed somewhere
unusual and he had missed them, the place had all the appearance of a
single house.  Was Pavlik a lodger then?  Or a guest?

The road was called, in improbable imitation of grander places, Fifth
Avenue, and when Simon examined the A-Z later he saw that it was indeed
one of six.

His luck continued when, immediately on reaching the Harrow Road, a
free cab appeared, going his way.  Safely inside, speeding along
against the flow of rush-hour traffic, he allowed himself some small
sense of achievement.  At least he'd established that Pavlik was
intending to live at the address he'd given to the court.  Now, at the
slightest sign of trouble, Simon would know where to come.  What he
might do once he got there was, of course, an entirely different
matter.  He took refuge in the solemn promise he'd made in his heart to
Catherine.  I'll make sure no one ever harms you again.

There was only one aspect of the day that did not slot neatly away in
his orderly mind.  The house in Fifth Avenue had looked too prosperous
to take in lodgers.  The fresh paintwork, polished brass house jiumber,
new plantation-style shutters in the upstairs windows, fancy window
boxes and plant tubs spoke of money to spare.  As he realised too late
that the cab was heading for Lancaster Gate and the bottleneck across
the park, an answer presented itself.  Pavlik was athletic and
good-looking, one to stand out in a crowd.  He might have a lover, a
luster after firm flesh who kept him in style in Fifth Avenue.

The tailback across the park started at Lancaster Gate; it would be a
long crawl.  He retrieved his mobile phone from his document bag and
switched it on.  Before he had the chance to pick up his messages,
however, it rang.  He had forgotten about Alice until her voice sang,
"How are you doing?  Ready for that drink yet?"

Gripped by a mild euphoria, he agreed immediately and with an
enthusiasm that surprised him.  An hour later, having been home to
shower and change, he found himself back in Soho, walking into the
Atlantic Bar.  Alice was waiting at the long curved counter, perched on
a stool.  She smiled when she saw him.  Her appearance took him aback.
She had changed out of the cream trouser suit into a black dress that
was low-cut and flimsy.  Since her figure was by any standards full, it
was a dress that displayed its contents rather too conspicuously.  When
she took a breath her breasts bulged over the rim of the dress, and he
took care to keep his eyes firmly above her neck.

She was drinking something bright green called a Japanese Slipper, and,
though he usually stuck to white wine, he allowed himself a rare
impulse and joined her.  She asked what he'd managed to find out about
Pavlik and didn't seem surprised or concerned when he reported a lack
of success.  Then, duty apparently done, she chattered about her life,
which seemed to consist of a long succession of parties, dinners, and
country weekends.  She dismissed her work in an estate agent's as
boring, while the parties were spoken of with excitement, as though she
regarded a packed social life as the only real mark of success.  Once
again, Simon wondered why she should bother with him, why she had gone
to all this trouble to meet him for a drink.  He didn't doubt there was
a purpose behind it all.  At one point, he turned the conversation
towards Catherine in case this should provide a cue, but she didn't
pick up on it.

"So," she said with a soft smile, 'what about you?  Busy?"

While he talked of Bahrain and Argentina she listened attentively, with
bright eyes that never left his face.  He had the feeling he was being
minutely appraised, and that so far, against all odds, he appeared to
be passing muster.  Under the searchlight of her gaze he ordered
another round of the green drink -a concoction of vodka, lime and
something he'd never heard of and, trying to enter into the spirit of
this strange encounter, offered a breezy smile.

Alice said something that was lost in the general din.  He bent closer.
Whether it was the misguided smile that had encouraged her or she'd
been planning to ask him all along, she said in her low musical voice,
"You don't have a significant other, do you?"

"Not significant, no."

"I didn't think so," she said mysteriously.  "Why not?"  She tilted her
head, she leant forward a little, and her bosom came towards him like
he remembered reading such a description in a book somewhere a
blancmange about to slide off its dish.

He said, "Too busy, too much work, no talent for commitment."

"Ah .. . commitment."  She smiled with mock wistfulness.  "What about
non-significant others?"

"Oh, we all have those, don't we?"

"Do we?"  she said, clearly relishing the idea.  Then, with a cat-like
smile, a narrowing of her eyes: "So you're not looking for a
significant other?"

"Not particularly, no."

"Don't want to be tied down?"

"Something like that."

"Quite right!"

She seemed pleased by his response.  She flashed her eyes at him over
her drink.  It occurred to him that in other circumstances, with anyone
but Alice, he might have suspected that he was being flirted with.  He
found this thought sufficiently alarming to change the subject.  "You
know that I'm leaving RNP, that Ben and I are going our separate
ways?"

Smiling dreamily, eyes still fastened teasingly on his, she came to
this subject slowly.  "Mmm?"  When he'd repeated the question, she
said, "I'd heard, yes."  Then, seriously: "I'm not surprised."

"Oh?"

"Well, Ben's a difficult sod, isn't he?"

Simon made a show of considering this idea as if it were entirely new
to him.  "Yes, I suppose he is."

"You know, I always used to envy Cath," she said unexpectedly.  "When
we were kids.  And later.  You know.  Looks.  Could eat all day long
without putting on weight.  Never had spots.  And there I was .. .
wellV She rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly.

Feeling some response was expected of him, Simon framed a frown of
denial.

Misreading this, she declared defensively, "Oh, don't get me wrong, I
didn't actually mind.  God, no!  Quite the opposite."  She attempted a
laugh.  "It quite suited me, you see.  I could just get on with my
life, do my own thing, and no one was any the wiser.  Got away with far
more than Cath.  God, yes!  Pa was always eagle-eyed where she was
concerned, wanting to know where she'd been, what she'd been up to. But
me .. ."  Her eyes slid away, as though she'd said more than she'd
intended to.  "So when Cath got Ben, we all thought she'd found herself
the best, just like we'd always thought she would.  Got the golden man,
the pick of the bunch."  She gave a small shrug, she said
enigmatically, "But now ... well, I rather think she's got her work cut
out for her, don't you?"

Simon found himself arguing Ben's case.  "Whatever else, he's doing his
best for Catherine."

"Do you think so?"  The disdain in her voice left no doubt as to her
opinion.  "It depends what you consider his best."

"What are you trying to say?"

She paused, she eyed him thoughtfully.  "I don't think he's behaving
very well.  I think he's doing the dirty on her."

"Oh?  And why do you think that?"

She raised an eyebrow.  "I could tell you it was just a feeling.  I
could tell you I'm just a clever judge of character."

"But?"

"But," she said with a heavy sigh, "I know he's seeing someone else."

Simon stared at his drink.  He felt sick with sudden excitement, as if
in one accelerated action Catherine had found out and the way was open
for him to step in.  "Ouch," he murmured, to give himself more time.
Then, with a look of suitable concern, he asked, "Who's the woman?"

"That I don't know."

He couldn't make out if she was holding out on him.

"But you know there's someone?"

"Oh yes.  It was when I went round early one morning to collect
something for Cath.  I heard someone moving around upstairs.  Ben tried
to make a clatter, to hide it.  But I heard all right there was
definitely someone up there."

"It couldn't have been I don't know someone else?  A friend?"

She let her head fall to one side, she rounded her eyes in a knowing
expression of doubt.

"No," he conceded.  "Just ships in the night, then?  A one nighter?"

She shook her head.  "She'd left her car keys on the hall table.  Think
about it."  She raised a forefinger.  "It's only a regular routine that
makes a woman do that."

"You didn't recognise the keys?"

"No."

His euphoria had quite gone.  He'd lost all taste for the gaudy green
cocktail.  The clamour of the bar seemed to rise around him,
unacceptably loud.  "It wouldn't be the first time," he said
casually.

Alice stared at him, as if to be sure of his meaning.  "Since they've
been married, you mean?"

He gave a light shrug.

"Who was it?"

"I couldn't say."

"But there was someone?"

He met her eyes, and it was a confirmation.

"The bastard," she said.

She was thinking of pressing him further, but he made a show of looking
at his watch.  "Sorry, I've got to go."

He caught the flash of disappointment under the forced smile.  "Oh, I
was hoping to lure you off to supper," she said.

"It's work.  Can't escape.  But another time."

"Definitely?"  She was still looking at him with something like
suspicion, and it struck him that he must tread carefully with her.

"Definitely.  In fact, next week?  Tuesday?"

"Tuesday."  Brightening a little, she smiled lazily.  "I must let you
go, then."  When she leant forward it was for a traditional meeting of
cheeks, a token pouting of the lips.  But then, as he straightened up,
she reached up and, framing his face in her hands, neatly guided his
mouth down to hers and kissed him full on the lips.  Her mouth was
slightly open and it seemed to him that the taste of her stayed with
him for hours afterwards.

Chapter Ten

"No PERSONAL mail, no," said Bridget's voice in Dublin.  "And none at
Foxrock either."

Sitting alone in the hotel suite, the phone tight against his ear,
Terry stared unseeing at the gauze curtains stirring in the sluggish
air, and thought: Well, what did I expect, for heaven's sake?  With
half an ear to Bridget as she ran through the arrangements for his
return to Dublin, he finally accepted what had been obvious from the
start: Catherine would never reply.  It had been ridiculous to think
she would.

When Bridget had rung off he went to the window and, parting the
swathes of fabric, watched the dusk creep up from the Mayfair streets
into a crystalline sky.  Hoping for a response had been foolish, though
perhaps not so foolish as the belief that friendly words and weekly
letters could overcome the resentments of the past.  It was the
arrogance of success, of course, to assume that everything could be
fixed, that nothing, not even grievances, could resist the forces of
determination and money.  And what had he been out to achieve anyway?
Forgiveness?  Peace of mind?  Just salves to his own conscience, he
noted severely, surely one of the more shameful forms of vanity.

No, there would be no letter from Catherine, and he would write no more
to her either.  He should have learnt his lesson the first time and
realised that the written word did not serve him well so far as
Catherine was concerned.  The letter he'd written her during the summer
of Lizzie's illness was incised painfully on his memory.  He had never
understood how he had come to misjudge the situation so badly, but
misjudge it he had.  There was no undoing it then, and there was no
undoing it now.  He would have liked his thoughts of that time to be
filled entirely with recollections of Lizzie, to remember the many
moments of laughter and celebration that had overlaid the recognition
of her slow deterioration.  But the choice of memories was another
thing that willpower alone couldn't provide.

When Lizzie had started treatment, he'd managed to visit her most
Saturdays and the occasional mid-week evening.  Later, he'd rented a
house a mile or so away from Morne and taken short weekends.  Finally,
at Maeve's instigation she said he needed a rest he'd taken a whole
month's holiday, an event unheard of before or since, though holiday
was a relative term for him, six hours a day on the phone instead of
sixteen, and three meetings a week instead of twenty.

At first he saw Catherine only occasionally when she flew in from
England, where she was studying under some famous garden designer.  He
noticed in passing her freshness and exuberance, apparently undulled by
four years in London, and her looks, which had settled on her well,
which to his mind meant unaffectedly.  If he was aware of feeling, it
was the great and clear affection he felt for Lizzie.  If he'd been
asked to describe his heart, he would have said it was full.

In July, a week into his so-called holiday, Catherine came for a
two-week stay which extended indefinitely, and they began to walk
together.  She was a fast walker; he, for reasons his doctor could have
spelt out, less so.  Eventually, however, they found a pace, and the
walks became a regular fixture of the afternoons while Lizzie was
sleeping, and some of the early mornings too.  Catherine told him about
her life in London and the people she'd met and the gardens she was
working on, and he felt he was listening to two people, the single girl
enjoying the big city, and the working woman who viewed the world with
more detachment.  On some of their more adventurous expeditions, they
began to talk of all the other things that two people discuss on long
walks: wars and governments and the nature of progress; ambition and
friendship and love.  She was an optimist, he a realist; she was what
she liked to term a benevolent atheist, he a more-or-less practising
Catholic; and so, coming from opposing philosophies, they agreed on
many things.

At other times, he teased her as he'd teased her when she was a child,
and she rose enthusiastically to the well-remembered challenge,
answering as she used to answer, with nonsense and wild exaggeration.
Then, towards the end of each walk they would quietly revert to the
subject that generally began and ended their outings, the matter of
Lizzie's wellbeing and how to improve it.  If their relationship felt
comfortable he told himself it was because it had both boundaries and
purpose; if he felt an affinity for her, it sprang from the ties of
familiarity and time, and their mutual determination to support Lizzie
through the weeks of her treatment.

Which moment changed everything?  Which of them had got it wrong?
Apparently it was him, though for the life of him he still couldn't
work out how.  He'd deconstructed and re-examined the succession of
events time and again, but still couldn't see how he'd misread the
situation quite so thoroughly.

The first moment that stuck in his mind came on an early morning walk
over the black hill to the north of Morne.  They'd left Lizzie looking
better than for some days, and Catherine was in a buoyant mood.  They
were talking about holidays and going abroad, and the relative merits
of Paris and Rome, which they'd both visited, when Catherine paused
abruptly and for no apparent reason turned to him and declared,
straight-faced, "I've been thinking most women would do far better to
go for older men, you know."

This was a way of hers, to throw a provocative statement into the air
and see how it would fall.

"And why is that?"  he asked mildly.

"Because then they wouldn't run out of things to talk about on
holiday."

"Is that a danger with younger men?"

She gave a theatrical sigh, all breath and affectation.  "God, yes! The
only thing they can talk about is sport.  Oh, and bad jokes why do they
love bad jokes?"

"Don't be too hard on them."

She walked on, pretending exasperation.  "No, they're worse than
useless.  Older men would suit us all much better.  They've been to
places, done things.  They know what they want, they're much more
relaxed with women."

"Older men would certainly warm to an idea like that with no trouble at
all.  But how much older are we talking about here?"

She hadn't thought about this of course.  Shrugging, she lobbed a
figure up at random.  "Ten years?  Fifteen?"

"Careful, at that rate you might consign a bright young thing to a
decrepit old man like me."

"Terry!"  She touched his arm and grinned at him.  "You're not old! How
old are you?"

"I need notice of that question."  He pretended to work it out.  "If
Buddy Holly died in fifty-nine, then .. . I'm thirty-six."

"Just a child."  She walked on for a while before stopping just as
abruptly.  "Will you marry again?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake."  He wasn't quite ready for that question. "Who
can say?"

"Of course you will!  You'd be a catch."

He snorted, "I think that's very much a matter of opinion."

"Well, I think you'd be a catch."

"Just goes to show your ideas about men are fatally misguided.  Who'd
want a workaholic heading for a heart attack?"

"Sounds perfect to me."  Then she'd leant across and kissed him lightly
on the cheek.  "Seriously, I'm beginning to see you in an entirely new
light.  Careful!"

She was joking of course, it was a moment of light flirtation, gone in
a trice, though not so light that it didn't add a small fris son to
their next conversation, a fris son that might nevertheless have
remained entirely harmless if a short while later, in an incident
emblazoned just as strongly on his memory, she hadn't looped her arm
through his and said, "I love it here, Terry.  Ireland will always be
my home.  I'm not sure I'll ever feel really comfortable in England."

"Come back, then.  Money galore in Ireland now there must be plenty of
people who want their gardens uprooted."

"Oh, it's not the work there'd be plenty of work it's the life here. Or
rather, it's the social life."  She chuckled, "By which I suppose I
mean the men!  Or rather, the lack of them.  Too many good Catholic
boys, Terry."

"Religion's never stopped a man yet."

She pulled a face of doubt.  "It's Madonnas or whores here."

"You mean there's something in between?"

"Ha, ha."

"So if there was the right man, you'd stay."

The laughter left her face, she considered this seriously.  "Yes," she
declared at last, as though the realisation had surprised her.  "Yes,
do you know, I think I would."  Then, in a lightning switch, she cast
him a mischievous look and said, "I'd stay for someone like you."  He
thought she was joking again, she was certainly laughing as she said
it, but then she muddied the waters all over again by pushing herself
up on her toes and kissing him full on the lips, a kiss that was not so
brief that it could be judged an assertion of friendship, yet not quite
so long that it constituted a firm declaration of interest either.  He
was tantalised and baffled in equal measure until he reminded himself
that it was a strange intense time for them all, that under the strain
of worrying and caring for her mother it was natural for Catherine to
look for light relief in games of love and desire.  He told himself
this, but deep down the idea of loving her was just there, waiting to
leap heartlessly to the surface.

She phoned with the dinner invitation the next day.  Looking back now,
he could see that this was the point at which perspective and judgement
began to desert him.  At the time, though, it was easy to convince
himself that the invitation was Catherine's idea, that as the one
person who had Duncan's ear she'd persuaded her father that the time
had finally come to treat Terry as one of the family.  He saw it as a
sign of her growing affection for him.

From this distance, the extent of his self-delusion cut him sharply.
And when he really wanted to give himself a hard time, he let himself
believe that the real reason for the summons had nothing to do with
friendship or acceptance, and everything to do with Duncan's need for
money, and that this had been as plain as the nose on his face, if only
he'd chosen to see.

During the summer Duncan had been away a lot on business, which, as
Terry well knew, meant buying mediocre wine expensively in France and
wondering why he was then unable to shift it at a profit in Dublin.  On
the few occasions the two men had bumped into each other at Morne,
Duncan had looked at Terry with his customary vague smile, delivered
the equivocal greeting at which he was so adept, the muttered, "Oh .. .
Terry, I didn't know you were here', and, wearing a vacant expression,
departed for another end of the house.  So when, after twenty-odd years
in which dinner invitations had been conspicuous by their absence,
Terry suddenly found himself on Lizzie's right, very much the honoured
guest, he took it as a sea change.  The fatted calf was on the table,
the silver was out, a half-decent claret filled his glass.  Duncan was
at his most gracious and urbane, the complete host, the practised
raconteur, the all-round bon vivant.  Lizzie, with echoes of her old
self, sparkled with pleasure at having so many of her loved ones at the
same table and stayed up until almost ten, which was late for her.
Catherine was quieter than usual, distracted or thoughtful, though
Terry in his half-unhinged state managed to translate this into a
beguiling serenity.  At a quarter past ten Catherine announced she was
going upstairs to make sure Lizzie was all right.  He had no doubt this
was precisely what she had done, yet when he raked over this part of
the evening later he couldn't help wondering if it was entirely by
chance that he was left alone with Duncan.

Not that he was in the least surprised when Duncan brought up the
subject of money; over the previous six or seven years it had become
something of an annual event for Duncan to be in need of 'the odd
loan'.  Terry braced himself, however, because on the last occasion,
just eight months before, Duncan had asked for quite a bit more than
before.  In the early years it had been two or three thousand, but
suddenly it had jumped to twelve, and Terry hadn't yet been rich enough
for long enough that every penny wasn't still precious to him.  He'd
had to remind himself that this was a duty, like giving to his own
family, and that normal considerations didn't apply.  There were always
going to be certain people in your life, related by blood or
circumstance, who only had to look at money for it to vanish.  His
brother was one, his uncle another.  Giving to them was a matter of
obligation, you didn't quibble, you wrote it off and never dwelt on it
again.

"And what can you offer by way of security?"  he'd asked Duncan on the
occasion of the twelve thousand because they always went through the
pretence of putting the loans on a business footing.

"I thought, the sporting rights for a couple of years?"

Since the oak wood had long since been cut down and the wood pigeon
departed there was no question of snipe Terry had supposed he was
talking about the fishing, though by the time the local poachers had
finished with the brown trout that didn't add up to more than a couple
of minnows.  But he'd accepted because honour, however transparent, had
to be satisfied.

This time, Duncan began in his customary way, with some bleak
observations about the business climate, before announcing that he was
experiencing a few 'on-going difficulties', which were forcing him to
reconsider his entire position, lock, stock and barrel.  Not to beat
about the bush, would Terry be interested in a business proposition?
This, of course, was beating around every "bush in sight, but Terry
managed to hold his tongue while Duncan meandered back and forth,
skirting the issue with a skill that would have done credit to a Cold
War diplomat, before coming in at an oblique angle, with what might or
might not have been a firm clue as to what he was after.

"So ... I was thinking of going for a total restructuring," he said.

"Your business finances, this is?"

Duncan made the gesture of a negotiator who didn't care to be drawn too
soon, a hand twisted one way then the other.  "Well..  . could be a bit
of both."

"How much did you have in mind?"

Duncan gave a deprecating chuckle, as if the idea of stating anything
so bald as the precise sum he had in mind would be far too crass at
this stage in the proceedings.  "Well..  ."  He had the lazy insipid
smile of a man who'd learnt at an early stage that an easy manner and
ready charm could get you a surprisingly long way in life.

Without warning, Terry reached some limit of his patience.  Leaning an
elbow on the table, unfolding a hand towards Duncan, he demanded
firmly, "Now, what are we talking here, Duncan?  Cash?  A lot of cash?
Because if we are, I think we might have a difficulty.  You see, I'm
not interested in the wine business.  I've no wish to buy into it, I've
no wish to have a stake in it.  And I don't believe there's anything
else we can usefully discuss in terms of a deal.  There's really
nothing I want to buy.  So you see ... there's a difficulty, Duncan."

Duncan made a show of taking this in good part, because according to
the dictates of his simple philosophy one kept smiling through thick
and thin.  He reminded Terry of a dog that keeps trying to please, even
when it's down.  "Of course, of course.  I wouldn't expect you to be
interested in anything you didn't want.  Lord, no!"

Terry raised an eyebrow, awaiting enlightenment.

"No, no .. ."  insisted Duncan.  "I was thinking you might be
interested in Morne."

There was a pause that for Terry was nothing less than electric.

"Obviously, not immediately .. . with things as they are .. ."  Duncan
struck the brave sorrowful note of the loving husband who can only wait
and hope.  "When Lizzie's better."  This was delivered in hushed
tones.

"You mean .. ."  And Terry could hardly say it.  "You want to sell
Morne?"

"Sadly, it's the only sensible option.  Business conditions are too
difficult here.  Far better in England.  People actually appreciate
wine there."

Terry was groping for understanding.  "But you don't want to sell quite
yet?"

"I was thinking of delayed completion."

Which meant the money now, and the house handed over at his
convenience.

"But, forgive me isn't the house going to be Catherine's and Alice's?
For some reason I had the idea that Lizzie was going to pass it on to
the girls."

Behind the bland eyes there was a shadow of annoyance.  "No, no never
the intention.  Lizzie and I were always going to sell in the fullness
of time.  Go and live abroad.  No, no it's been settled for ages."

"I see," Terry murmured, though he didn't see at all.  In twenty years
of conversations with Lizzie he'd never heard the slightest suggestion
of living abroad; quite the opposite.  "And you're sure this is the
only option?"

Duncan went through the charade of considering this.  "I think it's the
most realistic."

Which meant, thought Terry, his debts have got completely out of hand.
"And ... if I were unable to buy?"

"Oh, then I'd put it on the open market.  Lots of Germans buying around
here.  Plenty of interest.  No, I just thought with your ties to the
area it might just suit you.  A place to keep for your retirement,
perhaps."  He spun a hand, plucking possibilities out of the air.  "A
holiday home.  A long-term investment."

And still Terry couldn't quite take it in.  "So ... one way or another,
you're determined to sell?"

A gentle sigh.  "Sadly."

"But you'd prefer to stay a while '

"Until Lizzie's better."

"Until she's better."  Terry felt the need to spell everything out in
great detail.  "Which of course you couldn't do if you were to sell to
a German?"

Duncan tilted his elegant head while he pondered this for a while, as
though the thought hadn't quite occurred to him in this form before.
"That's right," he agreed with a solemn nod.  "It would be
disruptive."

Terry thought: So here we have it, this is the deal.  He was to buy
time for Lizzie, he was to provide for her happiness by letting her
stay in the house that she loved for as long as she lived.  He was to
pay for this privilege, undoubtedly through the nose, and be content to
wait for possession until such time as Duncan decided to move out.

It was the solution of Solomon, and Terry could only bow to Duncan's
masterly reading of his character.  At the same time he was pursued by
a deep unease.  "What about Catherine and Alice?"  he asked.  "How do
they feel?  Not to mention Lizzie."

"Oh, they're not to know.  Mustn't know," Duncan cried with a pale
laugh.  "It would upset them dreadfully.  Not a good time to think of
change, you know."

"But..  . the girls do realise they're not to get the house."

"They've known it for a long time.  There's never been any question."

"Nevertheless, wouldn't it be best to mention this business to them?"

"Best?  I think not, Terry.  Not for them, not for me.  Not for any of
us."

"If you say so," he agreed reluctantly.  "A private arrangement,
then."

Duncan was thrilled that Terry should finally grasp the essence of the
scheme.  He tapped his arm.  "That's it!"

"But Lizzie will have to sign the contract.  She'll have to see it."

"No, no she won't need to be bothered with the contents, she won't need
to be told what it's about," said Duncan in the certain tone of a man
who knows what's best for his wife, and again Terry's stomach tightened
unhappily.  Later, he assuaged his unease with the reminder that Duncan
would have sold the house anyway, and doing it this way Lizzie would at
least remain in ignorance of it.

Thereafter, the details were, in a sense, academic.  It was a question
of establishing how much Duncan needed immediately, on signature of
contract, a sum that probably equated to his current debts and then
some, and how much he wanted when the deeds were handed over, an
indicator of how much he thought he'd need in the next year. Thereafter
Terry offered yearly instalments, or a lump sum on vacant possession,
or a combination of both up to the sum agreed.  For form's sake he beat
Duncan down on the total price, but by the time he shook on the deal he
reckoned it was costing him sixty to seventy per cent more than Morne
was worth at the fanciest possible market price.

This transaction did nothing for his peace of mind.  He didn't want
Morne, he felt uncomfortable at the idea of buying it behind Lizzie and
Catherine's back, and, so far as the money was concerned, he didn't
trust Duncan not to come back for more.  And underlying all this
anxiety, lapping just beneath the surface of his consciousness, were
his tumultuous feelings for Catherine.

A couple of days later, he brought Maeve over to Morne for a picnic in
the walled garden.  Alice was there, and some neighbours and cousins.
With all the comings and goings there was no chance to speak to
Catherine alone, but when she glanced his way and smiled it seemed to
him that there was a very private and particular message in her gaze.
Imagination?  Wishful thinking?  The longings of a lonely man?

Early the following morning he arrived at Morne for their customary
walk, but it was raining too hard and they stayed in the kitchen
instead.  Catherine was drained after tending to Lizzie in the night.
Her eyes looked enormous and empty in the flat white light.  After a
while, though, she began to emerge from her tiredness, even to tease
him a little, which always cheered her up, and when he suggested an
expedition to Castledermot later for a spot of supper she agreed
immediately.

The evening had stayed with him as a series of conversations interwoven
by a long unspoken dialogue.  He saw her face animated, sad,
thoughtful, but most of all he saw her eyes, which seemed to contain
but one simple message.  As the evening wore on could he have been so
wrong?  it seemed to him that the two of them were gathered up in a
growing and unequivocal understanding.

Two days later, in a state of agonised hope, he sent the letter.  An
invitation to go to Donegal for the weekend, but also, clearly spelt
out between the lines, a man asking a woman if she wouldn't like to
take things further, the nearest a man could get in such
undemonstrative times to a declaration.  He signed it 'with greatest
love'.

The letter was written on perfectly ordinary paper, cream if he
remembered correctly, but for all its apparent fragility it might have
been written in stone.

Promptly at six thirty the desk rang up to announce Fergal.  Wherever
Fergal's natural habitat might be, it was clearly not the fin-de-siecle
opulence of Claridge's Hotel.  In his faded baggy-kneed trousers, his
crumpled linen jacket with the drooping hem, his recalcitrant hair, he
reminded Terry of a rather shambolic priest entering a lady's boudoir.
As if to reinforce this impression, Fergal looked around him with
curiosity and faint disapproval.

Settling himself as best he could in a cabriole-legged chair with
roseate padded upholstery, Fergal swivelled his eyes, as if to
encompass the whole building.  "Not thinking of buying this one,
then?"

"Not just at the moment, Fergal."  Terry offered him a drink, which he
declined with a spread of his hand.

"How's Maeve?"

"She's truly fine.  She's off now with Dinah, buying up Bond Street and
Knightsbridge and probably the rest of London as well."

"She's well recovered, then?"

"Almost there, I do believe."  Terry sat down opposite.  "So?"  he
prompted fretfully.

Reaching into a sagging pocket, Fergal pulled out his notebook and
flipped it open.  But either he didn't need reminding of what it said
or he hadn't written anything down anyway, because he closed it again
and spoke from memory.  "Pavlik," he stated solemnly, his shaggy
eyebrows knotted together in what might have been weariness.  "Bail
application successful.  Fifteen thousand pounds surety.  Required to
report once a day to the local police station."

"So.  As expected, more or less.  The lawyer He gestured a lapse of
memory.

"Gresham."

"Gresham.  Any good?"

"Wily enough, I'd say."

"The question is, will Pavlik keep to the bail terms?  Or will he try
to do a skip?"

"Hard to say.  He has no passport, no papers to speak of, except for a
forged national insurance card.  He doesn't have too many alternatives,
really."

"He might get frightened into it."

Fergal gave a laconic shrug.  "Thus far he's shown every indication of
resuming his life, returning to his haunts.  On release from Brixton he
made his way to the restaurant where he works, presumably to tell them
he is back in circulation, then on to West Kilburn, to the address
given to the court.  It's a house owned by a Mr.  Christopher
Addleston.  It seems Mr.  Addleston deals in antiques when he's out of
work as an actor, which is much of the time."

"So.  That's it for the moment, is it?"  Terry brought his hands down
decisively on the chair arms in a move that invited agreement.

"Not quite.  There are two complications," said Fergal in a brogue that
was suddenly very Irish indeed.  "Firstly, I was not the only person
following Pavlik home."

Terry felt a beat of alarm.  "What do you mean?"  he asked, though he
had heard him perfectly well the first time.

"There were three of us along the way.  A bit of a procession, you
might say."

"Who was this other person?"

"I don't know.  Sadly I wasn't able to follow him once he left Pavlik's
because he managed to find the only free cab on the whole of the Harrow
Road.  I'm fairly sure he was an amateur, though.  Certainly not
police, and not a private eye.  Though he took a lot of trouble, I'll
say that for him.  He was in the public gallery when Pavlik came up at
the magistrate's.  Wearing a smart suit, designer-style, young
professional.  Then when I spotted him outside Brixton he was in casual
clothes, wearing a cap, dark glasses.  But it was the same fella all
right, no doubt about that.  Early thirties, five ten or eleven,
darkish hair, pale complexion."

Sitting high in his chair, back board-straight, Terry made a wide
gesture of incomprehension that was also an appeal.  "I don't
understand.  Who could it be, for heaven's sake?"

"There's one thing.  He was joined in the public gallery of the court
by a woman he knew, also young, also smartly dressed.  I'm guessing
here, but I don't think he was expecting her.  I would say he was
startled to see her.  They talked a lot -well, whispered.  Then, after
Pavlik's appearance, they left the gallery together and parted in the
hall."

"And she?  What did she look like?"

"Darkish hair.  Medium height.  What you might call I think the term is
statuesque."

"A big girl?"  He was thinking of Alice.

"Oh, no.  Trim, but curvaceous."

"Black hair, you say?"

"No, somewhere between red and mid-brown.  That rich glossy colour that
catches every kind of light," said Fergal, turning poetical.  "The
colour, you might say, of mahogany."

"And the style?"

"The style?  Ah .. ."  Fergal's vocabulary failed him here.  He put a
hand to the side of his head and made a corkscrew gesture that might
have denoted Medusan locks.  "Short," he offered feebly.  "In layers, I
suppose."

None of this fitted Alice.  "For God's sake, Fergal!"  he cried in
annoyance.  Jumping up, he strode across the room and stopped by a
window.  "What have we here?  What's going on?"

"What we have here is someone who wanted to make sure Pavlik got home
safe and sound," said Fergal mildly.  "Or .. ."

Terry strode back and stood over him.  "Or?"

"Possibly someone who wished to harm him."

Terry almost laughed.  "And if someone did wish to harm him?"

For a moment they stared at each other in mutual incomprehension.

Terry shrugged.  "I meant, would we terribly care, for God's sake?"

Fergal looked mildly disappointed in him, as though he had betrayed a
singular lack of judgement.  "I don't think it would be terribly
useful."

Terry gave a heavy sigh.  "I suppose not," he agreed glumly and headed
for the drinks tray.  Having returned from a weekend at Longchamps in
which he seemed to have passed precious few moments without a glass in
his hand, he had been determined to abstain, at least for a few days,
but now he poured himself a large Scotch.  "So what are you
suggesting?"  he added darkly.  "That we protect him?"

Fergal let this remark pass in silence.

Pacing back to his chair, perching on the edge of his seat, Terry
declared, "It may be that these people are going to try to make him
talk, Fergal!  It may be that they're after information.  One way or
another, we should know?

"Ah.  That brings me to the other thing."  Fergal paused to add weight
to his words.  "Apparently he did talk to the police.  Briefly.  When
he realised the seriousness of the accusations.  Before Gresham got to
him and told him to shut up."

"Jesus!"  Terry gasped.  As the full implications sank in, he cried
more fiercely, "Jesus  And what did he say?"

"He said that he'd been put up to the burglary, but denied absolutely
the assault.  Said he wasn't even there when it took place."

Terry stared at him furiously.  Tut up to it?  But he didn't say who
by?"

"No.  He just said he'd been hired to go in and burgle the place."

"Curse it!  Why didn't we know this before, for God's sake?  Why
weren't we told?"

"My contact isn't on the case himself.  He can only get so much
information at one time."

"We should have paid him more then, shouldn't we!"

Fergal didn't deign to answer such madness, but continued in his calm
voice, "Pavlik said he broke in during the early hours of that Sunday
morning, a good sixteen hours before the assault."

Terry exclaimed, "Hah!"

"Later he withdrew his comment about being put up to it.  Refused to
say a word.  Just stuck to the story about breaking in well before the
Galitzas arrived home."

"Anything to back his story?"

"Pavlik said he spent Sunday evening with two acquaintances in a pub.
But the police haven't been able to find them."

"Not looking especially hard, I don't imagine," Terry declared
scathingly.  "But he knew these men, he knew their names?"

"Apparently so, yes."

"Can we get them?"

"At a price."

"Well, then!"  Terry pushed himself restlessly to his feet once more.
"Well!"  He paced to the far side of the room and back again.  And
still he couldn't remain in one spot; he turned, offered first one
profile to Fergal, then the other.  "Only one thing for it, isn't
there?"

"Find him his alibi?"

Terry jabbed a finger at Fergal.  "Get it in black and white,
watertight, no possibility for error!  Yes find him his alibi!"

"It might take some extra men."

Terry made a sweeping gesture.  "Whatever it takes."  His mind returned
to the other disturbing element in the story.  "Just so long as these
other people don't get to Pavlik first.  We must find out who they are,
Fergal."

