THERE, that was the window display finished. Tania climbed out of the window and, opening the door, went round to the front of the shop to stand on the pavement and study her handiwork.

With the children due back at school from their summer holidays within a fortnight, it had all been rather a rush to get the shop open in time to take advantage of the potential back-to-school trade in children’s shoes, but somehow or other she had managed it, developing along the way a firmness that surprised even her. But, as she had quickly discovered once she had taken the decision to start her business, there were plenty of people around who were only too eager to take advantage of her naïveté and inexperience if they could, often cloaking their callousness in the guise of appearing helpful and concerned.

She had lost track of the number of people who had warned her that her whole venture was a waste of time … that opening a shoe shop catering exclusively for children was madness, especially when she had chosen as her venue a small Cheshire market town. Everyone knew that these days people wanted to shop quickly and efficiently and that the places they chose to do so in were the huge soulless shopping malls.

Tania had listened to them, but had stubbornly stuck to her guns. She was a mother herself and she knew quite well that when it came to buying her daughter Lucy’s shoes, she preferred to do so in comfort, with the help of an assistant who knew what he or she was talking about … someone who had been properly trained to measure a child’s foot and advise on the suitability of the footwear needed.

And as for her decision to start up her business in this quiet town; well, that had been spawned by several factors, chief among which had been the fact that the property she had inherited from her unknown great-aunt, which had enabled her to make the decision in the first place had been a run-down old-fashioned draper’s shop here in Appleford.

One of the most important lessons Tania had learned in life was to make the most of the opportunities fate handed to her. It would perhaps have been easier to give in to the kindly pressure of her great-aunt’s bankers and to sell the shop as it stood, but she had seen in it a means of escape for Lucy and herself from the life they had been living in their small high-rise city flat with its lack of amenities, its claustrophobia, its soulless concrete lifelessness.

She had taken one look at Appleford, seen its small country town prettiness, its surrounding green fields, its open skies, its children who enjoyed the kind of environment she had always dreamed of for Lucy, and her mind had been made up.

Since the only business she had any experience of had been gained through her part-time job in a shoe shop in the city, it had seemed a natural course of events to make the decision to reopen her great-aunt Sybil’s shop, but as a children’s shoe shop.

She had not rushed into the decision lightly, no matter what others might think.

In the six months since she had received the astounding news that a great-aunt she had never known she had possessed had died, and that she was her sole heir, she had put herself heart and soul into making her projected new business a success.

She had been on government training courses to equip her to run the administrative side of her new business. She had learned how to deal with the various tradesmen whose services she had needed to transform the decaying, run-down shop into the pretty bow-fronted eye-catching emporium it was today. She had tackled her great-aunt’s bank manager and persuaded him to advance her the money for her new venture on the strength of the building, with the shop and its upstairs flat as security. She had even taken a course in the correct fitting and selling of children’s shoes, and through it all she had been praying desperately that her venture would succeed. So much depended on it.

Already Lucy was a different child from the pinched wan-faced ten-year-old whom she had feared was growing up far too fast in their potentially morally destructive inner city environment.

Perhaps it was because she herself had grown up in the country that she had felt this almost atavistic desire to return to the slower pace of country life, to a more natural and less stress-inducing atmosphere.

It was too late now to regret that she had never known her great-aunt. No doubt she had had her reasons for not making herself known to her, for allowing her to grow up believing herself to be completely alone in the world. A car accident had left her orphaned when she was twelve years old—a vulnerable age for any child—and the abrupt change in her lifestyle, from the only child of loving, caring parents to merely one of many children growing up under the harassed and over-burdened eyes of a series of foster parents, had caused her to withdraw inside herself, to become very much a loner.

Those years were now years she preferred not to remember, not to dwell on. Those years had culminated in Lucy’s birth, Lucy who was so precious and dear to her, despite the fact that at first she had not wanted her.

She had discovered at eighteen that she was pregnant by a boy she barely knew; a boy who had forced himself on her, practically raping her, she had since realised with the hindsight of maturity and wisdom.

At the time she had been too afraid, had felt too guilty, had believed that she herself was too much to blame to tell anyone what had happened.

They had met at a party; a party to which she had gone unwillingly with a girl with whom she had worked. She had left the foster home by then and had been living in a cramped council flat along with three other girls in similar positions to herself.

No doubt because of the various traumas of their lives, none of them, including herself, had been the type to reach out to others, to make friends easily, to trust easily, and so she had had no one with whom to discuss the tragedy which had overwhelmed her when she had realised she was pregnant.

