CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

LEO frowned as he listened to Davina’s anxious voice, relating what had happened the previous evening.

His frown deepened when she told him how, in a moment of unguarded anger, she had defended herself from Saul’s accusations by telling him that their fathers had been friends and that Leo’s visit had been a personal one.

‘He didn’t believe me,’ she added. ‘I’m sorry, Leo, I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he assured her.

‘I haven’t been able to find anything in Dad’s papers either, but I’m sure you’re right and that they did know one another; that for some reason my father was able to blackmail yours into giving him that information.’ She shivered a little. ‘I’m glad he’s dead,’ she told Leo. ‘I don’t think now that I could bring myself to live with him; speak to him even. I’m glad now that he never loved me and that I never loved him.’

‘Yes, I know how you feel,’ Leo agreed sombrely, and Davina knew that he did.

* * *

Christie lifted her head tiredly from her paperwork when the phone rang. She hadn’t slept well and it showed: there were dark circles beneath her eyes, the skin was drawn tight against her cheekbones and jaw, and when she had looked in the mirror the face looking back at her had been unfamiliarly strained and tense.

Cathy had already gone to school—another mother had picked her up earlier—and Christie wasn’t due in her surgery until after lunch.

This was no way to spend her precious time off, she warned herself as she got up to answer the phone.

She had no hope that it might be Leo. Why should he want to get in touch with her, after all? To explain why he had lied to her? He had had his chance to do that in Edinburgh, and besides, what difference would knowing the reasons make? They would not alter the facts.

And the facts were that Leo von Hessler inhabited a different world from hers, a world she could never inhabit without being sickened and stifled by its—to her—contaminated values, even if he should ask her to share it with him.

And just as she knew she could not give up the way she wanted to live, the things she believed in, she knew that neither could he. No matter how in tune, how close she had felt they were during those few hours they had shared together, she must not forget that for him that closeness had simply been a fiction.

He lived by other values than hers, other needs, and if seeing him so unexpectedly at the Grosvenor had stirred up aches and desires, emotionally based as well as physical, well, then, it was up to her to remind herself of reality.

Even if he had loved her, wanted her, they could not be together. It wasn’t so much his actual wealth that separated them as the way it had been earned, the fact that he was obviously content and, for all she knew, proud to be at the head of his vast empire.

She picked up the receiver and said the number, and then after listening to the voice at the other end she handed the receiver over to Saul.

‘It’s for you,’ she told him.

She had been reading a book last night when Saul returned from seeing Davina James, or, rather, she had been pretending to do so. In reality she had been too anxious about the anger Saul had displayed before he had left to concentrate on anything other than worrying about what he might be doing. She had never seen her brother react like that before, no matter what the provocation.

He had seemed calmer when he returned, but it hadn’t been a peaceful calm, rather a drained, empty one. She hadn’t tried to question him, sensing that he needed some time to distance himself from what had happened.

She had already guessed that acquiring Carey’s must be important to Alex for him to have sent Saul to negotiate the deal. As far as she could see, there was no reason why either Alex or Leo should be so anxious to acquire such a run-down company, and she frowned a little as she walked out of the kitchen, leaving Saul to speak in privacy.

She had become settled in this small rural part of the world, and initially when Saul had told her that Alex wanted to acquire Carey’s she had only thought that at last there might be a chance for those who worked for the company to obtain more security and better working conditions, but now, as she thought about the size and power of an organisation like Hessler’s, she wondered uneasily how its potential involvement would affect their lives.

More jobs, better jobs, better working conditions—that was one side of it, the best side; the other …

And that was something else Leo had not told her. He had known she lived here, she had mentioned it to him, but he had said nothing about Carey’s, nothing about visiting Davina James, when he must have already planned that visit.

Saul’s only comment when he had returned last night had been a bitter, ‘She tried to tell me that von Hessler’s visit was purely social; that their fathers were old friends.’

‘Well, maybe they were,’ she had tried to reason. ‘After all, they were both involved in the same industry.’

‘And at completely opposite ends of it,’ Saul had derided.

* * *

‘Saul … I’m glad I’ve managed to catch you in. Got everything tied up there now, have you?’

Saul wasn’t deceived by Alex’s genial tone. ‘Not yet,’ he told him crisply.

‘I see. Now, I hope things aren’t going to be difficult. You know how important speed and secrecy are with this one, Saul.’

