Chapter Twenty-two

London, Nassau, Los Angeles, New York, 1985

‘NASSAU?’ SAID ROZ. ‘Nassau? Are you sure?’

Andrew Blackworth was used to being patient. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m quite sure, Nassau is where Bill Wilburn last saw his nephew.’

‘Well, go to Nassau, of course,’ said Roz impatiently. ‘I don’t care in the least how expensive it all is. You seem to be doing quite well. Do you have anything further in the way of information, or is it just Nassau?’

‘Nothing at all. But I don’t see that as an insurmountable obstacle.’

‘No, I would hope not. Yes, do go on down there, Mr Blackworth. At least for a few days. Keep in touch though, won’t you? I don’t want you to disappear utterly.’

Andrew Blackworth assured her he would not, and put down the phone. He sighed. Nassau was certainly not going to be as nice as San Francisco.

C. J. was just beginning to think about making his excuses for leaving Oyster Bay and his mother earlier than he had promised when he remembered that Phaedria had asked him to talk to Camilla before he left. He sighed. He didn’t particularly like Camilla, but he could see that he was in fact probably the best person to talk to her. There were no violent emotions raging in his breast against her, or indeed in hers against him; they had had a civilized working relationship, she had been perfectly courteous and composed with him at the reading of the will; he viewed her a great deal more benignly than a lot of other people in the family.

He walked through into the hall and dialled the number of her agency. Miss North was out, they said, taking a late lunch; could she call him back in around a half hour?

Certainly, said C. J., any time, he would be in all afternoon. The secretary sounded very shocked at any suggestion that Camilla would fail to call within the half hour, and took his number. Almost exactly thirty minutes later the phone rang.

‘C. J.? Hallo. This is Camilla North. You rang me.’

‘I did. How are you, Camilla?’

‘Extremely well, thank you. C. J., I’m glad you phoned. I can imagine what it’s about, or I think I can, and I do actually have some news for you. I didn’t know quite what to do with it. That is, I didn’t know who to call. Could we meet for a drink? Perhaps the Palm Court at the Plaza?’

‘Sure,’ he said, intrigued.

Camilla was waiting for him when he got there. She really was a lovely woman, he thought, studying her before she had seen him; nobody would ever think she was forty-eight. No wonder old Julian had been so besotted with her. She was dressed in a loose white silk dress with wide shoulders and sleeves cut off sharply at the elbows; she was tanned, her long legs were bare. Her red-gold hair was clipped back from her face, she wore no jewellery except a heavy gilt chain and matching bracelet from Chanel. She looked classically, sleekly beautiful. C. J. went up to her and held out his hand.

‘C. J. How formal!’ She reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘It’s very nice to see you. I was sorry to hear about you and Roz.’

‘Yes, well, thank you,’ he said. ‘It’s never easy, is it?’

‘Well, of course,’ she said, very cool, very composed, ‘I have never been married, and therefore never divorced. But I have been through a break-up or two.’

She smiled at him, and he noticed for the first time the lines of strain by her mouth and a shadow in her eyes. It must have been very hard on her, Julian’s death, indeed the whole ghastly business. No sympathy, and plenty of pain.

‘Yes,’ he said, gently commiserating, ‘I know. What would you like to drink?’

‘A Bloody Mary, I think. To go with my day.’

‘How is the agency? And what are you doing in this God awful place in August?’

‘Working. I have a lot on. And you?’

‘Oh, same kind of thing.’

‘I heard you’d left the company.’

‘I have. I’m researching a book.’

‘C. J.! How nice. What on?’

‘London,’ he said, and then seeing her puzzled eyes, ‘I’m here visiting my mother.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I see.’

‘So what news do you have for me, Camilla? It sounds intriguing.’

‘It is. Deeply intriguing. I have a lead for you. Let me tell you about it.’

She told him. C. J. listened entranced. ‘That is – very interesting. Very interesting indeed.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh – oh, well, I don’t see why you shouldn’t know. I found some stuff in Julian’s desk.’

‘My goodness, C. J.,’ said Camilla, her eyes dancing with amusement, ‘you are doing a great deal of research! Your mother can’t have seen a great deal of you on your visit to her.’

He looked at her and smiled, and she thought how extraordinarily nice he was, quite the nicest person in that whole ghastly clan; maybe it had something to do with his nationality. Camilla had a deeply inbred chauvinism. She was also struck for the first time by how attractive he was. He did not have exactly striking looks, but they were the kind she liked and understood: gentle, well bred, understated. He was always so well dressed, too, and his manners were perfect; Camilla settled more deeply into her chair and prepared herself to enjoy the evening ahead more than she had expected.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, ‘I do find the whole business so intriguing, and Phaedria needs some help.’

‘Ah,’ she said, with a stab of irritation at the name. ‘Yes. How is Phaedria?’

‘Not very well. Pregnancy doesn’t seem to suit her. And Roz is giving her a hard time.’

‘Roz gives everyone a hard time. Anyway, tell me the significance of what you found in Julian’s desk.’

‘Well, it kind of ties in. Location-wise at any rate. Camilla, did he ever go to LA a lot when you knew him?’

‘Oh,’ she said, and there was a great humour in her eyes, ‘who could tell where Julian ever was? But no, not as far as I can remember. Indeed he always rather resisted the idea of having a store there, or a hotel. He said he didn’t like the place.’

‘Intriguing.’

‘Yes. Well, he was an intriguing man. Whatever his faults. Tell me what you found.’

He told her. ‘Camilla, do you remember Julian getting any calls ever from someone called Lee? Lee Wilburn?’

‘No. No, I don’t. But then he got an awful lot of calls.’ She looked at him and smiled suddenly. ‘He was very very clever at covering his tracks. I doubt if he’d have had anyone call him at home.’

‘No, but maybe in an emergency?’

‘Maybe. But it’s all so long ago, isn’t it? I mean it’s hopeless trying to pick up trails at this distance.’

‘I guess so. Although we don’t seem to be doing too badly.’

‘No. No, you don’t. So what will you do now?’

‘I think, if you don’t mind, I might talk to this Joanna Holden on Long Island. Can you give me her number?’

‘Of course.’

‘This is very nice of you, Camilla. I don’t really see why you should help any of us.’

‘Oh,’ she shrugged. ‘Well, I felt very bad about my being in the apartment that night. I didn’t behave very well altogether. I’d like to make amends.’

‘Well, you’re very generous. Can I show the family’s appreciation by buying you dinner?’

She looked at him consideringly. ‘I think that would be a really very attractive idea, C. J. Thank you.’

They had a very pleasant and relaxed dinner and (both being lonely, frustrated and in need of some harmless diversion) ended the evening, to their mutual surprise and immense pleasure, between Camilla’s linen sheets.

C. J. went to see Joanna next morning. He liked her immediately, she was pretty and sharp and funny; and she was only too delighted to talk about Miles.

She had obviously been seriously in love with him; she still talked of him with a kind of wistful intimacy. He had been her best friend, she said, as well as her boyfriend; she had met him on the beach at Malibu in 1975. ‘Ten years ago, goodness, aren’t we all getting old.’

He had been living with his grandmother, a nice old lady called Mrs Kelly, and he had been at Santa Monica High School. ‘Then Mr Dashwood came along and put him through college. Sent him off to Berkeley. Miles was very clever, he did really well.’

‘Who was Mr Dashwood?’

‘I don’t really know,’ said Joanna. ‘He was a bit of a hazy figure. I only met him very briefly once. He hardly ever came to see Miles. But he was a friend of the family, and he was quite rich, I guess. Anyway, he did a lot for Miles. Miles never really liked him, though, I don’t know why.’

‘He should have done,’ said C. J. ‘If he put him through college. That isn’t cheap.’

‘No, I know. Anyway, Miles was very very hurt because Mr Dashwood wouldn’t give him a job in his company. That was when he went off and became a beach bum. Miles, I mean, not Mr Dashwood. And he said he’d never see him or speak to him again.’

C. J. was beginning to dislike Miles intensely.

‘When did you last see him?’

‘Oh,’ she said, her face shadowy, ‘I guess it was about 1981. Yes, that would have been it. I tried, we all did, to change Miles’ mind, to make him get a job, do something with his degree, do something useful, he was awfully clever, and very – well, attractive, presentable, you know, but he just wouldn’t. He was so angry and kind of strange suddenly. He just went off and more or less dropped out of all our lives. I used to go and see him and his granny sometimes in the evening, but somehow I felt he didn’t want me any more either. So I gave up too.’

‘Do you have a picture of him?’ asked C. J., his heart beating suddenly rather fast.

‘Well,’ she said, looking suddenly guilty. ‘Well, I do. But you mustn’t tell Holden. If you ever meet him. He wouldn’t like it.’

C. J. looked very serious. ‘I promise I won’t.’

‘I’ll go and get it.’

She came back with a rather faded colour snapshot. ‘It’s very old. I don’t suppose he looks a bit like this now. But anyway, there you are. I got rid of all the others.’

A face smiled at C. J. It was an indisputably nice face. A very good-looking face, probably, he thought, if you could see it properly. With long, blond hair falling on his shoulders, blue eyes, and a ravishing smile. He was wearing a white T-shirt, he looked happy, relaxed, very Californian, and he had signed the picture: ‘Jo, from Miles, all my love.’

‘I can’t – I couldn’t – ?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry, I really would rather you didn’t take it. It’s kind of personal.’

‘Of course.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she said.

‘What would you suggest? Do you have any idea where he might be?’