The boy whom she had only known as ‘Tommy’ was someone she never wanted to see again. The shock of his possession of her had left scars which had taken a long time to heal and by the time she had plucked up the courage to confide in her doctor it was far too late for her to have her pregnancy terminated, even if she had wanted to do so.

Then she had been desolate, anguished, frantic with fear and resentment. Emotions she had continued to experience right up until the moment the midwife had placed Lucy in her arms.

Then she had known that no matter how difficult it might be, no matter what she was forced to endure in order to do so, she must keep her daughter.

There had been privations, hardships. She had hated the necessity of accepting aid from the state, but had had no alternative.

Even so, just as soon as she could, just as soon as Lucy had been at school, she had found herself a part-time job and somehow or other she had managed to make ends meet, but the pressure of her perilous financial situation had been constant and draining. There was no relief from it, no money for even the smallest of luxuries or extras.

So many, many times she had looked at Lucy, wearing the second-hand clothes she had lovingly washed and pressed, and ached to be able to clothe her daughter in things that were hers alone, ached to give her the kind of treats Lucy saw being enjoyed by other children.

It had hurt her sometimes to see the wistful longing in Lucy’s eyes and to know that it was out of love for her, out of a knowledge that no child of her age should ever have had, that she never once begged or pleaded for treats.

She had not been the only single parent living in the massive, desolate tower block of council flats. She had made friends with several of the other mothers, and she knew she would miss their down-to-earth company, now that she and Lucy were finally established in Appleford.

Before leaving she had pressed upon them fervent invitations to come and see her, anxious not to lose touch with the few people with whom she had managed to form a genuine bond.

All of them had tragic, unhappy tales to tell: some of husbands who had deserted them, leaving them with young dependent children; some who had done the leaving, driven from their homes by men who abused them physically and emotionally.

Some, like her, had found themselves mothers virtually before they were adult themselves. All of them shared a gritty, fierce determination to see that their children would not suffer as they had, to ensure that somehow their children would inherit a better, wiser, more compassionate world.

Yes, she would miss their support, their friendship, and they would not be easy to replace. She didn’t make friends easily, preferring her own company. Another legacy from her past; a deep-rooted fear, perhaps, of allowing herself to get too close to anyone because she feared the eventual pain of losing them.

No, it was for Lucy’s sake that she had taken this dangerous step into a new world. It was because for Lucy she wanted so much more than she had had herself. Not necessarily more in a material sense; it was going to be a long time before the business allowed them to live any more luxuriously than they had done in the city.

But at least here, with the clean, fresh air and the wide-open horizons, Lucy would have the benefit of an environment a hundred times better than the one she had had in the city.

Already she had told Tania in amazed accents that, in her new school, there would only be twenty other children in her class. In the city she had shared a classroom with almost sixty other pupils. Here the children had access to playing fields, to tennis courts, to a local sports centre, which, unlike the one in the city, was not a long bus ride away through the heart of a city in which no sensible unescorted woman walked after dark, and certainly where no mother could allow her child to venture unprotected.

Yes, she had made the right decision, no matter how many people might shake their heads and predict failure for her.

She might not be able to provide Lucy with the secure emotional background that came from two loving parents who were committed to one another and to the welfare of their children, but at least she was doing the best she could for her.

And, anyway, marriage wasn’t always the blissful, self-fulfilling, self-contained state of happiness and security those on the outside of it tended to imagine.

Take Nicholas Forbes, for instance, her late relative’s solicitor and now her own. He had a beautiful wife, the stepsister of a very wealthy local businessman, two healthy children, a successful practice, a home on the outskirts of the town in one of its most prestigious areas, which Tania had heard a rumour had been given to them as a wedding present by Clarissa Forbes’s stepbrother, and yet, according to local gossip, Nicholas Forbes and his wife were far from happy.

And it was not only gossip. Nicholas himself had indicated as much to her before she could stop him and make it plain to him that the last thing she wanted was to involve herself in anyone else’s private life. That the very last thing she appreciated in any man was what was to her an outright betrayal of the trust and privacy which should exist between a committed couple. Personally she thought it extremely disloyal for one partner in a relationship to discuss the private problems of that relationship with an outsider, especially when that outsider was not a properly trained counsellor or adviser. Besides, she barely knew Nicholas Forbes. As her solicitor, she had found his advice, his willingness to put himself out for her and help her with all the many small problems involved in setting up her small business, heart-warming and encouraging, making her think that perhaps her years of determinedly distancing herself from the entire male sex were now something she ought to outgrow. She had liked Nicholas, but not specifically as a man. She had liked him as a person, a fellow human being, but sexually … She made a tiny moue.