"Without more to go on .. ."

"Get whatever you need."

"It's not a question of more men," Fergal pointed out patiently.  "It's
a question of there being nowhere to start."

"There has to be!"

Fergal didn't answer but fixed his attention on a spot some three feet
in front of his chair, in the depths of the Aubousson-style carpet.

"Well, do what you can," Terry offered weakly, which was the best he
could do by way of apology.  He knocked back his drink, and, telling
himself it had done him good, immediately went and poured himself
another.  "Curse be to hell," he muttered under his breath.  "Curse be
to hell and back!"

Fergal waited until this small storm had passed before murmuring, "I've
made a few more enquiries about Ben Galitza, but failed to turn up
anything new."

"Nor me!"  Terry exclaimed hotly, and for an instant it looked as
though the storm would blow up again, worse than before.  "And not for
want of trying, that's for sure!  I have these facts, I have a mountain
of facts, but much good they've done me.  There's no sense in any of
it, Fergal.  No sense at all.  It's like a play going on in the theatre
next door someone understands what's going on, but it certainly isn't
me!"

"If I can help .. ."

He levelled his glass at Fergal.  "You can have a drink for a start."

Fergal was not fond of Scotch, but took the drink and sipped at it
dutifully because it was easier to go along with Terry in this mood.

Terry sat down again, and hunched forward with a weary sigh.  "Right ..
. this is the story.  You will not be surprised to hear that it is a
tale of money, greed and what should have been large profits," he
began, in the manner of a fable or a parody.  "It is also a tale of
promises, broken and unbroken.  The story takes us across many
frontiers and many banking systems.  We start in Poland, which is
famous for its electrical cable and generator industries.  We have a
valuable consignment of generators that have been built for some
hospitals in Germany.  However, the order is cancelled a contractual
dispute over specifications.  The person put in charge of finding a new
buyer for these generators is a fixer called, let us say, Mr.  X. Mr. X
puts feelers out.  In no time there is a firm bite.  It all looks good.
The price is fair.  There's a middleman or two who wants his
introduction fee, but then that's the way business is done over there.
Mr.  X makes checks on these people he is intending to do business
with.  They are British, though reassuringly they speak Polish.  He
discovers they are known in Poland and some other countries in the old
Eastern Bloc.  They have done business in Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia.  They have a reputation for driving a hard bargain, but once
terms are agreed they meet their contracts, they deliver on time,
everything is done by the book.  So, here we have it ... it's all
looking good for a deal that is going to be worth roughly fifty
million

US."

"Has Mr.  X ever done such deals before?"  Fergal asked quietly.

"Nothing like this.  But he has a reputation for being nobody's fool.
Canny.  He's been wheeling and dealing locally for years."  Draining
his glass, it seemed to Terry that he could see Mr.  X, that Mr.  X was
large and pasty-faced, with bullet eyes and unfortunate manners.
"Then," he resumed rapidly, 'for no apparent reason, the deal goes up
in smoke.  The middlemen don't get their money.  Naturally, they are
put out, but they offer their services again, they offer to find
another buyer.  However, Mr.  X is not interested.  He says he is
unable to sell the generators after all, that a decision has been taken
by a higher authority he hints at a government department and the
machines are off the market.  End of story, we would believe.  But some
time later one of the middlemen hears on reliable authority that the
generators have been shipped out of the country.  Sent, he is told, to
Gdansk.  But where did they go from Gdansk?"

Recognising a narrative pause when he heard one, Fergal waited
mutely.

"CintePs best efforts were required here," Terry commented.  "It took
time .. . but they discovered that the ship carrying the generators was
bound for Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela.  In the meantime, back in
Warsaw, Mr.  X has bought a BMW, he is renovating his house, he has
sent his daughter to America for a couple of years.  He says she's gone
to be an au pair, but in fact she's attending an expensive college, and
is able to accompany her richest classmates to Aspen on skiing
trips."

He pulled in a sharp breath, he shook his head; this was the end of his
story.  He rotated a hand towards Fergal.  "First thoughts, off the top
of your head."

Taking a long slow breath, Fergal went through the motions of setting
his mind to this conundrum, his eyes narrowed as if against a fierce
light, his mouth puckered in concentration, while Terry waited
impatiently, alert to any change of expression.

"Clearly, Mr.  X or his masters struck a better deal," intoned Fergal
at last.  "But you have to ask why, having scented the improved deal,
Mr.  X didn't go back to the first buyers to see if they would be
prepared to better their price.  In effect, to have an auction. Perhaps
the second price was so much better there was no point."

"But why would it be?"  Terry demanded.  "Why offer a crazy price?"

Fergal circled a hand loosely to show that he was entering the realms
of guesswork.  "It could be that Mr.  X was providing a service for the
buyers, something quite separate from the provision of the generators.
Who can say?  Perhaps he was close to someone in the government who
could put another far more lucrative contract their way, perhaps he
could bribe an official to allow something in or out of the country ..
."  The circling hand became more agitated.  "There's an endless list
of possibilities.  But in broad terms there was more to the deal than
meets the eye."

"Okay," Terry agreed.  "Another question.  Who got rich out of this?"

Fergal regarded him with caution, suspecting, rightly, that this was a
trick question.  "Everyone but the first unsuccessful buyers?"

"You would think so, yes."

The first buyers did get rich, then?"

"No."

Tiring of this game, Fergal waited.

"No," murmured Terry.  They didn't get rich.  They got very short of
money indeed."

"Ah."

Sounds came from the next room, the chatter of Maeve and Dinah
returning from their shopping trip.

"But one of them was expecting to get rich, Fergal.  One of them was
expecting to get very rich indeed."

With a shake of his head, a setting of his mouth, Fergal unwound
himself from the chair and got to his feet.  He could offer no more
opinions without additional information.

"Will you give my warmest regards to Maeve?"  he asked as he left. "And
tell her that I've found her that book.  She'll know the one I mean."

Terry promised, but in the hurry to get changed and off to the theatre
before curtain up it slipped his mind.

Rebecca made a fine entrance, with her firm stride, her head high, her
strong austere beauty set off by the whiteness of her skin and the
severity of her black suit.

"Well!"  Terry declared as he got up to kiss her.  "Time has treated
you well."  It was true.  She had slimmed down and she had developed a
style that managed to look both simple and sophisticated.  Her dark
hair was straight and loose around her shoulders and closer to auburn
than he remembered.  She wore little make-up, but with her bold eyes
and clear skin she didn't need to.

She cast him an appraising glance.  "You're looking affluent."

"You're a cruel woman, Rebecca."

She laughed.  "I meant just that affluent."

"What you meant was that I'd put on weight."

"It doesn't matter in a man."

"Ah, but how I wish that were true."

She ordered a salad but refused wine.  He had invited her to the
Connaught because it was quiet and the tables were well spaced, and
because it was she who had contacted him and he didn't think she would
have done so unless she had something to say.

To begin with, however, she made him tell her all about his business,
his horses, and his life, though for her life was just another word for
love life.  He did his best to avoid answering that one.  "Oh, you
know," he said equivocally when she pressed him.

"No, I don't!"

There was curiosity in her persistence, but also, behind her brittle
smile, a wistfulness.  In the end she wore him down and he admitted,
"Well, there is someone, yes.  A companion."

"Ouch!  What a word companion.  That says it all, Terry.  God!
Companion.  That's awful.  Is she married or something?"

"No."

"Companion.  You're not in love with her then," she accused.

Finding some sort of consolation in honesty, he said, "I don't know."

"Don't know, won't know," Rebecca remarked cryptically.  "In love with
someone else?"

He laughed mildly at this.  "No."

"Hoping to be in love with someone else?"

"I'm not a dreamer, Rebecca."

She feigned horror.  "We're all dreamers, Terry."

But he wasn't having it.  "I've got most things I want, I work hard, I
have a good life.  And the things I can't have I don't think about."

"Wish I could say the same," she said wryly.  She told him about the
changes in her life, the sale of the marital home in Hampstead, the new
flat she had bought off Eaton Square, the progress of her divorce,
which was going smoothly, she said, only because they'd refused to
fight over money.  "But then neither of us need to," she said
matter-of-factly.  "My father died a couple of years ago."

"I'm sorry."  He couldn't remember where the family money had come
from, but he knew there was plenty of it.

"So here I am, rich and single, God help me."  She cast her eyes
heavenward.  "Looking for Mr.  Right."

"He'll come along."

She shook her head at his naivety.  "Nah!  I'm a difficult woman to
please, Terry.  I'll never be happy with a lawyer, doctor, all-round
regular guy who wants me to stay at home like a good girl.  I like my
own life too much.  I like my own way too much," she declared
regretfully.  "Used to getting what I want."

"A bit hard on yourself."

"Just honest."  She pushed her food around her plate.  "That's why Ben
and I were so well suited."  She left this thought hanging in the air
for a moment before looking up at him and giving the tiniest shrug. "We
were both coming from the same place.  We both wanted the same
things."

"I wouldn't have put you and Ben in quite the same category so far as
ambition went."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure, Terry.  I'm fairly determined when I want
to be."  She gave an ironic smile that didn't entirely hide the
self-disdain beneath.  "I often think back to that weekend in Ireland,
you know," she said reminiscently.  "The day at the Curragh.  We were
having such a good time."  She meant: before Catherine came along,
before she lost Ben.  "And that other weekend we had with you, when you
took us to the west coast.  Though I have to say I did feel a bit I
suppose guilty."

"You, Rebecca?  Why?"

"I knew what Ben was up to behind the scenes."

"Oh, did you now?"  said Terry calmly.  "And what was Ben up to?"

"Oh, trying it on," she said with a chuckle.  "Financing that Mick
what's-his-name to buy that hotel for a song, and then selling it
straight on to you at a big profit."

"It was still a good buy, mind."

"But you pulled out."

"Yes, I pulled out."

She tilted her head, inviting explanations.

"I don't like people being untruthful people who're meant to be on my
side, at any rate."

"Ben was furious."

"Was he now?  And why should that be?"  Terry asked facetiously, though
not without the small hope, albeit remote, of gaining some insight into
Ben's character, which had long been a mystery to him.

"Oh, you'd blocked him, that's what you'd done.  And he didn't think
he'd done anything to deserve it.  He didn't think he'd done anything
wrong certainly.  By his reckoning you'd encouraged him to set the
whole thing up and then left him in the lurch.  Ben's always been very
good at seeing things from his own well, individual point of view." She
shook her head indulgently.  "He's never forgiven you."

"One of his more curious decisions.  Like not marrying you."

Having shuffled her salad to one side of the plate, Rebecca finally
gave up on it.  "You're quite wrong," she said firmly.  "It would have
been a disaster to marry me.  He couldn't have stomached a wife with
money, you see.  He needed to be the one earning, the one wearing the
financial trousers.  Oh, Catherine could play around with her gardens,
but it wasn't serious money, was it?  No, from that point of view
Catherine was perfect.  Minor gentry down on their luck.  Class without
cash.  Perfect!"

Terry had never had any pretensions to psychological insight; instinct
had served him well enough over the years.  He could only listen to
this judgement with quiet dismay.

Rebecca said, "There's another side to that coin, of course.  A man who
likes to feel in charge of his life, who's dead set on making his own
way he's not too good when things start going wrong."

This speech made Terry wary in a way he couldn't quite identify.

"Don't get me wrong," Rebecca added.  "I don't mean he'd get difficult
or nasty.  No, rather that he's the sort to fall apart.  Quite a
pussycat really."

He understood suddenly; she had made it obvious in so many ways.
"You've seen him recently?"

She met his eyes with a spark of acknowledgement.

Terry felt his stomach tighten unpleasantly.  "In what capacity?  If I
may ask?"

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.
"I'm meant to have given up," she murmured.  "But it's these or the
weight."  Coming to the question in her own time, she said, "Shoulder
to cry on."

"I see," he said stiffly.  "And what does Ben have to cry about?"

"Plenty, actually."

Tell me, do."

The scorn must have been strong in his voice because she looked at him
sharply and hesitated.  "He's got money troubles," she said
cautiously.

"I can't say I'm entirely surprised."

"Oh?"

"Always biting off more than he can chew."

"But he's always been successful in the past, Terry.  Always done
well."

"So these troubles are exceptional?"

"Absolutely!  It's something totally unforeseen.  Something desperately
unfair, Terry.  I wish I could tell you just how unfair.  The thing is'
her dark eyes widened soulfully "I was going to ask if you might be
able to manage some help ..."

"For Ben?  I rather think you've come to the wrong place, Rebecca."

She leant closer and said earnestly, "I know Ben hasn't done you any
favours, Terry.  I know he's been .. . less than clever in his dealings
with you.  But at heart he's not bad, he's just thoughtless."  Reading
his expression, seeing she wasn't going to make progress on that tack,
she withdrew the argument with an uplifted palm, a splay of her
fingers.  "Listen .. ."  She dropped her voice.  "Can I tell you
something in absolute confidence?  Will you promise not to tell
anyone?"

"I'd rather not be entrusted with secrets that shouldn't be mine to
keep, Rebecca."

She gave a small sigh of frustration, then, after what appeared to be
an intense inner debate, decided to trust him anyway.  "He's been
blackmailed," she said abruptly.

Terry did not alter his expression.

"I don't know the details, but it's something bad.  He's completely
broke.  Desperate for money.  I thought maybe ..."  Taking a plunge,
she said baldly, "I thought you might want to help him because of ...
the situation.  Because of Catherine.  I'd lend them money myself, but
my father knew me too well, I'm afraid.  It's all tied up in trusts."

Terry sipped his wine and suppressed the urge to knock back the rest of
the glass in one.  "Blackmailers don't go away.  They keep coming back.
He should go to the police."

"He can't."

"Can't?"  he enquired carefully.  "Or won't?"

"Can't."  She leant across and touched his arm.  "But look -this is the
last payment.  Definitely.  If he can just get through this .. ."

"But, Rebecca, there's never a last payment."

"Oh, but there is!  The blackmailer said right at the outset that he
only wanted half a million."

"Only half a million?"  Terry repeated caustically.  "That is a large
amount of money by anyone's standards."

"That was the amount that ... was in dispute.  I can't say any more."
By the sudden doubt in her face, she looked as though she had already
said too much.

He folded his napkin and called for the bill.  "Rebecca, I'm not the
person to ask.  I'm sorry."

She attempted a thin smile.  "Damn."

"And, Rebecca?"

"Mmm?"  She was hardly listening.

"Don't do anything you will later regret."

Her eyes flashed defensively.  "Meaning?"

"Catherine needs her husband."

"Hey," she said with a lightness that didn't conceal her indignation,
'you don't have to tell me.  I know that one thousand per cent.  No,
you've got me wrong if you think I've got ambitions in that direction,
Terry.  Believe me, once bitten!  I wouldn't want Ben on a platter, not
if he were free, single and on my doorstep.  Besides which," she argued
more fiercely still, 'he won't ever leave her.  He's determined to
stay.  Through thick and thin."  She shook her head firmly.  "No,
Terry, you've got him wrong if you think he'd ever give up on her."

Terry bowed to her judgement, though nothing could dislodge his
impression that the lady had protested too much.

Dear Terry, Forgive me for not having replied before but I've received
so many letters something like four hundred, many from people I've
never met that I'm only just beginning to get to grips with them all.
Catherine had started other letters the same way, which gave the words
a sense of neutrality, but now she must thank him, and that required
more careful thought.  Eventually she wrote: Thanks for writing so
regularly, and thanks for the flowers from Morne, which were an
extraordinary reminder.  He could read into that what he may.  She went
on: Concerning the garden, I can't say that Mrs.  Kent's ideas are
right or wrong, I can only say it all depends on what sort of a garden
you want.  Gardens do change and metamorphose.  I think it's a mistake
to try to keep them exactly the same.  However, from what you describe
of Mrs.  Kent's ideas, it sounds as though she's trying to create an
English garden rather than an Irish one.  While this might suit some
places I suspect it would be wrong for Morne, where the strength of the
garden has always been its relative lack of structure and the way it
merges so perfectly into the surrounding countryside.

Catherine paused, feeling cold and a little faint.  The infection had
left her exhausted.  Even now, the pen shook slightly in her hand.

I will be glad to draw up some ideas for you, if you would still like
me to.  The best thing would be for me to produce some outline plans
from memory, then if you approve them to draw up more detailed plans.
If you want to take things further, I could arrange for the preparation
of the site, the building of paths and structures as appropriate, the
purchase and planting of trees and plants, plus follow-up care for the
first season if this is required.

My fee for outline plans would be ... She wondered how much she could
get away with and put down a figure that was three times her usual
charge.  She did the same for the other options.  If he agreed to all
three options she would also get a commission on the plants, which
could bring the job in at well over ten thousand.  She told herself
that he could afford it.

If this is acceptable I could send you some outline ideas in a couple
of months when I'm back at my desk.

She finished it Yours, with thanks, and added at the bottom Perhaps you
could reply to the above address in the first instance.

Rather formal.  Decidedly cool.  Entirely reasonable.

She folded it and stuck it in the envelope before she had the urge to
redraft it.

They'd given her a side room while she recuperated, and she took the
opportunity to sleep through the afternoon.  She was woken by Julie.

"Visitor," she announced.

"Who?"

"Female and young."

"But who?"

"Foreign-sounding name.  Maeve?"

When Catherine eventually got herself to the front hall, she didn't
immediately recognise the pale figure in black sitting in the waiting
area.  It was only as the woman stood up and stepped forward that
Catherine realised with a slight shock that it was indeed Maeve.

"I hardly recognised you!"  she declared.

"I've done a bad thing," Maeve confessed, standing with her hands
clasped, palms up, her elbows pinched in to her waist, like a
supplicant.  "I've come unannounced.  And that was wrong of me."

Catherine reached out to grip her hand.  There aren't many people I'm
glad to see, but you're one of them."

It was a blustery day with spitting rain but after a week in a stuffy
sickroom Catherine was desperate for air, so they went outside and sat
in a sheltered corner of the garden, by beds of thriving weeds and
wilting roses whose petals were torn aloft by the scurrying wind.

"Are you warm enough?"  Catherine asked.

"Me?  Oh yes.  And you?"  Maeve was wearing a loose black jacket over a
long black skirt and a woollen scarf wrapped several times around her
neck, but no amount of clothing could disguise her obvious frailty. Her
face was pinched, her hands thin and bony, there was not an ounce of
flesh on her.

"Your father told me you'd been ill," Catherine said.

"Oh."  She shook her head gently, as if the subject were hardly worthy
of discussion.  "I'm on the mend now."

"What was wrong?"

Maeve addressed this question hesitantly.  "It began with an infection,
which turned into septicaemia.  I was in intensive care for a week. And
then just when I was getting over that I had a bad reaction to one of
the drugs and went into a form of shock.  So I managed to give everyone
a second fright.  And since then well, it's been slow."  She spoke
solemnly and unemotionally, her eyes lowered a little, her body so
still that she might have been a figure in a painting, with her pale
skin, her dark eyes, her hair held back in a band.  Only the loose
strands at her forehead provided movement as they were pulled to and
fro by the wind.  "Anyway, I'm all right now," she said.

"And what about the nursing?  Are you still studying for that?"  Asking
this, Catherine remembered the shy chubby girl with rounded cheeks and
a sweet smile in the garden at Morne, talking about her plans to study
at a London teaching hospital.

"I'm switching to nursery nursing.  I'm starting at a college in Dublin
soon."

"How lovely."

"I'll be happier with children.  It takes a special sort of dedication
to care for the sick."

"I'm sure you'll make a fine nursery nurse."

Maeve glanced away, and once again Catherine was struck by the changes
in her, the fragility of her body and the gravity of her expression.
"I'm so glad you came," she said.

"Oh, I've wanted to for a long time, but it's only now .. . I'm on a
trip with Dadda, you see.  We've just come from Paris."

"How nice."

"Oh, I'd rather stay at home.  I'm not a one for the race meetings or
the restaurants or the shopping.  But it pleases him to take me, so now
and again I go along."

"Your father he's been writing to me every week."

"Yes ... he said."

"I'm just in the process of replying.  Will you tell him?"

"I'll tell him."

"It's been hard to get round to letters."

"I'm sure it has," she replied in the same solemn manner.

"And the garden at Morne, tell him I'll be accepting his offer to
redesign it Catching Maeve's look of astonishment, she paused.  "You
didn't know?"

Maeve stared hastily down at her hands, frowning fiercely.  "I had no
idea.  I can't imagine why he should expect you to ... why he should
ask such a thing."

"I gather he has doubts about Mrs.  Kent."

Maeve was still breathing rapidly.  "Yes.  Mrs.  Kent."

There was a long pause in which Maeve continued to stare at her hands.
Then, with an obvious effort to pick up the conversation again, she
asked, "And you, Catherine?  How are things with you?"

"Things?  Oh, they're as well as can be expected."

"Will you get better?"  she asked simply.

"If you mean, will I get back to how I was before, the answer's no."
Maeve watched her with rapt attention as she explained the limitations
on her mobility, the walking on smooth surfaces, the crutches and
callipers.  "But there we are.  There are worse things.  I might be
quadriplegic, I might be dead.  It's all a question of how you look at
it.  The usual thing cup half empty, cup half full."

"And how much longer will you be here?"

"Oh, out quite soon now.  Got to get back to work!"

Maeve continued to gaze at her for a long while after she'd finished
speaking.  Then, seeming to come to a decision, she reached slowly into
her handbag and pulled out an envelope.  "Catherine .. . Here are the
keys to my flat.  I want you to have them in case you should ever need
them."

Catherine was bemused.  "Maeve, I..  ."

"It's just off Regent's Park.  The address is in there with the keys.
Dadda wants me to keep the place but I won't use it again, I know I
won't.  I'd like you to feel you can use it any time you want to, any
time at all.  For as long as you need it.  I want you to know there's
somewhere safe for you, somewhere that no one will..  . bother you."

"Maeve, I... it's very kind of you, but I really don't think I'll ever
need it..  ."

"Oh, it's got a lift," Maeve said hastily, as if this might clinch the
argument.  "And nice wide doors.  And the toilet's got space beside it
I checked everything very carefully with the spinal injuries people."

"But..  ."

Before she could think of anything to say Maeve leant forward and,
folding Catherine's hands around the envelope, laid her own hands over
the top.  "Please it would make me so happy to feel that you knew it
was there."

"But I have my home.  With Ben."

"Yes, of course.  But it would make me happy."

"I can't imagine I'd ever .. ."

"No.  But still."

Catherine gave in then, because it was easier to do so.  "Thank you,"
she shrugged.

Maeve stood up.  "I have to go now.  But I'm so very glad to have seen
you, Catherine.  You are in my thoughts and prayers always."

When Maeve bent down to kiss her on the cheek, Catherine was reminded
of a bird, her touch was so light.

Ten minutes later Emma came into sight, battling against the wind on
the far side of the rose garden.  Spotting Catherine, she altered
course towards her with a quick wave.  "God, darling, it's wild out
here!  Aren't you dying?  Listen you'll never guess who I've just met."
Her eyes flashed.

"A girl called Maeve?"

"No, her daddy.  The famous Terry.  We've been chatting!"

Catherine stared at her.

"He was waiting in the hall.  We had a long talk.  He may be a villain,
Cath, but I have to say he's rather good company."  When Catherine
didn't speak, Emma added inconsequentially, "He had a horse at
Longchamps that lost by a head."  Then, not so inconsequentially. "He's
charming and he's rich.  I tell you, a girl could be tempted!" With a
shake of her head, she laughed at herself before pushing Catherine back
through the gale.

Chapter Eleven

THE CAB from the airport jolted along as far as South Kensington where
it had a small but ill-tempered altercation with a white Transit van
and Simon abandoned it to walk the last half mile.  To add to his woes
there was a vicious wind, an advanced blast of midwinter, which cut
through his thin raincoat and chilled his jet lagged bones, still
somewhere on Argentinian time.  '..  . the wind's like a whetted knife
.. ."

He lived in a thirties block at the Brompton Road end of Draycott
Avenue.  Seen through weary eyes in the early darkness, the box-like
flat seemed arid and cheerless.  He'd rented it as a temporary measure
some eighteen months ago but, without the time or single-mindedness to
find a place of his own, had stayed put.  It was like a hotel room,
just a place for marking time.  The furnishings were bland and
characterless, the style international-chintz, with skirted sofas and
easy chairs in a floral design which, with relentless regard for
uniformity, matched the curtains and tie-backs.  In a fruitless attempt
to stamp his mark on the place he'd bought some modern pictures, but
they'd looked wrong under the low ceilings and had stayed where he'd
left them, propped against a wall in the bedroom.  The bathroom was
tiny, the shower inadequate, the lighting execrable and the heating
uncontrollable.  Come what may, he had determined to buy a place of his
own in January and move in immediately, onto bare boards if
necessary.

The answering machine was showing eight messages, but he didn't attempt
to listen to them until he'd taken a bath.  He lay in water as hot as
he could take for ten minutes, then went straight into a cold shower
and felt the jetlag lift a little.  He dressed for an evening that
would take him to a drinks party, maybe a quick dinner if the company
looked promising, and an early night.

He poured himself a glass of white wine before flipping on the
answering machine, hoping, but not really daring to hope, that there'd
be something from Catherine, who was now back at home.  He'd called her
from Argentina, but the first time her mobile had been switched off and
he'd had to leave a message; the second time, irritatingly, Ben had
answered, though Simon had deliberately not used the house line.  Then
this morning he'd called from the baggage hall at Heathrow to find her
phone switched off again.

The tape spewed out its messages.  There were two invitations to supper
parties at flats shared by chaotic girls in Wandsworth and Battersea,
neither of which tempted him, and another from a rather impressive girl
he'd met at Cheltenham and never imagined hearing from again, which he
would definitely accept.  But his spirits, having lifted sharply at
this, sank onto a more troubled plain as the next message brought
Alice's low lingering voice into the room, wanting to know if he was
back and whether he was free the next evening.  Alice remained a puzzle
to him.  He'd taken her out to dinner twice and gone along with her to
parties on another two evenings.  After the second dinner she'd come
for him in the cab with a voracious kiss, mouth open, breasts thrust
hard against him, no possible doubt as to what she'd had in mind, and
he'd had to plead an incipient cold to be sure of getting home intact
and alone.  Then at a party the next week Alice had been all over
another man in full sight of him and everyone else.  She seemed to live
in a permanent frenzy, trying to do everything, go everywhere and, it
would seem, have every man who happened her way.  Sometimes he wondered
if she was on drugs; at other times he thought she was trying to make
up for time lost to her excess weight, now almost vanished.  More
recently, it had occurred to him with the abruptness of the obvious
that her excesses might have rather more to do with Catherine, that,
however terrible Catherine's accident, it had in a strange way allowed
Alice to break free from cruel comparisons.  What he couldn't work out,
and what caused him suspicion, was where he was meant to fit into all
this.

If he expected the last two messages to bring more welcome invitations
he was soon disappointed.  The next voice, which opened with a
combative, "Hello?  If you're there, could you answer, please?"  froze
him gently, like an icy hand on his shoulder.  Even before the voice
announced itself as his aunt Betty he knew what was coming.  "It's no
good, I'm at the end of my tether.  I don't know what to do with her.
She'll have to be admitted, Simon.  I'm sorry, it's more than I can
take.  Could you please call immediately.  This time I mean it!  I'm at
my wits' end.  I have no life, I have no peace .. ."  The voice broke
into a sob.  He saw the little house in Chigwell, with the garish
purple-pink wallpaper, wriggly stripes above and stippling below a
livid purple frieze, frilly curtains at the mock-leaded windows, cheap
knickknacks and dolls on the sills: straw-hatted Spaniards astride
donkeys, flamenco dancers tossing their shawls.  He saw the bedroom
upstairs into which his mother barricaded herself on her days of fury,
the multitude of ethnic-Indian cushions spilling off the bed, vying
with the clutter of clothes and magazines and suitcases for floor
space, for her revolt against tidiness was another gleeful source of
conflict with her sister.  He saw her in the darkness, lying slumped on
the bed, head bent awkwardly against the wall, with the television on
full blast and vodka, cigarettes and the cat for company.

He didn't have to imagine her language because it came blasting into
the room with the next message.  "Simon?  Come and get me now!  Do you
hear me?  Right nowV She was half choking, half sobbing with rage. "You
have no idea what it's like in this dead-end hell-hole.  I'll go mad
mad if I have to stay a moment longer.  Where are you, for God's sake? 
You little bastard!  You shit!  Come and get me out of this fucking
awful placel Do you hear me?"  What he heard was the ominous hiss of
her breath as she filled her lungs for the long agonised wail of fury
and thwarted will that he knew so well, a moan that to his ears had
come to sound like an animal's.  Rasping for breath, she ranted
incoherently for a while, the phone seemingly forgotten as she was
caught up in a fever of grievances.  Then came the sly wheedling tone
of entreaty.  "Darling, darling, are you there?  Are you?  My darling
boy, my baby, come and take your mum away.  Come ... If you only knew
how vicious and cruel she is to me.  Vicious.  She's always hated me
always, alwaysl Oh, she always seems so sweet!  Butter wouldn't melt.
Little miss fucking perfect.  But darling, you've no idea she tortures
me, she makes my life a misery.  She won't even let me go out.  She
locks me in, the bitch, and I can't get out!  She takes my money.  I've
nothing nothing.  Darling, darling .. . come and take me away.  Please,
darling.  Please, please, please .. . please.  Your mumsy needs you ...
Your mumsy loves you more than anything in the whole world .. ."

The earlier she started on the vodka, the fiercer her voice became,
though the screaming and tears were always the same whatever time she
started.  He lowered the volume and watched the tape turning and
turning while he dialled the house.  It was still turning when Betty
answered.

"She's broken the bedroom window," Betty said without preamble.  "I was
almost hoping she'd jump out."

"What about the doctor?"

"He won't see her.  He says if she won't take her antidepressants then
there's nothing he can do.  There's nothing I can do either, Simon.
I've had it.  She smashed the mirror yesterday."  He heard the
niggardly note in her voice, the sound of someone counting the cost of
the disruption.  "She's up there now, music on to wake the dead and the
neighbours complaining.  I tell you, I've had it this time!"

"I'll come tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!  I can't last till tomorrow.  Tonight, Simon."

And so he found himself looking in on the drinks party for a brief half
hour before driving out through the unlovely regions of Leyton and
Wanstead to Chigwell.  He heard the music as he parked the car, and he
heard her jeering at the world as he climbed the stairs.  He called to
her as he pushed his way past the makeshift barricade but she pretended
not to hear him, nor to see him when he turned on the lamp, throwing
her hands up over her head as if to repel him.  It took him half an
hour to calm her, to still the stream of invective and rage, and then
she wept with great heaving sobs and clung to him, her fingers clawing
at his arm, her tears and snot leaving trails down his shirt.  Her
unwashed hair smelt of filth and cigarette smoke and self-loathing. And
all the time he tried to keep in his mind the image of her dancing the
leading role in Daphnis and Chloe, the black and white shot of the
impossibly high arabesque that he kept on the chest of drawers in his
bedroom, because then he could almost forgive her.

These 'bouts', as they had all come to call them, followed a routine,
and there was no departing from the tyranny of the progression, no
short cuts to be expected or hoped for.  The tears followed the rage;
and after the tears came the slurred ramble of complaint and
denunciation.  To anyone else, the jumble of protest would have been
incomprehensible, but he knew the script so well that it was like
shorthand to him, he could extrapolate a sentence from a single word.
Why was everyone against her?  Why had she been abandoned?  What had
she done to deserve it?  First the Company had turned against her,
plotted to get her out, and after all she'd done for them, staying on
through thick and thin, bad times and good.  Who else had gone on stage
sick, who else had danced time and again through the pain of injuries?
And how had they thanked her?  By kicking her in the teeth.  Everyone
was against her.  Everyone.  Men all bloody bastards, Simon's father
worst of all.  Ditching her for that common tart, sloping away like a
rat, making her beg for the money he owed her.  Just out for what he
could get, an easy time, burning money on booze and prostitutes, the
worst sort, coming back with their stink on him.  A bloody bastard,
just like the rest of them .. .

The whining lament of self-pity followed the familiar path, winding
back and forth through endless repetitions, illogicalities and lost
endings, until finally the last stage was reached, the vengeful
semi-comatose silence, the ugly glare of distrust that followed him
blearily around the room as he tried to impose some sort of order on
the dump that was the floor.

Then, at long last, she slept.

By the time he'd bathed her face and hands and put her to bed and gone
down to have his ear bashed by Betty for the best part of an hour over
a bottle of wine, it was almost midnight.  To get away at all he had to
promise that he'd book another stint at a clinic, though they both knew
it would change nothing because his mother's paranoia would always
triumph over any shaky resolve to stop drinking.

The road back to town was clear, but that didn't stop it seeming to go
on for ever, and by the time he found a parking space near the flat he
was more than ready for his solitary bed.

He viewed the message light on the answering machine with suspicion,
fearing it might be Betty again, or worse still, his mother,
re-energised by her own resentment, but the voice that floated into the
room sent his heart thudding with joy.

"Simon?"  Catherine murmured faintly.  "Oh .. ."

His joy stalled as she gasped in a tone of panic or distress, "Look ...
if you're not back too late, would you .. . could you .. . call .. .
please .. . I'm on my own, and .. ."  A gasp.  "If you could call."

Christ, what a time to have left his mobile off!  Tonight of all
nights!  What a bloody idiot!  He cried aloud, "God!  God!"  But it was
also a cry of happiness and exhilaration because she needed him.

In his haste to dial the house he got it wrong and had to tap the
number out again.  As it began to ring he noticed the time was almost
one.  When it kept ringing without reply he wondered if she'd switched
the phone off in her bedroom, if she'd simply gone to sleep, or ... He
tried her mobile.  This too rang unanswered until the automatic message
service picked up.

He grabbed his keys and raced for the car.  Stealing across one set of
red lights, openly jumping another, he reached Notting Hill in exactly
thirteen minutes and, double-parking outside the darkened house, ran to
the door and pressed long and hard on the bell before shouting her name
through the letter box.  He pressed his ear to the flap but heard
nothing.  There were no lights showing, not so much as a glimmer.  He
was about to beat on the door when he picked up a faint sound and,
putting his ear back to the letter box, heard her call his name.

"Yes, it's me!"  he called back, with a leap of elation.  "It's Simon!
Are you all right?"

The rattle of a chain, the turn of one deadlock then another, and the
door opened a fraction.  In his haste to get in he crashed the door
against her wheelchair.

"Wait," she cried.

He retreated momentarily before opening the door more carefully to find
she had moved herself well back.  He went forward and squatted at her
side.  The hall was very dark except for a strip of street lighting
that slanted across her mouth.