‘None. But you could look over in LA. He might well still be there. On the beach. Try his granny. I can give you the address. Oh, and I tell you who you could talk to. Father Kennedy at the refuge in Santa Monica. He and old Mrs Kelly were great buddies. Miles used to say she was his temptress.’ She laughed. ‘If only you could have seen her. But she was so good to Miles. And he did love her. He really really did.’

‘And you have no idea where we could find this Mr Dashwood?’

‘Honestly, no. I mean, he could be anywhere. England. New York. Anywhere.’

‘Why England? Why do you say that?’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Because he was English. Sorry, I thought I’d told you that.’

Margaret Friedman looked at Phaedria Morell across her desk.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Ask me some questions.’

‘When – when my husband came to see you, was he very unhappy?’

‘Fairly. Certainly not happy.’

‘No, well, silly question I suppose. Was he – well, had he lost someone he was very fond of? Had someone died?’

‘Yes.’

‘A woman?’

‘Yes.’

Phaedria was silent for a while. ‘Was she – was she his mistress do you think?’

‘I think she could have been.’

‘Was he still in love with her when she died?’

‘In a way, perhaps. But, he was more sad than heartbroken. I think she was much more of a dear friend. I got the impression your husband was not over-rich in close friends.’

‘No,’ said Phaedria, ‘I’m afraid that’s right.’ She looked at Margaret Friedman. ‘Did he talk much about a little boy?’

‘Not a great deal. This lady did have a little boy. And your husband was concerned about him.’

‘What about her husband, do you know anything about him?’

‘Yes, he had also died. Earlier. A year or two, I think.’

‘I suppose that would explain why Julian was so concerned about the little boy. He was an orphan.’

‘Indeed.’

Phaedria looked at her and sighed. ‘I feel you’re keeping an awful lot from me.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘You’ve told me why. You said you had to know more about me before you could tell me anything very much.’

‘I think I’ve told you a lot. I’m keeping my side of the bargain quite well. Let’s talk a bit more about you now. How are you feeling?’

‘All right. Very tired. But less sick.’

‘I really meant emotionally.’

‘Pretty bad. I miss Julian terribly, of course.’

‘Of course. Do you feel anything as well as sadness?’

‘Yes,’ said Phaedria, suddenly meeting Margaret Friedman’s detachedly interested eyes. ‘Yes I do. I feel angry. Absolutely furious. I don’t see how he could possibly have done this to me. Half the time I’m grieving because I love him, and the other half I’m raging because I hate him. It’s awful.’

‘It’s healthy.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well, don’t you think so? If he was still alive and he’d done it you’d be furious. Why should his being dead make a difference?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ said Phaedria. ‘But it does, because it’s so much worse. I can’t talk to him. Find out why he did it, why he hated me so much.’

‘I’m sure he didn’t hate you. Quite sure. But if you really thought, hard and constructively, you might find a few clues as to why he decided to do it.’

‘I have thought. I’ve thought and thought. I can’t come up with anything except that he wanted to make me miserable.’

‘Let me help you think. We may come up with something better than that. All right?’

‘All right.’

Pete was waiting outside with the car when she came out, drained, exhausted, but strangely more peaceful.

‘Dover Street, Lady Morell?’

‘I suppose so,’ she said and sighed, and then on an impulse, ‘no, Pete, could you take me to First Street, I’d like to see Mrs Morell. It’s only twelve o’clock, she’s sure to be there.’

‘Certainly.’

‘And, Pete, let’s stop off at Harrods, and we can get her some flowers.’

‘Very good, Lady Morell.’

She sank back in the car, her mind blank, vaguely anxious that she should be in the office, but equally sure that she would be unable to cope with its demands for an hour or two. It would be nice to see Letitia; she was always so comforting, so affectionate, such fun. It would be nice to talk over the past twenty-four hours with her, but she couldn’t; it would be unfair, too much for her to cope with. She had survived Julian’s death surprisingly well, but she had aged a lot just the same, and the ongoing stress of the mystery was taking its toll. She really was the pivot of the family, Phaedria thought; what would they all do without her? Even Roz talked to Letitia from time to time, and loved her. She managed to transcend all the rivalries, all the passions, all the jealousies and in-fighting and yet without ever being pious or sanctimonious, indeed she managed to defuse it all, make it seem rather amusing and silly. It would be nice to see her now, nice just to talk to her. She wondered if she should have warned her she was coming, but no, she always encouraged people to just drop in, and it was a good time, just before lunch, she wasn’t resting or anything, and she wouldn’t have gone out.

Pete pulled up outside the house. ‘Shall I wait, Lady Morell?’

‘Yes, please, Pete, I’ll only be a short while, and we may be able to give Mrs Morell a lift somewhere as well.’

She scooped the bunch of white lilies she had bought into her arms, walked up the steps to the front door and knocked three times very briskly. The door opened at once; Phaedria found herself looking up into the mournful face of Michael Browning.

Her first instinct was to bolt. Nobody (except perhaps Doctor Friedman) could have told her why, but it was extremely strong; however, it was plainly also ridiculous, and undignified. She stood there looking at him; he looked back at her in silence.

She was wearing a brilliant sea-blue silk dress, which slithered gracefully over her burgeoning stomach, and stopped at the knees; her long legs were bare, and she wore low-heeled blue pumps that matched her dress; her wild hair was tied back in a blue silk bow. With the lilies in her arms, the distress in her eyes, she looked exactly like a painting by Burne-Jones.

Michael Browning reached out and in an instinctive desire to comfort, to calm her, touched her cheek. Phaedria drew back as if she had been stung.

‘Hey,’ he said, ‘don’t look so frightened. I won’t bite you. Come along in. How’s the unfriendly baby? Grown, I see.’

‘Yes. Sorry. That is, well, I won’t stop. Not if you’re here. Just give Letitia these, I’ll be back another time.’

‘Now look,’ he said, his eyes exploring her face amusedly, ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to frighten you so much but I promise I’ll stop now. Don’t be silly, of course you must stay. I’m only here for a drink, and then I’m taking Letitia out to lunch. Why don’t you join us?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Phaedria, sufficiently recovered from her shock to smile, almost to laugh. ‘Thank you but no. Not in public, not with you.’

‘Well, thank you for the compliment. Maybe in private then,’ he said, returning the smile. ‘I don’t mind.’

Letitia suddenly appeared in the hall.

‘Phaedria, how lovely. Come on in, darling, and sit down. Are those for me? Thank you. I have a new maid, you know, Nancy finally decided to retire, and she’s hopeless with flowers, I’ll do them myself. Now then, what will you have? A drink?’

‘Oh, no thank you,’ said Phaedria, ‘and I won’t stop. You’re obviously busy.’

‘Nonsense. We have all the time in the world, don’t we, Michael? He’s taking me to lunch at Langan’s, so we can get to know one another better. Roz brought him over and introduced him to me last night, and I felt it couldn’t be left at that. After all he’s part of the family and he doesn’t know anything about me at all. Now don’t be so ridiculous, Phaedria, come along in and sit down. You look exhausted.’

‘I’m all right. Yes, could I have a cup of hot water with some lemon in it? And some glucose.’

‘Ah,’ said Michael, beaming at her delightedly. ‘I knew the lemon would help.’

‘Well, it didn’t, not exactly the way you said,’ said Phaedria with a sigh. ‘But I did find putting the ingredients in hot water was very good. Sorry, I meant to say thank you, but I couldn’t really without – well, without Roz knowing.’

‘And why should Roz mind you thanking me for a little ante-natal care?’

‘Oh, you don’t –’ ‘don’t know Roz’ she had been going to say, but it would clearly sound so rude, so offensive, she stopped herself. ‘You don’t know how elusive you are,’ she finished rather feebly.

‘Yes, well, I haven’t been here very much. But I’m over for two weeks now, I’ve been trying to persuade Roz to take a few days off and show me the rest of England, but she won’t, so I thought I’d get to know Mrs Morell – Letitia – instead. Much more interesting.’

‘What’s all this about lemons?’ said Letitia. ‘I gather you two have met before?’

‘We certainly have,’ said Michael. ‘Phaedria took one look at me and was immediately sick. I seem to have a profound effect on her, this morning she looked as if she was going to faint, or even die on me.’

‘Yes, we met in my office,’ said Phaedria hurriedly. ‘And he told me a cure for pregnancy sickness. Which was very good in time,’ she added tactfully.

‘Right, well, come in and sit down, and tell me how you are. We have half an hour, don’t we Michael?’

‘We do. I’ve asked Phaedria to join us, but she says she couldn’t. I’m not too sure why. Maybe she feels she might be sick or die again.’

‘Oh, I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ said Letitia carefully, wondering how a man who had clearly seen a great deal of life, been married twice and lived with Roz on and off for more than a few months, could possibly not see that lunching with her detested stepmother in the most gossipy restaurant in London would not be the best course of action in the world.

‘O.K. You both win.’ He shrugged. ‘Here’s the glucose cocktail. Letitia, can I help myself to some more champagne, and you too?’

‘Of course, please do, I’m sorry to be so rude. Oh, I certainly do miss Nancy.’

‘Who is Nancy?’ asked Michael, handing Letitia a glass of champagne and then sitting down next to her and fixing upon her reply as if it contained the secret of the universe.

‘Nancy was my maid. She’d been with me since oh, 1954, when Julian married Eliza. And she was nearly as old as I am and she decided, it was nothing to do with me, that I needed someone younger and she needed a rest.’

‘And where has she gone to find this rest?’