Now the geniality had been overlaid by a terser, slightly hectoring tone. Saul ignored it. He had long, long ago ceased to be afraid of Alex; Alex was a bully and like all bullies he enjoyed his power if you let him. ‘It seems that someone else is also interested in acquiring Carey’s,’ Saul told him.

‘Someone else? That’s impossible. Unless you’ve been criminally careless. I hope you haven’t done anything foolish, Saul. It doesn’t pay to try to be too clever, you know. I hope I don’t have to remind you that I can destroy you as easily as I made you. Without the Davidson Corporation—’

‘Without the Davidson Corporation I’d survive somehow,’ Saul told him tersely. ‘But it isn’t me who’s been careless, Alex. I should look a little closer to home, if I were you … or rather a little closer to the friend whose indiscreet whispers led you to want Carey’s in the first place. Hessler Chemie are after Carey’s,’ he told him.

‘Hessler Chemie?’ He could hear Alex’s shock. ‘The pharmaceutical people? But that’s impossible.’

‘Leo von Hessler himself has been down here to see Davina James,’ Saul told him grimly.

There was a small pause, and Saul had the satisfaction of knowing that he had caught Alex off guard.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Alex snapped eventually. ‘What possible use would Carey’s be to Hessler’s?’

‘Much the same as it would be to you, I imagine,’ Saul told him drily.

There was another pause.

‘But this legislation will only benefit UK companies,’ Alex told him angrily.

‘Perhaps Hessler’s intend to establish a separate UK offshoot.’

‘Why haven’t you been in touch with me about this before now?’

‘I only found out about it last night,’ Saul told him.

‘Well, I want Carey’s, Saul, and I can’t risk stirring up other people’s curiosity or to waste time looking for another suitable company, not at this stage. I want Carey’s, and I want you to get it for me.’

‘Well, it should be easy enough, provided you’re prepared to meet Davina James’s price.’

‘Which is?’ Alex demanded.

‘I don’t know yet. Obviously she intends to play us off against Hessler’s.’

‘No,’ Alex told him, as Saul had known he would. ‘Carey’s has no market value … that’s the whole beauty of acquiring it, and if some damned woman thinks she’s going to get the better of me … There must be another way. Something we can use. Find it, Saul,’ he told him, ‘and find it fast. No more time-wasting games.’

‘And if I can’t find a way?’ Saul asked him quietly.

There was another silence, longer this time than any of the others.

‘I’m surprised you need to ask,’ Alex told him acidly. ‘And it won’t just be your job you’ll lose, Saul. The City doesn’t like failures … losers. They make it very, very nervous.’

‘Problems?’ Christie asked him lightly when she came back into the kitchen and found him standing staring out into the garden.

‘You could say that.’

‘Saul, what exactly does Alex want with Carey’s?’ she asked him quietly. ‘I thought at first that someone else taking over the company would be a good thing for everyone who works there, but …’

‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ Saul told her, his mouth twisting, ‘Alex’s attitude towards Carey Chemicals’ workers won’t vary very much from Davina James’s. As far as both of them are concerned, people are an expendable commodity, especially when personal financial gain is involved.’

‘But I thought Davina was concerned about Carey Chemicals’ employees.’

‘There’s only one thing Davina James cares about, and it isn’t Carey’s or the people who work there.’

Christie heard the bitterness in his voice, and she heard something else as well. Did Saul realise just what he was betraying to her? she wondered as she caught that angry undertone of disillusionment and pain.

‘Alex wasn’t too pleased to be told that Hessler’s are also interested in Carey’s. The last thing he wants to get involved in is some kind of Dutch auction for the business, especially one presided over by a woman.’

‘So what do you intend to do?’ Christie asked him, ignoring his reference to Alex’s chauvinism.

‘I haven’t been given much choice. Alex wants me to find out some way to put some pressure on Davina James so that she sells out to him quickly and cheaply.’ He saw his sister’s expression and his own face hardened. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy on her, Chris.’

‘But she seemed so genuinely anxious to protect her employees.’

‘Didn’t she just!’ He paused and then said slowly, ‘Tell me again, Chris … about the safety infringements and those cases of dermatitis.’

Christie looked horrified. ‘Saul, you can’t use that. It’s privileged information I would never have told you if I’d thought—’

She paused as the sound of the telephone ringing interrupted her.