"Catherine, are you all right?  What is it?"

Her mouth moved but it was a moment before she managed to whisper, "I'm
all right."

"What's happened?  What is it?"

"Shut the door.  Please."

Pushing the door to, he found the light switch and they both blinked in
the sudden glare.

Crouching again, he took her hand.  "What is it?"

She took a steadying breath.  "There was someone there."

"Outside?"

"Yes."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know."

"Did he come to the door?  Did he threaten you?"

She shook her head.

"Did he try to get in?"

"No.  No ... he was just there."

"Well, you're all right now," he assured her.  "You're safe.  Nothing
can happen now.  Nothing!"

She nodded with more certainty, as though she was just beginning to
believe it might be true.  "Thank you for coming," she said
forlornly.

"Oh, Catherine!"  His throat seized up, he shivered with emotion.
Reaching forward, he put his arms round her and pulled her into an
embrace that was necessarily a little awkward because of the chair but
none the less sublime because, after a short pause, she brought her
hands up to his back and returned the embrace.  He continued to soothe
her.  "It's okay, it's okay."  And all the time he wanted to shout with
joy because he was holding her and she needed him.

Eventually he sat back on his heels and suggested a cup of tea, and
smiled a little at the banality of it.  He wheeled her into the kitchen
and put the kettle on.  She was still very dazed.  Only when some life
had come into her face did he finally ask with great gentleness, "So ..
. tell me exactly what happened."

"It was probably nothing," she said resolutely, as though she might
somehow convince herself of this.  "Probably just a drunk."  Despite
the time, she was still fully dressed, and he realised she'd intended
to sit up all night alone in the dark.

"You saw him, though?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"Over the road."

"What was he doing?"

She hesitated.  "Standing."

He made a show of absorbing this thoughtfully.  "Watching the house,
you mean?"

"I thought so .. ."  Screwing up her face, she seemed to lose all
confidence in her own judgement.

Before she could change her mind altogether, he moved her firmly
forward.  "How long was he there?"

"I don't know .. . half an hour?  Maybe longer."

"And what time was this?"

But either she hadn't heard or her mind was somewhere else because she
shook her head and frowned more deeply.  "What happened was .. . I've
had this feeling .. . since Ben's been away .. ."  A final hesitation
and she got it out.  "I think someone's been following me."  She
glanced at him as though she half expected to be disbelieved.

"Ben's away?"

"In Warsaw."

Simon thought: How could he leave her?  How could he do it?  He asked,
"This person this man when did you first see him?"

"It was three days ago, when I went shopping.  Emma was with me.  I
thought I was imagining things.  It was only by chance ... I just
happened to notice this man in the supermarket, and then again when we
went to lunch."

"What did he look like?"

"That's the thing," she admitted unhappily, "I didn't really get a look
at him."

"But you think it was the same man?"

"He was wearing this .. . hat."  She sketched a circle in the air over
her head.  "More of a cap, really.  Blue, faded, sort of cotton."

"And you saw him twice on the same day?"

"Yes."

"Any other day?"

She clamped her lips together as if to prevent herself from saying
anything too hasty.  "I don't know," she whispered.  "Sometimes I'm
absolutely convinced there's someone there and then well, I think I'm
just being hysterical.  The truth is, I'm not sure about any of it any
more."

He put a hand on her shoulder and she tilted her head over as though
she might rest it against his arm.  She said bleakly, "It's quite
difficult... being here on my own."

"I bet it is."  Saying this, he thought with fresh fury: Typical of Ben
to leave her alone.  Typical of his thoughtlessness.

"It's the practical things," she said, 'it's not being able to go and
check the windows easily.  Not being able to get upstairs if I hear
something.  I thought I'd be all right about that, but I'm not."

She'd been back from the unit exactly three weeks.  "Of course you're
not all right about these things," he cried, kneeling at her side.
"Nobody would be.  There should be someone here with you all the time.
You shouldn't be alone."

"My carer comes in twice a day."

"But that's the day."

She clasped a hand over her eyes.

"It's all right," he said, laying his fingers lightly on her arm.
"You're safe now."

"It's not just that, it's .. ."

He waited uncertainly.  Eventually he asked, "There's something
else?"

She bit her lip.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Can't."

He waited again before saying firmly, "Well, try to forget about
everything now.  Just think about getting some sleep.  Listen, why I
don't I stay downstairs tonight?"  Realising that this might be where
she herself slept, he added swiftly, "Or wherever you think I'd make
the best guard dog."  He made a feeble joke of it.  "Across the front
doormat?"

Her hand came away from her face.  "I couldn't ask you to ... I
couldn't..  ."  But her relief was transparent.  "I phoned Daddy, you
see, but I forgot he'd gone to France.  And Emma -she was out.  And ..
."  She fixed him with her extraordinary oval eyes.  "You really
wouldn't mind?"

"It'd be an honour," he said solemnly, feeling a sharp thrill of
responsibility and pride.  His offer was rewarded by a soft murmur of
thanks and the vestige of a smile.

"We'll leave everything else till tomorrow.  Sort it all out then.  The
police and so on."

The police?"

"We have to tell them about this man, Catherine."

She looked unhappy again.  "But I'm not sure.  I'm not sure it was the
same man."

"We should at least give them a description."

"But what would I say?"

"Well, the man last night, for example was he tall, medium, short?"

She was already shaking her head.  "It was so dark .. ."

"What about the man in the blue cap what sort of height was he?"

She thought about this for some time.  "It's no good ... I just don't
remember.  So you see what could I tell them?"

"Well, one way and another, you can't stay here alone, that's for
sure."

"I suppose not."

"I really don't think it's safe to stay here.  I really don't!"

But she closed her eyes, beyond discussion.  She wanted to sleep
upstairs so he carried her there.  She was light in his arms.  When her
hair brushed his cheek it was soft and sweet-smelling, and he drew in
its scent as though it might purify him of that other hair in Chigwell.
He set up the wheelchair for her and turned on a couple of lights,
then, taking the bedding she gave him, bade her a rather formal
goodnight.

He took keys and went to re-park the car, calling up to tell her when
he left and when he returned.  He checked the locks twice, rattling
them loudly so she should hear the sound and be reassured.  He called a
last goodnight, softly, and felt a thrill when she responded.  The sofa
was comfortable enough, but it was an hour before he slept, and then
his night was broken by racing thoughts and anguished dreams.  He
didn't sleep deeply until very late, and then woke sluggishly long
after he'd meant to, at eight.

He washed as best he could at the basin in the downstairs cloakroom
before going into the hall and listening for Catherine.  Hearing a
muffled sound, he called up to her.

"In the study," she replied.

The study was a converted bedroom with a small red sofa, a slatted
wooden blind at the window, and two desks set against adjoining walls,
Ben's minimal chrome, Catherine's a battered Victorian antique.  In the
corner was a round table laden with boxes, books and, perched on the
top, one of the hats from Ben's collection of exotic head wear an
embroidered cap, Indian or Tibetan.  The walls were decorated with
Ben's school photographs and holiday snaps, but most of all with the
hats, everything from solar to pees and helmets to fedoras and
deerstalkers, with, in pride of place, a Foreign Legion kepi, complete
with neck flap.

He noted the evidence of Ben's struggle with the intruder, the deep
gouge down one side of the Victorian desk, the splintered work top
still unrepaired, while a new chair had appeared in place of the one
reduced to matchwood.  He knew that many of the pictures had new glass
in them because he had collected them up himself and taken them to the
framers in the first days after the incident.

Catherine was bent over her desk, sorting through a large pile of
papers.  "Oh, I'm glad you're here," she said in a strange intense
voice, hardly glancing at him.  "Could you reach something for me,
please?"  Indicating a shelf above her head, she directed him to a ring
file that was marked "Clients Corr'.  The moment he handed it to her
she started leafing through it avidly, snapping the pages across.

He waited uncertainly, casting an eye over Ben's desk, which was also
covered in a chaotic pile of papers.  "Would you like tea or coffee?"
he asked after a time.

And still she was immersed in her search.  "It's here somewhere ... I
just can't remember which .. ."

"Can I help?"

"I'm looking for a letter."

"Who from?"

"I don't know.  But it would have been somewhere around November,
December.  Though it might have been an order .. . God, yes," she
sighed, 'it could have been an order."

"What am I looking for?"

"What?  Oh, a phone number pencilled on the top of something."

It was hard to know where to start but he began a desultory shuffle
through the letters and bills on the desk.

"No," Catherine announced, riffling quickly through the file once
again.  "It's not here.  Could you reach me the suppliers file,
please?"

When she'd started on this file he resumed his search of the desk and
couldn't help noticing that there were quite a number of bills in red,
as well as a last notice from the electricity company and a threatening
letter from the council.

Catherine gave a soft gasp.  "Here it is," she whispered.

He looked over her shoulder and saw a letter from a garden furniture
company.  Across the top was a number scribbled in pencil.  Now that
she'd found it, however, all the energy seemed to drain out of her, and
she stared at it gloomily.

Simon pulled up a chair and waited in silence.

"It takes me hours to get up stairs on my own," she said.  "On my bum.
And then of course once I'm here I'm lost without my sticks or the
wheelchair.  So I haven't really had the chance to look before now. And
perhaps .. . I've been putting it off."

She looked at him directly at last.  Her eyes were dull with tiredness
and he guessed she hadn't slept much either.  "This," she said, lifting
the sheet of paper up like an exhibit, 'is what the police wanted to
know about.  This is the number of the nuisance caller."  She dropped
the paper onto the desk from thfe tips of her fingers as though it were
faintly unclean and began to recount grimly, "One night when I was up
here doing the accounts there was a call.  I knew who it was straight
away because the calls were always the same.  Silence but with that
strong feeling there was someone there.  And quite often, breathing ...
I can't really describe it.  It was only later that I realised the call
had come through on the ordinary phone, not the mobile.  They'd always
come through on the mobile before.  It was just chance that no one else
rang up in the meantime.  So I

dialled 1471, thinking I'd get one of those 'number not available'
messages.  But no this was what I got."

He reached for the letter and saw a central London number with an
exchange that he didn't recognise.  "Did you try the number?"

She propped her head on her hand and closed her eyes for a long moment.
"No," she murmured.  "No ... I thought about it but then I decided I
didn't terribly want to find out who was at the other end."  She said
heavily, "I was pretty sure it was a woman, you see."  She cast him a
defiant look that told him it shouldn't be too difficult to work out
the rest.  Then, slowly: "But now I do want to know.  I want to know
who it is."

In the silence that followed he groped for the appropriate thing to
say, and could think of nothing.  It would have been equally false to
protest disbelief at the idea of Ben's infidelity as to sympathise.  He
felt his eye twitch and rubbed a hand over his forehead to forestall
it.  Then a memory came back to him in a rush.  "But wasn't it a man} I
thought you said it was a man?"

"That's what I said, yes.  I didn't want them delving into our private
life."

"But that's what you told Emma."

"Oh, she got it wrong initially she always gets things wrong and then I
didn't bother to put her right.  By that time, I'd realised, you see.
And I didn't want anyone to know."

"You're sure it was a woman?"

"Oh, yes."

He looked down at the scribbled figures.  "Would you like me to give
the number a try?"

"Would you?"  In her gaze there was a gleam of fear, but also
determination.

He reached across the desk for the phone and, pausing to rehearse some
sort of speech, tapped in the number.

It rang, and continued to ring.  After a full minute, he raised his
eyebrows and she signalled for him to give up.

"Oh, well," she said.

"Do you want me to find out who the number belongs to?"

"Can you do that?"

"I'll find a way."

She thought about it, then shot him a grateful look.  "If you would."

He stood up.  "Now, how about some breakfast?"  he suggested busily,
starting to plan all the other things he would do for her this morning,
revelling in his new role as her carer.

She didn't seem to have heard.  She was gazing past him in an unfocused
way, fixed on some distant thought.  "I'm leaving," she murmured
softly.

He echoed, "Leaving?"

"Leaving here.  Going to live somewhere else for a while."

"I have to say I think that's very sensible.  You can't stay here
alone."

"What?"  She frowned at him as if he had missed the point.  "No, I want
to live on my own for a while.  Somewhere else.  I want to leave Ben."
She looked away to the window.

He sat down again, slowly.  "Because of this woman?"

She said in the same dreamlike murmur, "I knew he wasn't going to be
the easiest man to live with.  I knew that I was going to have to be
the one to make it work."  She paused and for a time he thought she
wasn't going to go on.  "It wasn't that he wasn't keen to try he was.
Still is, in a way.  He loves the idea of marriage.  That's the
trouble, really he idealises it, he sees it as something separate,
which it isn't it's just a relationship with a label.  You still have
to get through all the day-to-day things.  He didn't want to see the
difficulties, he didn't want to think of it as anything but perfect,
special, sort of apart."  She took a long breath.  For an instant she
focused on him before resuming her scrutiny of the window.  "I knew
he'd be away a lot.  I knew he'd look at other women.  I knew that
eventually the practicalities of marriage would wear him down and he'd
feel disappointed in it and that he'd be unfaithful.  What I didn't
expect was for it to happen quite so quickly.  I thought it would take
years and years, a couple of children, boredom, the usual things.  And
then I imagined I'd probably take a deep breath and decide to live with
it, pretend it wasn't happening, do what the smart women do, rise above
it.  In one way, I knew it was bad to be thinking like that, right at
the start of our marriage, but I told myself it was realistic, it was
practical, it was the price of loving someone .. . complicated.  What I
hadn't allowed for was .. ."  She trailed off.  She grew so still that
she might have been in a trance.  "What I hadn't allowed for', she said
at last with an effort, 'was to find that I was no longer loved.  I
think almost anything's bearable if you feel you're loved.  Oh, he does
all the practical things, he's there for me, he declares he'll never
leave me, but it's like a mantra, something he keeps repeating to make
himself believe it.  It's like a grim act of faith for him, a penance.
The truth is .. ."  She swallowed suddenly, a tremor of emotion filled
her eyes.  "The truth is he doesn't love me any more.  Not as I am now,
anyway.  This new person wasn't part of the deal.  This new person is
too .. . different."  She gave a smile that shocked him, it was so
bitter.  "Oh, his intentions are good, he tries to love me.  But the
fact is he can't."  She inhaled sharply.  "And that's all there is to
it."

Simon could hardly breathe for the ache in his heart.  Never had he
felt such tenderness, such a wish to protect and defend another human
being.

Catherine absent-mindedly touched the papers on the desk.  "Just to add
to everything else, we're broke.  Not just a little broke either
horrendously terrifyingly broke.  Normally .. . well, I'd stay and see
it through.  I'd wait till we'd sorted ourselves out.  But' the fire
leapt into her face 'he's been spending money on this or another
person.  That's what really hurts!  That's what I can't take!  We've
remortgaged the house, we've risked everything and he's been taking
some woman to expensive restaurants."  Grabbing a piece of paper off
the desk, she brandished it furiously.  "One of those bloody places in
the food guide with Michelin stars, for God's sake!  Two hundred and
fifty fucking quid!"

Simon concealed an uneasy shiver.  His admiration was threatened by
dismay.  It offended him to see Catherine in such a state of anger. Her
dignity had seemed unshakeable, her courage fierce enough to withstand
anything; it unsettled him to see her stripped of the very qualities
that had always set her apart.

"So ... I'm leaving today," she announced in an uneven voice.

"But where will you go?"

"A friend's place."

"Emma's?"

"No.  Somewhere else.  Somewhere secret."

Immediately he saw a hidden place that only the two of them would know
about, a place of clandestine visits and secret phone calls, where he
would care for her.  His spirits soared again, and he said
passionately, "Somewhere you'll be safe."

"Yes."

"Somewhere no one can follow you."

"Somewhere Ben can't find me and talk me into coming back," she said.
"I know myself too well, you see.  I'd weaken.  And I mustn't do that.
I must have time on my own.  I must have time to think.  And to work
again.  I must have my work.  It's hopeless here!"  She was getting
upset again.  "I can't get to my desk unless Ben's here to carry me up
or I spend hours bumming my way up on my own.  And I hate it
downstairs, I hate it!  I can't work down there!"

Again he was disconcerted by her fretfulness, which was somehow
unworthy of her.

"So where is this place?"  he asked.

"Oh ... in the middle of town."

"Is it suitable?  Will you be able to manage there?"

"I'll manage," she said with a touch of bravado.

"When do you want to go?  I'll drive you."

"No, no.  You've done enough.  No ... And I've so much to sort out
before I leave."  She grimaced at the pile of papers.

"Let me do that," he said.  "Sort it all out."

"Thanks, but it's all bills.  Though God only knows how I'm going to
pay them."

That's what I mean.  I'll do it."

She looked slightly shocked at the idea; money was an intimacy too far.
"No.  Thanks, but no."

He didn't argue.  "I'll wait downstairs then.  Until you're ready to
leave."

She avoided his eye.  "Emma's going to take me," she blurted.  "It's
best that no one knows where I'm going."

His heart lurched painfully.  The familiar coldness came over him.  "I
wouldn't tell anyone," he said stiffly.  "I wouldn't dream of it."

"No, of course you wouldn't.  But I couldn't have you knowing and not
Ben it wouldn't be right."

"Well, Emma's not going to keep the secret long, is she?"  He tried to
suppress the peevishness in his voice.  "Ben'll soon wheedle it out of
her."

This hadn't occurred to her.  "Do you think so?"

"Absolutely.  When Ben sets his mind to something he doesn't give up.
And Emma's not the most reliable of people.  I wouldn't tell anyone, if
I were you.  You'll be on the mobile, won't you?  Everyone'll be able
to reach you, everyone'll be able to talk to you.  No if I were you I
wouldn't tell a soul.  Then you can be absolutely sure of your peace
and quiet."

"Yes, I..  ."  She was full of doubt.

"I'll take you," he said in a tone that didn't allow for argument.

"I'll tell Denise Cox where I'm going," she decided finally.  "And I'll
tell Daddy.  I must tell Daddy."

"Of course."  He stood up.  "I'll wait till you're ready to come down
then."

She looked at him contritely.  "I've upset you."

"No, not at all."  His denial was too hasty; it rang with
desperation.

"You've been so kind to me, Simon.  The best possible friend."

"It's an honour."  He managed a thin smile.

"Perhaps .. ."  She indicated the papers.  "If you would sort a few
things out..  ."

It was a peace offering.  "Of course.  Why don't I put things into
piles, ready for you to look through?"

"That would be lovely."  She squeezed his hand.  "You really are very
good to me."

It confused him that she should blow hot and cold in this way; it
brought echoes of anguished times.  But he forgave her because he'd
taught himself that forgiveness was the most dignified way.

He brought up some coffee and, while Catherine went to the bedroom to
collect some clothes, he began on the paperwork.  The bills made by far
the largest pile.  A quick tally brought the damage to five thousand
pounds or so, and that was just what lay on Catherine's desk. Listening
for Catherine, he crossed the room and took a quick look at the scatter
of papers on Ben's desk.  There were documents relating to mortgages
and cashed-in insurance policies, lawyers' and building society
letters, but only two bills.  One was from Ben's accountant, who Simon
knew from the occasional work he'd done for RNP, the other from a law
firm Simon had never heard of, for "Fees as agreed'. Leaving these
alone, he went back to the household bills and, coming to a decision,
rolled them up and put them in his breast pocket.

By the time Catherine came back he'd filed some of the redundant stuff,
had put the papers without an obvious home into a tray, leaving just a
handful of letters on the desk top.

"But where are the bills?"  she asked immediately.

"I've got them.  I'll pay them.  You can repay me when things improve."
He held up a hand to forestall argument.  "It's no big deal.  I've got
the cash, I wasn't planning to use it for anything."

She cried, "No!"

"The money's just sitting there."  He laughed it off.  "That's the
advantage of no wife, no children, no mortgage I've nothing to spend it
on."

She was torn, she began to argue, she fought one way and the other
before giving in with a small sigh of resignation.  "I'll pay you back
within a month," she insisted.  "I've got this commission, a large
garden.  Starting in a couple of days.  I'll pay you back as soon as I
get the money.  Oh, how I hate all this bloody debt!  It's so
destructive."

"But fixable," he said.

He asked her about the garden commission when they were loaded and in
the car.

"It's in Ireland," she told him.

"Great!  Just come up, has it?"

"It's only been confirmed recently."

"Near your old home?"

"Pretty near, yes," she said.

"You're going there?"

"I'm flying on Thursday."

"Can I help with transport?"

"No.  It's all being arranged, thank you."

He wondered how she was going to manage.  He also wondered why she
hadn't mentioned the job before.

Following her directions, he made for the Marylebone Road and turned
into a small street tucked in behind one of the Nash terraces on
Regent's Park.  The flat was in a mansion block with a wheelchair ramp,
a porter and a lift.  Number twenty was on the top floor with a view
over the roofs of the Nash terrace to the treetops beyond.  A quick
tour revealed a sitting room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen
with a table and four chairs.  The place had the look of a
pied-a-terre, well done up but rarely used.  There were no photographs
on show, no mementoes or waiting mail.

"Who does it belong to?"  Simon asked.

"Oh ... a childhood friend."

"It's a nice place."

Catherine stayed in the hall, looking rather lost, as though the
enormity of her decision was only just sinking in.

Simon moved the bags into the larger bedroom and taking a closer look
at the bathroom saw that it had a special shower for disabled people,
one with low doors and a swing-out seat.  "Your friend's disabled as
well, is she?"  he called to Catherine.

She wheeled herself in and stared at the shower with bemusement.
"No."

They were both silent for a moment.

"Well," he murmured, 'it seems you were well and truly expected
then."

The note was attached to the fridge with a magnet.  Dear Catherine,
Please feel you can stay here as long as you like -the place would only
be empty and likely to stay that way for at least a year.  The porter
can bring in deliveries, and there's a nice man next door in Flat 19
who is the best possible neighbour and can be called on in emergencies.
There's a car company (details on the attached card) who will take you
wherever you want to go.  The car service is my present to you, with
love and affection, M. Catherine shook her head when he gave it to her
to read.  "So incredibly kind."

On his way to the car to collect more of Catherine's belongings, Simon
knocked on the porter's door, which was opened by a wizened man in a
uniformed jacket with the top two buttons unfastened.

"I'm just moving Mrs.  Galitza into number twenty," Simon said
conversationally.

"Ah yes?"  The porter smiled, showing stained uneven teeth.  "That'll
be your car out at the front then, will it?"  he said in the accent of
a stage Irishman.

"That's right."

"Would you be wanting a hand?"  He walked lightly ahead on the bowed
spindly legs of an ex-jockey, leaving the reek of stale cigarettes and
stout in his wake.  "Have to watch the wardens round here.  Sharp as
they come."

"I bet."

"But I'll keep an eye," he promised as he lifted some books out of the
boot.

"Mrs.  Galitza's not sure how long she's staying."

"No, that's right."

"She might need help now and then."

"Oh, and I'll be glad to give it to her."

"Your name?"

"Doyle."

"The owner's being very kind, to offer the flat."

"Indeed.  Indeed."

"I feel stupid I've forgotten the owner's name."

Doyle gave a fleeting smile, as if to commiserate on the state of his
memory, before turning away and carrying the books into the building.

In the lift, Simon prompted him again.

"Oh, I couldn't be sure about the names," Doyle stated breezily.  "Most
flats here are company owned.  People come and go.  Come and go."

"So which company owns number twenty?"

Doyle affected an air of deep thought.  "Now wait a moment," he mused,
'maybe it's an agency that deals with it.  Yes, indeed, I believe it
might be an agency, and I'm not sure I have the name."  His eyes held
steady on the floor of the lift cage, and Simon finally understood that
such information was not going to be made available to him.

Emerging from the lift, they passed an open door, the entrance to Flat
19, and went on down the corridor to find the door to Flat 20 also
open, and a tall man leaning against the doorjamb, talking to
Catherine.

The man turned and Simon felt himself appraised by a pair of hooded
grey eyes set in a long lugubrious face.

"You are?"  Simon asked challengingly.

"From next door," the man explained softly.  "Just saying hello."  He
could have been any age from fifty onwards, with a lanky frame, unkempt
greying hair and the baggy uniform of an intellectual, shapeless
trousers and brown corduroy jacket.

Since he showed no sign of introducing himself, Simon asked his name.

"Latimer," he said before rooting around in his breast pocket for a
card, which he handed to Catherine.  "Anything you need, just phone me.
That's my mobile number.  I'm never far away.  I'm glad to do any
shopping, errands .. . I'm usually back and forth several times a day,
so don't hesitate to ask."

Catherine gave him an open smile, which advertised an immediate liking
for her neighbour.

Pricked by doubts he couldn't name and envies he knew too well, Simon
voiced caution as soon as they were alone.  "It might be wise to keep
to yourself."

"But he's just a neighbour!"

"I wish I lived next door to you.  I wish I could watch over you."

She gave a long patient sigh.  "Oh, Simon."  But words failed her and
with an attempt at a smile she went to unpack her books.

Chapter Twelve

To APPROACH Morne was to leave the world by stages.  First, the small
turning off the main road at the signpost bearing the single place
name, then, half a mile along a worn and uncertain road, the village.
Few tourists ventured this way, and, as the jokers used to have it,
those that came were only lost for the way out again, yet coming into
the familiar straggle of houses Catherine saw that a bright new craft
shop promoting linen and replica Celtic jewellery had been set up in
what had been Reilly's drapery store, while at the far end of the
narrow road that passed for a main street Paddy O'DonnelPs pub, which
had long sported mouldering wood for its door and window frames, had
acquired a fresh coat of vivid green paint.  Otherwise little had
changed.  Catherine was old enough to be glad of this, because she
liked the place just as it was, and young enough to be sorry, because
people her age still had to go elsewhere for work, albeit in these
prosperous times no further than Dublin.

Beyond the village a gap in the high bank marked an unsigned turning
onto a single-track road that wound up through hedgerows towards the
brow of the hill and the gates of Morne: the stretch known simply as
'the lane'.

From the moment she'd left the flat, Catherine had experienced the
sensation of being effortlessly conveyed.  In London, she'd used the
car service that Maeve had arranged, in Dublin Bridget had met her at
the arrivals gate, accompanied by Pat, the driver, and escorted her to
the Mercedes that stood at the kerb, guarded by another man, never
identified, who immediately disappeared.  On leaving the airport,
Bridget had used her mobile phone to report to a nameless presence, who
could only be Terry, that they were safely on their way.  Bridget had
then gone through the day's itinerary: the expected time of arrival,
the lunch arrangements, the departure time, the check-in for the return
flight.  Nothing had been left to chance, and on this, Catherine's
first solo expedition, she wasn't quite so brave or so proud that she
wasn't glad of the assistance.

As the journey progressed Catherine found herself thinking: So this is
money, this is how it feels.  It was not after all a matter of
ostentation, though there was an element of that in the Mercedes, but
of seamless arrangements, of having people to check and double-check
each detail to ensure that everything ran smoothly; people, moreover,
who took their cue from those they served, who answered questions when
asked, who chatted a little when prompted, but otherwise kept a
measured silence.

The lane looked completely different, and this almost succeeded in
unnerving her.  The hedgerows had been trimmed so savagely that the
branches, once tall and overhanging, had been reduced to woody stumps,
which let a cold white light flood the road.  For a crazy moment
Catherine wondered if Terry's gardener hadn't been let loose here too,
perhaps had blighted the entire neighbourhood.  At the last bend, she
prepared herself to see the house over a wasteland of uprooted shrubs,
even it was too terrible to imagine completely denuded of its cover,
whole trees or thickets gone.  But when the gates came into view all
the trees were standing, and when they turned up the drive it was
between wide plantings of lusty new rhododendrons, most over two metres
high, leaves shiny with nursery-nourished health and heavy with buds,
and hardly a glimpse of the house until the very last turn.

The house looked both strange and utterly familiar, a place she might
have left three years ago or yesterday.  It was a moment before she
understood that nothing had changed since the final months of her
father's occupation, when times had been difficult and gardeners
unreliable.

Fragments from Terry's letters came back to her, snippets that talked
of wild tangle woods and rampaging roses and unpruned trees and
creepers with trumpet-like flowers unknown to the reference books. 
Never for a moment had she taken him seriously: she had thought it pure
exaggeration, designed to amuse.  Though the rhododendrons might have
been slain, she had pictured the rest of the place in ruthless order,
new gravel on the drive, fresh paint on the windows and all plant life
firmly under control.  Yet here was the past held still and magnified,
the gravel thin and dusted with weeds, the strange mossy stain still
clinging obdurately to the foot of the front wall like verdigris,
climbers taking light from windows, lichen patterning the roof, and the
tulip-shaped yew still sporting a ruff of nettles.

As Pat brought the wheelchair round from the back, a black dog ran up
to the car, barking benevolently.  It was a mongrel with one crooked
leg and a rolling gait that reminded Catherine irresistibly of her own
rather singular walk.  "Hello, Conn."

Whether by chance or design, Terry didn't appear until she was in her
chair, footrests set up, and ready to move.  He came striding round the
side of the house, dressed for the garden in ancient grass-stained
trousers, a baggy sweater and a battered tweed hat.  To complete the
picture, he carried a pair of secateurs in one hand, and she couldn't
help thinking that he had chosen both wardrobe and props very
deliberately, to strike a casual note no doubt, but also to put her in
mind of the days when he had carried out general maintenance for the
Langley family at two pounds an hour.

She had rehearsed a pleasant but neutral tone.  "Pruning?"

"A desperate and futile attempt to bestow order on the roses."

The hand he offered was large and warm, which reinforced her impression
of a big man grown even bigger and more bear-like.

"There's coffee freshly made," he said.

"And then if we could get straight to work?  There's a lot to get
through."

"Of course."  He inclined his head, as if bowing to her
professionalism, before flicking the briefest of glances over her head,
a signal, it appeared, for Pat to begin pushing her towards the door
while Terry went ahead.

On the few occasions when Catherine had bothered to imagine what Terry
might have done to the interior of Morne, she had pictured rooms
furnished in the country style peddled by department stores, largely
floral, largely insipid, and largely bogus.  Then, on reflection, she'd
decided that Terry would have brought in one of the more esoteric
designers, someone widely acknowledged to have seriously good taste,
which she knew from her own experience of working for the newly rich
was the quality they coveted most keenly, and that the resultant style
would be somewhat austere, the rooms painted from head to toe in soft
white or palest cream to offset a collection of spectacularly beautiful
and expensive antiques.  Nothing in her imaginings had prepared her for
the sight that met her astonished gaze.  Bare floorboards, a scattering
of unattractive rugs, skimpy ill-fitting curtains, peeling paint in
familiar if faded colours, walls with the ghostly outlines of the
long-departed pictures she had known so well.  In the dining room, camp
chairs around a trestle table, and, visible through the drawing-room
door, a strange modern sofa and what might have been a matching chair,
looking shipwrecked amid plain walls and bare boards.

"I haven't done too much to the place," Terry said vaguely.

Catherine could only think he was attempting irony.

"Would you care to freshen up?"  he asked rather formally.

In another orchestrated move, the two men disappeared and Bridget
stepped forward to offer help, which Catherine accepted as far as the
cloakroom door.  This room at least was furnished in recognisably
country style, with a clutter of fishing rods, waterproofs, battered
tweed hats and boots in every state of decrepitude.

When she emerged, Terry was waiting in the hall alone.  He had taken
off his hat, and she saw that his hair was receding and had begun to
grey, and that it wasn't only his face that had grown rounder, but his
waistline too.  Again, she was reminded of a bear, though his eyes,
which were grey-blue and steady, belonged to an altogether more
watchful animal.  He smiled.  "Where would you like to start?"  She
said crisply, "If we could look at the plans somewhere?"  He directed
her to the dining room where coffee was laid out on the trestle table:
cafetiere, cups, milk, cream, two kinds of sugar.  "Unless you'd prefer
tea?"

She would have preferred tea, but she said coffee would be fine because
she didn't want to delay things.  While Terry poured, she caught fresh
glimpses of the past: a faint damp-stain high on the wall in the shape
of a seahorse, an area of chipped paint on the doorframe, the smudge of
finger marks around the lightswitch, dilapidations that had gone
unnoticed in the last years of her parents' occupation, but which, like
the absent pictures and dispersed furniture, were a source of sharp
nostalgia.

As Terry put the coffee tray to one side and sat down, she took the
graphics from her folder and began to spread them out over the table.
"These are computer simulations of the garden from various vantage
points," she began in a rush, 'and at different intervals, after a
year, two years, five years, and showing the different layouts and
options, which I've kept to three, though of course they can be mixed
and matched a bit if that's what you want."  She glanced up to find
Terry watching her steadily and thoughtfully, with little sign of
having absorbed what she was saying.  "Obviously these are very
approximate," she pressed on.  "They can only give you a rough idea,
and the effect very much depends on the maturity of the trees and
shrubs that you decide to plant."  As she went through the visuals in
detail and explained the various options at some length, she became
increasingly aware of his inattention.  "Are you clear so far?"  she
demanded briskly.

"I believe so."

She decided to test him.  "So how do you feel about the woodland? Which
option do you think you'd prefer?"

A gleam of understanding lit his face, as though he had read and
appreciated her motives.  "I think I'd prefer to have the largest
possible area of woodland," he said, with a show of great seriousness.
"Either side of the glen and all the way down to the meadow and right
along to the bridge.  Complete with glades, as you suggest, and some
coppicing to the north, to attract the birds.  That was your second
option, I believe, wasn't it?"  He didn't pause to relish his moment of
triumph.  "And I'd prefer wholly indigenous trees, or how did you put
it?  trees that have been growing here for at least a thousand years.
Almost indigenous.  Like most of the Irish, you might say.  And four
species sounds plenty to me.  Oak, elm, hazel and .. . yew, was it?
Yes, I think that will look very fine.  And if it's fifty years to
maturity well, I grudgingly accept the risk of not being around to see
them in their full glory."

She should have realised that, even with minimal concentration, he
would have an effortless grasp of content and detail.

"Only one thing..  ."  He lifted a hand and rotated it in a gesture of
unexpected grace.  "I don't think I can resist one item from your list
of exotic species.  A handkerchief tree.  The name appeals to me.  The
idea appeals to me.  I believe I've seen a picture of one.  Would that
be allowed?"

If he was being facetious, he hid it well.

"It's not a question of anything not being allowed," she said.  "You
can have whatever tree you like, wherever you like, so long as the
soil's right.  A handkerchief tree would probably be best on the edge
of the lawn, in the rough grass, as a focal point."

"In solitary splendour?"

"I would think so, yes."

"When does it produce all those handkerchiefs?"

"May or thereabouts."

"So ... I should hold back on all my tears till springtime, then."  He
said it lightly, but not so lightly that there wasn't a reflective ness
in his tone, and it struck her that for all his money and success life
hadn't gone entirely his way.