‘To live with her sister in Oxford.’

‘And is this sister younger than her? What will she do all day? Will she be able to find something else to occupy her?’

He looked genuinely anxious for the fate of the suddenly unemployed Nancy; Phaedria, watching him, thought she had never in her entire life met anyone so unselfconscious, so unconcerned for himself and the impression he was making.

‘Oh, I expect so,’ said Letitia, ‘she is a very active woman. And the sister is younger, yes, how kind of you to take such an interest in an old lady you’ve never met.’

‘Oh,’ he said, sipping his champagne, leaning back on the sofa, ‘I find old ladies terribly interesting. Truly I do. And I do hope you have about three days clear for this lunch, because I suspect you and your life are going to be even more interesting than Nancy and hers.’

‘Well, I certainly hope so,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘Anyway, we can move on to my life later. Let’s talk to Phaedria while we have her. What have you been doing, darling? I hope you’re visiting Mr Pinker regularly.’

‘Oh, he’s heaven,’ said Phaedria, sipping her hot water. ‘I shall miss him terribly when it’s all over.’

‘Who is this Pinker guy? Is he a new admirer or something?’ asked Michael, looking at her, his mournful eyes lighting up in a way that reminded her suddenly and sharply of Julian.

‘No. I wish he was. He’s my gynaecologist.’

‘Ah. Some difference. Those guys always have a very sexy image. Tell me about him.’

‘Well,’ said Phaedria, laughing, trying to line up the distinguished, grey-haired, old-English charm of Geoffrey Pinker with a sexy image, and failing, ‘he is just very very charming and reassuring and nice. He delivered the Princess of Wales’s babies. And Princess Anne’s.’

‘So you’re in good company. Is this child going to be born at Buckingham Palace?’

Phaedria laughed again. ‘No, a very ordinary hospital in Paddington.’

‘And how much longer is it to B-Day now?’

‘Just over two and a half months.’

‘You look very thin,’ he said critically. ‘Are you eating all the right things? Taking vitamins? Getting enough fresh air?’

‘I certainly am,’ said Phaedria, determinedly cheerful. ‘Never was a pregnant lady so carefully looked after.’

‘I somehow doubt that,’ he said gently, suddenly serious; Phaedria, meeting the dark eyes, felt all at once confused, disturbed.

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘I go to classes –’

‘Oh, not those dreadful relaxation classes!’ said Letitia. ‘Not natural childbirth again, Phaedria, please!’

‘Again?’ said Michael. ‘This is not a first baby?’

‘Oh, this is,’ said Letitia briskly. ‘But surely Roz must have told you about her experiences in childbirth? No? My God, that poor child, she got in the grips of some extremely expensive lunatic who didn’t seem to believe in anything more powerful in the way of pain relief than a little light massage. I’m pleased to say she gave as good as she got. Even in childbirth, it seems, Roz is a formidable character.’

‘I have to tell you I believe it,’ said Michael. ‘I haven’t heard any of this, though. What did she do?’

‘Oh, kicked him very hard a few times. Swore so loudly and violently other women complained. Bit poor C. J. It was a very – what shall we say – active birth.’

‘Yeah, well, I don’t know about all that,’ said Michael. ‘In New York they still more or less knock you out.’

‘Much better,’ said Letitia briskly.

‘Yeah, but I think it’s a good idea if the father can be there. If he possibly can. It’s kind of good for him, I guess, even if it doesn’t do the mother any good.’

There was a strange sound from Phaedria, halfway between a sigh and a sob; she was looking out of the window, fighting back the tears. Michael and Letitia looked at her, stricken.

‘Oh, my God, what a lousy, stupid goddamned thing to say,’ said Michael, jumping up, going over to her, sitting beside her, putting his arms round her. ‘Phaedria, I am so sorry, so terribly terribly sorry. Please forgive me. Here, look, have a cry, go on, don’t fight it, take my hanky, take two, I always have plenty to spare so I can lose them, go on, just cry.’

And she did, she sobbed for five minutes or so, on and on, like a child, all the stress of work, the anxiety of her pregnancy, the trauma of her morning with Doctor Friedman, breaking in her heart in a waterfall of grief. Michael sat holding her, mopping what he could see of her face with his handkerchief; when she had finally stopped she looked up at him with half a crumpled, wounded smile and said, ‘I’m so sorry, and now look at your shirt.’

‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about this shirt,’ he said. ‘It is quite an amazingly absorbent shirt, I always wear it just on the off-chance that some lady may burst into tears on it. There now, you see, it’s drying off already. Now take this handkerchief, and blow your nose, that’s better.’

She blew her nose, and then as unselfconsciously as he, sat there for a while, with her head on his shoulder, resting herself and her emotions.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said after a while. ‘Now I’ve spoilt your fun lunch.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Letitia, ‘but I really don’t think we can leave you now. I suggest, Michael, that you go down the road to Harrod’s and buy us a picnic. I’ll cancel the table at Langan’s. We can make sure Phaedria is getting her proper diet, and then send her back in the car with Pete.’

‘Fine. I’ll go right away. Phaedria, is there anything you don’t like?’

‘Everything.’

‘I’ll find something. It’ll be a challenge.’

When he had gone Phaedria looked at Letitia and smiled shakily. ‘He’s so nice,’ she said. ‘Much too nice for Roz.’

‘Indeed.’ Letitia looked at her ravaged face, and decided this was no time to give her even the mildest hint of what she had foreseen, with hideous clarity, as she watched Michael holding Phaedria in his arms on the sofa.

Two weeks later Phaedria flew to LA in search of Father Kennedy. C. J. was almost hysterical with anxiety at the thought of her going on her own; he said he would go with her, but Phaedria pointed out with perfect truth that Roz would be so angry if she found out that she would probably come after them, and would also guess the reason for their trip: ‘I can concoct a story about checking out the store, or doing some buying, or just taking a vacation, I deserve one for God’s sake, she’ll never know.’

‘But Phaedria, you’re seven months pregnant, you’re mad, you’ll make yourself ill, you’ll have a miscarriage.’

‘Oh, C. J., don’t be such an old woman. I’ll be fine.’

‘What does Mr Pinker say?’

‘Mr Pinker isn’t going to know.’

‘There you are, you see, you know it’s dangerous otherwise you’d tell him.’

‘C. J., I’m in a state of frenzy, it’s dangerous for me not to go.’

He saw her off at Heathrow with some misgivings. In the end she had had to tell Victoria Jones (Mr Pinker, perhaps fortunately, she thought, being on holiday); because she had to have a medical certificate before the airline would take her. Doctor Jones, who understood her distressed state all too well and felt she needed a break, dispatched her with her blessing and a warning not to do anything silly.

C. J. had still watched her go through passport control with a sense of deep foreboding.

She booked into the Bel Air Hotel. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the Beverly Hills; besides, the peace and the lush quiet beauty of Bel Air suited her mood much better. She spent the first twenty-four hours resting, recovering from the flight, wandering through the flower-filled grounds, standing on the bridge and watching the black and white swans drifting lazily beneath her. Her bungalow opened almost on to the lake itself; she sat on the patio the first evening, dining on giant peaches and strawberries, sipping iced water, and listening to the birds singing in the rich still air, watching the sky grow suddenly and beautifully intense and then dark, and felt nearer to happiness than she could remember for a long time.

She asked the hotel for a car; she wanted some freedom to explore. They provided her with a Mercedes SE convertible; she set off after breakfast, with the hood down, and a set of very good maps.

She was in Santa Monica by mid-morning; it was a glorious sparkling day, and she stood leaning on the fence of Palisades Park for a while, looking at the beach and the ocean below her, drinking in the beauty and the sense of timelessness, the lack of hurry that is so essentially Californian. She was also gathering her courage; what she was about to do had its darker side.

She had an address for the refuge, and she found it easily. She went in; it was a big shabby hall, with folding beds stacked neatly against the wall, a few disintegrating chairs set about by small tables. Outside in the sun and the long, uncut grass lay a dozen or so down and outs, watching the day go by.

‘Can you tell me where I can find Father Kennedy?’ she asked a girl who was sitting with them, talking to them.

‘He’s inside in his office,’ she said, pointing. ‘Working on the books.’

Father Kennedy had a small room off the main hall; it had just space for a small shaky desk and chair. He had a host of papers spread in front of him, and an extremely old cumbersome-looking adding machine which he was shaking rather hopelessly.

He looked up at Phaedria as she came in.

‘Good morning.’

‘Father Kennedy?’

‘Indeed I am.’

She looked at the machine. ‘That doesn’t look too terribly healthy.’

‘It is not. It is like myself, it has seen far better days. What can I do for you?’

‘Well – I don’t know. I believe you may be able to help me find someone.’

‘And who might that be? We have all manner of people here, were you thinking this person might be among them?’

‘I don’t think so, Father.’ She suddenly felt rather frightened, a little faint. ‘May I sit down?’

‘Oh, now, what am I thinking of, of course you must sit down, come along with me now, and we will find you a grand chair.’

She followed him and he took the least decrepit of the chairs in the hall and set it out at the back of the building in the shade. A pair of cats sat looking at Phaedria interestedly as she sank down into it; Father Kennedy settled himself beside her on a three-legged stool.

She looked at him, a plump, white-haired old man, with all the patience and candour on his face that only a long life given to the ungrateful and undeserving can provide, and felt she was in safe hands.

He looked at her for a while in silence, and then said, easing her into the conversation, ‘I expect it’s Miles you’ve come about?’