Sexually she was completely immune to any and all members of the male sex and that was the way she wanted things to stay.

She was an intelligent woman. She realised that not all men were necessarily like Lucy’s father, that even he might have found maturity and wisdom as he grew up. But, despite her awareness that logically not all men had to be disliked and shunned, emotionally and as far as her body was concerned, physically, she only felt safe and in control when they were held at a good distance.

She did her best not to communicate her fear, her dislike to Lucy. Idealistically, maternally, she wanted for her daughter all that she had not had herself and that included the self-confidence, the freedom, the belief in herself and in others which would enable her to reach out when the time came and to forge the kind of emotional and physical bonds with another human being which she had never been able to.

For Lucy she wanted it all: happiness, success, security. She would never encourage her daughter to consider herself less of a human being because she was female. She would bring her up in a full awareness of her own assets. Most of all for Lucy she wanted the security that came from knowing that she would never ever have to depend on anyone else, either emotionally or materially.

Lucy was a clever child, a child who would do so much better in a smaller school environment where she would receive more individual tuition and attention. She also made friends easily, something which she herself had never been able to do.

She had no fears of Lucy being isolated or alone in their new home. Already she had made friends with another girl whose family lived half a dozen doors away. Her parents owned and ran a local decorating shop, her father was a decorator, and it had been he who had papered the awkward-to-deal-with ceilings in their own upstairs flat, cheerfully managing the sloping ceilings of the old eighteenth-century building.

Ann and Tom Fielding were a pleasant couple in their late thirties. Susan was their youngest child, and had two older brothers, and, although Tania had felt her normal reticence with Tom Fielding, despite his genuine kindness, she had felt very drawn to Ann Fielding’s warm personality.

The couple had gone out of their way to welcome her to the local community, giving her generous advice about her potential business and making both Lucy and herself welcome in their home.

Their own shop, unlike hers, was double-fronted, with a generous-sized flat above it in which Ann Fielding had allowed her artistic talents full licence.

Tania had marvelled at the effect of her marbled bathroom, a painting technique which Ann had modestly assured her was quite easy to pick up.

In addition, their property, like her own, had a long rear garden, but, unlike her wilderness, theirs was neatly segmented into a pretty courtyard for sitting in, plus a well-maintained vegetable plot, the sight of which had made her own fingers itch to get to grips with her smaller garden.

Lucy was round at the Fieldings’ now, and Tania broke off her contemplation of her shop window, with its artistically draped ‘branch’ and its tumble of fallen gold and russet leaves in shades that toned with the display of winter brogues and boots, to glance at her watch.

Heavens, was it really that time already? Lucy would be beginning to think she had abandoned her. The window display had taken longer than she had expected, and then there had been that long telephone call from a supplier. It was time she changed out of her scruffy working jeans and T-shirt and went round to the Fieldings.

Ann Fielding had very kindly invited both of them to join her family for tea, an invitation which Tania had hesitantly accepted, not wanting to take too much advantage of Ann Fielding’s generosity and uncomfortably conscious that as yet she was not in a position to repay her hospitality.

In fact it was an invitation she would probably have refused if it weren’t for the fact that last night, totally out of the blue, just as she and Lucy had been about to sit down, her solicitor, Nicholas Forbes, had arrived unannounced and unexpected, explaining that he was on his way past and had thought he would call.

Tania wasn’t used to having men in her home and neither was Lucy, and Tania had been conscious of a feeling of resentment and irritation which she had tried to repress. After all, Nicholas Forbes was merely being kind, merely being friendly. And yet … And yet …

Was she wrong in imagining that there had been something in the way he had eyed her T-shirt and jeans-clad figure, something that, while not remotely lustful, had not been entirely without sexual curiosity either?

She had come a long way from the inexperienced girl of eighteen who had silently endured the painful fumblings of the much stronger and heavier boy who had been her first and only sexual partner. She knew a good deal more about the human race now at twenty-nine than she had done at eighteen. Sex was something she avoided, something she had cut out of her life. She felt no sexual desire, no sexual curiosity, and had no need of a man in her life in any sexual sense, and that was the way she preferred it.

There had been men who had attempted to change her attitude, but she had always firmly and determinedly rebuffed them, making it clear that they were wasting their time, and she had no idea why on earth a man like Nicholas Forbes with a wife as attractive as Clarissa Forbes should show any interest in a woman like her, who could not afford to dress in anything other than the cheapest chainstore clothes, who could never afford the money or the time to visit a hairdresser or beauty salon, whose hands were serviceable rather than elegant, with short unpainted nails—hands which were far more used to the hard realities of life than the sensual pleasures. Unless it was because she was on her own.