She said, "This woodland .. . You do realise the size of the
undertaking?"

He bowed his head again and smiled.  "You've explained it very
clearly."

"It'll take some time to cost it accurately, but if you want
semi-mature trees we're talking tens of thousands."

He gave a considered shrug.

"You want to go ahead, then?"

"I believe so."

"But why?"  The instant the question was out, she wished it unsaid. She
felt the heat come into her face.

He paused to make sure he had understood her.  "You mean, why
bother?"

"I meant... I didn't realise you had such a feeling for trees."

This explanation didn't fool him for a moment, but he answered it all
the same, albeit wryly.  "Ireland has so little woodland, does it not?
It's a small investment for the future.  A gesture if you like.  We'll
all be moving on soon enough, won't we, but the trees, they'll still be
here.  My small piece of immortality."  He smiled broadly to show he
didn't really take thoughts of immortality too seriously.  "Not much
else one can leave behind.  Besides, I was always sad that the old
woods went."

He was talking about the oak wood that had been felled before she was
born in what must have been one of her father's first acts on marrying
into the family and taking over the house.  While she was growing up,
this event had never been mentioned at Morne, except by unwitting
neighbours, who'd soon found it a poor subject for conversation.  She
supposed it had been done for the money.

"You might say the woods here gave me some of my happiest memories,"
Terry said.  She'd forgotten his smile, the way it lifted one side of
his mouth before spreading up into his eyes.

"The poaching, you mean?"

He drew in a soft breath of mock offence.  "Vermin control."

"Ah."  She began to fold up the plans.  "Done from the goodness of your
heart, then?"

"The pigeon were terrible.  The rabbits worse."

"And that was it, was it?"

Pretending seriousness, he made a show of searching his memory.  "I
believe so."

"Mummy said you used to take the brown trout."

"I might have glimpsed them in passing, but they were too quick for
me," he said ruefully.  "Never could master the tickle."

"She said you used nets."

"No, no, that was Paddy O'Brien!"  he said firmly.  "He was a devil for
the nets and the explosives.  Your mamma always had that wrong," he
said fondly.  "For all the years I knew her, she had that wrong."

Rather briskly, Catherine put the visuals back in their folder.

Taking his cue, Terry straightened up and placed both hands flat on the
table.  "The garden," he said, 'would you want to have a look around
straight away or after lunch?"

She chose to go straight away.  This contingency, like everything else,
had been planned for.  A golf buggy had appeared at the front of the
house, as if by magic.

"Is this yours?"  she asked disapprovingly, hating the thought that he
had bought it specially.

"I borrowed it from a golf club over by Carlow," he said immediately.
"The alternative was the quad, but I wasn't sure if it was your sort of
thing."

He was right, she couldn't have ridden pillion, not without her arms
locked precariously around the driver's waist.  At the same time, she
viewed the buggy with resentment because it was everything that was
safe and dull.  "A quad is just my sort of thing actually," she
declared childishly.  "But not very practical when I'm working and
taking notes."

Pat lifted her out of her chair into the buggy and wrapped a rug around
her legs against a gathering wind.  She thought again: The detail, the
detail.  And wondered yet again why Terry should go to all this
trouble, what he could possibly want from her.  In the next instant she
persuaded herself that it really didn't matter.  When the fee was large
and you needed the money, explanations were something of a luxury.

"We've had a go at the worst of it," Terry said cryptically as they set
off around the side of the house onto the grass.  "Tidied things up a
bit."

"From what you described, it sounded like Sleeping Beauty's castle."

"Ah, but we fought the worst of the brambles off the house.  We hacked
them back."

As they emerged onto the lawn she saw beds with only a mild sprinkling
of weeds and hedges with the barest stubble of new growth.  "Looks
fine," she commented.

"Wait till you see the shrubbery," Terry said, rolling his eyes in mock
despair.

The machete?"

"Believe me, that would have been merciful."

"And you've managed to restrain him since, your gardener?"

"We've had him chained hand and foot, worse than a felon."

Led by the dog, zigzagging rapidly ahead, the buggy trundled across the
lawn to the long walk, where she saw real work to be done on the avenue
of yews, deadwood to be cut out, and tops to be tapered to let the
light down.  At the far end of the walk, framed by the long promenade
of yews, was the ancient arbour encased in a tangle of rose stems, also
in need of pruning, and when they reached the opening half way along
the avenue, she saw that the wrought-iron gate was badly overgrown.
Making the calculations that came automatically to her, she reckoned it
would take a good gardener seven or eight weeks to get the remedial
work done, and that was before any preparation for spring planting.

At the arbour, Terry turned the buggy onto the narrow grass path that
led into the area of scrub known as the wilderness, and stopped. Before
them, the ground sloped away through coarse grass and bracken, rowan
and young hazel to the lip of the small gorge, which sheltered, deep in
its cleft, the concealed stream.  Further down the glen was the bridge,
also hidden from this point, and visible on the far side, the
wild-flower meadow with its autumn cover, a sea of tall silvery grasses
that rippled and shivered in the wind.

"It will be a derry," Terry announced as he surveyed the wilderness. "I
think I'm right in saying that means oak grove in old Irish, aren't I? 
When you think of all the smaller places, the crofts and the like,
which are called something-or-another-derry you realise what the
country must have looked like in the olden times."

She was aware of him gazing at her again.  "So .. ."  he murmured
softly, as though passing from one thought to another.

She glanced at him expectantly, and was surprised to see him drop his
eyes in what in any other man could have been a momentary shyness.

He indicated the wilderness.  "Will it be possible to grow wild flowers
under the trees?"  he asked, like a diligent pupil.

"While the trees are young, you'll be able to grow them almost
everywhere.  Later, well .. . there're one or two species that tolerate
shade.  But in the glades that'll be the wonderful thing about the
glades, walking out of the trees into a sea of wild flowers."

When she looked back at him he seemed distracted.

"Thank you again for sending the wild flowers," she said, wanting to
get this out of the way.  "They were .. ."  She hesitated and settled
on, 'different'.

"They probably didn't keep too long."

"No, but that didn't matter."

"You didn't mind then, that I sent them?"

"Mind?  No.  No, I... they were lovely."

He seemed relieved.  "I'd wondered maybe .. ."  But with a sudden smile
he left this thought aside and said brightly, "Now, tell me something,
Catherine if it were up to you, how would you choose to do this garden?
Here in the wilderness, for example, would you make a woodland of
it?"

"I couldn't say.  It's not my garden.  That's the whole point -it's an
individual thing."

"But it used to be your garden."

"Never mine," she protested.  "My family's.  My mother's."

"All right," he conceded easily.  "So if it were yours now, at this
moment, what would you do with it?"

"You're asking the impossible ... It all depends on how one feels about
a place, how one sees it.  I don't live here any more, I couldn't have
a view on that."

He made a face of disappointment.  "So I can't have the benefit of your
opinion?"

"You told me what you were looking for in a garden.  I must go by
that."

He searched his memory.  "What did I say exactly?"

"You said .. . natural, tranquil, wooded."

"Ah.  I might have been concocting a thing or two there," he said in
the manner of the confessional.  "I don't think I really knew what I
wanted.  In truth, I'm still not too sure.  Most of the time, I don't
feel like a proprietor at all, you see.  More like a caretaker who
happened along."

Her anger caught her unawares.  "We're all caretakers, aren't we?"
Shuddering inwardly at the banality, she added, "But you got the place.
You acquired it."

"Well... I ended up with it at any rate."

"Ended up with it?  You sound as though you didn't want it!"  she
retorted.  Before he could answer she said with a pretence of
indifference, "But that's none of my business.  And nothing to do with
the garden.  Which is what we're here to discuss, isn't it?"

There was a taut pause.

Terry said in a low voice, "I think lunch will be ready and waiting. If
you need to see anything else, perhaps we might do it later."

He reversed the buggy back onto the main walk, and they returned to the
house in a silence that she might have broken if she could have thought
of anything pleasant to say.

The house was warm, the trestle table had been laid for two.  Catherine
could hear Bridget and another woman in the kitchen, chattering softly.
Terry brought in soup and warm bread, and some wine.  It was good wine,
and Catherine decided she'd have at least two glasses, which was one
more than the doctor had deemed healthy for her kidneys, or it might
have been her liver, it suited her to forget which.

The skirmish still turning in her mind, Catherine maintained a
deliberate coolness as they began to eat, but if Terry noticed or
minded he gave no sign.  He talked companionably about the latest
neighbourhood gossip, the scandals and mishaps, 'though I've only half
an ear to what's really going on."

She'd forgotten quite how easy and unassuming his manner was, how his
blend of banter and attentiveness made you feel you were the one person
in the world he wanted to talk to.  She'd forgotten how effectively he
used this approach to draw you into a sense of friendship and intimacy,
and how easy it was to believe in it.  There had been a time in the
long summer of her mother's illness when she'd been beguiled by this,
when she'd come to look forward to their walks and their rambling
absurd intense conversations, had even it made her shudder now begun to
think of him with great fondness.  But thank God she had found him out
in time.

She accepted a third glass of wine even before he brought the main
course.

"It was good to see Maeve at the unit that day," she said.  "But you
were there too.  You should have come in and said hello."

"I thought best not," he said pleasantly.  "I thought one of us was
probably enough."

"How's she enjoying the nursery nursing?  The new college?"

"A success, it seems."

"And her health?"

"Oh, stronger, you know.  Better by the day."

"She was very ill, she said."

"She nearly died."

"Septicaemia."

Lowering his fork, he said sharply, "It was the incompetence of the
doctors."

"They didn't spot it in time?"

"Too busy banking their fees.  I'd like to sue them to kingdom come,
I'd like to see every last one of them struck off."  The quietness of
his voice did not disguise the enmity beneath, and it seemed to
Catherine that this gave the lie to the quiet charm that had gone
before, that here at last was the vengeful man who did not take kindly
to being thwarted.  Then, as if to turn this impression on its head, he
gave a long and heartfelt sigh.  "I'd do it if I believed for a moment
that it could make up for the suffering Maeve has been through.  But
sometimes at the end of the day it's wiser to think about your future,
your health, and whether you want something like that hanging over you,
poisoning your life, for years and years to come.  If you can't
forgive, you can at least try to forget and put it behind you.  This is
Maeve's view.  And it is mine."  He looked at her in a strange way, as
though he wanted to say more, before changing the subject abruptly.
"But now, what about you, Catherine?  How are you getting on?"

"Me?"  She was immediately on her guard.  "Oh, well enough.  I can't
run like I used to, of course."

Far from being embarrassed, he seemed to understand her need for bad
jokes.  "But you're managing all right?"

"Oh yes."

"It must be a matter of the practicalities, of a hundred small
annoyances."

"I've never tried counting them, but yes, the annoyances.  And other
people."

He grasped her meaning immediately.  "Ah, they try too hard, do they?
Kind to a fault?"

"They gush.  They talk as though I were a child.  That, or they look
above me, past me, through me.  I become invisible."

"It could have advantages, being invisible .. . But perhaps not that
many."

"Not that many."

"But you have your family, your friends."

She said evasively, "I have all I need."

"And the house, it's been adapted?  You're managing there?"

This answered the question that had been on her mind for some days:
whether Terry knew she was living in the flat, whether Maeve had kept
her promise of secrecy.  "The house ... is not ideal," she admitted.
She hadn't intended to tell him about the difficulties of living in a
two-storey house without a stairlift but he was a patient and
attentive listener, and perhaps she'd got to the stage where she needed
to tell somebody, but she found herself going through it at some
length, finishing on a note of exasperation.  In case this had given
away too much, she added, "Of course, we'd have put in a st airlift if
we were sure about keeping the house.  But we're still thinking about
moving. We haven't made up our minds yet."

"But what happens when Ben's away you're not on your own there, are
you?"

She stiffened.  "Occasionally."

A long pause in which he fiddled with a spoon and seemed noticeably ill
at ease.  Several times he seemed on the point of speaking before he
finally asked, "And the trial of this man?"

"It starts next week."

"Are you going to have to appear yourself?"

"No."

"But still a strain, I imagine."

"Only if I let it be."

"You have plenty of support?"

He had asked it with such open concern that she answered this too.
"Yes.  The police are very good."

"Support's very important," he muttered vaguely.

Another silence during which Terry laced and unlaced his fingers
several times.  "Ben's still in partnership with Mr.  Jardine, is he?"
he asked eventually.

She queried the subject with a frown.

"I was just curious," he said.

"Actually, no," she answered cautiously.  "Simon decided to go his own
way."

"I see.  Since when?"

"Oh, quite recently."

"Ah.  But it was a mutual thing, was it?"

"Completely."

And with that, the strange stilted questions came to an end.

There was a pudding, but she couldn't eat it.  There was more wine,
which she could manage very well.  Over coffee, he asked about her
work, but aware that the wine was in danger of making her garrulous she
got him to talk about his work instead.

"Oh, it reached the stage last year where I had no life of my own,
working insane hours, so I decided to pull back a little, to give
myself a bit more time to stand and stare, to travel a bit."

"With Maeve?"

"Ah, when I can.  No, usually with Dinah, my lady friend."

This took Catherine completely by surprise, it was an effort to keep
the astonishment out of her face, though the moment she stopped to
think about it she realised that Terry would never have stayed
unattached for long.  In Dublin circles in any circles he was probably
seen as a great catch.  No, what had caught her out was the passage of
time.  In her mind he was still the rather solitary man from five years
ago, the widower of under two years with the touching devotion to her
mother.  Also, and unforgivably, he was the arrogant self-made man
who'd managed to equate love with power, and had the nerve to suggest a
relationship with her at the very moment when he was in the process of
defrauding her father.

"So," she said carefully, 'this spare time will you be spending it at
Morne?"

"I'm always trying to come more often."

"How often do you get here at the moment?"

"Ah.  Not as often as I'd like," he said a touch sheepishly.

"Weekends?"  she persisted.

"Once a month, if I'm lucky.  Bit of a waste, really."

It could have been the wine, it could have been the reminders of the
past, but the resentment welled up in her again.  "Yet you were so
anxious to get hold of this place."

He paused.  "I wouldn't say anxious exactly."

"Well, you didn't miss the opportunity."

"I never saw it as an opportunity, Catherine."

"It was a favour, then?"  She hated the sarcasm in her voice.

"No," he said with dignity, 'not that, either."

And still she wouldn't let go.  "So Morne just fell into your lap."

His eyes darkened, he gazed at her with something like disappointment.
"I didn't seek to come here, Catherine."

She shook her head at him in mute anger.

Slowly, with the air of someone undergoing an ordeal he would rather
avoid, Terry slid his elbows onto the table and made a cage of his
fingers, before saying in a considered tone, "I never wanted this
house, Catherine.  In fact, I've never known what to do with it.  I'd
sell it tomorrow if I felt it was the right thing to do."

"But you took over the mortgage, you .. . foreclosed on it -or whatever
it is.  You were bound to end up with the place."

Again, he chose his words carefully.  "I only did what I was asked to
do."

"You're suggesting Daddy wanted to give up the house?"

"It wasn't quite as simple as that, Catherine."

"So how complicated was it?  Either my father wanted to stay or he
didn't."

"Perhaps you should ask him."

"I already have."

He dropped his eyes, he sat back in his seat with a small gesture of
submission, and said quietly, "Then you must take that as your answer,
mustn't you?"

The dependency clinic stood in the grounds of a private hospital
serving the commuter belts of Kent and East Sussex.  It was the
cheapest Simon had been able to find, which wasn't saying a great deal
because all the private clinics were daylight robbery.  But National
Health places were impossible to find unless the addict was prepared to
wait months.  So far as his mother was concerned no amount of waiting
would ever make the time right, of course, but the six weeks would at
least offer a respite for Betty.  And for me, he thought.  Most of all
for me.

Following accepted practice, his mother was to share a room; following
normal routine, she informed the nurse that this would be out of the
question.  The inevitable scene ensued.  First the imperious froideur,
the grand inspection of the premises and the announcement that it
wouldn't do, as though she'd booked the Ritz and been shown a seedy B &
B; then the reasoned argument, delivered in a sweet voice of injured
innocence.

Some token tears followed, then, when these proved futile, came the
venom, delivered with skill and precision because she knew exactly what
she was doing when she was sober.

"I only have to look at him to feel sick," she told the staff. "Because
he's just like his father a two-faced shit."

The lexicon varied but the substance always remained the same.  When he
finally got her into the room and unpacked, she sat on the bed like a
martyr, face set, mouth pulled down, eyes drooping, talking of suicide.
He remonstrated, as he always did, but she wouldn't be denied her
outpouring of bitterness, her chance to visit her anger on him in the
name of his father.

The next stage brought a familiar turmoil, a surge of heat and tension,
like the spiking of an old wound.  She told him things about his father
that no mother should ever tell a son,

things that as a child he'd barely understood except to know that they
were hurtful and loathsome and must surely be his fault, things that as
he'd grown older he'd heard with growing confusion and despair, and
something else dark and shameful which he dare not name.

He listened as he always listened, silently, obediently, feeling the
heat and disgust which had long ago become indistinguishable to him,
until they reached the last stage, the long process of pacifying her,
of repeating the reassurances and promises of devotion that she'd heard
a hundred times before, but still demanded of him feverishly, like a
liturgy from an abandoned religion.

He returned to London with a sense of deep fatigue and nagging dread,
knowing it was only a matter of time before she threatened to walk out,
wondering as always how many phone calls and blandishments it would
take to dissuade her.

His mood didn't improve when he realised he was going to be late for
his meeting with Wilson.  Nearing town, it began spotting with rain. By
the time he parked in Notting Hill it was bucketing down.  He jogged
into the police station exactly forty-five minutes late.  Fortunately
Wilson hadn't gone out.  While he waited for him to come down to the
lobby, Simon ran a comb quickly through his dripping hair and dried his
spectacles with a handkerchief.

"Mr.  Jardine!  Brought the weather with you, I see."  In keeping with
his little quip, Wilson seemed lively, almost cheerful: the clear-up
rate improved perhaps, or no murders this week.  "How's Catherine?"  he
asked.

"Fine, thank you."

Wilson took him through the pass door.  "She did better than expected,
I gather.  Earned herself early release."

"She said she couldn't take more of the physio's sadism.  That and the
quiz nights."

Wilson gave the obligatory laugh, then, finding a vacant interview
room, waved Simon to a seat.  "So, what can I do for you?"  he demanded
crisply.

"I just wanted to catch up really.  I've been away '

"Argentina, you said?"  Sitting on the other side of the table, he made
a show of racking his brains.  "Pampas?  Or have I got that completely
wrong?"

There seemed no limit to his bonhomie today.  Simon replied pleasantly,
"I only got as far as Buenos Aires."

"Ah.  No pampas then."

"Not a lot."  Hoping this had exhausted the travel talk, Simon
ventured, "There were a couple of things I wanted to ask, if that's all
right."

Wilson gestured him on with a flip of his hand, as if he'd be the last
person to hold things up.

"This is a bit difficult," Simon began with a suitably awkward laugh.
"I don't want Catherine to think I'm going behind her back.  It's just
that .. . well, she happened to mention that she'd come across the
number of that nuisance caller.  She made a note of it late one night,
thought she'd lost it, then found it again a couple of days ago."

Wilson made a face of great puzzlement.  "But the calls came through on
her mobile telephone.  There was no easy way to trace them."

"That's right.  But this time the call came through on the house line,
and she used 1471 to get the number."

Wilson tightened his lips.  "But this call it was silent, like the
rest?"

"As I understand it."

"So it could have been someone else altogether?"

"Possibly," Simon conceded rapidly.  "But Catherine thought not.  She
thought it was the same person."

"Though the person didn't speak?"

That's right."

They exchanged a comp licit smile, as if to say: this is the way women
are, intuitive, beyond simple logic.

"And we're not talking wrong numbers any more?"

Simon chose to answer this with a diplomatic shrug.

"I never thought we were," Wilson remarked heavily.  "Not for a
second."

Under Wilson's unwavering gaze, Simon reached into his wallet for the
slip of paper he'd prepared and handed it over.  Wilson laid the number
on the table without looking at it.  "I'll get it checked this
afternoon."

"You'll let me know, obviously?  Rather than Catherine?  So she's not
bothered."

When Wilson's eyes narrowed Simon thought for a moment he'd gone too
far.  But apparently it was just Wilson's way, to consider all requests
with circumspection, because the next moment he nodded unconcernedly
and lifted his eyebrows, ready for the other item on the agenda.

"Yes ... Again, I'm going a bit behind Catherine's back."  Simon
frowned to show that even the mildest subterfuge was distasteful to
him.  "She didn't want to tell you in case it was nothing, in case it
caused unnecessary fuss, but I thought you should know.  The thing is,
Catherine had the idea that someone might be following her earlier this
week."

Wilson's look of polite interest sharpened into something more
terrier-like.  "Did she get a look at this person?"

"No.  Not enough to give a description anyway.  It happened twice.  She
thinks it happened twice.  The first time, she was out shopping and saw
this man in a blue cap twice within the space of an hour.  Sort of
loitering nearby.  Then on Tuesday night there was someone standing
opposite the house for quite a while.  But she couldn't say if it was
the same man."

"A blue cap?  Loitering?"  Wilson asked in a flat tone of
disappointment.  "That was it?"  Then, without waiting for an answer:
"And the man outside the house she only saw him the once?"

"Apparently."

"Did he appear to be watching the house?  Or just hanging about?"

"It was very dark."  Simon made a regretful face.

"Height?  Age?  Weight?  Ethnic group?"  Wilson rattled the questions
off without expectation of anything useful by way of reply.

"Nothing."

"And no similar incidents since?"

"No, but then she's moved into this flat for the time being, and it's
quite a long way from the house."

"Ah yes, WPG Cox did inform me."

"I encouraged her to go.  While her husband's away."

"Good idea," Wilson muttered vaguely.

"It was just to be on the safe side."

Coming to a decision, Wilson said, "Yes, best thing all round, because
I regret to say we won't be able to follow up on these incidents.
Without a description to go on, without any certainty that she was
being followed .. ."  He gestured sympathy.  "Perhaps she's just a bit
nervous, what with the trial coming up.  A bit jumpy with her husband
being away."

"You don't think it could have been Pavlik?"

Tavlik?  Not likely."

"Why?"

"Never been a stalker.  No reason to start now.  No motive to try to
intimidate Catherine.  She can't identify him as her assailant."

"He's been keeping to his bail conditions?"

"He must be reporting daily to his local nick, otherwise we'd have
heard soon enough."

"And the other conditions?"

"We assume everything's all right unless we hear to the contrary."

Simon wanted to say: Well, he wasn't bloody working at La Rondine last
night for a start, and the house in Fifth Avenue was deserted till at
least three in the morning, so I don't know how you can sit there and
assume anything at all.

"We did check things out at the beginning," Wilson volunteered
smoothly.  "Visited his landlord."  He added with what might have been
a sneer, Though landlord is not the word some might choose."

Simon was silent.

"Protector," Wilson threw into the air.  "Admirer.  An older man with
what shall we say?  charming manners and a voice to match."  He made a
knowing face.

"Gay, you mean?"

"It would seem so, yes."

"But..  ."  In a theatrical gesture of incomprehension, Simon touched
his fingertips to his temples.  "I thought ... You mentioned sexual
overtones ... in the attack.  You talked about a possible stalker."

That's right."

"But if Pavlik's gay, then surely .. .?"

With the manner of someone only too glad to enlighten others, Wilson
said, "I'm no psychologist, Mr.  Jardine, but from what the experts
tell me Pavlik wouldn't be the first homosexual to have violently mixed
feelings about women.  Apparently some of them adore and worship women
from afar, but once they get close, then something called I think I'm
right hetero phobia kicks in.  All mixed up with Oedipus-type feelings.
Revulsion, revenge.  Getting back at mother and women in general for
all the imaginary wrongs they've suffered.  Confused sexual feelings.
I've explained it badly, but it's something like that."

"What about these objects that were found?  The ones that made you
think he was psychotic?"

"Yes .. ."  Wilson grunted.  "But in the end they may not feature much
in the trial."

"Why not?"

Wilson hesitated.  "There's a question mark over whether the CPS will
be able to make much use of them.  There's no way of linking the items
to Pavlik, you see.  Nothing forensic."

"And what were these items?"

"Some lace panties.  A lady's scarf."

Simon frowned.  "Catherine's?"

Wilson shook his head.

"They were found near her?"

"The panties under her head, soaked with her own blood.  The scarf .. .
tucked up her skirt.  With blood on it, but not hers."

Simon's heart gave a cold thump.  He felt a blend of revulsion and
curiosity.  He looked away and took a long breath, to give himself
time.  "And you think these items were put there by Pavlik?"

"We think he carried them around with him, ready for a moment like
this.  A collector, you might say.  An enthusiast for deviant little
items.  Probably graduated from thieving off washing lines."

And still Simon couldn't make any sense of this information.

Wilson peered at him.  "You all right?"

"Yes, I'm just..  . shocked."

"Catherine didn't tell you then?"

Simon's throat swelled, his voice choked slightly as he said, "No, she
never mentioned it."

"Well, I'm sure she just wanted to put it out of her mind."

Sensing that Wilson was about to call a halt, Simon asked hastily, "But
tell me, why can't this be used against him?"

"Oh, it'll be used, but the CPS won't go strong on it.  If Pavlik had
been a known stalker, a known collector of women's underwear, if
there'd been forensic evidence .. . When Pavlik agreed to a body sample
we thought we'd get him on some DNA traces, something on the scarf at
least, but' he pursed his mouth 'no such luck."

Simon said with a light laugh, "So what evidence do you have against
Pavlik?"

"Oh, we can prove he was in the house.  We can prove he was upstairs in
the second bedroom.  We've got four different strands of fibre plus
some specks of very unusual paint.  Then, what else .. .?"  He checked
his memory.  "We've got a witness who'll say Pavlik boasted about
breaking and entering.  And of course he was caught trying to flog the
jewellery."

"That's going to be enough, is it?"

Wilson gave the mirthless chuckle of someone who'd seen too many
prosecutions turn to dust.  "Mr.  Jardine, you're a lawyer.  You know
how it is.  There're no certainties in this game.  It only takes a
smart barrister.  It only takes a jury who're easily swayed.  I wish I
could promise you that Pavlik's going to be put away.  But I can't.
According to the defence disclosures, two men are going to swear they
spent the whole of that Sunday evening with Pavlik."

Simon made a show of absorbing this.  "And will it stand up, this
alibi?"

"Who knows?"  Wilson exclaimed contemptuously.  "Pavlik's got a very
sharp legal team.  Presumably they wouldn't be fielding these two
witnesses unless they thought it might be of benefit to them.  As I
say, I can't give you any guarantees."

A sliver of fear slid into Simon's stomach.  "A sharp legal team?  What
do you mean?"

"The CPS people know them.  Top firm of solicitors.  Top QC."

"Top firm?"  he said incredulously.  "What, this man Gresham?"

Wilson offered this up to his memory.  "No, no he's changed them all.
No, the solicitor's something else like .. . Blake?  Black?  And the
QC, one of those that comes at ten thousand a day."

Feeling slightly sick, Simon continued to hold very still.  "A totally
new team?"

"No expense spared."

"But how can Pavlik afford people like that?"

"Mr.  Jardine, I don't think we have to look very far to work out who's
paying, do we?"  Wilson said in the tone of a schoolmaster explaining
the basics to a dim pupil.  "Pavlik lives with an older man.  An older
man with a bit of money."  He shrugged to suggest that this settled the
argument, and, pushing back his chair, got briskly to his feet.

Simon moved slowly, with a sense of being weighed down.  "So he might
get off?  You're saying there's a good chance he'll get off?"

"I'm saying that I can't give you any assurances, Mr.  Jardine.  That's
all.  But it wouldn't be fair to anyone to promise he's going to be put
away."

Chapter Thirteen

THE PLANE was late leaving and late arriving.  By the time the car
reached Regent's Park Catherine was in that state of exhaustion and
muddle-headedness that comes from a long day punctuated by wine and
ranging emotions, otherwise she wouldn't have turned down the driver's
offer to escort her up to the door of the flat, wouldn't have assured
him when they reached the lift that she'd be able to manage the rest of
the way on her own.

The lift rose smoothly, the doors opened all right, but when she
wheeled herself out it was to see strange numbers on the doors of the
flats because she was one floor too low.  Then, as if her patience
needed further testing, on recalling the lift and reaching the door of
number twenty, it was to wrench the keys from her bag with clumsy
fingers and see them fly from her hand and fall to the floor, where
they hit the polished wooden strip beside the runner and slid into a
deep corner, the one place she couldn't reach from the chair.

Early on in this long game of adjustment and transformation, she'd
learnt either to laugh at such mishaps, as she'd laughed at her
birthday skirmish with the escaping wheelchair and the gutter, or more
often to rage, for which she'd acquired a voluptuous repertoire of
short sharp swear words; but never, if she could help it, to get upset,
not because she was in the least stoic, far from it, but because tears
infuriated her far more than whatever had caused them.  Nothing was
worth the sense of defeat, certainly not anything so measly as a set of
keys, because one thing was certain, there were going to be plenty more
lost keys and annoyances to come.  Tonight, however, she had little
energy for exasperation, and certainly none for laughter, and resorted
to a muttered commentary that took her back along the passage to a
radiator casing, where she removed the armrest from the wheelchair and,
hanging onto the top of the casing, swung herself out and down to the
floor.  Doing a bummer, as it was known in the trade, was like sex,
best practised in private.  Sliding herself along the floor on her
backside, she reached the keys and dropped them in her lap, turned
herself round and shuffled back to the flat door.  Resting against the
jamb for a few moments, she addressed an indifferent world like some
bag lady in a shop doorway.  "Well, you've got this far at least.  Well
done!  Well done!  Got something half right..  ."

The answering voice seemed to spring out of the darkness.  "Are you all
right, Catherine?"

With a gasp, she looked up to see her neighbour from Flat 19.  "God!"
she cried with a nervous laugh.  "You gave me a shock!"

He made a penitent face.  "I apologise.  I didn't mean to startle you.
How can I help?"  he enquired solicitously.  "Shall I bring your
wheelchair over?"

"Thank you .. ."  She couldn't think how he'd crept up on her.  She
hadn't heard his door open, hadn't heard him approach.  As he padded
off to fetch the wheelchair she looked at his feet, wondering if he'd
be barefoot, and saw battered suede shoes with crepe soles.

Parking the wheelchair at her side, he waited with a grave expression
on his long face.

"Thank you, Mr.  Latimer."

"Please call me Fergal."

"Fergal.  You really did give me a bit of a fright there."

"My apologies."

"I didn't hear you come out."

"I was looking for the cat.  One has to go stealthily to have a chance
of catching him."

"A cat?  I haven't seen a cat."

"A tortoiseshell called Bertie.  He's Maeve's cat really.  And a bit of
an escape artist.  Likes to roam the corridors unsupervised at
night."

She said, "Rather like me, you mean?"  and held up her arms to be
lifted.  "If you wouldn't mind?"

He picked her up and sat her in the chair and, unprompted, slotted the
armrest back in place as though he were a master of wheelchair
assembly.  He unlocked the door for her and reached inside to switch on
the lights before returning to the corridor to collect her briefcase.
"Now, can I get you anything?  Tea?  Coffee?  A kettle for a hot-water
bottle?  Something a little stronger?"

There was an accent she hadn't caught before.  Matching it to his name
she said in a tone of mild accusation, "You're Irish."

He dipped his head in acknowledgement.

"But I've just been to Ireland today," she said.  "I've just come
back."

"Ah.  Is that so?"  The comment was polite but incurious.  "It must
have been a very long day for you."

"Yes."  Voicing it, she felt a fresh wave of weariness.

"Can I make you a drink?"

There was a steadfastness about Fergal, a calm unhurried quality that
made her surrender herself to his care without question.  "Tea would be
lovely."

While Fergal padded around in the kitchen, filling a kettle, she
retrieved her mobile from the hall table where she'd left it that
morning and dialled in for her messages, which, according to the
robotic voice, totalled six.  As expected, there was the daily call
from her father, dutiful questions first, asking how she was managing,
did she need anything, his tone fervent and anxious, then his voice
warming instantly a list of treats she might like to consider: a glass
of champagne at the American Bar, a trip to the theatre, a dozen
oysters at Bentley's.  She had no interest in such outings, she had
told him so more than once,

but there was no deterring him because for Duncan life without treats
was a life unlived.

There were messages from Emma and Alice, both sounding hurt, both
wanting to know where the hell was she and what she meant by hiding
herself away like this.  The similarity of the phrasing made her
suspect they had been agreeing tactics.

Then Ben.

Her heart tightened at the sound of his voice, which seemed very close
for Poland.

"Catherine?  Where are you?"  he began coldly.  "What the hell's going
on?  What does this note mean gone away?  Gone away where, for God's
sake?"

She realised then: he was home.  Her stomach lurched, she felt she
could hardly breathe.

"Are you feeling all right?  Has something happened?  I mean, this note
it sounds like you've bloody left home.  No address, no nothing.  What
the hell does it mean?  It sounds like There was a sharp hiss. "Christ!
I do wish someone would bloody tell me what the hell's going on.  I
couldn't get any sense out of your father.  Nothing that didn't scare
the shit out of me anyway.  Talked about you being somewhere and he
couldn't say where.  What the hell did he mean?  Pissed, I suppose.
Your father, I mean."  A rapid sigh.  "Well, I'm here anyway.  I'm
back.  I got an early plane.  Specially."  Another sigh.  "And if it's
not too much to ask I'd like to know where you are and when you'll be
back!"  The message ended abruptly.

The next message also brought Ben's voice, but calmer.

"Moggy, sorry if I was .. . angry.  It was just a hell of a shock.  You
know getting back to find this strange note and an empty house.
Darling, where are you?  Please call me.  I'm so worried.  This note
sounds so .. ."  His voice broke.  "Moggy, I love you.  I'll be worried
sick until you call.  Christ, this note frightens me.  You will call?
Please."

Fergal appeared with the tea.  Wordlessly, he put it beside her and, in
the absence of chairs in the tiny hall, wedged his lanky frame into the
corner and looked away into a distance of his own making.

The final call was inevitably from Simon.  Her keeper, her guardian,
who yesterday had taken it on himself to phone four times and drop by
in the evening with some food she hadn't asked for and didn't need.
Hearing his voice she prepared herself for the diligent questions, the
request to phone him, his hope of seeing her the next day.  Tonight,
however, his voice took her by surprise, it was so taut, so urgent.
"It's really very important that you call me, Catherine.  However late
you get in.  You must call me straight away.  Please, it's extremely
important!  And, Catherine, I know this sounds strange -I can't explain
but trust me, please don't speak to anyone until you've spoken to me.
No one at all."  He made a sound of frustration.  "Really, Catherine no
one.  And it's nothing to be worried about but don't open your door to
anyone, will you?  No one.  Not even .. . Just no one!"