And yes, she said, yes it was, she needed to know about him, not just where he was, but who he was, and how well Father Kennedy had known him, and whether she was wise in pursuing him across half the world. She explained who she was, and why she wanted to find him; she felt it was the only fair basis from which to ask him what she needed to know.

Father Kennedy talked to her with great tenderness and care. He answered only her questions, he gave her no more information than she asked for, and even then he tempered his words with great thoughtfulness, rewriting history just a little in the telling to make the story easier for her to hear.

Yes, he had known Miles since he was a little tiny boy, and his parents too; nice people they had been, good and loving parents, a happy family.

Dean had died as a result of taking an overdose when Miles had been only about ten or eleven; the verdict had indeed been suicide, but he, Father Kennedy, had always thought that was an act of such despair, and that Dean had been a calm and a cheerful man, it seemed perhaps just a trifle unlikely, and that there was certainly a reasonable possibility that he had been drinking and then taken too many sleeping pills in his confusion.

And Lee, now that had been a dreadful thing, cancer she had died of, and only a young woman, in her early forties, but her end had been very peaceful, he had been there with her when she went; his only sorrow had been that Miles had not been there. People said children should have no part of dying or death, but he thought it was important for them to see there was nothing to be frightened of and to know it as the part of life that it was.

The boy had been all right at first, very sad of course, but he had been doing well at school, and he had been a wonderful games player; later on though he had stopped working, wasted his talents, fooled around a bit and that was when his grandmother had moved out to Malibu with him.

And that had been when he met the girl, a sweet little thing, Joanna, and such a nice family, very well off and so on, but with no silly ideas, they had been so good to Miles. And of course it had been a wonderful thing when he had been able to go to Berkeley and do so well there.

Yes, indeed, that had been when Mr Dashwood, Mr Hugo Dashwood, his name was, had stepped in and paid the fees; now wasn’t that a fine gesture for a man to make? – he had been a great gentleman, Mr Dashwood had, and it was the greatest pity that Miles had fallen out with him as he had.

No, he had no idea where Mr Dashwood was now, he had never seen very much of him, indeed he had seldom visited Miles latterly; owing to the difficulty between them the meetings that took place were not happy. He had had an idea he lived in New York, although he was English, and certainly the address that Mrs Kelly had had was not in England. Indeed he had not heard of him for some time.

He believed Miles had taken it very badly that Mr Dashwood had not offered him a job in his company; he had felt in some way that it was his due. Of course it was not, and it was very foolish of him to think that way, but the fact remained that if it had been possible, it would have made the greatest difference to Miles and his life. But then on the other hand Mr Dashwood had been so good to Miles, so generous, it was hardly fair to expect any more.

What had Mr Dashwood been like? Oh, a very typical Englishman, Father Kennedy would have said, a fine-looking man, very tall and slim, and what he would always have imagined a public school person would be like, but Lee had told him that wasn’t right, he had gone to a grammar school and made his way in the world himself. He had had a wife, yes, Lee had also told him, with some old-fashioned English name, Alice, now that was it, and two or three children, boys if he remembered rightly. He had been a good friend to Lee as well as to Miles and done a lot for her when her husband had died.

The house in Malibu was still empty, be believed, although there had been rumours it was up for sale; if she wanted to go and have a look out there, it would do no harm, he could tell her where it was, it was only half an hour’s drive away.

And where was Miles now? Well, he supposed there was no harm in telling her the address, although he had written there himself and not had an answer, so it was possible that they had moved on. He had been sad to have lost them, Miles and Mrs Kelly. He hoped they were well. If she went out to Malibu one of the neighbours might have a more recent address.

‘Now, I wouldn’t go rushing off to Nassau yourself,’ he said, looking at her with concern in his faded old blue eyes. ‘I really don’t know that they are still there, and it would do you no good in your condition. Write to this address, child, and see what comes of it. Now, Mrs Kelly’s friend is called Mrs Galbraith. That is the lady they were staying with. You may have more luck than I. Or send someone else. That would be a better thing.’

‘I probably will,’ said Phaedria, standing up and smiling down at him. ‘Thank you, Father, you have been so very kind. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. How can I thank you?’

‘Oh, it was nothing, now what has it cost me?’ he said, smiling back at her. ‘However –’ Father Kennedy would have starved to death without a whimper of complaint himself; for his flock he was shamelessly greedy – ‘if you felt able perhaps to make a small donation to the refuge that would be a wonderful thing.’

‘Oh, of course I will,’ said Phaedria. ‘I would be really happy to. Here –’ she thrust a hundred dollars into his hand – ‘take this for now. When I get home to England, I will see that a trust fund is set up for you, supplying you with a regular income. I promise. I won’t forget.’

Father Kennedy believed her. She was a sweet, pretty child, and he wished her nothing but well. But he watched her drive away, waving to him gaily, with a little foreboding. He hoped she wasn’t going to learn anything about Miles that would cause her distress.

Andrew Blackworth stood miserably in the Reception of the Cable Beach Hotel and wished he had never heard of the Morell family. It was hot here, it was ugly, and he felt suddenly sharply homesick. He decided to make his stay here extremely short and to continue with his inquiries at long distance. Mrs Emerson could come down here herself if she was so extremely anxious to find young Wilburn.

It was lunch time, and after checking in he sat in the bar for an hour, developing a stiff neck from the fierce air conditioning, drinking iced beer and wondering what he should do next.

He decided the telephone directory might yield a Wilburn or two, but it did not; the next step was either the police, or the barmen. The barmen were usually better company.

That afternoon he did a dozen bars along Cable Beach; and learnt nothing. At the twelfth that evening, the barman told him sympathetically he should try Paradise Island. ‘My friend Barney, in the Royal, he knows everything that happens in this place. You try there.’

Andrew took a cab and went to the Royal. He ordered a champagne cocktail and asked where he might find Barney.

‘I’m Barney,’ said the bartender, smiling him one of the huge Bahamian smiles that despite himself Andrew was beginning to like. ‘What can I tell you?’

‘I’m looking for Miles Wilburn. Do you know him?’

A rather wary look came over Barney’s face. ‘Who wants him?’

‘A family in England I represent.’

More wariness still. ‘You a detective?’

‘Yes.’

The face went blank, closed up.

‘I don’t know him. I never heard of him. Sorry, mister, you asked the wrong guy.’

Andrew was baffled. ‘Look, don’t get me wrong. I’m not the police. I’m a private detective. He hasn’t committed a crime.’

‘I told you, mister, I never heard of him. OK. Now you want another drink, or will you go and sit down and be comfortable over there?’

Andrew, baffled, went and sat down.

‘As if I would tell on Miles,’ said Barney indignantly to his wife Josephine late that night in bed. ‘That’ll be one of those spies sent by one of his lady friends’ husbands. Well, he done a lot for those ladies, he don’t deserve to get into no trouble over it. What’s more, I’m going to see none of the other boys tells this English guy anything either.’

Josephine looked at him admiringly. Then she lay down and turned her magnificent black breasts to her husband. ‘You’re a good friend, Barney. Miles is lucky to have you. How about you being a good friend to me now for a while?’

Andrew found the same baffling lack of helpfulness in all the other bars on Paradise Island. Weary and irritable by the end of the second day, he made his way back to his hotel. Clearly all these people had known Miles. Why wouldn’t they tell him where he was? He felt discouraged, and in addition he had indigestion from all the bowlfuls of peanuts and crisps he had been consuming in all the bars, and a filthy headache. When he got back to his hotel room he felt worse. The pain in his stomach had intensified. Damn. He knew what this was. It was his ulcer working its way back into his life. No wonder, the punishment he had been meting out to it over the past few days. Well, he wasn’t going to suffer the torments of a perforated ulcer in this benighted place. He was going home. The Morells could wait. He would make some inquiries long-distance. He picked up the phone and asked them to check on the next available flight to Heathrow.

Phaedria turned the Mercedes in the direction of Malibu. Driving in California was a very pleasant experience. Nobody rushed, the speed limit was fifty-five and you could simply bowl along in the sunshine, enjoying the view. And it was a beautiful view. The ocean stretched endlessly, gloriously to her left; to her right now the dark sharp shadows that were the Santa Monica Mountains were beginning to rise. It was hot; she was glad the Mercedes was convertible. If she hadn’t been pregnant she would have stopped and gone in the sea. She stopped briefly at Malibu Pier and had a glass of iced tea and a crab sandwich in Alice’s Restaurant, watching the surfers riding endlessly on the waves, zooming, skimming, swooping in or sitting appraising the sea from the beach, chatting, laughing, sun-soaked. She could see why Miles had liked it as a lifestyle. Who was she to take him away from it, she wondered. If she ever found him.

She paid the check, walked over the hot road, back into her car and drove on. Latego Canyon, Father Kennedy had said. Make a right just after Pepperdine University. Here it was. She swung in, drove cautiously up the winding dusty road. She had to stop twice just to drink in the view: the interweaving hills, the sea, the endless range of headlands. It caught hold of her heart; she wanted to stay for ever.

She drove on, about three or four miles. ‘Then the road will fork. Take the left fork. Two miles on, there is a blue house. That’s the one.’

And there it was, the blue house, built cleverly on three levels into the hill. There was parking space in front of a garage. She pulled in and parked. Then she got out and looked at the house. It was quite definitely empty.

Phaedria wandered round it, up and down the steps, peering in at the windows. It was desolate, dusty, still. The furniture wasn’t even covered in sheets. It was modern furniture, neat, soulless. No clues.