She had come up against that particular phenomenon too often and from too many unlikely sources to be naïve about it any more. The most unlikely men could betray the most unwelcome sexual harassment when it suited them. There had been that teacher of Lucy’s who had called round to the flat on the pretext of wanting to discuss her work. There had been her superior at the shoe shop. There had been countless others, all of them no doubt respectable and well-thought-of men, but all of them, as far as she was concerned, men who were being disloyal to their wives and families, to whom they most owed commitment.

Personally she could think of no reason why Nicholas Forbes should want to spend time with her. She was not pretty, not in the way that his wife was. Tania had seen her once when she had called at Nicholas’s office, bursting into the room and totally ignoring Tania, and she was a pretty, fluffy blonde woman in her early thirties, with a slightly petulant, spoilt expression and the mannerisms of a little girl.

Tania hadn’t been particularly drawn to her. Just listening to her pouting little girl demands as she persuaded Nicholas to agree to her plans for redecorating their drawing-room had confirmed Tania’s initial view that as women they were complete opposites.

She doubted if Clarissa Forbes had ever wanted for anything in her entire life. The clothes she was wearing were expensive designer models, her hair, her hands, everything about her proclaimed that Clarissa was an adored, petted woman whose single most important preoccupation in life was herself and her own needs.

She was barely five feet two with round blue eyes and a pretty-pretty face, making Tania at five feet seven, with her thick, heavy mane of conker-brown hair and her cheap cotton skirt and blouse, feel uncomfortably conscious of the difference between them.

Perhaps because no one had ever told her so, Tania herself was unaware of the classic beauty of her oval face, with its high cheekbones and well defined lines. She had no idea that the length of her neck and the fullness of her mouth gave her a sensual vulnerability that men found fascinating, or that her lack of artifice, her inability to pretend and pout, might be like a much-needed glass of clean, pure water to a man who had come to feel sickened by the syrupy mock sweetness of a wife who could turn into a virago the moment she was opposed in any way.

Because she had no wish to attract the male sex, Tania assumed that they felt no attraction towards her. Certainly she did nothing to attract their attention or desire. Certainly she never encouraged them to believe that she wanted or needed them in any way, and, because she was the woman she was, she genuinely had no idea that her very indifference, her very lack of interest, only caused men to be more attracted to her, more curious about her, more determined to breach the walls she had so obviously put up around herself.

She had got rid of Nicholas Forbes just as quickly as she could, firmly explaining that she considered this particular time of day sacrosanct to Lucy. Undeterred, Nicholas Forbes had offered to take her out for a drink so that they could talk in private, but she had quickly refused.

She felt that she had made it more than plain to him that, while she welcomed his conscientiousness as her solicitor, there could be no personal relationship between them, especially one that involved the kind of discussions about his marriage which she knew could only lead to problems.

Even if the kind of friendship he had been offering her had included Clarissa, even if Clarissa herself had been willing to welcome her to their circle of friends, which she quite plainly was not, Tania doubted if she would have felt comfortable with them. The Forbeses, while not jet-setters, certainly had a very comfortable and affluent lifestyle. Ann Fielding had mentioned in conversation that Clarissa’s brother was an extremely wealthy man and that through his various companies and contacts he had put a good deal of business Nicholas’s way.

‘I was at school with Nick,’ she had added, pulling a face as she commented, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I suspect that, as far as his marriage is concerned, he’s beginning to discover that marrying a rich girl isn’t all a bed of roses. Clarissa is very spoilt. James dotes on her and spoils her to death. It’s amazing how stupid even the most intelligent of men can be, isn’t it? There’s only three or four years between them; James’s father was Clarissa’s mother’s second husband and both of them were killed in a skiing accident just before Clarissa’s twentieth birthday. She went completely to pieces and although legally she was an adult, James stepped in and virtually took the place of their parents overnight, and he’s gone on shielding and protecting her ever since. Too much so, if you ask me. He’s made a rod for his own back in indulging her so much. She’s very possessive about him, and I doubt if she’s ever going to allow any woman he becomes involved with to oust her as number one in his life, which is a shame, really.’

‘Perhaps he enjoys their relationship,’ Tania suggested. ‘Some men seem to get a kick out of keeping the women in their lives dependent on them either emotionally or financially.’