"I guessed at milk no sugar," Fergal said as she switched off the
phone.

"Thank you."

"Is there anything else I can get you?"  His voice was very soft.

She shook her head.  "Where do you come from, Fergal?"

"Dublin."

"You go back sometimes?"

"Now and again."

"You have family there?"

But a part of her had ceased to listen, and sensing this he soon fell
quiet again.  She was thinking: Who should I call?  Ben?  Simon?
Neither of them?  Arguments with Ben demanded energy and agility, and
she was short of both tonight.  Even when she was feeling reasonably
sharp-witted he could usually out manoeuvre her.  He had a way of
leaving an argument just as she was getting to grips with it, and
launching off into another, with no backtracking permitted.  And she
knew how it would be this time.  He would take the high moral ground:
the injured party, hurt and bewildered, innocent of all charges,
declaring devotion.  The expensive dinner would be business or an old
friend.  The double room at the country house hotel would be booked for
a Pole and his girlfriend who hadn't turned up.  If that didn't work he
would cajole, charm, bully, plead with her, and then start from the
beginning all over again.  He wouldn't stop wouldn't allow her to ring
off until he'd extracted a promise to return to him.  The prospect of
such determination might have touched her if she hadn't suspected it
was driven as much by anxiety as love, for though Ben was desperate to
do his duty, by far the sharpest and least ambiguous emotion in his
soul was the fear of losing control.

Fergal, at ease with silence, waited quietly in his corner perch, his
gaze fixed on some inner world.

Catherine said, "How peaceful it is here."

"For the centre of London."  He produced the closest thing she had seen
to a smile.  "Now, you're sure there's nothing more I can get for
you?"

You could get me a hard heart, thought Catherine.  You could get me a
heart that could shut Ben's message out of my mind and let me go to
sleep without guilt.  "No, thanks."

"In that case .. ."  He straightened up slowly.  Standing, he resembled
a tall stork-like bird, with his long loose limbs and his shoulders
raised high around his ears, an impression reinforced by the enquiring
tilt at which he held his head.  "I'll wish you a good night.  Oh!"  He
thrust a hand into his pocket and pulled out a card.  "I gave you my
mobile number before.  But for the night perhaps you should have the
number next door.  Just in case."  He placed it on the table beside her
before making for the door.  "You're going to be all right now?"

"Fine, thanks.  Good night."

"Take care, Catherine."

This time she heard the door of his flat sound as he closed it behind
him.  She heard a fainter click, which might have been an internal door
opening, and then the soft rush of a communal pipe somewhere between
the walls.  The tea cooled in her hand.  At some point she must have
put it down, but she had no recollection of it.  Her memory was caught
elsewhere, in a place she couldn't name.

Take care, Catherine.

It's the tiredness, she decided.  It must be the tiredness because it
makes no sense.

You're going to be all right now.

She tried to capture the precise sound, word, intonation that had
jogged the dark corner of her memory.

Catherine .. . You're all right, Catherine.  You're going to be all
right.

It was the softness of his voice, it was his choice of words.  It meant
nothing, couldn't mean anything unless .. . Thoughts seized in her
mind, caught on improbabilities, rushed off again, stopped and
stalled.

At some point her eyes fell to the card on the table beside her.  There
seemed no order to events after that; they might have happened all at
once or minutes apart.  She looked at the number and it meant nothing
and everything.  Like his voice it belonged to another time, another
place.  She closed her mind to it; she opened her reason to it: she
knew, but refused to know that she had seen it before.

The entry-phone buzzer sounded, and that also seemed to come from
another world.  She held still as if this might deny the sound, but it
buzzed again, and she thought dimly: Simon.

But it was her father's voice that spoke her name.  Then: "Let me in,
darling."

She pressed the door-release and waited for him calmly, with a sense of
disconnection.  Whatever had happened here, whatever she had begun to
grasp in these few minutes were like secrets, to be hidden away until
another time.

Before opening the flat door, she folded the card and slipped it deep
into her pocket.

At the sight of her, Duncan gave a show of immense relief, a clutching
of both hands together, a heavenward roll of his eyes.  "Thank the Lord
you're safe, darling!  I can't tell you how worried we've been!"

As he opened his arms and stooped to embrace her she saw over his
shoulder the dark figure of Simon, caught in the shadows between the
passage and the doorway.  Her father straightened up and stood aside
with a glance towards Simon, who came slowly forward into the light.

"Thank God," Simon said forcefully, his mouth working with suppressed
emotion.  Thank God."

"For heaven's sake," Catherine sighed with sharp impatience.  "What is
it?"

Her father gestured towards Simon.

"Well?"  she demanded.

"The nuisance caller," Simon announced gravely.  "I'm sorry to have to
tell you, Catherine' he lowered his voice to a confidential murmur 'but
the phone number belongs to the flat next door."

There was a pause in which she held his gaze.  "Yes," she said very
deliberately, "I know."

Simon blinked at her.  "The flat next door to here, I mean."

"Yes."

He frowned at her, before saying, in the manner of a further
announcement, "We've told the police."

"What?

"They would have come anyway," he argued defensively.

"Oh, why did you have to do that?  I wish you hadn't done that!"

"But they traced the number for us.  And Denise Cox knows you're living
here they'd have worked it out for themselves."

"You shouldn't have gone behind my back, Simon.  You should have asked
me first!"

Simon appeared to shudder, his cheek danced furiously, for an instant
his eyes were very dark.

Duncan touched Simon's arm to gesture him to one side, and said to
Catherine, "But darling heart, these calls, this place '

"It isn't something for the police, Pa."

"My dear girl, listen .. . I'm sorry to have to tell you ... it may
come as a bit of a shock .. ."  He half crouched to bring himself down
to her level.  "Darling, darling .. ."  His expression suggested he
would do anything to spare her such news.  "The thing is, both this
flat and the one next door are owned by this company," he began
unhappily.  "And the thing is, darling girl, the company is controlled
by I wish I didn't have to tell you this' he made a gesture as if to
berate the gods 'well, dear heart, they're both owned by Terry Devlin."
He paused mournfully, waiting for some sign that she had understood.
"This one and the one next door," he repeated for clarity.  Glancing to
Simon as if for help, he resumed unhappily, "You see ... this Latimer
and his nasty calls the thing is, darling girl, I'm afraid to say it
was all a vile way of trying to get at Ben through you."  He took her
hand, his face creased with mortification.  "I'm so terribly sorry,
darling."

"Get at Ben?"  she echoed.

"I'm afraid so."

"But why?"

"I know it's hard to take it all in," Duncan said, ignoring her
question.  "I know you thought that nice daughter of Devlin's was just
being kind.  I know, I know how painful and beastly it must be to
realise just how badly you've been taken in '

"For God's sake, Pa," she protested.  "This is crazy!  This is madness!
Why would Terry want to get at Ben?"  She looked from her father to
Simon and back again.

Duncan's eyes slid away helplessly.  "Darling girl..  ."  He patted her
hand abruptly and straightened up.  "Best if Ben explains it all, I
think.  Definitely best.  He can tell you."

"I can tell you," Simon cut in, his face animated by a strange
excitement.  "It's all about money."

Duncan shot him a reproving glance.  "I don't think it's for you to
talk about this, Jardine.  This is something for Ben!"

Simon said directly to Catherine, "It's very simple.  Ben owes Devlin
money, and Devlin wants it back."

Duncan said rather pompously, "Can we please leave this to Ben.  He'll
be here any minute."

Catherine stared at her father.  "You've told Ben I'm here?"

"I know I promised, darling, but I thought it best ... in all the
circumstances .. . The thing is, darling girl, he's absolutely frantic.
Frantic!  I can't tell you!  And he can explain everything, you see.
Much better than me, better than either of us!"  His gaze flittered
everywhere but to her face; he was ill at ease with explanations of
betrayal.  "And we thought, since it's not safe for you here, that
you'd want to go home, you see.  We thought he should come and take you
home .. ."  Hoping the worst was over, he ventured to look her in the
eye, armed with his most defenceless smile.

She said, "I understand, Pa," because there was nothing else to say.

He beamed, his entire face dissolved into an expression of relief. "For
the best, darling!"

But she wasn't ready to forgive the summoning of the police, and Simon
must have read this in her face because he said in a voice that
quivered with self-justification, "It was out of my hands.  Ben's
making an official complaint.  He wants Latimer arrested.  There was
nothing I could do."

She shook her head obdurately.

Simon's face was very white.  "I would have done anything, anything..
."  But the words blocked in his throat, he seemed almost dazed, and
with a strange gasp he turned on his heel and left.

Every night, work-day or weekend, Soho was the same nowadays, crowds of
secretaries and traders up from their East End strongholds, armed with
bulging pay packets and raucous laughter, spilling out of the pubs to
block the pavements, even in late November.  Stepping past them, forced
out into the street itself, Simon thought: To the coarse and
loud-mouthed, the modern world.  Only La Rondine retained the flavour
of a gentler era.  The post-theatre diners were few and soberly dressed
and, keen to catch the last trains back to the garden suburbs, were all
gone by midnight.  From the other side of the street Simon watched the
illuminated sign of the swallow fall dark and a waiter hastily relay
the last table with white cloth and crimson napkins.

On arriving, he'd made a close pass of the frontage and spotted Pavlik
in full waiterly stride, swerving rapidly between tables with a cluster
of stemmed glasses high in one hand.  The sight of him had produced a
shiver of relief or terror, he didn't care to identify which, while the
knife in his pocket might have been molten steel, it seemed to sear his
hand so badly.

When Pavlik emerged, Simon prepared himself to match a fast pace.  But
Pavlik seemed tired tonight, he stepped out slowly.  He shrugged his
leather jacket higher onto his shoulders before ambling off through the
crowds, hands thrust into his pockets, head low.  He turned into Old
Compton Street, apparently making for Piccadilly and the tube, only to
take the next right into Dean Street, which was not the direction for
home at all.  When Simon rounded the corner it was to see him on the
opposite pavement, slowing up to turn into an entrance with a smoked
glass door and no sign to say what sort of a place it was.

Simon gave it five minutes and pushed open the glass door to a
reception area, a long passage dimly lit by down lighters and the throb
of bass music rising from the basement.  Guarding the entrance were two
men at a desk, clones with shaved heads, heavy moustaches, earrings,
black leather jackets copiously adorned with studs; a clear and
unambiguous indication, if any were needed, of the style and tone of
the establishment beneath.

It was a membership club, no ID, no questions asked, a year's
subscription in advance.  Simon retreated to the street in a state of
jittery frustration.  This was all he needed, Pavlik on the pull.  Two
minutes, two hours: he might be all bloody night.  Even then he might
appear with a ghastly pick-up, or someone eager to take him home,
though from the look of the place it wasn't for tender hearts.  Simon
decided to give it an hour, and took up his cold vigil in an office
doorway, which smelt of disinfectant and rotting vegetables.

Watching the comings and goings at the smoked glass door, he tried to
make out if the club's clients stayed for long, but it was impossible
to tell because they all began to look the same to him, like soldiers
in an outlandish inter-galactic army, with their uniform black jackets
and convict hair and strutting steps.

One fifteen; and the hopelessness crept up on him in a tide of loss and
yearning.  He'd blown it.  This would achieve nothing; Pavlik would
walk free from court and have his revenge; Catherine would hate him for
ever.  He slumped a little in the doorway, counting off the regrets and
lost opportunities, pondering the unfairness of a life half lived.

Pavlik emerged just after one thirty.  He was alone.  He came out fast,
heading south at a stride just short of a run, quickly vanishing into
Old Compton Street.  In his haste to follow, Simon ran across the
street, dodged between some dawdlers on the corner and promptly
cannoned into two men on the far side, one of whom declared comically
to his vanishing back, "Excuse me."  Simon sped on and saw Pavlik
disappearing round a bend ahead, at the same frantic pace.

Simon caught him again in Brewer Street, going west.  Following a few
yards behind, he almost had heart failure when Pavlik glanced back over
his shoulder.  But either he didn't see him, or he was looking for
something else entirely, because he hurried on in the same way as
before, without looking back again.

Within sight of Regent Street, with no warning at all, Pavlik suddenly
broke into a sprint, flat out, arms pumping, head back, and jumping a
barrier wove through a line of oncoming traffic to disappear behind a
stationary bus on the far side of the street.

Simon ground to an unsteady halt, panting hard, and watched Pavlik take
his seat on the N36 bus as it drew away, going north.

The first cabbie he tried had left his adventurous spirit with his
sense of humour, in another life, and drove off with a sour grimace.
The second driver laughed, game for anything that broke the routine,
even if it was a predictable succession of stops and starts along
Oxford Street and up the Edgware Road, towards Paddington and the
north-west.

When the bus reached the Harrow Road, Simon told the cabbie to overtake
and drop him just short of Fifth Avenue.

He walked fast and chose a spot opposite the house in the shadows of an
overhanging shrub.  Pavlik's lover didn't seem to be at home: there
were no lights on, not even a porch light, and the ground-floor
curtains were un drawn  He waited impatiently, the sweat cold on his
back, the blood hammering in his ears, the knife sharp and unwieldy and
terrifying as he fingered it in his pocket.  How hard did you have to
push it in?  And where?  Just under the ribs?  The neck?  God, God, he
wanted to be sick.  He had the shakes.  His guts churned hotly,
threatening action.

How much longer?  Where are you, you shit?

Just when he thought he might have made a ludicrous misjudgement, that
Pavlik might have turned around and gone in a different direction, he
saw in the steady beam of a street lamp the squat athletic figure
walking unhurriedly up the road, head low, eyes on the pavement, no
scent of danger.

Simon slipped his spectacles into his pocket and waited for Pavlik to
turn in through the gate, then, blood running high, nerves thrumming,
he began to run lightly across the road.  At the point where he
adjusted his stride to leap onto the opposite pavement he still
believed he might reach him undetected.  In the moment when he landed
awkwardly and one foot brushed roughly against the paving stone, he
knew that he wouldn't, and then the blood sang in his ears, he felt the
blind lust of pursuit.  As he covered the last two yards, he watched
Pavlik twist around defensively.

The sight of Pavlik's half-raised hands sent a shot of doubt into
Simon's heart and in an action he hadn't planned and certainly didn't
have time to think through he cranked his left forearm back to take a
swipe across Pavlik's head or neck, while keeping the knife low in his
right hand, ready to thrust upwards.

He had caught Pavlik by surprise, but not so much by surprise that his
reflexes weren't working perfectly.  He ducked to one side and twisted
away so that Simon's left fist glanced ineffectually off the top of his
head, and when Simon thrust the knife up he found air and then
something hard: brick or stone, the blade bounced off it all the same.
Pavlik must have seen the blade, or heard it, because he caught Simon's
wrist and chopped down hard on it with such force that the knife might
have been blown from Simon's hand, it left his grasp so quickly.

For some reason Pavlik let go of Simon's wrist, perhaps to swing at
him, but Simon was too fast for him.  Driven by panic or fury, he
grabbed the front of Pavlik's jacket in both hands and, bunching it up
under his jaw, jammed his head hard against the door.  The sound of
Pavlik's howl seemed to fill the whole street.

Simon yelled into his face, "You shit!"

Pavlik fell silent, or maybe he couldn't breathe.  His eyes bulged, the
whites gleaming in the dull light, his lips were drawn back over his
teeth.  He gave a sharp hiss, a sound of contempt or fear.

"You're a dead man, you bastard," Simon roared, voice juddering,
'unless you tell me who the hell's bought you?  Who's paying you?"

Pavlik gasped something that Simon didn't hear.

"Come on, come on!  Who's bought you, you fucker?  Who's bought you?"

Pavlik stared down his nose at him, and Simon caught the stench of
alcohol on his breath.  "Talk crazy," he hissed.

"Who the hell is it?  Galitza?  Devlin?  Give me the name, you shit!

Even before Pavlik's face contorted and swelled, even before Simon
heard the long intake of breath and felt the sturdy arms coming up
against his chest, he felt the panic of the weaker man.  As Pavlik
shoved him forcefully away, Simon saw the hurried jab coming and
managed to duck it by a hair's breadth.  He got in one feeble upward
blow to Pavlik's side it was like hitting stone before he realised that
Pavlik was cranking his fist back for something far more serious.  In
an effort to forestall him, Simon lunged for a neck-lock that didn't
come off though it succeeded in throwing Pavlik off-balance and
disabling the blow.  Reaching out blindly, Simon grabbed desperately
for clothing, flesh, anything and finally got some sort of a grip on an
arm.  They wrestled fiercely, toppling a dustbin, and almost fell
before regaining their feet.  Simon tried for the neck-lock again, but
Pavlik had his balance this time, rooted and square to the ground, and
pushed Simon's arm aside as if it were matchwood.  An instant later
Simon felt an explosion against his ribs, a hammer-blow that doubled
him over in a jackknife and drove the air from his lungs in an agonised
rush.  The second fist caught the side of his head, a cracking blow
that sent him sprawling to the ground, grating his face over concrete
or stone.  He rolled over he was somewhere in the doorway -and came up
in a crouch, gasping.  From the corner of his eye he saw Pavlik turning
to run for it, and felt a fresh surge of anger.  Scrambling after him,
his empty lungs fighting for air that wouldn't come, Simon made a dive
for him.  He managed to grab one leg at knee level and for a ludicrous
moment they were caught in a grotesque pavement ballet, one man hopping
and kicking, the other hanging on grimly.  Then Pavlik twisted round
and swung a fist onto the side of Simon's head, precisely where he'd
struck it before, and Simon yelped as the pain shot through his brain
like fire.  He had the impression of passing out, though he remembered
rolling onto his back and shouting after Pavlik, "I'll kill you!"

He heard savage sobs and realised they were his own.  He curled up on
his side and, cradling his head with his arm, vomited until the nausea
faded.

Eventually, he staggered to his feet and, groaning aloud,

made his uncertain way to the Harrow Road.  The first two cabs sailed
past, the drivers' eyes carefully averted, and it was only by stepping
out in front of the next that he got it to stop at all.  Even then, he
had to persuade the cabbie that he'd been mugged, and no, he wouldn't
bleed all over his precious interior, and yes, he still had enough
money for the sodding fare.

At Draycott Avenue he thrust a note at the cabbie and waited doggedly
for every penny of his change, no bloody tip, before stumbling towards
the entrance.  As he fumbled for his key he heard a woman call his name
and, disorientated, looked around open-mouthed.

"Simon!"

He stared stupidly at Alice.

"God!"  she cried, getting a proper look at him.  She helped him into
the lobby.  "What the hell happened to you?"

He looked down and saw that his suit and shirt were covered in blood.

Up in the flat she bathed and disinfected his face where it had scraped
along the stonework, and put ice to the lump on his head, and prodded
his ribs gently to see if they were broken.

"The party was so boring.  I was hoping you'd liven things up a bit,"
she said, laughing at the absurdity of it all.

He told her he'd been mugged, but didn't want to bother with the
police.

They had a large brandy each, his washed down with two painkillers,
before she put him to bed.  He was glad when she slid in next to him.
He wanted sympathy, he wanted the proximity of a warm body, most of all
he wanted to obliterate his fear in the transitory joy of sex.

"Let's get some sleep now, Moggy.  It's very late."  Ben reached for
the bedside lamp.  '

"I still don't understand."

Abandoning the lamp switch, Ben took a long breath of ill-concealed
dismay and, rolling back, dropping his arm heavily onto his stomach,
turned his head on the pillow to look at her.  "What is it you don't
understand, Moggy?  God knows, I've tried to explain.  I've told you
twice three times there is no other woman.  The bloody hotel room was
for that stupid oaf Casimir and his ghastly blonde totty.  I took
Rebecca out to lunch once.  The last of the big spenders.  Guilty as
charged.  That's it!"

"It's not that.  I've got all that," Catherine said quietly, though
there were things she had chosen not to mention, like the perfume in
the bathroom cabinet, and what had or hadn't passed between him and
Emma.  "It's this business with Terry Devlin," she said slowly.  "I
don't understand why ... I thought you'd fallen out years ago.  I
thought you hated him.  I thought you were never going to do business
with him again."

"God alone knows, so did I!"  he agreed lavishly.  "Last thing I
wanted!  But a deal's a deal.  If it looks like a good one, you have to
go with it, even if it means supping with the devil.  Or you think you
have to go with it," he added with a grunt of regret.

"So you ended up owing him all this money?"

"Darling love," he said heavily.  "It wasn't quite as simple as that.
It was a business thing."

Softening her voice, she persevered, "I need to understand.  Please
tell me."

He became so still, his eyes so vacant, that he might have been lost to
the conversation altogether.  "Okay," he said at last, coming to a
decision.  "Basically .. . Terry advanced some money against the
prospect of this deal in Poland.  That's all there was to it really.
The deal was going to take a year or so to complete.  Maybe longer.  He
knew that, there was never any question of a fixed time."

"This deal..  . what was it for?"

Another pause, a slight shrug.  "A hotel."

"I didn't think RNP went in for that sort of thing."

He gave her a narrow look.  "It doesn't.  This was a one-off.

Nothing to do with RNP."

She absorbed this with surprise before struggling on.  "And something
went wrong?"

"It appears so.  I thought we had an agreement.  The terms were
perfectly reasonable.  He agreed to them quickly enough anyway!  But
then .. . then he went and decided he wanted to foreclose."

"And he threatened you?"

"Let's just say he wasn't going to be put off."

"He was going to use this .. . bad thing against you?"

"Yeah," he mused distractedly.  "Yeah."

"You're saying that Terry was the blackmailer?"

"I'm saying that Terry knows how to get his way when he wants it badly
enough."

There was a part of Ben that had always taken refuge in abstruseness,
and she was too tired to press him further.  "It's all over now,
though, is it?"  she asked.  "He's got his money back?"  "Mmm?"  Again,
a vagueness came over him.  Again, it was a moment before he answered.
"Oh yeah.  I've kept my part of the bargain all right."

"And .. . the nuisance calls?"

"Oh, bully-boy stuff.  Latimer's his errand boy."

"But why me} Coming through on my phone?"

He said, shame-faced, "I got them, too, Moggy.  Calls."

She stared at him and pushed herself up on one elbow to see his face
more clearly.  "You never told me that."

"Didn't want to worry you."  His brusqueness had given way to a sort of
misery.

"But..  ."  She bowed her head for a moment while she caught her
breath.  "Is there anything else you haven't told me?"

He shook his head and putting a hand on her shoulder caressed it
softly.  "It's been a dreadful time, Moggy.  Not being able to tell you
the half of it."

"But it would have been far, far better if you'd told me.  Far
better."

"Not too late now?"

And still she hung her head.

"Moggy - I'm sorry.  I'm really sorry."

She looked up to find him smiling contritely, the child asking for
forgiveness.  When this didn't produce an effect he breathed, "Oh,
Moggy..  ."  He touched her hair and his eyes took on the liquid glint
that in the dim days of uncomplicated happiness had so often formed a
prelude to love-making.

He guided her head back to the pillow and they lay side by side, faces
inches apart, caught in the stillness of the night and in the awareness
of each other.  It was astonishing to have forgotten the force of this
stillness, the slow deepening of sensation, the closeness that was all
the more potent because their bodies were not quite touching.  But
forgotten it she had, partly from a need to protect herself from the
ache of rejection, partly because no amount of remembering could ever
do justice to it.  She had wanted this moment for so long, had fixed
her hopes on it so unquestioningly, that now ... As he murmured the
endearments that were the first way marks along the familiar path, she
felt something stall inside her, she was caught up by a huge emptiness.
Her body responded with a host of old and new sensations, some
mechanical, some lost for ever, some that would need to be
reinterpreted or re-learned.  But her mind was somewhere else, floating
in a sea of loss that had no name.

Chapter Fourteen

CATHERINE WAS ready and waiting by the front door in her long coat and
scarf when she heard the car halt in the road outside and the sound of
brisk footsteps on the pavement.  Reaching up to slip the latch, she
saw in the early gloom the face of Mike, the driver who'd taken her to
the airport for the flight to Dublin.  He held the door open for her as
she levered herself upright and made her way out, then, following her
directions, locked up and slid the keys into her pocket.

It was four o'clock and already pitch dark.  There was a cold snapping
wind, a hint of snow.  Her breath vaporised and was sucked away into
the murky swirl of the streetlights.

Mike helped her off the pavement; she wasn't yet so confident with
crutches that she could swing them forward from one level to another
and be absolutely sure her legs would follow.  He saw her into the car,
understanding immediately how this must be done.  She thought how they
all followed a type, these people who worked for Terry Devlin, willing,
efficient and taciturn.

Before setting off, Mike passed her an evening newspaper, and she
thought at first that he meant her to read something about the trial,
but when she searched the news pages it was to find nothing but
blizzards in the east, snowstorms in the north and the doom merchants
blaming the early winter on global warming.  She flicked through the
paper once again, but if there was anything about the case it must have
been very small.  At the start of the trial the papers had carried
reports of the prosecution's opening case under extravagant headlines,
the most restrained of which was "Burglar accused of throwing TV girl
from landing'.  Reading these accounts -all with a sensational slant,
all containing errors of fact she'd had the impression of reading about
a fictional character loosely connected to herself by name and when
they got it right by age, a person who'd been constructed from a series
of stereotypical images to form a more digestible version of herself.
Redrawn in this way, she had become 'beautiful', her career as a
'popular presenter' had been 'blossoming', she was newly married to a
'dynamic entrepreneur', and of course she was 'paralysed'.  It was like
viewing herself through the wrong end of a telescope: she saw a person
who was diminished and indistinct.

At the mansion block, Doyle must have been looking out for them because
the moment they drew up he came scuttling out like a crab, head tucked
down, shoulders hunched against the wind, to open her door.  She
replied to his greeting absent-mindedly, because her attention had been
caught by the sight of Fergal emerging from the entrance.

"How are you, Catherine?"  he said, coming forward to help her up the
steps.

"They haven't locked you away then, Fergal?"

He cast her a small admonitory frown, as though it were inappropriate
to make light of such things.  In the lobby he said rather formally,
"I'm glad you telephoned.  Had you been trying for long?"

"For two or three days, off and on.  In the rush I lost your mobile
number."

"I was away in Dublin, seeing my mother."

"The police they've finished with you then, have they?"

"I believe so."

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them that it was a mistake."

"And what sort of a mistake, may I ask?"

He didn't reply until the lift had arrived.  "I told them," he said in
a considered voice, 'that it was a private matter."

She held her tongue with difficulty.  Once in the lift, however, she
asked firmly, "And the man following me?"

"I know nothing of anyone following you, Catherine."

"No?"  She would have argued with him, because in recent weeks she had
learnt to question all facts offered to her by way of explanation, but
something held her back.  She realised, with mild surprise, that it was
a belief in his honesty.  "Oh, well," she sighed, "I was never sure
there was anyone anyway."

The lift stopped, the door opened, Fergal held a hand over the sensor
to stop it from closing again.  His lugubrious face took on an
expression of great solemnity and some discomfort.  "I have to tell you
though, Catherine, that there was someone watching over you in the
night.  The man outside your house -I can only offer my sincere
apologies that the fool should have alarmed you and caused you
distress."  With this speech, Fergal himself became almost agitated.
"He was meant to stay in the car, to keep his distance.  He disobeyed
his instructions.  He was dismissed immediately."

There was a long moment in which Catherine couldn't speak, except to
breathe in a tone of incredulity, "My God."

The silence was broken by a sharp buzz as someone tried to summon the
lift.  Fergal stepped out and, restraining the door once more, helped
Catherine onto the landing.  The door closed with an impatient whir.

"Terry asked you to set it up, did he?"  Catherine asked with iron
calmness.  "This watchT

"Yes."

"How long has it been going on?"

"It was simply for those few days.  While you were on your own in the
house."

"You knew I was on my own?  But how did you She broke off as the answer
came to her.  Ben had gone to Poland; he must have gone with Terry's
knowledge, perhaps even his blessing, to sort out this business of
theirs, or to raise money, or ... But she had tired of trying to
understand the crazy world of Ben's dealings.  "But why put a man
outside?"  she asked.

Then, as her anger began to goad her more fiercely, she repeated with
indignation, "Why?"

"To watch over you.  Nothing more, Catherine."

"But the reason, Fergal.  Why should you want to do that?  What am I
saying?  I mean, of course, why should Terry want to do that?  To spy
on me?"

"Never to spy, Catherine.  Never that."  Fergal spoke with the sadness
of misunderstanding.  "It was merely to make sure you came to no
harm."

"But who would want to harm me?  Tell me!  Do you know of someone who
wants to harm me?  Do you, Fergal?"  All pretence of calm left her
then, and she exclaimed bitterly, "Why, oh why do I feel that I'm the
last to be told anything!  Why do I feel that I'm being treated like a
child!  Or worse like a nothing, a nobodyl'

Fergal said placatingly, "I myself am not aware of any particular
person who wishes to harm you, Catherine."

"But Terry knows of someone perhaps?  Is that it?  Is it?"  She
snorted, "But I suppose you would have to get his permission to answer
that!"  With this retort, she turned perilously fast, maintaining her
balance only by a panicky jolting move of one crutch, and started her
unwieldy progress towards the flat.

Reaching the bend in the passage, she saw Maeve standing in the open
doorway of number twenty, so still that Catherine felt sure she must
have been there for some time and heard her spat with Fergal.  Maeve
came forward tentatively, hands out as if to embrace Catherine, before
losing her nerve and coming to a sudden halt with her hands clasped
tightly together.  "Come in," she whispered at the floor, before
leading the way.

Catherine glanced back, but there was no sign of Fergal.  Watching,
presumably, and waiting.

An elderly tortoiseshell trotted determinedly into the flat just ahead
of Catherine.  Maeve shooed him into the kitchen with a brief awkward
smile before gesturing Catherine towards the sitting room.

"Oh, Catherine, how I've been dreading this moment," she said, taking
Catherine's coat.  "And how I've wished to talk to you for so long."

Once Catherine was settled in an armchair, Maeve seemed to lose what
small amount of confidence she might have had.  Wringing her hands, she
cast around in desperation.  "Oh, there's tea," she said breathlessly.
"I made some tea.  Will you?"  As she pointed jerkily towards a nearby
table Catherine saw that her hand was trembling.

"Thank you," Catherine said formally.

Maeve went to the side table and moved to pick up the teapot, then the
milk, then the teapot again, before appearing to forget why she was
there.  As her hand paused indecisively in midair, the rest of her also
seemed to be in imminent danger of stalling.  She swayed slightly and
gasped.

"Why don't you sit down?"  Catherine suggested.  "We could have tea
later."

Blinking rapidly, Maeve half turned and, taking this in at last, gave a
dazed nod.  It was another few seconds before she managed to unlock her
limbs and manoeuvre herself to a chair.

"Are you all right?"

She whispered, "Yes, I... Forgive me.  I... stupid .. ."

Appearing to remember some instruction she had been given for just such
an occasion, she closed her eyes and took a long slow breath, holding
on to it for several seconds before exhaling at the same measured rate.
She did this twice before opening her eyes again.  "I forget to
breathe," she gasped.  "Then I breathe too much.  Hyperventilation.  It
makes me feel faint."

With her transparent skin she looked even paler than in the rose
garden, and, if anything, thinner, though this may have been the effect
of her clothes, a black ribbed sweater that clung to her body and a
long straight skirt through which her hip bones protruded in sharp
crescents.  Without make-up, her wide-set eyes appeared to float in her
face, adding to her air of distraction.

Pressing a hand to her chest, appearing to recover a little,

she managed to say, "The trial Fergal said the verdict's due any
minute."

"They thought today.  But now it'll be tomorrow.  Probably."

Maeve absorbed this slowly.  "Aha.  And you yourself, Catherine," she
asked in her soft whispering voice, 'did you have to go to the court
and appear?"

Suppressing her impatience, Catherine answered mildly, "They didn't
need me there.  Or rather, I told them I wasn't going, so they had no
choice but to manage without me.  They had Ben, of course.  He gave
evidence."

Again Maeve pondered this for some time, and again Catherine had to
curb her restlessness.

"And what's going to happen at the trial?"  Maeve asked in the same
halting voice.  "Will he be sent to prison?"

"Will he be sent to prison?"  Catherine repeated vaguely, as though she
hadn't given this much thought.  "I think, all in all, from what people
tell me, reading between the lines probably not."

"Oh .. . Oh!  I'm so very sorry."

"It doesn't bother me."

Maeve searched Catherine's face in open bewilderment.  "You don't
mind?"

"I mind, yes.  But I'm not going to let it rule my life."

"But, Catherine, I don't understand why won't he go to prison?"

"He has an alibi.  Apparently it's rather a good one."

"Oh.  But is that enough?  How can that be enough?"

Catherine shrugged.

"What a pity no one saw him!"  she declared with sudden passion.

Catherine said drily, "Quite."

With a surge of colour, Maeve stared hastily at the floor and became
stranded once more in a world where she could neither breathe nor
speak.

Catherine prompted firmly, "So .. . this flat, Maeve it isn't yours?"

Maeve looked startled by the question, but also relieved.

"No," she agreed meekly, "This flat is Dadda's.  Mine's next door.  I
mean it used to be mine, when I was here."

"And you phoned from there?"

She whispered, "Sometimes, yes."

"Why me, Maeve?  Why not Ben?  It was Ben you wanted, wasn't it?"

"I never meant you any harm, Catherine," she moaned wretchedly. "Never.
 Please believe me.  Please."

"But you've been' she chose one of the more delicate expressions
'seeing Ben?"

"I wish I didn't mean to I .. ."  Maeve's face contorted, her eyes
gleamed with tears.

"When did it start?"

Her gaze fixed pleadingly on Catherine.  "Oh, it was all over before
your marriage.  I swear.  I swearV

Catherine kept very still.

"That was one thing I could not have done.  Not that!  Never!  No once
you were married!  I promise!  For the rest..  ."  She bowed her head.
"I cannot justify anything to you.  Not a single thing.  What I did was
wicked, utterly wicked.  When I think back now, I can't believe that I
could have behaved in that way, telling myself I was doing no harm,
knowing full well that I was doing dreadful harm to everybody, to the
Lord, to myself, to ... you.  I can only say that I seemed to lose all
power over myself, that I couldn't seem to stop myself, or to fight my
way free.  It's not enough to say that though, is it?  You can always
stop yourself if you try hard enough!  I just couldn't couldn't stop."
She sank forward, caging her eyes with rigid fingers, until her
forehead was virtually resting on her knees.

"And when did it finish?"  Catherine asked in a voice that conceded
nothing.

A gasp.  "That September."

Maeve would have been nineteen then, which pushed Catherine towards the
question: "How long had it been going on?"