Everything was locked. Every door, every window. She tried the garage. That was locked too. She sat down on the grass to rest for a while and try to think what she wanted to do next when she heard a voice.

‘Can I help you?’

Phaedria jumped. A man stood on the grass, smiling at her; friendly, helpful.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. We live next door. These folks moved years ago. Never sold the house, though. Are you looking for them, or looking to buy the house?’

‘Oh, I’m looking for Miles and – and Mrs Kelly,’ she said. ‘Do you know where they’ve gone?’

‘Can’t rightly say,’ said the man. ‘Mrs Kelly kept herself pretty much to herself, and Miles was a bunch of no good. We didn’t have much to do with them.’

‘I see.’ Phaedria was silent. ‘Well, thank you anyway. I just thought I might find a clue or something. But everything’s locked.’

‘Did you try the shed down there?’ asked the man, pointing to a hut on the lower lawn. ‘That might be worth a try. They left in a mighty big hurry. They didn’t take hardly anything with them at all.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Phaedria. ‘Thank you.’

She clambered down to the lower lawn and pushed cautiously at the shed door. At first she thought that was shut too, but a second, harder push and it yielded.

Her heart thumping violently, she went in.

It had obviously been Miles’ shed; in it was his skate board, an old surf board, a bike, some roller skates. She looked at them, mildly amused and charmed by the personality that was emerging. But there were no clues as to his whereabouts.

Then she saw the satchel. An old school bag it was really, stuffed into a corner. Phaedria looked at it for a long time, then cautiously, as if she might be burnt, reached out and took it. It was dusty, covered in insects. She shook it, took it outside and sat down on the grass.

It was full of letters. Letters from girls at school, all with patently big crushes on Miles, letters from Granny Kelly written on his birthdays, all urging him to work hard and do better at school right in the same breath as wishing him happy birthday; heartbreaking letters from Lee, written in hospital, telling him how much she loved him, how she trusted him, how she wanted him to be good.

And then a last few, stuffed right to the bottom of the satchel, typewritten letters from Hugo Dashwood. One was very old and faded, dated 1971, saying how very very sorry and sad he was to hear of Miles’ mother’s death, asking him if there was anything he could do for him, and promising to come to the funeral; another dated two years later, saying how pleased he was to hear Miles had made the water polo team, but he hoped he would still go on working hard at school as well; and finally three more recent, undated, all rather admonitory in tone, telling him that he should stop fooling around on the beach, and get himself a job, that he was fortunate to have such a good education, that he owed it to his parents’ memory as well as to his grandmother and indeed to Hugo himself to show what he could do.

Phaedria read them in silence, wondering at them, at the heat of emotion so obviously contained in them, at the proprietary tone. Whoever Hugo Dashwood had been, he had felt very strongly about Miles. And moreover he could type. Odd, that. Not many men typed letters. Well, if the signature was anything to go by, it was just as well. It was virtually illegible, just a scrawled ‘Hugo’ – if she hadn’t known the name, been looking out for it, she would not have been able to make it out at all.

Phaedria sat looking at the letters for a long time, aware that they were engaging her attention on some quite different level. And then became aware that her brain was focusing very strongly on that signature. And that her heart was suddenly thundering in her and that the sun seemed suddenly almost unbearably bright. A darkness came over her briefly; a frightening, rushing hot darkness. She closed her eyes, swallowed, put out a hand to steady herself. The entire earth seemed to heave beneath her.

Then she opened her eyes, took a deep breath. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said to herself. ‘It isn’t, it couldn’t be.’

She stood up. She felt shaky, weak. She took the satchel and climbed very slowly back up to the car and sat in it for a while. The baby, still all day, suddenly woke up and started moving energetically inside her; it had less room now, the movements were different, stronger, but more forceful somehow, more controlled.

The normality of it made her feel better, hauled her back into the present, herself.

‘Let’s go home,’ she said to it, to her baby, to Julian’s child, ‘let’s go home and have a rest.’

She started the car and drove very very slowly down the hill. It took her a long time to summon sufficient courage to cross the teeming highway, but she finally managed it. Then she headed back into Los Angeles.

Tomorrow she would go and see Father Kennedy again. Ask him some more about Hugo Dashwood. But now she just had to get back and lie down. She had a strange taut pain ebbing and flowing at the base of her back, and her head throbbed. She was terribly frightened.

Afterwards all Phaedria could remember of that night was bright lights. Bright lights coming towards her from other cars: the bright welcome lights of the hotel, there at last to receive her after the nightmare drive of fear and pain; the bright brilliant light as the doctor summoned by the anxious hotel manager looked into her eyes and then as gently, as carefully as he could, said he had to move her to hospital, that her baby was being born; the fearfully bright lights of the hospital reception as she was rushed through on a stretcher, silent, stoical through her terror; the piercing white light of the delivery room as she was taken in, moved on to the bed, her legs put in stirrups, her pulse, the baby’s heartbeat, taken feverishly, anxiously, her own pain set aside, taken no account of, not through disregard, nor callousness, but urgency, necessity; the light came and went then, sometimes it seemed dark, almost peaceful, but then again and again she was surfacing into the room, the pain, the brightness; you’re doing well, they kept saying, not long now, hang on, hang on, now rest, relax, breathe deeply, and she would start to sink, and then, there it was again, the awful wrenching tearing in the centre of herself, so fierce, so violent she could not see how her body could survive it.

And then at last, quite quickly they told her afterwards, not more than an hour after she had arrived, the great primeval urge to push, to go into the pain, to let it carry her forward, onwards, to endure it somehow, anyhow, because through it, at the end of it, there now, yes, she heard it, was the cry, the triumph, the new life, the love. Love such as she had never imagined, never even begun to know, a great invasion of her every sense, love at first sight and sound and touch and smell. And they placed her in her arms, her daughter, a tiny, too tiny scrap of life, a great mass of dark hair and surprisingly wide dark eyes, just for a moment, just so that she would know that this was what for the rest of her life she would fight for and give to and be concerned about, over and above everything else she ever knew.

Then they took her away again; she was two months early, they said, she must go quickly to the special care unit, to an incubator, to be cared for, to stabilize. Phaedria wept, sobbed, tried to climb off her bed and follow them, but the doctor said no, she could not go, that the child would very probably be all right, that caring for prems these days was a most advanced science, that seven months was considered almost full term, that she must not worry, but have some rest. And then at last they moved her away from the brightness into a quiet, dim, peaceful room, and Phaedria, soothed by the assurances, exhausted, triumphant, fell asleep.

In the morning the news was good. The baby was lively, hungry, breathing well. Phaedria said she was to be called Julia, and ate an enormous breakfast. Later they took her down in a wheelchair to the prem unit and she sat and gazed enraptured at the tiny scrap she had created, she and Julian, as she moved and stretched and curled up into her pre-natal shape again; sneezed, clenched and unclenched her hands, kicked her tiny legs. They let Phaedria put in her hand and touch her, feel her soft crumpled silky skin. She put her finger in the tiny fist; Julia took it, gripped it, clung on. Phaedria smiled triumphantly: the baby was strong.

Two days later she was not doing so well; she had developed, a respiratory infection. ‘Nearly all prem babies do this,’ said the doctor, trying to soothe her out of her wide-eyed terror, ‘she’s strong, you must try not to worry, she should pull through.’

Twenty-four hours later she was still holding her own, but plainly distressed; she was restless, feverish, she wouldn’t take the breast milk Phaedria was expressing for her, and the nurses were trying to give her.

Phaedria sat and watched her for almost thirty-six hours, scarcely moving, hardly sleeping; she was afraid to close her eyes lest she should open them and see the baby still, dead, gone. While she looked at her, she felt she could keep her safe. In the end, the doctor led her away, saying she would collapse if she stayed any longer, that she could do nothing for Julia, that she must rest. He put her to bed and sat with her, trying to reassure her; as soon as he had gone she climbed out of the bed again and dragged her poor sore, weary body down the corridor, back to Julia’s side.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she kept whispering urgently, fearfully, to the fragile, brave little piece of humanity: ‘Stay with me. I need you. I can’t lose you too.’

Towards the end of that night she fell asleep, and awoke suddenly to see the tiny body still, quite quite lifeless; she opened her mouth and screamed endlessly.

A nurse came running to her, took hold of her and shook her. ‘Stop it, stop it,’ she said, frightened herself. ‘You must be quiet.’

‘I can’t, I can’t,’ she said, tears of fright rolling down her face. ‘My baby’s dead.’

But no, they said, no she is not dead, she’s better, look, she’s peaceful, sleeping, she’s going to be all right.

And even then she would not leave, she stayed, exhausted, just watching and looking and loving the baby until another day had passed, and then finally, seeing her pink, kicking, healthy, however tiny, she trusted them and agreed to leave her for a while and go to bed.

The trauma and her vigil had weakened Phaedria; she did not recover as quickly as she should. She stayed in the hospital for another week, and then, because they said Julia could not leave for two weeks more, maybe three, she moved back into her bungalow at the Bel Air, driving in every morning to sit with the baby, feed her, hold her when she was allowed, and coming home in the evening to rest and recover herself once more.

It was a strangely happy, almost surreal time; she loved best (guiltily, because she was alone, not with her baby) the evenings, when she would sit on her patio, utterly peaceful, drinking in the scents of the flowers, watching the swans, hearing the conversation, the laughter, the music drifting quietly from the main body of the hotel; concerned briefly only for herself, and rediscovering the sensation of happiness.