* * *

Leo frowned as he replaced the telephone receiver after Davina’s call. It was obvious that Saul Jardine’s visit had upset her. He had observed yesterday how careful she was to exert control over betraying her private emotions, and, even though she had been shocked and distressed by his disclosures, she had not reacted to them with the passionate intensity Saul Jardine had obviously aroused in her.

Leo could think of no obvious reason why Alex Davidson should want to acquire Carey’s, nor why Christie’s brother should assume that Hessler Chemie was a rival.

Leo had liked Davina. He had recognised almost immediately the virtues in her and the strength. In other circumstances, if he had not first met Christie Jardine … He smiled a little grimly to himself. It would have been easy to form a close relationship with Davina; she was that kind of woman; there was something spiritually refreshing about her, something that a man could draw strength and hope from, and their shared knowledge of their father’s blood-guilt would have formed a strong bond between them … still would form that bond.

He had heard in her voice as they talked her concern for the future of Carey’s, her sense of responsibility towards its employees, and that too was awareness, a responsibility he knew, if on a much larger scale. Both of them in their different ways bore the burden of rectifying their fathers’ omissions.

Sins of the fathers? He steepled his fingers together and frowned. Experience and caution warned him not to get involved. There was already risk enough in the fact that someone else had made a connection between them, even if it was the wrong one. Much better, safer simply to let matters lie as they were … to let Saul Jardine believe that Hessler Chemie was interested in acquiring Carey’s than to risk anyone making any other kind of connection.

‘I told him that our fathers were friends,’ Davina had said. ‘But he didn’t believe me.’ And he had heard in her voice more than anger or resentment.

Davina was not his concern; not his responsibility. He had problems enough with the family he already had, and this sense he had that he and Davina were now linked at one of the deepest human levels there could be was one he should not encourage or dwell upon.

There was a telephone directory in his room. He looked at it for a moment and then picked it up, his long lean fingers flicking through its pages until he found what he was looking for.

Jardine. Dr Christie. He wrote down the number and then picked up the receiver.

‘Christie.’ She had recognised his voice long before he said quietly, ‘This is Leo von Hessler; please do not hang up.’

Her heart was pounding heavily, her body reacting as though it had been under some kind of intense physical strain so that she heard, saw and felt everything at a thick, blanketing distance, as though they were events taking place in a dream in which she was only an onlooker.

‘Christie, I should like to speak with your brother if he is there, but first … There is something I should like to say to you before my flight leaves for Hamburg. And I should like to say it in person.’

He had never intended this; his own vulnerability had told him that it would be safer, simpler, wiser simply to go, and then last night he had seen her face, had felt her anger and pain. If nothing else, at least he could take those from her. He had recognised from her eyes that she had misunderstood his motives in leaving her at her bedroom door, that she had seen them as a rejection.

‘I can’t really see that there is any point,’ Christie started to tell him acidly.

‘Perhaps not, but I should appreciate the opportunity to see you nevertheless.’

His calm determination confused her. It wasn’t what she had expected. Or wanted?

She held the receiver away from her ear, and said shortly to Saul, ‘It’s Leo von Hessler. He wants to speak with you.’

It was a good fifteen minutes before Saul replaced the receiver. He was frowning, his face blank of all emotion.

‘What is it … what did he want?’ Christie asked him.

‘He wanted to tell me that Hessler Chemie has no interest in acquiring Carey’s, and that in fact Davina James was speaking the truth when she said that their fathers knew each other.’

‘And you believe him?’

‘Yes,’ Saul told her tersely.

‘But you didn’t believe Davina.’

‘No,’ he agreed, and now his expression had changed, his reactions not quite quick enough for him to conceal what he was feeling for her.

Christie looked away from him, swallowing down her own pity.

‘Oh, I told him you’d meet him at the Grosvenor.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You’ve got just under an hour. Would you like me to drive you?’ Now it was his turn to read her thoughts. ‘That is what you want, isn’t it … to see him?’ For a moment Saul thought she was going to lie and deny it; her eyes were wild with the same feral intensity he remembered from her childhood, and his heart ached for her.

‘Whatever he has to say, it can’t make any difference,’ Christie told him doggedly.

Saul said nothing. He would have to go and see Davina, of course. Apologise … explain. Explain? Explain what? And how?