Maeve's reply was almost inaudible, and Catherine had to repeat it for
confirmation.  "A year?"  She thought: That would be about right.  By
then she and Ben had been together two years, long enough for him to
welcome a little diversion before settling down to the serious business
of marriage.  And of course the really irresistible attraction of such
a diversion with Terry Devlin's daughter.

"A year .. ."  she murmured again.  It was only with the greatest
effort that she asked, "And ... how did it happen, Maeve?  How did it
start?"

Maeve lifted her head a little.  "It was me.  I... called him."

"Just like that?"

"He'd .. . said to call him.  I knew no one in London.  He said to call
him for lunch and .. ."

"You'd seen him, though.  Somewhere.  Not long before."

"At the races."

Of course, Catherine thought.  The races.  Where it appeared that
everyone in her life was doomed to meet and part.  "And how often did
you see him?"  she asked.

"Perhaps .. . once every two weeks."  Her head was going down again,
her voice fading.

Catherine pondered the questions that sprang into a hurt and saddened
mind.  What did you do?  Where did you go?  When in the day did you
meet?  How many hours did you spend together?  Did he say he cared for
you?  Did he promise to look after you?

Strangely but perhaps not so strangely after all she hoped Ben had been
kind to her.

"What did you want when you phoned the house, Maeve?  Why call?"

Maeve was crying, the tears dripping from her nose and cheeks
unchecked.  "I just wanted him to speak to me," she sobbed.  "To accept
that I still existed, that he couldn't just pretend I wasn't there any
more.  I wanted to make him speak to me that's all!  Oh, it was a
dreadful madness, Catherine a dreadful madness.  I couldn't think of
anything else at all.

Nothing, nothing!  My studies, my friends I did nothing, saw nobody for
weeks and weeks.  All I could think about was making him talk to me!
Just talk to me."  She raised a hand as if to deflect an accusation.
"Oh, don't think for a moment I had any other ideas!  No, no, I knew
he'd never want to see me again, not like that.  No, I just wanted to
... talk, to make him realise .. ."  She struggled to express some
other idea, but gave up with a gesture of hopelessness.

"And your illness?"

"Oh, I wanted to die," she announced matter-of-factly.  "I rejoiced at
the thought of dying.  Lord forgive me, but I hoped and prayed for it.
It was like a terrible darkness all around me, the wish to die.  I
couldn't see my way clear.  I couldn't imagine the darkness going away.
That's what happens when you're very ill you can't see a way clear, you
can't imagine it's ever going to end.  I'd learnt about such things in
college, I knew it was a terrible illness, depression, but you don't
understand it when it's happening to you.  The only thing you know is
that the pain is unbearable.  I realise now that I was in great need of
treatment, that I was very, very ill ill in my body and ill in my mind,
that I needed the right drugs.  I know that now .. ."

Catherine softened a little.  It was impossible to feel angry in the
face of such unhappiness.  "But you almost died, you said.  You were
seriously ill."

"Yes," she answered in a flat voice directed at her knees.  "I hadn't
been eating, I'd lost weight, too much weight.  And when I got ill, I
didn't go to the doctor.  I never thought... It didn't seem important,
you know?  It was only when I got a fever.  Even then I didn't think to
tell anyone.  And the next thing I knew I was in the hospital."  She
finished this speech as she had begun it, in the same measured
delivery.

Catherine let the silence draw out before asking, "And me, Maeve?  Why
did you make the calls to me?"

"I thought I thought She started again.  "I was beyond reason,
Catherine, beyond reason ... I thought that we might meet, you and I,
that we might talk .. . Oh, not that I was going to say anything to
you.  No, no not a word.  No, I simply thought that if we talked, then
.. ."  Her voice faded again in shame or disbelief..  .. "I might just
see him."

This brought a parallel memory to Catherine, of a time when she'd been
young and impressionable and had formed a mercifully brief obsession
for an older man she'd met at a polo match.  He was beautiful and rich
and amusing; in the short time before she realised he was also
self-indulgent, lazy and unkind she'd waited in for his calls, caught
up in a frenzy of hope.

She murmured, "On the phone once, I heard you crying."

"Oh, I didn't mean for that to happen," Maeve protested.  "I always
meant to speak to you, even if it was just to say hello, but I never
could."  She directed a groan of scorn at herself.  "Of course I
couldn't!  It was part of the madness, to think I could talk to you as
if nothing had happened.  Lord help me!"

"But you spoke to Ben sometimes?"

"Yes."

"And?"  she asked with an attempt at lightness.  "What did he say?" She
had to interrupt Maeve's whispered reply to ask her to speak up. "My
hearing," she explained patiently, 'is not so good as it used to be."

"He said he couldn't see me," Maeve said in a voice that was barely
more audible.  "He said it wouldn't be possible."

"So you never saw him?"

"No."

Catherine waited for the rest of it.  It was a while coming, a minute
or more, and arrived obliquely in a flurry of unconnected fragments and
repetitions, told in the same rushed whisper, which she had to strain
to hear.  "Oh, I understood," Maeve began, apparently referring to
Ben's refusal to see her.  "I knew it wasn't possible ... I knew, but
at the same time ... I went to Mauritius, I went to Italy.  But it was
no good, I couldn't bear it.  I only wanted to ... It wasn't that I
expected anything no, no.  But I had this terrible need to ... This,
this She made a gesture of frustration.  "It was as though I had no
room for anything else in my head.  I used to imagine so often, used to
think about it all the time, day and night ... I didn't expect
anything, I just..  ."  She lost her way altogether then.  She pressed
a palm to her forehead.  When she picked up the threads again, it was
with new resolve.  "I wanted my say," she declared, with a sense of
discovery.  "I wanted a proper end to it, a moment I could look back on
and think: That was the end of it and I had my say.  I wanted peace.
That's all.  Peace."  She added bleakly, "Of course, there was nothing
to be said.  And no peace to be had.  But that was how I felt at the
time."

She searched in her sleeve for a handkerchief and blew her nose.  She
was calmer now, and when she continued her story it was in a steadier
voice, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere near the foot of Catherine's
chair.  "I managed to speak to Ben just before you went to France.  Of
course he didn't want to speak to me, to see me, but I begged, I used
every argument, I said it would just be for five minutes.  He finally
agreed.  Just to keep me quiet, of course.  But he agreed.  He said
he'd be back early from France, on the Sunday.  He said you were
staying on longer.  He said he'd call me when he got in.  I knew he
wouldn't, of course.  I knew he'd .. . well, I just knew he wouldn't.
So I decided to wait for him."

She wrapped her arms tightly around her waist, as though to ward off
the cold, before pushing herself onwards.  "I arrived at the house in
the morning and there was no one in.  I went to a coffee place in
Portobello, and came back again, then one of your neighbours kept
looking at me, so I went and had some lunch and came back again.  I
don't know how many times I came back four, five times?  Then .. ." She
stiffened, her voice rose.  "When it was getting dark I thought I saw a
light in the house.  I rang the bell and waited.  And then She glanced
uncertainly at Catherine.  "I looked up and I thought I saw the blind
move.  Oh, I tell you, I've gone through it in my mind time and again! 
Time and again!  And I'm never sure if it really moved or it was a
trick of the light or ... You know how it is when you look up suddenly
and it's almost dark and you're not sure what you've seen. But of
course I was ready to convince myself that it was Ben.  I thought he'd
spotted me and was hiding from me, pretending he wasn't there.  I
pressed on the bell and kept pressing and pressing .. ." Unwrapping her
arms from her waist, she immediately crossed them again over her thin
chest and gripped her upper arms, as though for protection.  "I went
and waited across the street.  I was upset.  I thought -Oh, I was in a
dire state, Catherine.  What can I tell you? Angry.  Wretched.  Crying
my eyes out."

Her voice had risen dangerously, her breath was coming in short gasps,
and it was only by a visible effort that she slowed herself down.  Then
I realised I had to calm myself.  It was no good being in a state like
that.  If it was him in there, I didn't want him to see me like that.
Hysterical, pathetic.  So I went to the pub round the corner and
cleaned myself up and dried my face and had a glass of wine for some
courage.  It must have been about fifteen, twenty minutes before I got
back.  Then .. . well..  ."  She made a small agonised gesture, a plea
to be spared the last of the story.

But for Catherine the story was everything.  She said implacably, "You
found the front door open?"

"Yes."

Still Maeve hoped for a reprieve, and still Catherine wouldn't give it
to her.  "Was it dark inside?"

"More ... dim," she replied with a droop of resignation.  "There was a
light at the back somewhere.  That's why I didn't see you to begin
with.  I stood in the doorway and called out.  Not loudly, just a sort
of hello.  I called several times, then I plucked up courage to go in.
And then .. ."

"You saw me."

The tears had returned silently.  "It was like the most terrible
nightmare in the world to see you there.  The blood oh, the blood!  It
was like a black lake.  I thought you were dead.  I felt sure you were
dead!"  A shudder snatched at her body.

"But I wasn't."

She closed her eyes at the memory of her relief.

"And then?"

"Then .. . oh, I wish I could tell you I did everything possible for
you, everything I was trained to do!  I wish I could say I went through
all the right procedures!  But my mind was in a state.  I couldn't
think.  It was like a dream I didn't feel I was there at all.  I can't
remember very much .. . Everything was all mixed up.  I was crying and
carrying on.  I felt it was all my fault, Catherine.  I felt somehow I
was to blame!  And the blood all I could see was the blood.  There was
so much of it!  I was desperate to stop it.  Desperate.  I tried
hankies ... I tried anything I could find.  Eventually I don't know how
long it was I began to come out of it, to wake up, to think about what
I should do.  Finally I went and turned on a light and felt your pulse.
I knew I mustn't move you at least I knew that!  I knew I mustn't even
straighten your head.  But Catherine I completely forgot to check your
pupils and your breathing and your airways and to make sure you weren't
choking.  I completely forgot!"  She cried in disgust, "Why did I ever
think I could make a nurse!  It was madness to think I could ever be a
nurse!"

Refolding the handkerchief in trembling fingers, she used it to rub the
tears ferociously from her cheeks.  "Then Fergal arrived.  He was
everything that I was not.  Practical and calm.  He phoned for the
ambulance.  He did all the things I should have done checked your
airways, your breathing.  He went upstairs and found Ben and checked on
him as well.  Fergal is one of those people there is nothing he can't
do."

A growing listlessness crept over her.  Her grip on her arms loosened,
her hands dropped, she settled back in her chair and closed her eyes
momentarily as her head sank against the cushion.  "Fergal told me to
go and wait in the car.  He said he'd deal with everything else.  I
wanted to stay, I was desperate to stay, but he made me go.  He said it
wouldn't do any good if I was still there when the ambulance arrived.
He said it would only make things difficult for everyone.  That's what
I mean," she said wonderingly, 'he thinks of everything."

"But, Maeve, why was Fergal there in the first place?  What brought
him?"

"Why?"  Maeve echoed as if this should have been obvious.  "Oh," she
breathed with a show of understanding, 'because of Dadda!  Dadda had
told him to keep an eye on me.  To follow me, really.  Fergal was there
to watch over me."

Another person to be watched over.  But the deeper realisations came to
Catherine in slow stages, first as small nudges of suspicion, then as
lurches of shock and comprehension.  "Fergal was there all day?"

"Oh no, he didn't come until that minute.  No, I fooled him into
thinking I'd gone to the doctor and then out with a friend.  No, it was
only when I didn't come back .. ."

"But he knew where to come?  He knew where to find you?"

She gave a single nod.

"He knew about Ben?"

Catherine missed her murmured reply, but then the answer was written in
her expression.

"And your father did he know too?"

She nodded again, miserably.

Catherine's heart squeezed coldly.  "When did he find out about you and
Ben?"

Maeve's expression was full of pain.  She didn't answer.

"When did he find out?"  Catherine repeated with quiet insistence.

"When I was ill," Maeve breathed.

"He knows the full story?"

Her frown said yes.

At this, a whole succession of possibilities cascaded into Catherine's
mind, one building on another, each more disturbing than the one
before.  At each realisation she pricked with fresh anger and
mortification.  He had known!  He had known all along!  She pictured
the scene at Morne, the tour of the garden, the lunch, and all she
could think was: He looked at me and he knew!  And when he wrote all
those letters he had known then too.  The letters that had given her
such secret pleasure, which she had looked forward to each week this
knowledge had infected every word.  And in the midst of this long rocky
storm of feeling, one thought wedged firmly in her mind.  A father does
not forgive the man who takes his daughter's innocence.

Catherine picked up her shoulder bag to leave.  "One thing, Maeve.  The
ambulance men found some panties under my head.  They were yours, were
they?  You put them there to stop the bleeding?"

Maeve stared aghast.  "Panties .. . Did I..  .?  Oh .. . Oh."  She
flushed and dropped her head.  "Oh, I didn't realise.  Oh .. ."

"There were yours?"  Catherine persisted.

"Yes, I ... always have some ... in case ... in my bag ... in case of
... you know .. . emergencies."

Catherine assumed she meant emergencies of the feminine kind, and
wondered at her fastidiousness.  "And the scarf, Maeve whose blood was
on it?"

"Scarf?"  she repeated dully.

"It was yours, wasn't it?"

Again the confusion, the flush of what looked like shame.

"Whose blood was on it?"  Catherine repeated.

"It was mine."

"You'd hurt yourself?"

Her eyes slid away, her voice faded to a whisper.  "No ... it was from
before."

Catherine waited silently.

"From .. . when I was bleeding and ... he cared for me."

Catherine couldn't disguise the incredulity in her voice.  "That was
why you kept it?"

Maeve nodded silently, with a heartbreaking tenderness, which Catherine
could only gaze at with a kind of awe.

"I'll be going now," she said to break the spell.

Maeve jumped to the front of her seat in renewed agitation.  "Oh,
Catherine I'm so very sorry for everything!  I feel it's all my fault.
I feel I'm to blame for everything!"

"Why?  Don't be silly."

"But if I'd got there sooner.  If I'd stayed outside the house and
waited.  I can't stop thinking, If only, if only."

"There was nothing you could have done."

"But I might have seen him!  I might have stopped him!  I can't help
going over it again and again.  I can't help thinking that I must have
caused it to happen ... I can't explain.  There was even a time when I
thought She started guiltily.

Catherine asked quietly, "What was it you thought?"

Maeve gave a strange laugh.  "Oh, nothing!"

But her fresh open face was incapable of concealment, and Catherine
read something there that made her insist, "Tell me."

"Oh, it was just..  . When I was in a state a real state!  - I thought
really, it's nonsensical' she made a face of disbelief "I thought it
was Dadda!"

Catherine held her expression.  "In what way?"

"Oh ..."  Again, Maeve tried to brush it aside.  "That he wanted to see
Ben hurt.  That he'd sent someone."

"Does he do that?  Send people?"

"Oh no!  No!"  In her horror, Maeve kept repeating this.  "No, no.  It
was just me.  I was imagining it!  No, Dadda would never do a thing
like that!  No, never.  It was just the madness in my head."

The moment Catherine began to manoeuvre herself upright, Maeve leapt to
her feet.

"Oh, Catherine, I'm so terribly sorry for everything."

"Don't feel sorry about the accident," Catherine insisted.  "You
probably saved my life, you and Fergal.  Someone else might have tried
to move me and succeeded in finishing me off."

"I didn't even check your airways," Maeve sighed inconsolably.  "I
didn't check your breathing.  Oh, I'm no use, Catherine.  No use to
anyone!"

When Catherine kissed her cheek, she had the sense of kissing a
forsaken child.

In the car Mike said, "There was an item on the news, Mrs.  Galitza.  I
don't know if you've heard '

"About the trial?"

"Yes, the man, he '

"Not now, Mike, thank you."

A surprised pause, before he said humbly, "Right ho."

She wasn't ready for more; not yet.  There was only so much that could
be absorbed at one time.  She needed to catch her breath, to make sense
of her emotions.  Her heart was racing; her heart was icy.  She felt
calm; she felt wild with bitterness.  She kept thinking: How could he?
How could he betray me so deeply?  And then, almost as passionately:
How could he destroy Maeve?  She had no idea what she felt for him any
more.  She loved him, she despised him; she yearned for him, she felt
sick at the thought of him; he was achingly familiar to her, he was a
stranger, unnerving and suspect.  One minute she strived to forgive
him, to make allowances for his troubled nature; the next she wanted to
be rid of him for ever.  She hated to give up, but she knew it was
essential to give up sometimes if one was to hold on to some shred of
self-respect.

And all the time the facts kept racketing around her head, stinging and
tormenting her: the whole year that it had lasted, the very year that
she and Ben had been planning their future together, gone
house-hunting, found and bought; the subterfuge that Ben had exercised
so flawlessly, the late meetings, some of which couldn't have been
business meetings at all, the evenings when he'd reported on his day
and must have reported lies; the declarations of love and devotion that
had meant whatever had suited him at the time, nothing, something,
everything.

But if the facts were hard to bear, the unknown was worse, because
there was no stopping your thoughts then, the only limits were the
limits of imagination, and just then it felt as though her imagination
had no limits at all.  She saw the two of them together, she saw Ben's
foxy grin, she saw Maeve's childlike gaze, and for a while she let the
images run on painfully, in the hope they might burn themselves out.

The car swept down from the overpass towards Padding-ton: ten minutes
to home.  Ten minutes to prepare.  One morning recently, Catherine had
woken to a vivid nightmare in which she'd been struggling in deep
water, her legs useless because they were dragged down with weights.
Lying there in half sleep, she'd thought dramatically, with a surge of
self-pity: That's how it is for me I'm drowning by degrees.  I can't
survive any more!  But in the full light of day she'd seen her
situation rather more prosaically.  You could always survive, so long
as you took things slowly, with time to catch your breath in between.

Well, she was getting her breath back now, and as the car skirted the
north side of Paddington Station, she had the strength to say, "Sorry,
Mike what was it you heard on the radio?"

He met her eye in the mirror to check that he hadn't misheard.  "There
was an item about the trial of the burglar, ma'am."

"And what did they say?"

Again, the anxious glance in the mirror.  "Not guilty of the GBH,
ma'am.  Guilty of something lesser."

"Thank you, Mike."

In the remaining minutes before reaching home she had imposed some
semblance of calm.  She thought: I'm getting as bad as Ben, all cover
and pretence.

At the house, someone must have been looking out for her because the
front door swung open as Mike helped her up onto the pavement.

It was Emma who ran out, crying, "We've been worried sick about you,
Cath!  Where've you been?"

"Is Ben here?"

"And your father.  And Denise Cox.  Where've you been?  I got here
sharp at four and you weren't here!  You gave me heart failure,
Cath!"

"I left a note for Ben saying I was going out."

"Well, no one told me."  In the frosty air Emma's breath plumed
sharply, like steam.  "But come on in, darling it's so cold."

Denise and her father stood just inside the door, solicitously, like
mourners at a funeral.

"I heard the news," Catherine declared before she crossed the
threshold.

"I'm sorry," Denise said, stepping back to let her pass.  "Sometimes
these things happen, and you never know what you could have done
differently."

"Darling heart," her father cried, wrapping her in a tortured embrace,
'there's no damned justice!  None at all!"

Catherine sat down to take off her coat, and remarked in the same brisk
tone as before, "I forgot to ask is he out and walking free?"

"One year suspended," Denise said.  "For the burglary.  We lost the GBH
on the alibi."

"The damned alibi!"  Duncan muttered furiously.  "The jury swallowed it
hook, line and sinker.  Believe anything, these people!"

"Emma?"  Catherine called.  "I'd love some tea."

Emma pulled the cigarette she was about to light hastily out of her
mouth.  "Of course, darling," she agreed effusively and hurried away.

Catherine laid a hand on her father's arm.  "Pa, would you get my
wheelchair for me?  I'm too tired to walk any more today."

"Darling girl, of course!"  Clutching her shoulder, he compressed his
mouth in a grimace of unbearable pride.  "Walking!  All this walking! I
tell you!"  He flung a look at Denise, inviting her to share a moment
of celebration.

"Just explain it to me," Catherine asked Denise once Duncan was out of
earshot.

"He admitted burglary, but sixteen hours earlier.  He said he'd broken
in, taken the valuables.  But that was it.  He said he'd left the door
open and unlatched, and anyone could have walked in off the street, and
presumably did.  When you arrived home at ten on the Sunday night, he
had these two witnesses to swear that he was drinking with them in a
pub in Soho.  They were independent witnesses, that's what really swung
it in Pavlik's favour.  Neither knew him particularly well.  No axe to
grind.  And definite about the date."  She made a face as if to say,
what can one do?  "And the legal team this top QC they made it
watertight."

"I'm sure they did."

A door slammed above and Ben came running down the stairs, wearing his
harassed face.  "Christ, the phone it hasn't stopped."  Twisting to a
halt in front of Catherine, he adjusted his expression to one of grave
concern.  "Denise has told you?"  He looked to Denise for confirmation
before crouching lightly at Catherine's feet.  "What a bummer, eh,
darling?  What an absolute bastard."  He took her hands in his and held
them delicately, with a sort of reverence.  "Have to look on it as the
closing of a chapter, I'm afraid.  Have to look ahead to new and better
things."

Catherine always forgot how perfectly he could match his mood to the
occasion.  "New and better things?"  She laughed darkly and
unnaturally.

A flicker of doubt crossed Ben's face before he too laughed, falsely.
Duncan, appearing with the wheelchair, lifted his head enthusiastically
to the sound.  "That's right, damnation to them all!"

Denise was pulling her coat on.

Catherine said jauntily, "This is goodbye then!"

"The case will stay open, you know.  For as long as it takes," she
said.  "We won't give up on it."  And promptly spoilt the effect by
dropping her eyes.

After she'd gone, they sat in the sitting room to drink the tea that
Emma had made and few wanted.  Duncan opted for a stiff whisky.

"Sun safely over the yardarm, I think.  Not drinking alone, am I?  What
about you, Ben?"

Ben flicked a thoughtful glance at Catherine.  "No, Duncan, not for the
moment."

"Emma?"  Duncan asked with mock despair.

"No, I'm going to stick with tea," Emma said, directing a comp licit
smile at Catherine, as if to show that she was prepared to stand by her
even in the smallest things.

Securely ensconced in an armchair with his glass cradled to his chest,
Duncan launched forth on the subject of juries and their deplorable
gullibility, and a favourite lament the lack of education among the
populace as a whole.  Emma, on the other hand, was more inclined to put
the jury's failure down to the modern practice of passing the buck, of
ducking every type of responsibility that society asked of them,
responsibility for themselves, their families, their health and
welfare.  Citizenly responsibilities came way down their list of
priorities, in fact so close to rock bottom as made no difference.  Now
it was a who-cares-and-stuff-everybody-else society.  Most people's aim
was to get by with the minimum bother.  The jury had found it easier to
let Pavlik off than go through the mental effort of weighing up the
evidence.

Duncan waved his glass airily and proclaimed that this proved his point
precisely, it was the fault of appalling educational standards.

And all the while, Catherine gazed out into the black, dead garden and
felt Ben watching her.

Finally, when Duncan and Emma had heartily agreed on the underhand
tactics of the defence lawyers and the CPS's lamentable
cross-examination of the alibi witnesses, who'd obviously been put up
to it you could tell by the shiftiness in their eyes a silence fell. By
chance, everyone looked at Catherine at the same moment.

"I want to thank you for your support," she said, 'for everything
you've done for me.  But now I want you to go."

Emma must have caught something in her tone because as she bent to kiss
her goodbye she said, "You all right, darling?"

"Me?"  Catherine declared in a voice that was pitched too high.  "I'm
fine!"

Duncan, shielded by good intentions, oblivious to the finer nuances of
atmosphere, beamed happily at her.  "There's my girl!  Leave you to a
cosy evening, my darling.  Just know that we all love you.  In my case,
to absolute bits!"

He planted a loud kiss on her cheek.  As he drew back, Catherine saw a
face on which life and love and loss had left no mark, and could only
envy him.

"Well!"  Ben said a little too brightly once he had seen them out.
"Would you like that drink now, Moggy?"

"You have one."

Unable to gauge her mood, he eyed her warily.  "Don't want to drink
alone."

"I've gone on the wagon, so I'm no good to you."

"Is there something wrong?"  he asked solicitously.  "I mean, is it the
trial or something else?"  He sat down in the chair next to her and,
sitting forward with his arms resting on his knees, offered a cautious
smile.

The games that she might play.  The traps that she might lay for him
before delivering up the series of ugly little truths that would mark
the point of no return.  The temptation was there, part of her wanted
the satisfaction of humiliating him, yet the victories would be cheap,
the process ant agonising and at the end of the day she yearned for
peace.

"It's over," she said a little unsteadily.  "Between you and me.  It's
all finished.  I know about Maeve.  I know about the phone calls
everything.  And I don't think there can be any going back, do you?  So
I'd like you to leave.  I'd like you to move out."

For a full five seconds he didn't move.  His eyes stayed fixed on hers.
She felt he was weighing up the various approaches he might take and
finding them all wanting.

"Oh, Moggy, I'm so terribly sorry," he cried at last, in a racked and
hoarse voice, and she realised that he had decided on the full and
frank approach, the placing of his head on the block.  "What can I say?
It was unforgivable.  I could tell you it was a last fling, I could say
that I called a halt long before the wedding but she threatened to kill
herself I was terrified that she would kill herself I could make a
dozen different excuses, but He paused with a deep contrite sigh.  "In
the end there are no excuses, are there?  It was totally wrong."  He
dropped his head onto his hands, he gasped miserably.  Raising his head
again, he looked at her imploringly.  "Moggy, if I could undo it all I
would.  Believe me.  I've never stopped loving you.  Never!  In fact, I
know this sounds crazy' in the tiny pause that followed she had the
feeling that he was assessing just how crazy it might sound 'but it was
a way of proving to myself how right you were for me, how much I truly
loved you.  It was a sort of confirmation of everything we were aiming
for, if that doesn't sound too insane.  I loved you so much so much! 
but I still had this ridiculous fear of the commitment we were making. 
I mean, marriage is such a huge and daunting thing, isn't it?  And I
thought that a last fling, a last sort of test."  Again the glance,
again the measurement of progress.  She was careful to show nothing in
her face, and this encouraged him to continue in the same vein.  "The
crazy thing is that I knew straight away that it meant nothing nothing
that it was just as I'd thought you were everything to me, Moggy.
Everything.  But by then well, she was being difficult, threatening to
phone, come round, you name it.  Basically to try and ruin our lives."
He slumped a little, he gave a long laboured breath.  "I was weak,
Moggy.  Utterly weak.  I can only say I haven't stopped regretting it
for a single moment ever since."

"You were weak?"

He didn't like that.  His eyes narrowed, his voice took on a note of
self-justification.  "Look, I wanted to be kind to her, I tried my best
to be kind to her, but it was the worst possible thing with someone
like that.  You've no idea she kept phoning and saying she was going to
take mouthfuls of tablets.  She was wildly unstable, absolutely
hysterical.  Someone like that you can't reason with them.  You can't
begin to deal with them."  But the conviction was fading from his
voice.  Standing up, he paced across the room and came back to stand
over her, restless and fretful.  Sitting down again, he declared in a
tone of near despair, "I don't want us to be finished, Moggy!  I don't
want it at all.  I'd be lost without you.  Completely lost.  We make a
great team, you and me!  Admit it, Moggy we're good together!"

He was waiting doggedly for an answer.  She murmured, "I used to think
so, yes."

Grasping at this, he tried his old winning smile, the roguish
half-closed eyes: the handsome devilish son of a gun.  "Could be again,
Moggy."  He ducked his head to catch her gaze.  "No reason why not! You
and me.  Hey," he sang in the soft fluid tone he used to bring her
round to his point of view.

Looking at him, she felt an immense distance.  She thought: It's all a
technique, it's all a game, it means nothing.  And yet like an
autonomic reflex part of her responded, an unbidden sway of the flesh
and the heart.

He covered her hand with his.  She looked down at it, she felt the
warmth of it, and thought: But there can't be any going back.

She murmured, "I'd like to know on the night of the burglary, were you
expecting to see Maeve?"

He pursed his mouth at having to go back to Maeve.  "See her?  Christ,
no."

"But you told her you would."

"What?  No, no, I just told her something anything to get her off the
phone."

"So you weren't expecting her?"

He pulled up his mouth in mystification.  "Christ, no!  Hardly.  Why
would I be expecting her?"

"No, I ... It was just something she said."

He caressed her hand, as if to soften the mood again, and cast her a
hopeful gaze.  "So, Moggy .. ."  Lifting her hand, he bent and kissed
it.  His voice was low and tender again.  "Could be a team again, you
and me.  Hey?  What do you say?"

Taking her silence as a sign of encouragement, he moved forward as if
to embrace her, but she pulled her hand away very deliberately and said
with a tremor of anger, "There's been someone else though, hasn't
there, Ben?  Since Maeve.  In fact -recently."

He sank back onto the edge of his seat.  "What?"  He glared at her
defensively.  "For God's sake, where did you get that idea from?" Then,
with a show of indignation: "No, Moggy -absolutely not.  That's a crazy
idea."

But she had startled him, she knew she had.  As if to underline this,
he repeated in a blustery tone, "No, I'd like to know where you got
that idea from.  Was it that lunch with Rebecca?  That stupid hotel
room?  I told you what that bloody hotel room was about precisely
nothing.  Bloody Casimir and his blonde!  There was no story.  What
more can I say?"  His eyes flashed angrily.

"And the perfume in the bathroom?"

He held her gaze just a little too long, she saw the flicker of
realisation.  "Perfume?"  he responded, too late.  "I don't know
anything about perfume.  What perfume?"  When she didn't say anything,
he repeated angrily, "What perfume?

"It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter!  You've accused me of something and now you won't even
talk about it."

"It's hard to talk when .. ."  She took a steadying breath.  "When
there've been so many lies.  All that time you were seeing Maeve.  The
phone calls.  Saying you were being blackmailed.  Was there any
blackmail?"  she asked wearily.  "No," she added immediately, 'don't
bother to answer that.  It's not important."

"Christ!  You think I'd make up something like that?"  he retorted,
taking the offensive.  "You think I'd pretend I was being taken to the
financial cleaners!  God, I may have done a few things but not that!'
Shooting angrily to his feet, he went across to the drinks tray to pour
himself a whisky.  Glass in hand, he leant back against the table and
said sulkily, "So that's it, is it?  Just write the whole thing off. No
thinking about it, talking it through, giving it time?"

"I don't think there's much point."

He lifted one shoulder, he pushed out his lip in a Gallic gesture of
indifference.  When he drank, the gaze that met hers over the rim of
his glass was blank and cold.

She said, "I might have felt differently if .. ."  Here were the most
painful words of all.  "If I thought you still loved me."

"But I've said so!  I do!"

"I think you've tried very hard, but I think that it's all a terrible
effort for you.  The burglary, the attack .. . we've both changed.  I
know you find it hard to love me as I am now."

"So you don't even believe me when I say I love you!"

"I suppose that's it, yes," she agreed.

"Great!"  he scoffed sarcastically.  "So everything's been a lie, has
it?  All the good times.  All the fun we've had together."

"The fun's over, Ben."

"Well, that sums it up, doesn't it.  You don't want to know.  You're
not interested in even trying!  You're giving up!"

"Yes."

"And just when the going gets tough!"

She said reasonably, "The going got difficult when you began seeing
Maeve."  She suppressed the urge to say, and this other woman.

"The money I mean the money.  This is when I need your support."

"You've had my support.  You'll still have my support so far as the
money goes."

"Fat lot of good," he mumbled.

They didn't look at each other.  The silence stretched out and settled
around them like darkness.

Abruptly, he tossed the rest of his drink back and slapped the glass
down.  "I'm to leave then.  Is that what you want?"

"I think it's best."

"Best?  Best?  Who for, for God's sake?  You don't know what you're
doing, you really don't!"  He had got himself into a strange fury that
was almost like a panic.  "This is going to be the end for me.  And for
this house.  The house'll have to go, you do realise that, don't you?
Don't think we can keep it because we can't!  It'll have to go!"

She shrugged.

"You don't seem to understand what I'm saying."

"I do, it's got nothing to do with MS."

"It's got everything He broke off with a shudder of exasperation.  "You
just don't understand!"

She looked away.  "Apparently not."

He stalked to the door.  "Well, don't blame me, that's all," he flung
back reproachfully.  "Don't bloody say I haven't tried!"

She made herself a proper supper, no half measures.  It was quite a
performance, levering herself up to hook things out of the higher
cupboards, hunting for pans that had been put away in strange places,
but it was occupation, it was therapy, it was all the things that the
unit encouraged.  Occupational therapy, and get the hell on with life
and, if that didn't do the trick, there was always the help line and
the quiet voice of the sister-brother, trained in advice and anodyne
sympathy.

Well, she wanted to get the hell on with life, which at this precise
moment was pasta with tomato and basil sauce, salad with dressing,
freshly made and no modifying the recipe.  She opened a bottle of
vintage burgundy, one Ben had been keeping for a special occasion, and,
pouring a glass, holding it up as if in a toast, made herself a
promise, that if she couldn't stick to the one glass she'd give up
booze altogether, for at least a year, absolutely no cheating, even if
everyone said she was miserable as sin.

She sat at the small table in the kitchen.  Knife, fork, cheapskate
napkin of kitchen paper.  Meal in front of her, glass of wine: a small
cause for celebration.  She turned on the counter-top television and
flicked through the channels.  There was a programme she actually
wanted to see.  She thought: There!  Not so very hard after all.  Only
her jittery stomach threatened trouble.  The first mouthful went down,
however, and stayed down, smoothed by the wine.  Smoothed enormously by
the wine, she thought as the doorbell rang, long and loud.

Her heart lurched and plummeted.  He'd come back.  He couldn't bear to
stay away.  Then she remembered with both relief and disappointment
that he had his key, of course he still had his key: he had no reason
to ring.

Her father, then.  Or Emma.

She sat immobile, wishing the world away.  The bell sounded again, and
still she didn't move.

"Catherine?"  The voice that came drifting down the passage was
muffled, but unmistakably Simon's.

She wheeled herself to the door and, unfastening it, opened it just a
short distance, to show that she was not at home to anyone, not even
friends.

He loomed into the doorway, shoulders hunched high, face pale, looking
frozen or worn out.

She said, "Simon, it's not a very convenient time, I'm afraid."

"Is Ben here?"  he asked.

His eyes gleamed in the half light.  She thought: He's come to
sympathise about the verdict, he wants to wallow in it, chew over every
detail.

"He's out, but..  ."

"I can come in then," he said, gasping a little.

"Another day, Simon.  I've just made supper and then I'm going straight
to bed.  I'm sorry."