There had been endless excitement, of course, when they had heard in England what had happened, phone calls and letters and great banks and baskets and bowls of flowers, arrived, and boxes extravagantly gift wrapped in Beverly Hills, containing presents for Julia, tiny dresses, shawls, bonnets, coats, and enormous, ridiculous soft toys, golden teddies and great pink bunnies, three, four, five times as large as their small owner; Eliza flew over to see her, and her small stepdaughter, wearing a minute white silk dress and matching coat from the White House, and a cobweb-fine hand-crocheted shawl from Letitia, and a tiny gold locket set with sapphires that Letitia’s grandmother, the Dowager Lady Farnsworth, had worn in her own cradle, and bequeathed her in her will. David Sassoon came with a Hockney print of Los Angeles for her: ‘Clever girl, what better place could you possibly have chosen to have a baby?’

Susan came, greatly to Phaedria’s surprise and pleasure, a little reserved but friendly just the same, bringing boxes of cookies and chocolates and strawberries. ‘I do remember how marvellous it is to be hungry again, and you must need little doggy bags to take to the hospital.’

Augustus Blenheim came, jerked into reality by concern and love.

C. J. came, with an exquisite engraving by Frith of a baby, looking anxious and concerned, but with a ring of ‘I told you’ in his eyes and his voice. ‘And I’m sure it could all have waited, there was no point tearing down here, Roz has made no progress at all, as far as I know.’

Phaedria, still nursing her quiet fear, unable to confront it, to recognize it as real, had allowed the night of pain and the days of terror that had followed in its wake to blank it out, did not even tell C. J. she had seen Father Kennedy, merely sat and nodded and said how right he had been.

And then one day, towards the end of the time, when Julia was nearly strong enough to leave and she was sitting peaceful and happy in the evening sun, reading The Water Babies, which someone had sent to Julia and which she had rediscovered with immense pleasure, she heard footsteps and looked up and there in front of her was Michael Browning.

‘Now you are not to faint and you are not to be sick,’ he said, placing a bottle of Cristalle champagne on the table and producing two glasses from his pockets, ‘and you are certainly not to run away. And before you ask, Roz has no idea I’m here.’

He looked at her as she sat, frozen with shock, silent, her eyes huge brilliant smudges in her pale still face. ‘Aren’t you going to greet me? I’ve travelled three thousand miles to bring you this. I hope you like it.’

And he produced from yet another pocket a book, a tiny leather-bound volume, a first edition of Christina Rossetti’s poems. ‘I bought this because of the “Birthday” poem. I thought it was appropriate. I guess your heart must feel pretty much like a singing bird just now.’

‘Michael!’ said Phaedria, reaching up and kissing him gently on the cheek. ‘I didn’t know you were a literary person. What a lovely present. Thank you.’

‘This is a man,’ he said, taking off his jacket and sinking into the chair beside her, ‘who got the Eng Lit runner’s-up prize at Sethlow Junior High two years running. Champagne?’

‘Do you know I haven’t had any yet? Eliza offered me some but I refused. I wasn’t ready for it. But today, yes, I really would like some.’

‘Well, it’s time you did, and it’s just as well,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have drunk it all.’

She looked at him, smiling with the absolute pleasure of his company, untroubled for the moment by thoughts of what might lie before or behind them. He looked, as always, slightly rumpled; it was not just his clothes, it was his hair which looked perpetually in need of a comb, his rather shaggy eyebrows, his disturbed (and disturbing) brown eyes. She thought (not for the first time) how extraordinary it was that a man so devoid of most of the obligatory qualities of conventional male desirability (height, looks, stylishness) could have such an ability to project sexuality with so acute a force. She wrenched her mind away from her deliberations with an effort, and smiled at him. ‘It’s so nice to see you. But why are you here?’

‘I’m here,’ he said simply, ‘because I wanted to see you. I was in Los Angeles anyway, I have two companies here, I knew where you were, and I suddenly decided to come rather than go racing back to New York for a lonely weekend. I am family – or nearly. I felt I should greet the new member.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘Well now,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘tell me all about this baby. I hear she is beautiful. Are you all right? Are they taking good care of you?’

‘The baby is beautiful. She has dark hair and the most wonderful dark eyes. She’s tiny, but growing very very fast. She eats and eats and eats.’

‘From you, I see,’ he said, his eyes lingering, briefly, pleasurably, on her changed, swelling breasts.

Phaedria saw the look and felt a strange stabbing somewhere in her heart; she looked down, away from him, flushed.

‘Yes,’ she said in an attempt at lightness. ‘I have proved to be a fine dairy cow.’

‘Good. And how much does she weigh now, this little calf?’

‘Oh, nearly five pounds. She was only three and a half when she was born. So thin, so tiny; now she’s getting quite fat.’

‘I’d like to see her,’ he said. ‘Could I, do you think? Would it be possible?’

‘You could,’ she said, touched, moved by his genuine interest, ‘but not tonight. Tomorrow. I will take you to the hospital and introduce you to her. Where are you staying?’

‘I don’t know. Would they keep me here, do you think?’

‘We could ask.’

‘Good. I’ll try now.’ He went through the french doors, into her sitting room, and picked up the phone. ‘You pour me some more champagne. This is a very nice little pad you have here. I’m surprised you don’t stay.’

She laughed. ‘I would if I could. I feel it’s half home. I’ve been terribly happy here. But we have to get back, Julia and I. We have to wake up, get on with reality.’

‘What a pity,’ he said. ‘Dreaming suits you. Ah, Reception? Do you have a room for tonight and maybe tomorrow as well? You do? No, I don’t mind. That’s fine. Browning. I’ll come and check in right now.’

‘Excuse me,’ he said, putting down his glass. ‘They want to inspect me. They only have a small room. I guess that means only big enough for three. I’ll be back. Have you had dinner?’

‘No.’

‘You need feeding up. Why don’t you ask me to join you for a nice big juicy T-bone?’

‘I don’t like nice big juicy T-bones.’

‘I’m easy. I’ll eat anything.’

‘All right,’ she said, laughing, ‘please stay and have dinner with me.’

They ate on the patio, salmon poached in champagne, and then some roquefort cheese so delicately salty, so mildly perfect it was, as Michael remarked, like eating happiness, and she laughed, and he made her drink a glass of claret, ‘great for milk production’, sitting outside until it was dark and suddenly chill; relaxed, happy, just talking, talking.

She told him about her childhood, about Oxford, about Charles even, her life in Bristol, before she had met Julian. On the subject of her marriage she kept silent; it was not something she wished, or was able, to share. Michael sat listening, interested, enthralled even, questioning her on the most minute details, things it amazed her he should want to know: had she worn school uniform, and what had it been like, had she been in love with any of her teachers (he had heard all English public school children were homosexual) what had her room been like at Oxford, had she been taken up the river in a punt, what was the first event she had ever reported, what colour was her horse, who were the people she had shared a house with in Bristol?

And then he wanted to hear every detail she could offer of Julia’s birth, of her life and death struggle, of exactly how Phaedria had passed the days since she had left the hospital, of any interesting guests she had met in the hotel and patients in the hospital, of what she had been eating, what exercise she had been taking, of how well she felt.

‘You look very tired,’ he said severely. ‘You can’t have been sleeping.’

‘I haven’t. I have bad dreams still.’

‘What about?’

‘Julia dying. Every night, I see her as she was when I woke up that morning, all white and still. Not just once, but over and over again.’

‘Poor baby,’ he said, and his voice was very gentle. ‘What a lot you have to deal with. All on your own.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ But she smiled as she said it.

‘And why were you here anyway? So great with child? The most famously pregnant traveller since Mary of Nazareth. I imagine it wasn’t really a sudden concern with the competition on Rodeo Drive. This wild-goose chase I suppose, for your missing partner.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re both crazy, you and Roz. Neither of you need subject yourselves to any of it.’

‘I know. And yet, we do. When did she tell you?’

‘Oh, right at the beginning. Don’t worry, I haven’t talked. I can be as silent as an entire mortuary if necessary. I don’t think he exists at all,’ he added, cutting himself a last sliver of cheese. ‘I think he’s a figment of Julian’s crazed imagination.’

‘Do you now?’ She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘I fear you’re wrong. But it’s a nice idea. Anyway –’ she visibly brushed the topic aside – ‘let’s not talk about it. I don’t want to break my spell.’

‘What spell?’

‘I feel like the Sleeping Beauty in her castle here, safe, preserved, lost in time. That nobody can get near me, to hurt me.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘I must take care not to kiss you.’ And he smiled at her, amused, gentle; she smiled back, but inside her somewhere something leapt, unbidden, forbidden. The light-heartedness left her; she felt tense, and oddly fearful.

‘I’m very tired now. Will you excuse me if I go to bed?’ he said suddenly. ‘We have this very heavy programme tomorrow after all.’

‘Of course. Yes, you go, you must be exhausted. And come back for breakfast if you like. I leave for the hospital at about nine.’

‘Do you have a car?’

‘The hotel provides them. Along with almost every other human need.’

‘Do you think that might extend to a pair of pyjamas? Most unaccountably my secretary didn’t slip them in with my budget forecasts as she usually does.’

‘I’m sure they would. A trunkful if you wanted them.’

‘I generally only wear one pair at a time,’ he said. ‘I shall see you in the morning then. Good night Phaedria. Sweet dreams.’

For the first time since Julia’s birth, she slept well.