Well, even if he couldn’t explain, he still had to apologise. He stood up, removing his suit jacket from the back of the chair.

He was halfway towards the door when the phone rang again.

Christie answered it. He heard the quickening concern in her voice, the sharp anxiety as she said firmly, ‘Now, calm down and …’ He was opening the door when she covered the mouthpiece of the receiver and called out quickly to him, ‘Saul, it’s Karen. There’s some problem with Josephine. I think you’d better speak to her.’

It took him close on five minutes to decipher what Karen was saying. She was half hysterical, blaming him, accusing him, complaining that she had not even known where to get in touch with him; that he cared nothing for his children; that he had abdicated his responsibility towards them.

‘She is your daughter, Saul,’ she told him.

‘Yes,’ he agreed calmly. ‘She is.’

‘What is it?’ Christie asked him anxiously when he eventually hung up.

‘Josey’s been suspended from school for possessing drugs. According to Karen, they’ve been having problems with her for several months. My fault, apparently, because she’s my child. Karen seems more concerned with what her neighbours and boss are going to think than in helping Josey.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Christie asked him gently.

Saul shrugged. ‘What the hell can I do? Josey has always made it plain enough what she thinks of me. Now, according to Karen, she’s shut herself in her room and is refusing to see or speak to anyone.’

‘Go and see her, Saul,’ Christie suggested. She saw the indecision in his eyes and pressed, ‘She needs you.’

‘I can’t,’ Saul told her. ‘I have to see Davina James, and I have to get this deal tied up. If I don’t … There’s no point in my going anyway, Chris. What the hell can I do to help her? If she won’t talk to her mother … You’d better leave if you’re going to get to Chester in time to see von Hessler,’ he told her, changing the subject.

He saw the uncertainty in her eyes and shook his head. ‘You can’t do anything for Josey by staying here.’

‘No,’ Christie agreed heavily. ‘I don’t suppose I can.’

Ten minutes later, having watched her drive off, Saul closed the front door. It was all right Christie’s saying ‘go’, but his relationship with Josey was not like hers with Cathy. She knew that. The last person Josey would want now was him. Her contempt for him had never been something she’d bothered to hide, her duty visits grimly hostile spaces of time she treated as something unpleasant that had to be endured, like him.

And even if she had wanted him, how the hell could he go?

He closed his eyes, and suddenly he could hear the echo of the emotion in Davina’s voice when she had told him, ‘People are more important than possessions; than wealth, or ambition. People matter, all of them, and if you deny them the right to that importance then you take away from them one of their most basic human rights, you demean and devalue them, and in doing so you demean and devalue yourself as well.’

Behind his shuttered eyelids dark images formed: Josephine as a baby, a toddler, a child. Josey, the last time he had seen her, almost on the brink of womanhood, her eyes blazing contempt and resentment, her face set with rejection, her body willing him not to come near her; to touch her.

How long had it been since he had last touched her, held her, shown her how much he loved and valued her?

But she didn’t want his love; she never had; even as a small child she had turned from him fiercely, denying him the right to claim his fatherhood.

‘You’re not my father,’ she had spat at him once. ‘I don’t have a father and I don’t want one.’

But she was his child.

Without intending to, and certainly without wanting to, he found he was asking himself how Davina would react in the same circumstances. Why did he even need to ask the question?

There was a notepad on the table. He sat down and wrote quickly on it, folding the piece of paper before reaching for a fresh sheet and writing on that as well.

He found an envelope on Christie’s desk, and put the folded note in it, sealing it. He then placed it with the second note in the middle of the kitchen table where Christie couldn’t miss it.

There was no point at all to what he was doing, he told himself as he climbed into his car; no point. It would probably lose him his job and destroy his career, and it meant he was breaking all the rules he had ever set for himself about seeing a task through to its completion; about grimly keeping to whatever path he had set for himself.

And it certainly wouldn’t help Josephine, who would probably refuse to see him, which would mean he would have to get straight back in his car and drive all the way back to Cheshire.

But he still headed for the motorway, grimly trying to ignore the thudding message of his tyres on the tarmac, which seemed to sound out a flat, hard chant of ‘It’s your fault … your fault … your fault …’

* * *

Christie was not a nervous woman, nor one given to awkward self-consciousness, but her self-confidence had not been easily won, and as she walked into the Grosvenor she was suddenly reminded of an occasion as a child when her mother had taken her shopping and then on to meet her father as he left work.