"But I must see you," he said with a hint of desperation.  He put a
hand on the edge of the door as if to push his way in and she heard the
rasping of his breath, as though he'd been running.  "Please,
Catherine.  Please."

"Can't it wait?"

"No," he cried urgently.  "There's something I have to tell you.
Something very important!"

He seemed to stagger as he came in, like someone near exhaustion.  When
he turned to face her, she saw that his hair was awry and hanging
damply over his forehead and his spectacles were spotted with moisture.
As he struggled to speak she became aware of the breathlessness
again.

"What is the matter, Simon?"

"I - I've got bad news."

"What is it?"  For a wild moment she thought: It's Ben.  He's hurt.

"Pavlik," he gasped.  "He left court and walked straight into the arms
of Terry Devlin's people!"  He seemed to think she should understand
the implications of this because he waited in agitation for a reaction.
When none came, he cried, "Don't you see?"

Her stomach tightened.  "No."

He began to gabble, "His defence was bought and paid for by Devlin.
Devlin!  I knew there was somebody, I knew there had to be.  Devlin
went and found his alibi for him.  The two men in the pub well, the
police couldn't find them, could they?  Couldn't find them anywhere.
But Devlin did.  Just like that.  Must have put them up to it, mustn't
he?  You see?  Bought and paid for.  And the legal team the solicitor,
the QC all paid for by Devlin!  All part of the deal!  I tell you, he
just walked straight into the arms of that man Latimer!  They just
-walked off together!"

"Slow down," she begged, throwing up both hands.

Fresh damp had sprung onto his forehead, his cheek was jerking so
violently that it brought up the corner of his mouth like a leer.

Beckoning him to follow, she led the way down the passage to the
kitchen and pointed to a chair.  "Sit down."

She fetched a glass and poured him some wine.  "Drink it," she
commanded, 'and start again, please.  Slowly."

He knocked back half the glass, and it seemed to steady him a little.
His eyes hunted around the room before they finally settled somewhere
on the table in front of her.  Between the staccato statements, his
gaze flicked up to hers.  "Devlin paid for Pavlik's defence.  He found
the witnesses, the ones that got him off the charge.  Pavlik's there
with them now, with Devlin's people.  Bought and paid for."

"Are you trying to say .. ."  She paused to get it right.  "Are you
saying that Terry Devlin hired Pavlik to come and break in?"

Simon gazed at her with a bitter expression, and nodded slowly and
deliberately three or four times.  "He was after the papers.  The
papers in the strongbox.  He wanted them.  And he got them."

"Papers," she repeated dully.

Leaning forward, Simon spoke avidly, his eyes glinting behind the
misted glasses.  "The papers that proved Ben was cheating him.  That
Ben had done a secret deal.  That he was stealing all the profit. And..
."  His voice rose to a fierce note.  "The generators?  From Warsaw? 
Ben took an extra ten million and shuffled it on to Bermuda and the
Caymans for his clients in Colombia.  It was dirty money, Catherine. 
Dirty money."  He shivered with disgust.  "The bank codes and transfer
details were in the strongbox, and that's what he wanted, Devlin wanted
the proof.  And he got it!  He got the proof!"

She felt oddly calm, as though all this were happening in another life.
She looked away to the pin board with the display of postcards and
party snaps.  She saw a clipping from the society pages of a
Tatler-style freebie magazine, showing Ben and herself at a wedding.
Mr.  and Mrs.  Ben Galitza, smiling confidently into the future.

"Catherine?  Do you understand what I'm saying?  It was Devlin.
Devlin."

"Yes," she said, "I understand."

Her lack of reaction confounded him, he clutched at her hand, but she
was in the past somewhere, thinking about Ben and Maeve.

When she finally focused on Simon again, it was to say, "You look
terrible.  You mustn't take all this to heart, you know.  It's not the
end of the world."

But he wouldn't have it, there was no consoling him.

"Go home," she said.  "Get some sleep."

"I don't want to leave you."

"I'll be fine."

"What time's Ben coming back?"

"He isn't coming back."

He gasped slightly.  "Then .. . can I guard you again tonight,
Catherine?  Can I watch over you?  It would make me so ... happy."  He
said the word gently, as though in the midst of all his distress he
were trying it out for size and finding it perfect.

Chapter Fifteen

SHE WOKE to the sound of knocking, so faint it might have belonged to
her dream.  After a while it came again, a tentative brush of
fingertips against wood.  In the second or two before she answered,
Catherine placed herself in time, and the previous day came back to her
in a series of interlocking layers, each lit by a stark image: Maeve
bent forward, weeping into her hands; Ben's eyes staring coldly at her
over his drink; and Terry pondering his next move at the massive desk
that her imagination had drawn for him silhouetted against a tall
window.  Truth and lies, but blurring now, and gaining distance.  In
one of those insights that seem so revelational in the waking hours but
always fail to survive the light of day, she decided: The truth is not
so important as the leaving of it behind.

She didn't give Simon any thought until she remembered the knock.

"I've brought up some breakfast," he announced when she called out to
him.

The bedside clock said eight; she was surprised at how long and how
well she had slept.  She ran a hand through her hair and, pulling
herself up against the pillows, told him to come in.

His head came slowly round the door.  "How are you feeling, Catherine?
Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

Encouraged by this, his shoulders appeared.  "Shall I bring the
breakfast in now?"

"Why not?"

He put the tray on the bed and when he straightened up his face was
empty of all expression.  He said, "All safe and sound."  It was a
watchman's report.

"Thank you."

"I found some cranberry juice is that okay?  And a croissant, and some
toast."  He was like a zealous waiter running through a difficult
order.  "I've made both tea and coffee.  I'll drink whichever you don't
want."

There was butter and marmalade.  The tray had a proper cloth, and a
napkin lay folded on one side.  She murmured, "Spoilt."

"Of course.  What else?"  His smile flickered uncertainly.  He glanced
around for a seat, only to change his mind and lean against the door
frame, hands in pockets, in a casual pose that succeeded in making him
look rather stiff.  His clothes were slightly crumpled and his chin was
dark with stubble, but his hair was damped down and neatly combed, his
spectacles were polished.  She had the feeling he'd been up for some
hours.

"I'm sorry about last night," he said in a thick voice.  "Coming out
with everything in such a rush like that.  I must have frightened you.
I'm sorry.  I wasn't thinking straight.  The last thing I wanted was to
frighten you."

It occurred to her that if anyone had been frightened, it had been
Simon, though incensed might have been a better word.

"It was just the shock the complete disbelief," he said, as if to
confirm this.

"Of course."

Straightening up, he moved restlessly towards her.  "And the
powerlessness of seeing it happen under your very nose."

"Forget it.  Really.  I have."

But with Simon, forgetting was never an easy matter.

An evangelical light had come into his eyes, and when he began to talk
it was in a rapid insistent voice that echoed the strange fury of the
previous night.  "You see, I thought I'd hang around after the verdict.
I just thought, I wonder, I wonder.  It was just a hunch, that was all.
Just a feeling that there might be something to see.  Some evidence. 
But never, never, did I think that it'd be so absolutely blatant. 
Latimer was waiting for him right there at the door of the court right
there, Catherine!  Went up and greeted him, then shook the barrister's
hand.  Congratulating him for a job well done, presumably. And Pavlik
over the moon, of course.  The bastard actually laughed. Laughed.  Then
they went off together, him and Latimer.  Obviously all planned, all
set up, because there was a car waiting.  Driver, engine running, the
lot.  Just swept them away.  Gone!"

She picked up the coffee and held it out to him.  He came forward
jerkily, and when he grasped the saucer, the cup rattled.  Stilling it
swiftly with one hand, he met her gaze and finally seemed to read the
message there, that enough was enough, that for her it was too early in
the day for all this, or perhaps too late for any day at all.

"Sorry," he said solemnly.  "Here I am worrying you again.  I didn't
mean to.  Absolutely not..  . Sorry."

His concern touched her because it was so confused and earnest, but
also because it was nice not to wake to an empty house.  She hadn't
been brought breakfast in bed since the early days with Ben.

"Take the coffee," she said.

Settling self-consciously on the edge of the bed, he gave that odd
disjointed laugh of his, the small gasp that came out of nowhere. "No,"
he smiled, trying to make himself come alive, 'what I really wanted to
say what I came up especially to say was how about going away for the
day?  I wasn't planning to do very much work today anyway.  Why don't
we go somewhere?  Give ourselves time away from the madding crowd!  Go
somewhere marvelous for lunch.  The Manoir, perhaps.  And a drive in
the country.  Perhaps to the coast.  Or' he took a stab at spontaneity
"Paris!  How about Paris?"

"It's a lovely thought, Simon, but I've so much to do.  Money to earn
for a start.  Rather urgently, in fact."

"But it's just one day, Catherine.  The weather's cleared up a bit.
It's much warmer than it looks.  Please."  There was a feverishness in
his pleading.

"It's tempting, it really is, but another time."

"But tomorrow might never come," he said with intense seriousness.  "We
could go on postponing the important things for ever, Catherine for
ever and wake up one day to find we'd done none of the things we really
wanted to do!"

"Don't remind me," she agreed lightly.

"Please, Catherine.  It would be so perfect.  The whole day together.
Please."  Then, with a drop of his head and a quick upward glance: "I
do have a slight ulterior motive."  He said it with the air of laying
himself at her mercy, but also with a gleam of excitement.

"Oh yes?"

"There's a house.  Just the other side of Oxford.  I want you to come
and look at it with me."

She was slow on the uptake.  "What house?  Why?"

"A place I want to buy."  His eyes were glittering now, he put his
coffee cup hurriedly on the tray.  "A stunning Queen Anne house.  Would
you come and see it with me?  Would you, Catherine?  It looks perfect
from the photographs.  I haven't fixed a viewing, but if the agent
can't arrange anything in time I thought we could see it from the
outside, get an idea, ask if we can at least see the gardens.  The
gardens, Catherine they look amazing.  Though you mightn't think so, of
course!  You might think they're all wrong, that they need a lot of
work.  But there's a knot garden and a walled garden and a rose garden,
and a lake and '

"A lake!  God, it sounds enormous."

"No, no," he retreated immediately.  "The lake's really quite small, I
think.  And the house well, it's got eight bedrooms, so not too large.
Then there're the outhouses and two cottages.  And the grounds fifteen
acres in all."

"And just the other side of Oxford?  But, Simon, you're talking really
serious money for a house like that.  Two million at least."

"Quite a bit, yes."

She made a face of incredulity.

"Oh, I can manage it all right," he said with a touchy modesty.  "I've
been doing rather well on my own.  More than well.  Never seem to get
round to spending it."  Then, hastily, as though fearing some loss of
momentum: "You'll tell me what you'd like changed, won't you,
Catherine?  In the house and the garden?"

Still absorbing the surprise of his new-found prosperity, she missed
the reference to the house.  "Is this a commission then?"  she teased
mildly.  "Are you signing me on?"

"In a way," he said enigmatically, and, looking away hastily, wouldn't
be drawn further.

In the terrace off Eaton Square the morning light arrived early,
reflected by the immaculate white stucco and sparkling windows.  For
the rich, even the winter dawn looms brighter.

In the car, Terry sat hunched in the back and thought longingly of
home.  In his mind even the overdressed house at Foxrock had taken on
an emotional appeal out of all proportion to its real place in his
affections.  He found himself thinking with overt fondness of the heavy
da masks and drapes and curlicues, of the Hollywood bathrooms and gilt
taps, because it was there, in his memory at least, that he had lived
simply with Maeve, and, God willing, hoped to live as simply again.  He
felt the overblown yearning of the exile stuck in an alien land by an
interminable and futile war.  With luck he should be back in Dublin by
evening, yet each moment he had to stay in London was a moment too
long, because his heart had gone out of the fight, and his soul too,
and the duties that faced him this morning seemed irksome and
repugnant.  The campaign had gone on too long, the victory had been
short and unsatisfactory.  He was tired, but most of all he was tired
of the struggle, which for him was tantamount to declaring a tiredness
for life.

In the front of the car, Fergal murmured something to Mike then fell
silent again, bowing his head contemplatively.

As eight came and went, Terry kept his eyes doggedly on the portico of
number fifty-three, waiting for the swing of the black door.  A
succession of people emerged or gained admittance from the adjoining
houses, City men and domestics and decorators, and the occasional
well-dressed young woman, bolting off to work.  And still Terry watched
the one door, with patience, because he knew it was about to be repaid,
but also with exasperation, because it was typical of Ben Galitza to
make him wait.

It was ten past when Ben finally ambled out and paused on the top step.
In the short unguarded moment before Fergal got out of the car and
proclaimed their whereabouts, Ben's mouth was compressed sourly, he
wore a troubled frown, and Terry found himself thinking: Good!  I hope
you're hurting!

At the sight of Fergal, a mask of indifference slipped over Ben's face.
He sauntered over and got into the back of the car without meeting
Terry's gaze, which was probably just as well because Terry wasn't
attempting to hide anything in his expression just then.

"Charming," Ben declared sarcastically, without preamble.  "But then
you have absolutely no shame, have you, Terry?  Your instincts
automatically reduce you to the lowest of the low because it's all you
know."

Terry watched Mike close the car door behind him and walk round the
bonnet to join Fergal on the pavement.

"So, you've had me followed and now you think you've proved a point,"
Ben continued caustically, addressing the windscreen.  "You're going to
call in the guarantee and you're going to destroy my life, and I hope
it brings you nothing but misery because you'll be wrong, you see.  Not
that you'll be interested in hearing anything to do with the truth, of
course.  Oh no, because you'll have your mind made up.  Because you had
your mind made up right from the beginning."  He gave a long sigh of
disgust.  "Christ."

Terry was silent.  His mind was on the call he'd made at seven thirty
this morning to the third-floor flat high above them, and the sound of
Rebecca's angry hiss as she exclaimed,

"Who the hell is this?  Do you realise what time it is?"  and then the
startled pause as he'd asked for Ben, and it might have been his
imagination the intake of breath as she'd recognised Terry's voice.

"You're such an arrogant sod, Terry!"  Ben snapped, with a sudden
display of fury that came from nowhere.  "You and your pathetic terras!
I told you at the outset they were completely unworkable and bloody
patronising and deeply offensive '

"They were cheap at the price," Terry interjected quietly.

"Only someone who thought he was God bloody Almighty would try to
interfere in other people's lives the way you do," Ben scoffed
viciously.  "You think you can control everyone's lives the way you
control your workers and your minions and your bloody empire and all
the people who think you're God.  Well, I've got news for you there're
a whole world of people who think you're a bloody dangerous officious
sanctimonious tyrant and won't put up with it."  In his fury, he
spluttered incoherently before delivering his final salvo.  "You should
take your half-baked Catholic morals back to the bogs where they
belong, and mind your own bloody business."

And still Terry didn't speak.  He was recalling their conversation at
The Shelbourne all those months ago.  He was remembering Ben's
protestations of devotion to Catherine, of the absolute irrelevance of
money in his conduct towards her, of how nothing that Terry could say
or do would in any way influence him in what love and duty would have
compelled him to do anyway, which was to stay firmly by her side.  The
very idea that he could be induced to stay was deeply insulting.  Only
someone who believed that people could be bought and sold would have
suggested such a despicable thing.  And all the time Terry had reminded
himself that you might misjudge a man once, but only a fool did it a
second time.  This was the man who had set out to cheat him over a deal
from which they both stood to make a fair profit, had exploited Maeve
pitilessly while he was betraying Catherine, and for all he knew in
those confused and tumultuous days was also the man who had brought
about the whole catastrophe of Catherine's accident.  This was the man
who, despite his protestations, was going to accept Terry's terms
because his outrage was grounded less on scruples than an aversion to
having restrictions placed on his god-given freedom to do exactly as he
pleased.

"So you haven't broken the terms then?"  Terry enquired mildly.  "Is
that what you're saying?"

"I'm saying you're going to believe what you choose to bloody believe,
so what's the point."

Try me."

With a harsh sigh of forbearance, Ben announced in the heavy
contemptuous tones of someone who's wasting his breath, "The situation
is that the situation's out of my hands.  Catherine's decided she needs
some space for a while.  She's asked me to move out, maybe for the
short term, maybe for ever.  So I can't take care of her because she
doesn't want me to.  So you see?  The terms can't bloody apply, because
she's made the decision to leave me, and that's all there is to it. And
before you start thinking precisely what I can see you're thinking, it
was nothing that I did, and nothing that I failed to do.  She just
wants to be on her own, it's her decision, and there's nothing I can do
about it.  Okay?  Absolutely nothing.  I've stood by her a thousand per
cent, I've done everything I could possibly do to make her happy
everything I would have done anyway, I may add, without your bloody
interference but she wants out.  All right?  And I came here to
Rebecca's because I had nowhere else to bloody go."  He rolled his
eyes.  "Christ, the very fact that I'm having to explain this to you ..
."

Terry said nothing.  He was wondering if this was what Catherine really
wanted.  If so, he secretly rejoiced for her.

"And if you don't bloody believe me which you won't, of course go and
ask her yourself," Ben muttered petulantly.  "Or ask the entire world
everyone'll know soon enough, I'm sure.  Though of course they'll go
and blame me.  Inevitably.  So much more convenient to cast me as the
villain.  I'm not crippled, I just tried to kill the bastard who
attacked her.  No allowing for the fact that it's Catherine who wants
out, no allowing for the fact that it's Catherine who's broken He bit
hard on his lip, as if to stifle his despair, before muttering
scathingly, "Oh, for God's sake, what do I care what you believe?
Withdraw the bloody guarantee.  I'm not going to beg.  Do your bloody
worst."

Terry said with the same appearance of great calm, "I didn't come about
that, in fact."

There was a pause while Ben turned to look at him for the first time.
"What do you mean?  You had me bloody followed, for Christ's sake!
You've caught me at Rebecca's.  What else is this about if it's not
that?"

"I've only had you followed since last night," Terry remarked wearily.
"And only because I needed to know where to find you."

And still Ben stared, though now his curiosity was tinged with
resentment at the realisation that he had poured out his excuses and
aired his humiliation for nothing.  "So what the hell is it about then?
Why the hell go to all this trouble?"

Terry said unhurriedly, "Rightly or wrongly, I took it on myself to
find out who burgled your house and why, and I thought you might be
interested to know what I've discovered.  Oh, and I wanted to ask you a
few questions.  Yes," he said carefully, as if correcting a lapse, 'to
ask you to fill in the gaps."

Ben's eyes were very sharp and very still.  "You know?

"I took the precaution of buying Pavlik the best defence in town."

"You whatr

Terry thrust up a quieting hand.  "And I found him his alibi -or
rather, I located the witnesses who could attest to his alibi, the ones
the police in all their diligence had failed to find or failed to look
for.  It was true, you see.  Pavlik was not there at the time of the
attack.  He was innocent of that charge.  So ... in exchange for this
service, Pavlik told me who had paid him to break in.  And why.  Well,
more or less why.  I think that's where you might be able to fill in
some of the details."  Without waiting for an answer, Terry continued
in a musing tone, "Pavlik's employer if that's the word had already
bought him a defence of sorts, but Pavlik didn't trust his employer one
inch.  He had the feeling that the defence lawyer he'd been given might
be renowned more for his obscurity and incompetence than for his
talent, and that he, Pavlik, might have been cast in the role of
sacrificial lamb.  He feared to tell the police the truth because he
feared for his life, and he had no name for his employer anyway, no
proper name, so he doubted very much that they would believe him.  With
good reason, I would suspect."

Ben seemed overwhelmed or frozen, or both, so Terry continued, "I will
say straight away that I began these investigations with the idea that
you yourself might have a very great deal to answer for.  More, I mean,
than you have to answer for already.  I had the idea that you had meant
to harm Catherine '

"For God's sake!"  Ben exclaimed, emerging from his daze with a jolt.

"Allow me to finish," said Terry on a warning note.  "I thought you
might have harmed her because you believed she was someone else because
you believed she was Maeve."

The short but startled pause that followed was broken by Terry whose
voice maintained an iron calm.  "You were expecting Maeve or rather,
you should have been expecting her if you had bothered to remember the
arrangement you'd made.  And, as I saw it, there she was, turning up at
an inconvenient moment, a nuisance to you, an encumbrance' his voice
broke a little, it was all he could do to steady it 'she'd become ill
and bothersome, you wanted well rid of her, her sudden arrival was the
last straw."

"But I didn't-'

"That was how I believed it to be," Terry interrupted, with his first
show of impatience.  "That was how I saw it at the beginning.  For a
long time it was hard to make out what had happened because when Maeve
returned she was wild with grief.  Inconsolable.  Because you must have
realised it was she who discovered Catherine on the floor."

Ben looked defensive.  "Oh."

"At first I knew only what Maeve was able to tell me, and for a long
time she could say very little.  She was in a terrible state.  Finding
Catherine like that, thinking she was dead.  And coming on top of her
other griefs, which, as you will know better than anyone, were
considerable and had been going on for some time."

Ben dropped his head, though whether it was from anything as decent as
shame it was impossible to tell.

There was another pause in which Ben turned to stare out of the window
and Terry fought old battles with his own grief and anguish.  The
temptation to rage at Ben was very strong, he longed to beat his
arrogant head against a wall and demand to know what had been going
through his mind when he took Maeve's innocence and generosity and
trampled on it so mercilessly, he wanted to ask what kind of man could
take satisfaction from such destruction.  But he made the supreme
effort to restrain himself, partly because he strongly suspected that
Ben's satisfaction had come precisely from the fact that Maeve was his
daughter, and partly because at the end of the day there was no arguing
with a man with only the slenderest grasp on decency and morality,
there was no winning a quarrel in which painful revelations might come
to light, only to haunt him cruelly for ever afterwards.  It was almost
more than he could bear, to stay quiet, but he told himself there was
more to be gained by keeping a dignified silence.

"Then I heard that Pavlik had a story to tell," Terry resumed after a
moment.  "For a price.  So I struck the deal, not because I especially
wanted to nail you though the Lord only knows, that would have given me
the most enormous satisfaction but because I wanted the truth for
Catherine.  I wanted her to know that it was your dealings that had
brought it all about."

Ben opened his mouth as if to protest, only to think better of it and
draw in his lips tightly.

"Pavlik told us he'd been hired to break into the house so that his
employer could remove or copy some papers.  What were the papers,
Galitza?"

Again Ben seemed on the point of arguing, again he decided against it.
"Details of financial transactions," he replied in a flat sulky
voice.

"What transactions?"

"Normal business transactions," he said as if explaining the obvious to
an ignoramus.  "Money coming in and going out again.  Bank details and
statements.  Access codes.  The normal things."

Without warning, something overturned in Terry, his stomach lurched,
his anger flowed over him like a red-hot sea, his throat seized and it
was all he could do not to shout.  "Details!"  he echoed in a voice
that shook audibly.  "Come on, come on.  What details?  Of money
laundering?  Of the profits from the secret deal for the generators
that you pulled off behind everyone's backs?  Come on, let's have a
little truth for a change!  I know it comes hard to you, the truth, but
humour me, let me have a little flavour of it!  What was it about
-money that you had forgotten to pass on?  Money that you had forgotten
to share?  Money that was illegally obtained?  Come now let's have
something like the unvarnished truth here!"

"All right, all right!"  Ben replied savagely.  "It was money I was
passing on for some customers.  I didn't ask where it came from, I
didn't ask where it was going, I only knew where it had to go when it
left my hands, and that's where I sent it."  He added in a more
reasonable tone, "But I guess I upset some people along the way.
There's a dealer in Warsaw, a middleman I've dealt with for years,
someone who's got fingers in every pie or so he likes to think.  He got
miffed when he realised I'd cut him out."

"So it was him, is that what you're saying?  It was him who sent the
employer to come and reclaim the money?"

"Yup.  He as good as told me he was coming after it."

"What did he get for his burglary?"  Terry demanded, not letting up for
a moment.  "Precisely."

Ben didn't want to answer that one, he would have shrugged it off, but
something in Terry's expression made him give in with bad grace.  "He
managed to empty my bank account '

"So he got all the pass-codes and access details!"

Ben didn't like being reminded of his stupidity.  "Yes!"  he hissed
sardonically.

"Foreign banks?"

"Bermuda, the Caymans."

"But he wanted more?"

"He demanded the same again in lieu of his cut."

"Or else?  There has to be an or else."

"Or a photocopy of the transaction details to the authorities."

"So stymied.  Your profit gone, and then blackmailed to boot.  That
must have hurt.  My Lord, that must have hurt!"

Not sure whether this was offered in a spirit of gloating or irony. Ben
clenched his jaw furiously.

Terry continued in the same tone of jaunty sarcasm, "This middleman
must have felt as sore as a scalded cat to go to all that trouble.
Polish Mafia, was he?  Dabbling in drugs and all sorts, didn't like you
muscling in was that it?  Still ... to go to all that trouble.  But
then, I suppose the money alone was worth it.  Your cut was what?  - a
million dollars or so?  And then the million in recompense.  So, two
million dollars.  Well, yes, that would have gone a long way to making
him feel better.  It would make anyone feel better, would it not?"

"None of it excuses what was done to Catherine!"  Ben cried bitterly,
finding his voice again.  "Nothing I've done could ever justify that
sort of thuggery!"

"No," Terry agreed abruptly, calming down at last.  "No, nothing at
all."

He watched a pretty woman coming out of a house opposite, carrying a
small child on one hip, its short legs straddling her waist.  She had a
large bag over her other shoulder, and a folded push chair in her hand.
Despite all the paraphernalia, she made her way down the steps with
assurance and grace, and in some unfocused way Terry was reminded of

Catherine.  Except that Catherine would never know the simple pleasure
of carrying her child on her hip and depositing it -crying now into a
push chair

"Did it never occur to you', Terry murmured, his eyes still on the
woman, 'to try to get even with this man after what he'd done?"

"What declare war against the Polish business community?  This guy's
still doing a whole bundle of legitimate deals.  He's got influence.
He'd make my name mud.  I'd never be able to do a deal there again."

"So you decided to take your medicine instead."  He added, with the
slightest touch of irony, "Like a man."

Ben closed his eyes expressively.

The moment of revelation had almost come.  Yet again Terry felt no
sense of triumph, only emptiness.  "It never occurred to you to look
closer to home?"

He got Ben's full attention then, the eyes swung round, alert, wary.

"You didn't think there was anyone here who might have felt entitled to
that money?"

"Like?"

"Someone you'd cut out of a deal he was expecting to share in?"

"No."

Ben might have cunning, he might be quick, but Terry always forgot to
allow for the fact that he wasn't outstandingly bright.  "What about
your company?  Wasn't it expecting the benefit of your profits?"

"You mean .. ."  Ben hesitated, he thought it through, he dismissed it
with a laugh.  "Simon?"

Terry lifted his eyebrows.

"Simon?

Tavlik met him in a gay club, knew him as someone called Christian.  It
was a cash deal, the burglary.  Half up front, half after the break
in."

Ben was already shaking his head with a superior knowing smile.  "Simon
couldn't wouldn't he's incapable .. . No, no, for God's sake .. . We
were are friends."  With each denial he was slowly but surely talking
himself into the possibility.  "And a gay club?  He's never been that
way I mean, not to my knowledge!  And why would he want to I've never
cut him out of anything He stalled suddenly, his eyes flickered
crossly, he became indignant.  "Christ, he did okay, we made money, he
had nothing to complain about.  I mean, he was my number two, for God's
sake.  I mean, we were partners, I gave him half of everything, of
course I did, but I did all the deals, I had all the contacts, nothing
would have happened without me.  And then he goes and He made a
dismissive exclamation, then in the next breath demanded coldly:
"You're sure}'

Tavlik described him, we showed him a photograph."

"But he only met him the once, was it?  in a club!  How could he be
sure?"

Terry paused, embarrassed.  "According to Pavlik, they had a, er
transient relationship."

Ben pulled back, startled.  "Jesus.  Jesus."  His face slowly contorted
as his fury grew.  "And Pavlik identified him from a photograph?"

"For sure."

"That bastard!  He cleaned me bloody out!  Took everything!  And had
the brass nerve to And after all we did together!  God what a two-faced
God!"  He had flushed with anger, his handsome mouth was pinched and
rigid.  Then his expression clouded as fresh realisations and doubts
came to him.  Twisting round in his seat, he stared at Terry.  "He was
the one who attacked me?"  It took him a moment to absorb this.  "God,
if I could ..."  He clenched his fists like a schoolboy itching to get
his own back.  Again he turned to Terry and stared.  "And Catherine?"
He couldn't bring himself to spell it out.  "He did that to Catherine?
He .. ."  Then, with confusion, "But he adores her, he's always hanging
around her, he's like her bloody shadow!  He's like a lapdog!"  And
finally, in a murmur: "The burglar alarm, he knew the code of course.
It was the same as the office.  Yes, yes ... he knew the code."

He was finally there.  He understood it all.

Now that the unpleasant task was over, Terry was suddenly desperate to
be away.  The sense of revulsion rose in him like a panic, he felt he
would suffocate if he stayed in the same space as Galitza for a second
longer.

"I propose to tell the police this morning," he announced, opening the
window to a blast of cold air.

Ben raised his head to this.  "Hey, what about me} I don't want them
bloody nosing about in my affairs.  No, I think that would be an
appalling idea!"

"I'll leave it twelve hours, then.  That will give you time to settle
on your story."

"You shit:

Ignoring this, beginning to feel more cheerful all of a sudden, Terry
asked, "Where's Jardine now, do you know?"

"No idea."  Then he hissed bleakly, "Spending my money, presumably."

Heavy clouds swept low over the valley, driving veils of thin sleet up
the ramp of fields into the exposed garden, agitating the animals in
the topiary and swirling plumes of leaves up into the branches of the
black-limbed beeches.

"Not much point in seeing more," Catherine said.

"But it gives you an idea?"

"Oh yes."

Simon turned the wheelchair round and pushed her back along the path
through a brick arch into the relative sanctuary of the rose garden.

"It's beautifully maintained," she called back over her shoulder.

"You like it?"

"I think it's a splendid garden."

"You wouldn't want to change it?"

"Not in any major way.  It'd be a waste of your money."

He turned the chair round and tipped it backwards a little to pull it
up some shallow steps.  "But it could be improved?"  he asked.

"Oh, the planting could be improved, I'm sure, but you'd have to see it
through an entire season before you'd know what you wanted to do."

"So if I bought it now .. .?"

"You'd begin to have a good idea by May."

They came round the side of the house onto the gravel sweep where the
car was parked.  "Six months then," he said.

"More or less."

He opened the car door for her and held the chair steady while she
transferred herself.  He waited until she was settled then brought a
rug round from the back to lay over her knees.

"Really, I'm fine," she insisted, but he was already crouching down to
wrap the rug around her legs.

"Just until the car warms up," he said protectively, and cast her a
diffident smile.

When he'd stowed the wheelchair he sat in the driver's seat with the
door open and his feet on the gravel and changed his shoes, placing the
dirty ones in a plastic bag, which he carried round to the boot.  He
then took off his waterproof jacket and, shaking the rain from it,
folded it neatly and laid it with care on the back seat.  Watching
this, Catherine wondered how he was going to manage country life, in
which mud, dirt and wet clothes had a way of sneaking into the
best-defended homes.  But then the whole day had been overlaid with an
odd sense of unreality.  Leaving shortly before ten, they had taken the
slow road along the Thames through Henley and Cliveden, arriving at
Bray at exactly twelve thirty Simon had speeded up a little so they
shouldn't be late where they'd eaten a rich ornate lunch.  Simon had
talked a lot about lifestyle, the importance of getting it right, of
the futility of working hard unless you had something worthwhile to
come home to, how the bedrock of a good life was non-negotiable: strong
values and a united family and un stinting loyalty and solid friends.
The house, still unseen, appeared to be central to this vision, a pivot
or a symbol, and the garden too, though by his own admission he'd never
felt the need for one in the past.  He'd rambled a bit, repeated
himself a great deal, but there was no doubting his passion and
sincerity, nor the sharp edge of desperation beneath, as though by
focusing so closely on his dream, having earned the money to realise
it, he knew it would slip from his grasp.  He was suffused with a
nervous jumpy energy that had the moods chasing over his face faster
than she could follow them.  Hope, despair, anxiety she had never seen
him in such turmoil.  His cheek trembled almost continuously, he had
developed a new habit of sucking in his lips, and now and again when he
looked away it seemed to her that his eyes contained desolation.

Climbing into the car at last, Simon sat with his hands on the wheel
and looked up at the facade.  "Well," he said, 'what do you think?"

He had asked this several times during their tour of the house.  She
could only repeat, "I think it's stunning."  She added on a cautionary
note, "Though I hate to think what they're asking for it."

"It's a fair price."

"You'll need to add a lot for the furnishings," she warned him.  "And
then there'll be the maintenance, of course.  A full-time gardener, I'd
have thought.  And probably a housekeeper too."

He said softly, "Could you live here, Catherine?"

She was about to make some mundane reply when, glancing across at him,
she found him watching her with a strange intensity, and paused.  She
was struck by the uncomfortable thought that he was serious.  "Me?  I'd
love to live in a beautiful place, of course I would.  But," she added
hastily, "I think something smaller would suit me far better."

And still his brilliant eyes remained fixed on her face.  "But ... if
you found yourself here .. . you could like it?"

Oh God, she thought, he's about to make a declaration.  "You can like
all sorts of places, can't you?"  she said in a tone that was
deliberately offhand.  "It all depends on She was about to say, on who
you're with and whether you're happy, but pulled herself up just in
time, and said lightly, "On where you happen to find yourself."  She
ducked forward to look up at the sky.  "Could we get going now?"  she
asked breezily.  "It'll be dark soon.  And I'd like to get home."

"But Ben and you," he said relentlessly, 'it's over, isn't it?  He's
gone?  You're going to need someone to look after you."

"I really can't discuss Ben."

"But Catherine wouldn't you be happy here?"  His voice had risen, his
breath was coming fast.  "We both like the same things.  We could make
it the most beautiful house in the world.  Antiques and pictures, and
people in for lunch.  Not all the time of course!  We could go abroad
for some of the winter, we could travel.  But this would be our home,
we could make the garden the best garden for miles.  Oh, God," he
groaned furiously, "I'm making it sound as though it's all about that!
It's not what I mean is, what I've been saying very badly, is that I
want to look after you, Catherine, take care of you.  I want that more
than anything in the world."

"Simon, please."  She waved a hand inarticulately.  "Not now.  This
isn't the time.  I'm sorry."  She exhaled slowly.  "If we could just go
home."  She looked firmly ahead through the windscreen.

"Oh, I do realise it's rather soon," he gasped in a voice of sudden
reason.  "Of course I do.  I realise you're still upset about Rebecca.
That's natural..."

The name resounded darkly in her head.  Rebecca.