Roz was frightened and she didn’t know quite why. On the face of it she was doing well. She had gathered a good many reins into her exquisitely manicured hands during the few weeks Phaedria had been away, with immense ease. People no longer felt inhibited, by loyalty to or sympathy for Phaedria, and allowed her to take visible control; the management staff, heading the various companies, impatient for decisions on this and that, for go-aheads, for direction on expansion moves, hamstrung earlier by the ridiculous charade Julian had orchestrated, found her quick, shrewd, brilliantly decisive. Predictably hostile to the notion of being ultimately answerable to two young women, experienced businessmen found themselves grudgingly more receptive to acceding to one. The wholesale exodus of management talent which had threatened the company on Julian’s death was slowing; people were waiting, seeing what might happen, what Roz (increasingly Roz) might do.

Roz, exhilarated, excited by what she was accomplishing, but exhausted nonetheless, had fears that haunted her frequently sleepless bed. She knew she was still fighting a crisis of confidence, that she needed a personal team behind her that could lend respectability and status to her accession. She knew that however brilliant her own mind and training, the one crucial quality she could not possibly lay claim to was experience.

She looked into the distance, and could see no end, no turning even, that might indicate a by-way, a respite, just a long, relentless straight highway.

She travelled it all day – she was in the office by seven thirty most mornings – and she travelled it much of the night as well, leaving the building often at ten, and then still taking work home with her. She hardly ever saw Miranda, she briefed her domestic staff by notes, and in the months since her father had died she had not once eaten a meal with anyone other than a business contact or Michael Browning. And that was the other reason for her fear. She knew she was pushing their relationship, straining his tolerance to the furthest possible parameters; she occasionally spent the weekend with him, in England, still more occasionally flew to New York, she paid lip service to listening to his problems, his demands, but in fact her contact with him on any genuine level was restricted to sex and a demand that he listen to her. And she did not know quite how much longer he was going to put up with it.

He had told her he would give her six months; that he would wait because he loved her and understood what she was trying to do; that he would not complain, not press her. ‘But after that, by God, Rosamund, I will not be a memo on your office wall any longer. If you want me, you will have to pay for me.’

And she had promised, grateful for the reprieve, feverish in her anxiety that she would lose him again so swiftly, so decisively; but she knew that six months was not a quarter, not a tenth of the time she needed before she could relax and cease her vigil on the company.

C. J.’s departure from the household, and indeed the company, was a great relief; she was able, immediately he had moved into his new flat near Sloane Street, to feel quite fondly towards him again. He was the perfect ex husband; undemanding, good-natured, polite, he took over Miranda almost every weekend, he had agreed to go ahead with the divorce as fast as possible, and he had remained loyal, he did not go badmouthing her all over London, as she was uncomfortably aware he would have been justified in doing.

She had a feeling he was helping Phaedria with the hunt for Miles, but she really did not care; such was her contempt for C. J.’s intellectual capacities, his lack of shrewdness that she could not imagine they were going to be very successful, certainly not as successful as she was, with the loyally dogged Andrew Blackworth working on her behalf (although she had been very impatient with his precipitant return from Nassau, and the excuse of a troublesome ulcer). The latest news had been that Miles was working for a bank somewhere; the crazy old woman who had finally revealed herself in Nassau hadn’t had a clear idea where. It probably wasn’t him in fact, she thought wearily; in the very few moments when she had time to think at all, she wondered at the fact that Miles had so completely failed to materialize; the lawyers had advertised so painstakingly, and if the flood of fakes (from half the major countries in the world) who had presented themselves to the offices of Henry Winterbourne either in person, or by letter or phone call, had seen the advertisements, why had not Miles himself? And who was this Hugo Dashwood, for God’s sake, that Henry Winterbourne had discovered through Bill Wilburn? None of of it made sense. Sometimes she wondered if Michael Browning was not right, and that her father had invented Miles.

She woke up late that Saturday morning and decided she had to speak to Michael. What was the time? Ten o’clock. Damn, only five in New York. Oh, well, he should be pleased to hear from her just the same. He had always told her to ring him any time. Michael could wake up and go back to sleep with the ease most people took a drink of water. Maybe she would give him another hour.

She got up, lay in the bath for a long time, thinking about Michael and how much she would like to be with him, wondering even if she might fly over for twenty-four hours, then dressed slowly, fetched herself a coffee from the kitchen and dialled his number.

It was answered by his butler, Franco, a good-natured, efficient and loyal man, who shared with his master a distaste for untruth and an irritating ability to answer the most intensive questioning without giving anything away at all.

No, Mr Browning was not here. No, he had gone away, he believed, on a short business trip. Yes, he had gone by air, Franco had ordered the car to take him to Kennedy himself early yesterday. An internal flight. No, he had no number. He had not said exactly when he would be back. Would Mrs Emerson like him to give Mr Browning a message if he phoned?

The message Mrs Emerson had for Mr Browning was not quite of a nature to be passed on second hand; Roz put down the phone, trembling slightly. Where was he? Where was the bastard? He had never, ever – well, not since their last reconciliation, never when they were together – done anything like this before. He had always told her where he was going, left a number, told her to call.

He must have something to hide. He must be with someone. He wouldn’t have gone on a business trip on a Friday. But who? And a flight? That must mean quite a distance. Where would he go? Florida? Possibly. He liked the Keys. California? Surely not. Too far for a weekend, without a very good reason. Although he did have at least two companies there.

Where could he be, where could he be? Who could he be with? Roz looked out of the window at the golden October sunlight dancing on the Thames and shivered. It seemed to grow darker. The fear that followed her everywhere had suddenly grown very big.

After they had looked at the baby, admired the baby, and Phaedria had fed the baby (Michael having asked most charmingly if he could stay while she did so, and she, surprised at her own unselfconsciousness, had said of course he might, if he wished) cuddled the baby, remarked on her great beauty, and Michael had talked to the nurses and extracted news of an imminent engagement from one, and a suspected pregnancy of her own from another, and Phaedria had talked to the paediatrician and extracted a promise that Julia could fly home in another week, and the baby had been finally lain in her crib and after a brief protest, gone back to sleep, Michael suggested a picnic. ‘Or do we just stay here with her? I don’t mind at all, if that’s what you would like.’

‘I do usually,’ she said doubtfully, ‘but the nurses are always telling me to go out more, they have masses of my milk in the fridge, so I suppose we could.’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘it will do you good. Let’s go to the seaside.’

So they drove out of Los Angeles and along the coast road, past Malibu, on to Paradise Cove. Michael produced from the boot of the Mercedes a picnic basket, an armful of towels, two beach beds, and a beach umbrella. Phaedria watched entranced.

‘This is like an act at the circus. When did you get all that?’

‘The hotel did it, early this morning. Come on.’

He set the umbrella in the sand, put up the beds, opened the hamper: it contained a bottle of exquisite Californian chardonnay, another one of Perrier, a modest heap of smoked salmon sandwiches, and a large bag full of peaches, cherries, strawberries, raspberries. ‘And I even have swimsuits for us both. You’re right about the every human need. I feel if I had asked for a trio of naked ladies to come in juggling flaming torches on one-wheeled bicycles, they would have said, “Certainly, Mr Browning,” and had them there before you could say room service. Do you feel like swimming?’

‘I’m not sure. Sunning anyway. You are wonderful.’

‘I know. There are some pretty amazing sights over there,’ he said, pointing to the far side of the beach.

‘What?’

‘It’s the nude beach. Never been there?’

‘No. And I don’t think I want to now,’ she said, laughing.

‘Do you not like the naked form, Lady Morell?’

‘Very much,’ she said, ‘but not on a lot of strangers.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘I look forward to being your friend. Now don’t start looking frightened,’ he added, seeing her eyes fill with confusion and alarm. ‘I was only joking. Eat your food, like a good nursing mother. You need nourishing.’

‘All right,’ she said, and he watched her relax again.

They ate slowly, drank the wine, watching the surfers, drinking in the sun. Phaedria thought of Miles, spending his days here, in this very ocean; he began to materialize for her, a lean brown body, sun-tangled hair, swooping interminably in on the waves, pursuing nothing but pleasure: she longed to know more of him, now, to meet him and talk to him, to find what sort of a man he could possibly be.

‘Hey,’ said Michael, who had been watching her, ‘where are you? Back in that hospital?’

‘No,’ she said, smiling, hauling herself back to the present, ‘more or less here. I was looking at the surfers and envying them rather. I love the sea and I love the sun. It makes me feel good right down in my bones.’

‘Me too. It’s hot, though. That delicate English skin of yours will burn. Do you want some oil?’

‘It’s not delicate, not really, but it might be a good idea. Did the hotel send that too?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yes please. Could you put some on my back?’

He opened the bottle and began to spread the oil over her shoulders and her back, smoothing it in slowly, rhythmically, gently massaging the tender nape of her neck, down her spine, over her shoulders, his fingers stopping just short of her breasts. Suddenly, shockingly strongly, she wanted his hands on them, more than she could ever remember wanting anything; she closed her eyes, pulling herself tautly together, lest he should feel her tipping over into desire. ‘Thank you,’ she said quickly. ‘That’s fine. Shall I do yours?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘no need, I have skin that resembles a tortoise’s shell more closely than anything else.’ He looked at her closely, saw the raw flicker of sex in her eyes, and smiled.

‘You worry too much,’ was all he said.

A little later on Michael went over to the water and Phaedria lay down under the umbrella; when he came back (not having quite entrusted himself to the surf, which was running high) she was asleep; he sat and looked at her for a while, his face an interesting blank.