She remembered how excited she had been; how thrilled and proud. They had waited outside the building for him. She had wanted to go in, but her mother had told her that her daddy didn’t like being interrupted at his work.

Christie had known that this wasn’t true. Saul often spent Saturday morning at the office with their father; a treat which had never been permitted her. But this unfairness was forgotten when her father had finally emerged from the building. Christie had broken free of her mother’s hold and run up to him.

‘Christie, for goodness’ sake, why do you have to be such a hoyden? Jean, can’t you do something about this wretched child’s hair, and why are her socks dirty?’ As she listened to him, all Christie’s excitement had faded. In its place had come guilt and misery; the knowledge that in so many ways she displeased her father and was not the child he wanted. Now for no reason at all she remembered those feelings and what it had been like to know that she was not wanted … not loved.

It was dark inside the hotel foyer after the sunlight outside, and she shivered, suddenly afraid and uncertain, turning instinctively back towards the exit.

‘Christie.’ His voice, the light detaining touch of his hand on her arm, her sensitive awareness of the height and breadth of him, the subtle dismayingly familiar personal scent of him, held her rigid.

She turned round, unaware of how clearly her eyes betrayed her contradictory emotions.

What he saw in them made Leo catch his breath. She really was the most extraordinary woman. Her eyes now held pride and anger, the knowledge of maturity and self-awareness, and yet with them was the innocence and pain of a child.

‘I’m glad you came.’

Something in his voice soothed her, broke the imprisoning spell of the past.

‘I didn’t want to,’ she told him, ‘but Saul thought I should.’

Leo looked gravely at her. ‘And you, of course, always do as your brother suggests.’

Christie had the grace to laugh. The sound of her laughter, spontaneous, rich and warm, gave Leo hope.

‘We can’t talk here,’ he told her. ‘The hotel management has been kind enough to lend us a small spare conference-room. I thought you’d prefer to talk there.’

Rather than in his room? He was extraordinarily sensitive and tactful, she had to give him that, Christie acknowledged.

‘How did you manage that?’ she taunted him. ‘Or do I need to ask?’

‘I merely explained that I needed privacy for a short space of time to talk with someone,’ Leo told her, unruffled by her cynicism. He acknowledged it, though, adding gently, ‘Contrary to what you seem to think, Christie, I do not wield the power of the von Hessler name round me like a war mace. I never have. Personally I find that good manners, consideration and honesty are much more effective.’

‘Honesty?’ Christie challenged, her expression suddenly hardening.

As though he sensed that she was about to change her mind and walk away from him, Leo took hold of her. He had a surprisingly firm grip, she recognised as he guided her along a small corridor and stopped outside a polished wooden door.

‘You can let go of me now, Leo,’ she told him as he opened the door with his free hand. ‘This isn’t Germany circa 1940-odd, and you aren’t the SS.’

It was a childish taunt, but its effect on him was immediate and intense. His face went white as he released her, his eyes suddenly blank and unfocused as though he couldn’t bear to look at her.

Against her will she wished she had been less abrasive, but as always her stubborn pride refused to allow her to say so.

‘You wanted to talk to me,’ she said palliatively instead. ‘To explain. Although why you should think it necessary I can’t pretend to understand.’ She was back on the defensive, her chin tilting as she refused to admit what they both already knew; trying to reduce what had happened between them to something of no importance.

Instead of reacting to her challenge, as her father might have done, to her surprise, Leo laughed. ‘You are very British, Christie, aren’t you?’

Caught off guard, Christie stared at him suspiciously. ‘What does that mean?’

Leo’s smile deepened. ‘Wasn’t it a British admiral who raised his telescope to his blind eye and claimed, “I do not see the signal”?’

To her consternation, Christie knew that she was blushing. Blushing. Something she hadn’t done since she had left her teens behind. Just for a second she was tempted to try to bluff her way out, driven by stubbornness and pride, and then she reminded herself that she was supposed to be mature enough now to have conquered or at least controlled those betraying petty vices.

‘I simply meant that I could see no point in resurrecting something which, with hindsight, both of us know wouldn’t …’ She stopped abruptly, biting her lip. Now she had said … betrayed far more than she had intended, and she cursed her stupidity and her vulnerability silently.