'..  . You're bound to be.  And I appreciate that you can't actually
decide at the moment.  That you can't make promises.  I wouldn't expect
you to."

Rebecca.  In the instant that she felt the first stab of anguish, she
also understood that Rebecca was the obvious choice for Ben in a time
of trouble.  He would have wanted sympathy, familiarity and lack of
complications, more or less in that order;

he would have wanted someone who understood this instinctively, someone
who knew him well, an old lover without expectations; or, with
expectations and the shrewdness to hide them.

Ben and Rebecca.  A story that she had interrupted.

She had missed much of what Simon had been saying.  Now he was asking
insistently, "Catherine?  Will you?  Will you?"

She looked at him helplessly, she made as if to touch his arm by way of
apology.  "Have you known about Rebecca for long?"  she asked.

He didn't want to talk about Rebecca, he frowned.  "I saw them together
once.  I was trying to catch Ben one morning and ... I saw them."

"At the house.  She was at the house?"

He looked mildly abashed, as if he'd said too much, but not so abashed
that he didn't nod in confirmation, before resuming with quiet
insistence, "Just say you'll think about it, Catherine."

"Sorry?"

"Say you won't rule it out.  That's all."  He gave a laugh that seemed
to catch in his throat, there was a sheen of nervousness on his temple.
"We'd be so happy here, I know we would.  Think this garden with two
garden makers!"

The attempt at lightheartedness only succeeded in striking a note of
pathos, and again it seemed to her that his longing hid a deep
pessimism, that he knew his chances were hopeless.

She began to recite the ritualistic words of rejection.  "Simon, I'm
terribly flattered, and I'm terribly honoured, but I can't possibly
begin to think about the future at the moment, not in any shape or
form.  I have no idea where my marriage is.  I have no idea what I want
myself."  Seeing his pain, she ploughed on, forcing an overt note of
kindness into her voice, hating the string of platitudes.  "I like you,
of course I do, I value your friendship, but I have to say that I've
never thought of you as anything but a friend.  And I can't say that's
ever going to change.  I just can't.  I'm sorry."

He turned his head sharply to look away through the windscreen.  After
a while he started the engine.  "I understand," he said in a voice that
was very controlled, but also very close to breaking.  "Thank you at
least for being such a good friend."

"No, no," she said, far too quickly, "I'm the one who's grateful to
you."

She thought: I got that wrong.  No, she corrected herself, we both got
it wrong.  His timing couldn't have been worse, and he had sprung it on
her: he hadn't thought it through at all.  He hadn't taken account of
the upheavals that had shaken her life over the last two days; or
perhaps he had, and rushed at the opportunity.  At this thought, her
indignation grew, and she began to see his declaration as an intrusion,
wildly insensitive and very unfair.

They drove for a long time in silence.  Wearied by the tension, she
took out her phone and announced in a light voice, "Just going to pick
up my messages."  In the dusk, his profile was severe.  He didn't look
towards her and he didn't speak.

She hadn't really expected a message from Ben, but she was miffed not
to get one all the same.  Instead, there was her father's standard
message, complete with diversionary ideas it was a trip to the races
now, a lunch with friends.  Then Emma's voice, diffident, loyal, a
little troubled, possibly hurt, asking if she could do anything for
her.  In her mind, Catherine apologised: I thought it was you, Emma,
and I was wrong.  It seemed extraordinary now to believe Emma capable
of such sustained and accomplished deceit, but a tortured imagination
is a wild imagination, in which it's a short step from an embrace to a
well-established affair.

After Emma came three or four business calls that she would play back
later.  Then Alice, in a panicky tone that made Catherine instantly
alert.

"Cath, wherever you are, please call me straight away.  I went round to
the house, but you weren't there.  I've got to speak to you.  I'm at
work.  Usual number.  But I'll leave my mobile on as well, just in
case."  A pause, then, distractedly: "Hope you're okay."  And urgently:
"Cath straight away."

Catherine ruled out a broken love affair; Alice had always been too
proud to come to her with those.  A family problem then?  Pa running up
debts and not telling anyone?  Or Ben, going to Alice with some sob
story about being thrown out?  But even as she brought up Alice's name
on the display and pressed the dial key, she discounted that one.  Ben
was frightened of Alice; he would rather choke than confide in her.

"Where are you?"  Alice cried hastily.

"On a motorway, coming back from the country."

"When will you be back?"

"An hour or so."

"An bourY A sigh of frustration.

"Why?  What's happened?"  She was thinking of Pa.

As if reading her mind, Alice declared brusquely, "Oh, it's not Pa.
Nothing like that.  No, it's ... to do with your burglary, Cath.
Something you should know.  Something that the police should know." She
was sounding slightly hysterical.

"Give me a clue."

A hesitation, as if she couldn't make up her mind how much to say.
"It's about Simon," she said eventually.  "Something really bad,
Cath."

Without thinking, Catherine glanced across at him.  His eyes swivelled
round and met hers briefly.  In the instant before she looked away
again, she saw a strange brilliance in his eyes.

"Tell me," she said, selecting her most casual tone.

"But can you talk?  Are you driving?"

"Hardly driving."

"Oh no, of course not.  God, no stupid of me.  No ... But it might take
a moment.  Is it all right?  Who're you with?  Who's driving you?"

"A colleague."

She made a nervous exclamation.  "God, I thought for a moment it might
have been Simon."

"So," Catherine said lightly, 'what's the problem exactly?"

A pause while Alice chose her words, which she delivered with a kind of
agonised excitement.  "You remember I went to the court that day when
Pavlik first came up?  The magistrates' court?  And Simon was there
too?"

"Aha."

"Well, when the bail was arranged, they mentioned the name of this man
who was going to guarantee the bail or whatever the word is and well, I
hardly registered the name.  I mean, it was no one I knew.  I never
thought to remember it.  And I was so appalled at the fact Pavlik was
getting bail that I just didn't pay much attention."

"No."

"Anyway, I just realised a couple of hours ago well, in fact it was
last week that I actually heard the name again, but it just didn't
click until today, I just couldn't remember where I'd heard it before.
You know how it is you hear names, and you just don't connect them.  It
was only today that I finally realised it was the same guy.  And even
then I got Denise Cox to check the court records for the name of the
man who put the money up.  It took her all day to get the information.
I couldn't say how urgent it was, of course, and I went almost mad
waiting, but at last she came through with it, and it was the same guy,
Cath."

"The same as who?"

Alice slowed down a little as she said rather stiffly, "The same as the
man who left a message on Simon's machine.  While I was there.  Last
week.  In Simon's flat.  His name's David Frankel.  He's a solicitor.
He's the same man.  But, Cath, he talked like a friend in the message.
First name stuff.  Sort of, how are you, Simon, and can you phone me
some time.  But, Cath why would Simon know him unless .. .?  You see
what I mean?"  she cried on a rising note of fear.  "It's all wrong,
isn't it?"

Catherine said calmly, "I see what you mean, yes."

"What should we do?"

Catherine said, "I can't think just at the moment."  And it was true.
Her mind had stalled, her thoughts were all over the place.

"But, Cath, if Simon was involved with this man, if they put up the
bail, then '

"I understand what you're saying.  Let's talk about this later.  I'll
call you."

As she rang off, Simon asked, with echoes of his old anxiety and
attentiveness, "Everything all right, Catherine?"

Reaching the house, he stopped the car with a slight jolt and gripped
the top of the wheel, his shoulders hunched, his head bent forward,
like some awful parody of a boy racer.  "I'm sorry if I frightened
you," he cried in a rush of anguish.  "It was the last thing I
intended.  The last thing in the world!  I knew it wasn't the best
moment, I knew it was a bit too soon.  But I could just see us there,
Catherine!  I could see us in that house with all those beautiful
rooms, and the garden, and the lake, and the country life.  It's what
I've always dreamt of, you see.  Always.  From when I was small, when
we lived in a rat-hole flat with filthy windows and dirty carpets.
That's what I dreamt of a place like that!"  His voice had risen
emotionally, and dipped again.  "I knew it was hoping for a lot, of
course, to think you'd want to share it with me.  I knew the chances
were a bit slim.  I knew The words seized in his throat, he inhaled
unevenly.  "But you've got to dream a bit, haven't you?"  His nervous
laugh emerged as a ragged gasp.  "You've got to go for things,
otherwise what's the use?  Got to believe it's going to happen."  He
turned to her.  "Forgiven?"  When she didn't reply he begged furiously,
"Please, Catherine."

"Sure," she murmured.  "Forget it.  It's not important.  But I'd like
to get into the house now, if you don't mind.  I'm tired."

Something in her voice must have alerted him because he stiffened and
gave her a long searching look before climbing out of the car.

When he wheeled her up to the house, he seemed preoccupied, and it
wasn't until they were inside that he spoke again.

His words came as a statement delivered in a flat voice.  "You're not
forgiving me then."

"I told you it's not important."

He twisted his head, as if to catch her tone.  "There's something
else," he said tightly.

She began to pull off her coat and waved him firmly away when he tried
to help.  In the car, she'd decided to leave the business of Simon and
Frankel to the police, she no longer trusted her judgement on matters
involving explanations, excuses and lies.  But now as she struggled
ineffectually with the sleeves of her coat, her frustration got tangled
up with a wider anger, and she said accusingly, "I'm told that you know
someone called David Frankel."

Freeing herself from the last sleeve, she threw the coat in the general
direction of a chair and looked up to find him staring at her,
white-faced, as if someone had struck him.

"Well?"

He seemed frozen.  He might not have been breathing.

"David Frankel," she repeated slowly as if addressing an idiot.  "You
know him?"

A barely discernible nod.

"He was the man who put up the bail money."

He closed his eyes tightly.  He seemed to shrivel visibly, to retreat
into his body in a dozen minute ways, his head to settle lower into his
neck, his hands to shrink against his body, his shoulders to slump by
infinitesimal degrees.

"Well?"  she demanded in cold exasperation.

"Oh, Catherine .. ."  he whispered faintly.  He lowered his head.

"You're making me think bad things, Simon."  And now it was her own
voice that was shaking.  "You're making me think you arranged Pavlik's
defence.  You're making me think he was working for you!"

He tried to speak, but only choked.

"For God's sake!"  she cried contemptuously.

"Oh, Catherine!"  It was an agonised wail, a great cry of despair.
Suddenly he clamped his hands over his face, and she realised with
astonishment that he'd begun to cry.  He tried to say something, which
she couldn't at first make out through the increasingly violent sobs.
"I never meant .. . Never, never, never?

"For God's sake!"  she snapped, in terror at what he might say.

He dropped his hands from his face and flung them down by his sides,
palms spread wide.  With his bowed head and splayed hands, he was like
a supplicant offering himself for retribution.  And still he sobbed.
The tears dripped off his nose, tracking down a long skein of mucus
that dangled from the tip.  Spikes of hair had fallen forward, masking
his eyes.  "It was a mistakel A terrible, ghastly mistake?  The
'mistake' was drawn out in a long moan of misery.  "If you knew how
I've tortured myself how I've begged for it not to have happened!  God,
there hasn't been a moment, not a single moment that I haven't begged
to be struck down, that I haven't longed for it to be me.  If I could
have been the one I'd have given anything for it to have been me!  Oh
Catherine, if I could have brought you back, made you whole again I'd
have done anything I'd have died a thousand deaths a thousand million
deaths.  Believe me, Catherine, there hasn't been a moment not a second
that I haven't wished it undone that I haven't longed for it not to
have happened.  I've dreamt so often of catching you as you fell, I've
rushed to catch you '

"It was Pavlik.  You hired him.  It was Pavlik who attacked me.  Is
that what you're saying?  Is that it, Simon?"

He raised his head.  His face was distorted and ugly with despair.

She read her answer, and one part of her was in immediate and fierce
revolt against it, refused absolutely to accept it, did not want to
admit to the message in his eyes, not now, not ever, while another part
of her was sickened with revulsion and betrayal, was recoiling from the
depth of his treachery, though even as the rage shook her, it began to
ebb rapidly away.

Simon was gesticulating violently.  "Don't you see, don't you see,
Catherine I didn't realise it was you.  I had no idea it was you. Don't
you see .. ."  His legs buckled slowly, for a moment he stood like
someone who'd been shot and refuses to fall, until he finally sank
forward onto his knees, which met the stone with a sharp crack.  Like
my head, she thought.  My head would have sounded like that.  Crack!

"I thought it was her, Catherine!"  He held his arms up wide, like a
priest.  "I thought it was the girl!  I heard her ring, I saw her
knocking!  I saw the awful sick look on her face that they always get
when they're around Ben.  The disgusting foul look before they throw
themselves at him, just like cheap common tarts!  I've seen them time
and again, getting that same sick disgusting look in their eyes."  With
a whimper, he brought his hands down in a savage cutting motion, as if
to haul himself back from some brink.  "I saw her there," he began
again in a shuddering voice.  "Knocking on the door, thinking he was
there, desperate to get at him.  And, Catherine, I realised he was
betraying you just like he was betraying me!  I thought: He's doing to
Catherine what he's doing to me!  And I felt sick, I felt disgusted, I
wanted to kill him with my bare hands!"

He had begun to cry again, his cheek was dancing so violently that his
face seemed permanently askew.  "He sold me out, Catherine.  Betrayed
me!"  he sobbed in a voice of fresh despair.  "After all my work. After
everything I'd put into that deal heart, soul, energy, bloody devotion
and what did he do?  He went and cut me out.  Cheated me! Without a
second thought, without a moment's hesitation!  Because I was nothing
to him, you see.  I was just a load of shit!  Someone he could treat
like dirtl Just like he was treating you, Catherine.  He was going to
have that girl, just like he'd had a thousand girls, and not care a
shit!  The fact that he was married to you, to someone as fantastic and
wonderful as you well, what would he care?

He takes people and uses them.  Always has.  Greedy, greedy -always
wanting more, more, more.  Never enough money in the world for him.
Never enough women.  And loyalty?  Christ, what a joke!  Loyalty means
fuck all to him.  It's just a word!  He doesn't begin to know the
meaning He made the strange choking sound again and, clasping his head
in both hands, sucked in long gulps of air as if he were suffocating.

"The girl," Catherine said in a low voice, 'did you mean to hurt
her?"

His head came up slowly, he looked at her, aghast.  "God, no!  No!  She
you took me totally by surprise!  I thought when Ben arrived that he
was alone I thought he'd come back from France a day early without you.
He was meant to be coming back the next day on his own, Catherine! You
were meant to be staying on in France.  That was what he told me! That
was how we left it and when I heard him come in, and I looked down and
saw him alone, it never occurred to me that you were somewhere behind
him.  When he caught me upstairs and we fought, I never thought for a
second there'd be anyone else!"

He dragged a hand across his eyes, rubbing them viciously.  "It was a
complete shock when I heard someone calling.  I thought it had to be
her, I thought it was the girl come back, that they'd planned to meet.
I only meant to push her out of the way, to make sure she didn't see
me.  But then .. . then I got angry, I wanted to punish her for being
in your house, I wanted to punish her for behaving like a cheap .. ."

He trailed off, the energy went out of him, he sank back on his
haunches and lowered his hands onto his knees.  He whispered, "But it
was you."

There was a long pause in which the only sound was the rasp of his
breathing.

Finally she asked, "And you blackmailed Ben?"

"I wanted my money," he said dully.  "I wanted him to know what it was
like to pay up.  I'd got the proof of what he'd been up to.  I used it
to make sure I got my money."

"You took what he owed you?"

"Double.  Exactly double.  He never worked that out!  It never occurred
to him that I could have done such a thing, you see."  He was still
close enough to tears that he laughed easily.  "He thought '

The doorbell made them both start a little.  They exchanged glances,
Catherine's bewildered, his afraid.

She moved towards the door.  "Who is it?"  she called.

"Catherine, it's Fergal."

She looked back towards Simon.  He was still kneeling, his eyes fixed
on the floor.

She opened the door a short way.

Fergal seemed immensely tall against the darkness.  His expression was
very stern.  He said in a voice designed to carry, "Just calling by to
see you're all right, Catherine."

She took a deep breath.  "I'm all right," she said.

Flicking his eyes towards the road, Fergal added in a whisper, "I've
got Mike right here.  We could have the police round in a jiff."

From behind her, Simon said flatly, "He knows, Catherine.  He knows
everything."

As she moved back to let Fergal pass, Catherine pretended faint
irritation.  "Watching over me again, were you, Fergal?"

"Oh no.  Never," he remonstrated gently.  "No, if you're to thank
anyone, Catherine, it should be Mr.  Devlin."

Chapter Sixteen

Foxrock, 21st February.

Dear Catherine, Forgive me for not having been able to meet up with you
for so long.  Christmas seemed to arrive in a terrible rush, and then
as you know I was off to the US for the best part of two weeks, and
then back to a situation here that has conspired to keep me chained to
my desk ever since.  But Fergal tells me that you've had a good offer
on the house.  I'm glad things have moved so fast.  I hope that you'll
find what you're looking for in the way of a new place very soon.  A
fresh start is a great thing.

Regarding the financial matters, the final account is now complete.
Fergal will give you the details.  He is in London from this Saturday
evening and will phone you to arrange a time to call.

I hope Bridget has been able to provide you with all the necessary
liaison over the garden I'm afraid I haven't had the time or the mind
to give it proper attention.  But I have every hope of getting down to
Morne to see the work begin.  And if, as Bridget tells me, you will be
coming over before then (to plan the excavations?), then we will
definitely meet, though it may have to be in Dublin.

Maeve sends her fondest love.  She is good and busy.

Your friend, as ever,

Terry

Built in sturdy post-modern style on the site of a demolished church in
Bayswater, the block was four years old but looked older.  The agent
had extolled the virtues of the stainless steel kitchens and bathrooms,
but Catherine had taken the flat not for the gleam of its plumbing but
for its position high on the fifth floor, its south-west-facing
terrace, and the reserved parking in the basement garage below.

Arriving on this Sunday morning, letting some air in, she also
discovered that you could hear church bells drifting from the direction
of Hyde Park, and the faint screech of shunting trains beyond
Paddington Station.

While waiting for Fergal, she took measurements and inspected the
decorators' progress.  The whole place was to be white: a space
intentionally blank.  She would impose some sort of mark with her
antiques, her pictures, and the few bits of modern furniture she had
yet to choose.  But possessions would be kept to a minimum.  She had
the instincts of an itinerant now; no sooner camped than ready to move
on.  It was no coincidence that the feeder road to the Westway was
barely fifty yards away.

It was just before eleven when Fergal rang the bell.

"I thought we were doomed to the phone for ever."  Her smile didn't
entirely hide the reproach beneath.

He pecked her cheek.  "Not for want of seeing you, Catherine."

She gave him a conducted tour, which took all of two minutes.  "A tidy
little place," he commented, with the forced interest of a man who
expects little of his surroundings.

They sat on two cheap plastic chairs belonging to the decorators.  A
slow rain speckled the windows.

"So, what's going on, Fergal?  Why are you two rushing around like mad?
You're bad enough, but Terry ... We've talked twice, I think, since
Christmas."

"Oh, you know how he is, always saying he's going to ease up, and then
he's away again, after another hotel, another enterprise."

"It's not that he's gone off the idea of the garden then?"

"Oh no, it won't be that!"  he declared without hesitation.  "No, it'll
be the hours he's working, all God made and more.  Which isn't to say
he won't be keeping an eye.  He always keeps an eye.  You can be sure
he's fully aware of the progress of the garden."

"So what's this project, Fergal?"

Fergal took on the abstruse expression of someone whose lips are
sealed.  "Empire building, you might say."

Taking her shrug as a display of bewilderment, Fergal hastened to add,
"Oh, it's not for the money that he does it.  Never the money.  The
house at Foxrock, it's not grand, you know, not by the standards of
some in Dublin.  No, he's a restless spirit, that's the truth of it.
It's in his nature to look for the next challenge.  Apart from the
horses and the racing, there's little to occupy him, you see."

"But Maeve, he's got Maeve."

"Aha.  But then he hasn't seen so very much of her since Christmas.
She's found herself some new friends.  Students like herself.  They're
always away somewhere walking the hills, or off to the films, or gone
to the dancing.  It's a great thing for her, the dancing."

"So she's happy, Fergal?"

He made a speculative gesture.  "She will be, I believe.  Yes, one
day."

Catherine had an image of Maeve in a group, dancing, and of Terry going
back to an empty house.

"I was hoping to meet Terry at Morne this week," she said.  "But of
course it doesn't look as though he'll be free.  When I ask Bridget
what to do she just tells me to go ahead."

"I would do that very thing then," Fergal suggested calmly.  "Go ahead.
Take it as a declaration of faith in your judgement."

"Supposing he doesn't like the result?"

"You can tell him he should have paid more attention," Fergal retorted
uncompromisingly.

Despite Fergal's reassurances, Catherine couldn't quite rid herself of
the idea that, having done his duty by everyone, Terry had moved on,
that, subconsciously or otherwise, he was distancing himself from the
past and everything associated with the period of Maeve's obsession.
And, as Catherine hardly needed reminding, associations didn't come
much stronger than herself.

Fergal cleared his throat in the manner of someone getting down to
business.  "So ... I have brought what Mr.  Devlin likes to call the
final account."  He pulled a paper from his breast pocket and handed it
to her.  "He wants to know if it meets with your approval."

It was a list of six charities, with, against each one, the sum it had
received by way of anonymous donation.  Since drugs had seemed the most
likely source of the money, it had been Catherine's idea that a large
proportion of it went to addiction and rehabilitation projects.  For
the rest, she had left the decisions to Terry.  The total came to over
three-quarters of a million pounds.

"It looks fine," she said.

"Mr.  Devlin also wanted to be sure that you had received everything
that was owing to you.  That nothing was outstanding."

This was Fergal's way of asking if Ben had made over the house proceeds
and signed the other papers relating to the separation settlement.  "My
solicitor tells me it's all gone through," she said.

"And the house sale?"

"Completion next week."

"So, you're all set then?"

She had no real reason to disagree.  Her work was picking up, she had
financial security again, she had this place, and a modified car in the
garage below.  Everything she needed, and yet, and yet .. . she felt
unsettled.  She was alone and lonely, of course: that was part of it.
But also, somewhere in the long process of drawing a line under the
past, she'd developed a sense of unfinished business, of matters
unresolved.  Gradually,

amid the legal discussions, the house clearance, the impending divorce,
the shadow of an idea had begun to form on the edge of her mind.

She grasped at it now.  "There's something I've been wanting to ask
you."

He waited attentively.

Catherine began slowly, almost casually.  "It's just a small thing.  I
don't even know if you'll be able to tell me.  About the accident..  .
the attack."

A `>-3,' slight wariness crept into his eyes.

"When you arrived that night, when you saw me there .. . you checked my
pulse, my breathing.  Presumably you checked on the bleeding too, to
see where it was coming from."  She turned this into a question with a
lift of her head.

Fergal's shaggy eyebrows drew into a frown.  "I did," he said.

"And where was it coming from, the blood?"

"Your ear.  Your left ear."

"Aha," she murmured, attempting to sound indifferent.  "And that was
it?  Nowhere else?"

"So far as I could tell."

"And Maeve .. . she'd tried to mop up the blood?"

Fergal's eyes were very still, and she had the feeling he was way ahead
of her.  "Apparently so."

"A pair of panties, wasn't it?"

"I was not aware of what they were at the time.  I thought -if I
thought at all that it was a handkerchief."

Catherine made a show of absorbing this.  "And the scarf?  Did you see
the scarf?"

There was a taut silence.  "No," he said.

Catherine shrugged lightly.  "But you knew she'd left a scarf?"

He hesitated.  "Not then.  I was told later."

"And you know where it was found?"

She wasn't sure if it was embarrassment that made him grow
uncomfortable, or the confirmation of where this had been leading.  "I
believe I heard a while later."

She looked away to the window and the misty rooftops.  "When Maeve was
ill," she said in a low voice, 'was it just chance that she got
septicaemia, Fergal?  That she nearly died?"

She left it several seconds before looking back at him.

He was staring at her obdurately.

"Or was there a procedure that went wrong?"

"I couldn't answer that," he growled, dropping his eyes.

She asked so quietly that it was almost a whisper, "Was there an
abortion, Fergal?"

He tightened his lips.  "I could not say."

"Could not or must not?"

He didn't reply.

"I understand," she murmured, turning her head to scrutinise the window
once more.  "Suppose, though, that I simply asked you to indicate if I
was wrong nothing more.  Just... if I was wrong."  She left this
thought in the air for a moment while she transferred her gaze to her
hands.  "The reason I ask, Fergal, is that I want to leave the whole
thing behind.  I hardly need tell you how important it is to me.  But
I'm still finding it difficult.  Partly, I'm finding it difficult to
understand why Maeve should have been so ... persistent.  But if you
were to indicate to me that I wasn't wrong, then it would begin to make
sense, you see.  I would understand why she did what she did, why she
came to the house that day.  I would feel very much clearer."  In her
mind, she added, about Ben as well.  And about Terry.  "It would make
it that much easier to put it all behind me."

Unable to explain it any better, she finally brought her eyes up to
his.

His frown had returned, deeper than ever, his eyes hunted across the
floor as he wrestled with some inner debate.  Finally, he seemed to
come to a decision.  His mournful eyes lifted to hers and he affirmed
with a soft sigh, "No, Catherine, you would not be wrong."

She embraced him solemnly at the door.  "Tell Bridget I'll be coming to
Morne on Thursday.  If she could make the arrangements."

The sky was still stormy from recent rain, but as the car left the
village and turned up the lane the clouds seemed to break up a little,
the air to brighten.  Passing through the gates, climbing towards the
house, the rhododendrons drooped and glistened, tattoos of rain dropped
from overhanging branches, and the surface of the drive ran with a web
of rivulets.

Catherine had expected a gardener's car, or the golf buggy, or both,
but there were three jalopies and two vans outside the house, one with
ladders, another with faded sign writing that said Decorators.

Though it had stopped raining, the driver insisted on holding an
umbrella over her.  He promised to return in three hours.

Inside the house there were dustsheets and ladders.  The hall had been
painted a soft cream, the drawing room was turning a slightly warmer
shade of white.  The floors had been sanded and sealed.  The
dining-room walls had been filled and rubbed down, and a sample of
eggshell blue daubed across the furthest wall in a broad cross.  A
selection of curtain samples had been pinned to the shutters.  Through
the doorway to the kitchen, she glimpsed new units in pale wood and a
gleaming hardwood floor.

The men were taking a smoking break in a corner of the drawing room.
"Ah, if you're after Mick, he'll be back directly," one of them told
her.

She waited in the dining room, sitting at the trestle table, most of
which had been taken over by paint pots and rolls of lining paper.  She
tried to clear her mind for the meeting with the landscaping
contractors and tree specialists, but all she could think was, So he's
going to use the place after all.  She examined her emotions with
curiosity, and decided she was glad.

A vehicle approached the house with a soft hum and drew up noisily on
the gravel.  A car door slammed, footsteps sounded, the front door
cannoned open and crashed against the stop, and through the open
doorway she saw Terry stride across the hall to peer into the drawing
room.  Half way back across the hall he saw her and hastened forward
again.

She laughed as she called out his name.

He took both her hands in his and smiled.  When he kissed her, his
cheek was smooth and she caught a scent of aftershave.

He stood back and regarded her appraisingly, and she noticed his eyes,
which were clear and bright, and very steady.

"You look well, Catherine."

He seemed taller and to have lost a little weight, though that may have
been the effect of his suit, which was dark and beautifully cut and
undoubtedly expensive.

"I didn't think you were able to come!"  she said.

"It's amazing what Bridget can do with the diary when she really
tries."

He continued to survey her openly and fondly for quite a while before
turning to pull a chair up to the table.  As he sat down, he slipped
the button of his jacket and smoothed his tie, and it occurred to her
that he spent most of his life in such well-made clothes, and that the
image she'd held of him all these months, the rather self-conscious
figure in the misguided gardening outfit, had been quite wrong.

She said, "Your empire won't crumble while you're away then?"

He grinned.  "It's the vanity of self-made men to think that the ship
will hit the rocks the moment their backs are turned."  He rotated a
hand, and she remembered the unexpected grace of his gestures.  "I
should have two hours at least before danger looms."

"That long."  She turned down her mouth in mock rebuke.

"But I'll take as long as I need today, because it's not often I get
the chance to see you, Catherine."

"Entirely your fault, Terry."

Beneath his smile, he was rueful as he said, "Yes, my life is madness
at the moment."

She indicated the room.  "You didn't tell me you were doing the
house."

"Ah?  Didn't I?"  He affected a bafflement that was entirely
unconvincing.  "It's just a quick coat of paint really, to make it
presentable."

"But the kitchen .. . the curtains and colours.  You've got someone
helping you?  A designer?"

He gave her an odd look as though he wasn't entirely sure how to
interpret this question.  "A designer?  Yes, but no one I know," he
said with a quiet emphasis whose significance she could only guess at.
"Bridget organised someone."

"And you're going to use the place?  You're going to come regularly?"

"Ah, well .. . we'll see."  Abruptly, he changed the subject.  "Now,
Catherine, I want to know the final account?  You were happy with
it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Good, because I can tell you, it's been the devil's own job giving
away money that you do not own and cannot possibly account for, money
that will get you into jail quicker than a raid on the Central Bank. My
financial man's been red-eyed and drowned in sweat.  Like someone
handed a hot coal trying desperately to pass the damn thing on without
dropping it on his foot."  A gleam of mischief came into Terry's eyes,
and she had the feeling he had secretly enjoyed the challenge.

"However it was done, it was worth it."

"Indeed it was, Catherine.  Indeed."  Risking the decorators' dust, he
slid his elbows onto the table and rested his chin on his hands.  "I
also thought it prudent to make some enquiries about our mutual
acquaintance."  He added anxiously, "If you should like to know, that
is?"

"Sure."

"It seems he's in Argentina.  Buenos Aires.  He's set up an
import-export business there."

She felt nothing at this news except, perhaps, a lack of surprise.

"I still say, Catherine and this'll be the last time, I swear -I'll not
say it again that you were too generous to him."  He held up a hand as
if to forestall her objections.  "I know, I know he was more of a case
for the doctors than the courts, but-'

"Terry, I think he would have killed himself.  In fact, I know he
would."

He frowned, he came round to the idea reluctantly.  "Very well.  I must
accept your judgement on that."

"And if anyone should have ended up in court, shouldn't it have been
Ben?"

His expression clouded, he said with feeling, "Indeed.  And where is
he, still..  .?"

"In Eaton Square, so far as I know.  Oh, I don't mind, Terry.  Why
should I mind?  Better Rebecca than some poor girl who'd take him
seriously and get hurt."

They fell into a thoughtful silence, broken when they both began to
speak at the same instant, broke off, only to speak over each other
once again.

"There are two things I '

"There was something '

He said immediately, "No, after you," and smiled his slow smile that
started at one corner of his mouth and spread up into his eyes.  She
had forgotten how striking his eyes were, more blue than grey, and how
unflinching.

She had to look down at her hands before she could find the courage to
start.  "Before we discuss the garden, there are a couple of '

"Oh, I've no need to discuss the garden," he said quickly.

"What?"

"I'm here to see you.  I'm not worried about the garden."

"Oh," she repeated uncertainly.  "But all these people are coming '

"I'll wait.  I'll wait for as long as necessary."

She took a deep breath.  "There are two things I want to say to you
before we go any further," she began with strange formality.  "Firstly,
that I owe you an apology.  About this house, how you came to own it.
My father's never been terribly truthful about money.  I've always
known it, really.  I just found it hard to accept at the time. Somehow,
the loss of the house got bound up in Mummy's death.  It was too much
for me to accept that Pa had sold it under our feet just when Mummy was
dying.  I'm afraid I believed what he said all the bad things he told
us about you because it suited me to.  The alternative was too
painful."  She looked up at him.  "I got some sort of admission out of
Pa the other day.  Not a lot you can imagine but enough to make me
suspect that the truth was very different.  I don't know what the
arrangements were, but I'm sure they were very generous.  As always.
Whatever else, Terry, you are the most absurdly generous man I know. So
... I want to apologise.  I hope that you'll be able to forgive me."

Matching the note of formality, he bowed his head in acceptance.  When
he looked up again he seemed pleased.

In her relief at having got this out of the way, she almost forgot the
second matter.  "Oh yes!"  she exclaimed.  "I loved your letters."

She had caught him by surprise.  "I'm sorry?"

"I loved the letters you sent me.  I read them all many times.  I
wanted you to know that they gave me enormous pleasure."

"But they were a poor effort," he argued.  "I'm no good at that sort of
thing."

"You're wrong.  And in fact... I owe you another apology.  For sending
such an awful reply to that letter you sent me that summer '

He interrupted sharply, "No, no too long ago, Catherine.  Best
forgotten.  Water under the bridge.  No, no an age away!"

But she could see he hadn't forgotten, she could see that the wound
still smarted, and she felt an ache of regret and something else that
was very like longing.

"I'm sorry, I..  ."  But seeing the warning flash in his eyes, she said
rapidly, "What was it you wanted to say?  I interrupted you."

"I think later," he said.

It was an hour before the contractors left, an hour that Terry spent
alone in the study.  She found him hunched over his desk on the phone.
At some point he had changed into casual clothes, more country than
gardening, which suited him far better.

He mimed a greeting.  While she waited for him to finish, she watched
him and thought of the letter he had written her that summer.  She
couldn't recall the exact words he had used, but she remembered that
they'd been good honest words, straight from the heart.  It occurred to
her perhaps hadn't been far from her mind for a long time that she had
been foolish to turn him down.

"Now then!"  he cried as he rang off.  "Time to wrap up!"

The quad stood in the stable yard.  He lifted her on and got on behind
her.  They went slowly because she had to brace herself on the
handlebars, and he had to keep one arm tight around her waist.

A short way up the hill, he turned the machine around so they could
look back at the house.  "What I wanted to say was it's yours," he
said.  "I always intended to give it to you."

She leant to one side so she could look back at his face.  "The
house?"

"The house."

"But I don't want it, Terry!"

"I'm giving it to you anyway."

"And I can't possibly accept it."

He gave a sharp sigh.  "Now, why did I think you were going to say
that?  Unlimited loan then?"

"No."

He looked down at her.  "Why not?"

"I wouldn't want to live here on my own.  It wouldn't be practical for
a start."

He conceded this grudgingly.  "Will you come often then?"

"As often as I'm invited."

This idea floated tantalisingly between them.

"You drive a hard bargain, Catherine.  But I agree."

,"Tlfi

EDIT IO

Clare Francis is the author of seven international bestsellers, Night
Sky, Red Crystal, Wolf Winter, Requiem, Deceit, Betrayal and A Dark
Devotion.  She has also written three non-fiction books about her
voyages across the oceans of the world.

Author photograph Jillian Edelstein