She woke up quite suddenly, looking startled, sat up. ‘We must get back,’ she said, ‘quickly. We’ve been gone too long.’

‘Calm down,’ he said, smiling. ‘It’s only three o’clock, and I don’t suppose they’ll let that baby starve. We’ll go back if you like. But don’t panic.’

She relaxed again, and lay back on the bed. ‘I’m sorry. I just worry about her all the time.’

‘Of course. I would too. And we’ll go in a minute. Are you sure you don’t want to swim?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it’s so lovely just lying here.’

‘Sleeping Beauty again. Why wake up at all?’

‘I have to, Michael. I can’t give up now. I can’t.’

‘I don’t see why not. You have all the money you need. You have a gorgeous baby. You’re beautiful. Talented. Why not just enjoy yourself?’

‘I wasn’t born,’ she said, ‘to just enjoy myself.’

‘OK,’ he said, ‘do something else. Sell out to Roz. Take the money and run. Start your own newspaper or something.’

She smiled. ‘Do you know, I’ve thought of doing that. I just might in the fullness of time. But first I have to resolve this mess. Somehow.’

‘OK. You any nearer?’

She looked at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Quite a bit. Not finding him. But knowing who he was. Is.’

‘Really? And who is he?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

He lay down on the sun bed beside her, turned his head towards her. ‘OK. I’m in listening mode. You should know by now I find people kind of interesting.’

She told him. About the collection of things in Julian’s desk, about Father Kennedy and her conversation with him, about Miles, who he was, his small rather sad history, even about Hugo Dashwood and his role in it. All except the letters and the signature. That she was not even acknowledging to herself.

They dined on the patio again, reluctant to break the spell of privacy, of solitude. After dinner, they went into the sitting room and closed the french windows; the nights were getting cold. Michael poured them both brandies. They sat and looked at one another.

‘Right,’ said Phaedria, ‘let’s talk about you.’

‘How long have you got?’

‘As long as it takes.’

So he told her: about his childhood in Brooklyn, about selling his soft drinks on the streets of California, about Anita, about Carol, about Little Michael and Baby Sharon, about making a fortune, about his constant willingness to risk everything and lose it all again.

She listened, attentively, silent, drinking him in, enjoying his roughly rich voice, his humour, the attention to and pleasure in unexpected detail, that was so much a part of his charm, his ability to haul his listeners into intimacy; when he had finished she said, ‘And – Roz?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said smiling at her, ‘I think that is a subject we should not discuss. Not now. Not yet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I suppose I do.’

She was silent.

‘So now we know all about each other,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

There was tension in the room so strong that Phaedria felt she had to get up, move about. ‘Would you like another drink?’

‘I guess so,’ he said slowly, as if he had come back from a long way away. ‘Then I must go to bed. And tomorrow I have to fly back to New York.’

‘It’s been a lovely day.’

‘Yes it has.’

‘You are,’ she said, suddenly, smiling at him, quite relaxed, ‘the nicest man I have ever met. Ever.’

He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know how much of a compliment that is. You’ve met some real stinkers, that’s for sure. Been married to one of the best.’

‘Julian wasn’t a stinker,’ she said, indignant, defensive. ‘I can’t let you say that.’

‘Jesus!’ he said. ‘I seem to spend my life hearing women defend that monster. Just exactly what did he do to you all? Phaedria, honeybunch, just think what he did to you. He cheated on you, he manipulated you, he lied to you, and he left you with this goddamned pantomime to orchestrate. Of course he was a stinker.’

‘Well, maybe, in a way. But I –’ She was silent.

‘You loved him?’

‘Yes. I did. I really did. God knows why.’

‘God has to be the only one who does. Funny old thing, love. No respect for persons. Look at me, I’ve loved a greedy Jewish Momma, an ice-cold, nicely bred fish, and probably the biggest bitch in Christendom. Really loved ’em all. And now . . .’ He was silent, then he looked up at her, and his eyes moved over her face, lingering on her mouth. She felt herself tremble.

‘Phaedria – I –’

‘No,’ she said quickly, panic in her voice, ‘no, don’t. Don’t even think it.’

‘Oh, now,’ he said, laughing, the tension gone briefly, ‘you can’t do that. You can’t tell a man what he has to think and not think. You’re taking away one of our most unalienable rights. Besides, you don’t know what it was.’

‘No,’ she said, her voice small, a little sad. ‘No, I suppose I don’t.’

‘Oh, God,’ he said, ‘I hate it when you’re sad. Don’t be sad. Of course you knew what it was, what I was thinking, what I was feeling, what I was going to say. And if I had said it you’d probably have thrown up or something. I find myself in a no-win situation here.’

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to sound lighthearted too, in spite of the awesome conflict in her, the yearning and the panic, ‘yes you are.’ But her voice came out sounding dull and bleak.

Michael looked at her; she was sitting in the chair opposite him, tension in every particle of her; looking down at her hands, the glass she was holding, the great waterfall of dark hair obscuring her face.

‘Phaedria,’ he said, ‘come and sit down here. Next to me.’

She looked up at him, her eyes meeting his, full of longing and fear; and in a great rush of tenderness and concern he held out his hands.

‘Come on.’

‘Why?’

‘Dear God, you make things complicated. Because I want to have you near me, that’s why.’

She hesitated, looking at him, considering; then in a visible rush of courage, moved over to him.

‘That’s better. It’s all right, I’m not going to crush you in my arms or anything. Although I have to say I find it a litle insulting that you seem to find the prospect so alarming.’

‘You know why I do.’

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling at her again. ‘Of course I do. I find it quite alarming myself for the same reason. You know,’ he added, leaning back, looking thoughtfully into the soft darkness outside the window, ‘she isn’t really so terrible. Nobody realizes it but me, but she isn’t. Underneath all that toughness and bitchiness and anger is really quite a nice, funny woman. You’d be surprised.’

‘Perhaps I would,’ said Phaedria carefully.

‘I know she’s been vile to you. I know she’s been vile to a lot of people. But there are always reasons. And one of the biggest was that charming, dangerous father of hers. Who you loved so much.’

She nodded. Suddenly, surprisingly, tears formed in her eyes, spilled over; he reached out and wiped them tenderly away. ‘Poor baby. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have criticized him and I shouldn’t have threatened you. It’s much too soon. You did love him, and you’ve had an awful time, and you must miss him like hell.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I do. I really do miss him. I’m sorry, I’m always crying over you.’

‘Well, it beats vomiting.’ He looked at her for a long time, his eyes exploring her face. ‘We seem to have a penchant, both of us, for loving difficult people. What a shame. When we could probably have been so very much happier loving nice easy ones. Like each other. Well, maybe we shall never know.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

He smiled at her. ‘You really are very very beautiful, you know. I enjoy you. I really do.’

He picked up her hand, looked at it, playing with her fingers.

‘I’m beginning to find this rather hard to handle,’ he said. ‘I think probably I should leave.’

‘All right,’ she said, half relieved, half sad.

‘However,’ he went on, with a heavy sigh, raising his hand, stroking her cheek, ‘I find myself in considerable difficulty. I don’t think I can stay, in case I forget myself and do something ungentlemanly. On the other hand,’ and he sighed again, and then, suddenly, with his most soul-baring smile, ‘I have such a large erection, I don’t think I can possibly make it across the lobby and up to my own room. What do you think I should do?’

Phaedria looked at him, and smiled back; happiness, illogical, unbidden, delicious, filling every fibre of her; she stood up and walked through to the bedroom.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh,’ she said briskly, reappearing, her arms full of towels, ‘come along. I’m running you a very cold shower. It will do you no end of good.’

‘Ah,’ he said, laughing. ‘The English public school remedy. Did they really believe in that?’

‘They certainly did. They still do. And the Boy Scouts. I’m assured that it works.’

‘Oh, God. Will you get in it with me?’

‘That would defeat the object, I would have thought.’

‘I fear so.’ He was silent for a moment then looked at her sadly. ‘And I thought you were going to come back into the room stark naked, and make me all kinds of interesting propositions.’

‘No you didn’t.’

‘No, I didn’t. Unfortunately. It’s all right, you can turn the shower off now.’

‘Certainly not. You haven’t been near it.’

‘The very thought of it has done the trick.’

‘Your housemaster at Eton would not have believed you.’

‘You’re not my housemaster, and this is not Eton. Did you ever know anyone who went to Eton?’ he asked suddenly, his terminal curiosity distracting him for a moment.

‘Oh lots. Charles – my polo-playing friend – for one.’

‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘that explains a lot. And here you are, confronted with a real red-blooded male from Brooklyn and all you can do is show him the shower.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘of course you’re right. And we would both regret it terribly.’

‘I think we would.’

‘Correction,’ he said, ‘you would regret it terribly.’

‘All right, I would regret it terribly.’

‘Actually,’ he said, after a moment’s thought. ‘I don’t think I can let you think that either. I want you to know that neither of us would regret one single, glorious, fucking moment of it. But it is not to be.’ His dark eyes sought out a response from hers, probing her; it was an odd echo of the act of sex itself. She met his eyes, opened herself to them, and then, with a sense of physical loss, shook her head.

‘No.’

‘At least,’ he said, and there was an expression on his face that turned her heart over, ‘not for now.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘certainly not for now.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘go and turn that goddamned shower off and come and sit down again. I promise I won’t lay a single ill-bred finger on you. But I don’t want to lose you just yet. Now tell me some more about this Charles person. Did he really screw you and was he really gay?’