‘I didn’t lie to you deliberately, Christie,’ Leo told her quietly.

If he was aware of her self-betrayal either he was too tactful to show it or, more probably, he didn’t want to get involved in that kind of emotional issue, she decided.

‘I had decided to tell you the truth about who I was.’

‘It wasn’t not telling me your name,’ Christie retorted. ‘You let me confide in you … tell you things … air views you must have known I would not have shared with you had I realised who you were.’

She couldn’t bring herself to say how much he had hurt her by letting her believe he shared those views, or at least some of them, that he was sympathetic to what she felt, when he couldn’t possibly be. Not with the position he held in Hessler’s.

‘Yes,’ he agreed quietly. ‘But I am a man, Christie … an individual. I might share my name with the corporation, but I am not that corporation.’

‘But you work for it, you stand at its head; you are not forced to do that, Leo. You must have chosen that role at some stage in your life. Just as you must have known when we were talking that I would never …’ She stopped, unable to go on. ‘There isn’t any point to this,’ she told him flatly. ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing here. After all, what really happened? We had dinner together. I wanted to have sex with you.’ She gave a small shrug, forcing herself to meet his eyes. ‘I made a mistake, drew the wrong conclusions, and, although at the time it was an embarrassing as well as frustrating mistake, it’s hardly the end of the world.’

‘I wanted you,’ Leo told her quietly. ‘I wanted you then and I want you now. Would you like me to prove it?’

Just for an instant she had a brief mental image of them; of him taking hold of her, kissing her, touching her, lifting her against his body, while he groaned with need. She could almost feel his arousal; taste his kiss. Her own body ached sharply, her skin hot.

Just in time she managed to snatch herself back to reality.

‘No, I would not,’ she told him fiercely. ‘That isn’t why I came here, Leo, to have sex with you.’

‘Good,’ he told her unequivocally. ‘Because it isn’t sex I want from you, Christie. It never has been.’ He saw her face and his mouth curled. ‘Surely you knew that—otherwise what has this been about? You may be wrong about my motivation for being with the corporation, but you are right about my inability to leave it, and you, I think, are not a woman who would count the rest of the world well lost for love.’

For a moment she was almost too shocked to speak. Even though she had known how she felt about him, a declaration of love from him was the last thing she had expected. She had fought against her feelings, denied and stifled them, and now suddenly he was making her feel as though she was almost guilty of murder, of destroying something rare and precious.

Valiantly she tried to fight back.

‘Would you?’ she challenged him. ‘Would you give up everything to be with me, to live a life you knew was alien to you, a life that went against all your beliefs, a life that would suffocate and destroy you? Is that what you expect me to do, Leo?’

‘No,’ he told her quietly. ‘And it was because of that that I left you at your bedroom door, Christie. Because I knew that if once I touched you … held you … loved you I would have moved heaven and earth to keep you with me, done anything—’

‘Except give up Hessler’s,’ Christie interrupted him quickly. She dared not let him say any more; already her heart was beating far too fast, her body, her soul aching with a fierce need to reach out and claim what he was offering her, to beg him, plead with him to take the responsibility for the decision away from her, to compel her physically, with the drug of his body, if necessary, to say that she would stay with him.

It was like standing on a bridge over swirling water, wanting to lean forward and simply let oneself fall, the lure of self-destruction so inviting, so strong that it was almost irresistible. Almost. It only took one step to move back from the danger, and in the end Leo himself helped her make it by saying quietly, ‘Except that … I am not free to make that decision, Christie,’ he told her.

She tried to smile, knowing that her eyes were brilliant with the tears she could not allow herself to shed. ‘You mean you will not allow yourself to be free to make it,’ she told him, and then she opened the door.

As she walked through it she stopped.

‘There isn’t anything else we can say to one another, is there, Leo, other than that I wish you had had sex with me that night, and that it had been the worst sex I had ever had in my life?’ She saw his face and smiled bitterly. ‘You say you love me, but you couldn’t even do that for me, could you?’

It was unkind and unfair, but her own pain was so great that she had to have some means of releasing it. And she was crying so much as she drove home that she had to pull into a lay-by.

While she was there a plane flew noisily overhead. It couldn’t, of course, be Leo’s flight, but nevertheless she watched it until it had disappeared.