Her comment had earned her a shrewd, thoughtful look from Ann Fielding and the comment, ‘Some do, yes, but I wouldn’t put James Warren in that class. He’s far too intelligent, too … too secure in himself emotionally to need that kind of hold on another human being. No, I think he’s simply grown so used to believing that Clarissa needs him that he can’t see the truth about her, and she, of course, takes good care that he doesn’t see it. She isn’t at all popular locally. Most people feel rather sorry for Nicholas, even though they also feel that he’s rather brought his own misery down upon himself. Clarissa will never be satisfied with anything that Nicky can give her, not while she’s so aware of the difference between the lifestyle she had with James and the lifestyle that Nicky can provide for her.’

‘But they seem very comfortably off,’ Tania hadn’t been able to stop herself protesting, remembering the glimpse she had had of the brand new mock-Georgian house she had seen through its encircling protective trees, on the one occasion when Nicholas had driven her past his home.

Personally she would have preferred an older, more established property and certainly she doubted that she would have wanted the frilly festoon blinds and over-decorated rooms she had heard Clarissa describing so enthusiastically to her husband the afternoon she had interrupted their meeting. But Tania accepted fair-mindedly that people had different tastes and ideas.

‘Well, they are,’ Ann agreed, wrinkling her nose. ‘But I suspect that Clarissa stills gets an allowance from James. Certainly she could never afford to run that expensive Mercedes nor to buy all those designer clothes, as well as keeping both boys at such an expensive prep school, if James weren’t helping them. I doubt she even knows the meaning of the word ‘‘economy’’. They have a cleaner, and until the boys were at school they had a nanny. No matter how good Nicky’s practice is I doubt it runs to financing all that lot, and even the nicest of men must feel the burden of having his wife’s stepbrother have such a large financial say in their affairs.

‘Of course he’s tied hand and foot, really. The majority of his business has come to him through James. That’s no secret. I don’t envy him one iota … even if at times I do wonder what it would be like to be able to go out and buy all three of mine new clothes at the same time.’

Ann had laughed unselfconsciously as she made this last statement, causing Tania to warm to her even more. Had she known Ann better she might have been tempted to confide in her and ask her advice, but in the early days after Lucy’s birth being independent and showing that she could cope by herself had become such a fierce necessity in her life that she still found it very hard to lean on others, no matter how sympathetic they appeared.

This feeling she had that Nicholas was perhaps being a little more friendly towards her than was strictly necessary was something she would have to deal with on her own.

With a little tact and diplomacy, it should not be too difficult to do so, and, anyway, perhaps she was over-reacting a little, being a touch too sensitive to what was really no more than genuine friendliness on his part.

He had certainly neither said nor done anything to suggest anything different, and she certainly had far more important things to think about. Such as her shop, for instance.

Another few days and the shop would be opening. She felt her body clench with apprehension and excitement. She had taken extensive advertising in the local Press, and she had timed the opening of her business well, done all she could to ensure its success. The rest was in the lap of the gods and she could only hope that they were disposed to smile kindly on her endeavours.

With one last approving look at the window she turned on her heel and opened the shop door.

She was just about to close it behind her when she saw that a man was about to follow her inside.

For a moment, as she looked into his unsmiling face, a tiny frisson of fear ran through her.

He was totally unfamiliar to her, dressed casually in well-worn and very faded blue jeans, and a short-sleeved shirt that acknowledged the heat of the glorious summer they had been enjoying.

His dark hair was untidy and ruffled and he had a smear of oil on one cheekbone. Despite that, he had about him an aura of power and maleness that made her hesitate and then flounder a little before saying quickly, ‘I’m sorry, the shop isn’t open yet. We don’t actually open until Saturday.’

‘So I understand.’ His voice was cool, slightly abrasive, and very, very controlled, as though he was extremely angry.

She looked at him and discovered that he was. She could see it in the cold greyness of his eyes and the hard set of his mouth.

Her own eyes darkened from hazel to tawny gold in recognition of her apprehension.

‘Besides, I haven’t come to buy shoes from you, Ms Carter.’

He hadn’t? Then what did he want? Was he some kind of local official? Some kind of planning official or someone whom she had unwittingly annoyed?

As she frowned her confusion, she said uncertainly, ‘I see. Then … then, why … why have you come to see me?’

‘That,’ he told her curtly, ‘is something I think we can best discuss in privacy.’

Privacy. Her heart pounded. Once, long ago, another man had demanded privacy with her. Lucy had been the result of her acceding to that demand, and, while it was ridiculous to suppose that this man had anything like that in mind, she still could not help the tremor of fear that ran through her, making her tremble visibly.

‘I … I’m afraid that’s impossible,’ she told him huskily. ‘You see, I’m just about to collect my daughter … perhaps if I could make an appointment …’

He laughed harshly.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

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