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CHAPTER ONE
A tear trickled down Emma's cheek. Angrily, she brushed it away and fixed her mind upon the task in hand. She had another twenty miles ahead of her and her sense of self-preservation warned her that it was dangerous to think about Guy and Fanny. She needed to concentrate on the road. The sky was already turning a deep, luxurious purple, the colour of ripe plums. In this strange half-light it was easy to make mistakes. Shadows could play strange tricks. She disliked night driving, anyway, and wanted to reach her destination before night really fell over the curved Dorset landscape.
'Why Dorchester?' Fanny had asked blankly, watching her pack that morning.
'I've been commissioned to illustrate a new American edition of Hardy's books,' Emma said, sticking to the exact truth. The letter of the law, if not the spirit, she thought, blindly packing some clean handkerchiefs.
Fanny had given her a sidelong, anxious look. They had shared a flat for two years. They knew each other as well as it was possible for two girls to do—they both hated tomato ketchup, both loved cats, both hated opera, both adored liquorice. Where they differed the division was cheerful. Fanny liked watching sport while she sat comfortably at home in front of the television with a box of toffees. Emma preferred to join in, playing squash, badminton and tennis with energy and ferocious enjoyment. Emma liked the windows open. Fanny liked them shut. Since they had had to share a small flat, they had learned to compromise. It was, as Fanny had often said, a good preparation for marriage.
What neither had ever anticipated was that they would fall in love with the same man.
Emma had met him at a tennis tournament one hot June afternoon. There had been silver birches casting a moving shadow at the edge of the courts. Emma had played against Guy in a doubles match, beating him and his languid partner hands down. Over tea and iced buns they had discovered a great deal in common. Guy was tall, fair, energetic. Emma had loved the warm smile in his blue eyes and the little bump in his nose where a rugger ball had made violent contact years ago.
'I went out like a light,' he had grinned. She had been all sympathy, wondering what sort of schoolboy he had been, absurdly touched by the thought of him at such a tender age.
By chance, Fanny had been on a month's trip to America, a long sales tour with her publisher boss. It was three weeks before she met Guy, and by then Emma had fallen in love with him, believing or hoping that Guy felt the same about her.
They were in the flat playing a noisy game of cards when Fanny arrived home. It was raining hard, the wind blowing fiercely against the windows. Fanny stumbled into the flat, shaking the rain off her coat like a small, fussy dog. 'Good lord, what a homecoming! Is it laid on just for me…English rain! It smells heavenly after a month of Californian sunshine!'
Fanny was tiny, delicate, her head a mass of soft golden curls. Her skin was a glowing peach colour, warmed by golden suns far away. Against it her blue eyes seemed incredibly vivid, especially as she laughed at them.
'Oh, Em, I'm so glad to be home!' Her eyes rested on Guy, mildly curious for an instant, then widening oddly.
Guy had turned dark red and was openly staring. 'You're Fanny…' he stammered in the tones of one who had just seen Aphrodite rising from the blue waters of the Mediterranean.
Emma had felt a coldness around her heart. She looked from one to the other, at first incredulous, then despairing. She had never seen it happen before, but there was no mistaking what this was—Guy was too direct and open to hide what he felt, and Fanny was obviously as lit up as a Christmas tree, her heart in her wide blue eyes.
The coldness had deepened over the next week. Guy was always at the flat, but now it was to see Fanny.
Fanny had anxiously inquired as to Emma's interest in him, of course. She was far too honest and kind-hearted to steal a boy-friend ruthlessly. In the past they had never been attracted to the same sort of man, and although Emma had met him first, Fanny believed Guy when he assured her that they had been good friends, nothing more. To Emma herself, Fanny said, 'You would tell me to keep my hands off if you felt it that way, wouldn't you, Em?'
Emma had somehow managed a grin. 'You can put money on it!'
'You weren't seriously interested?' Fanny had pressed eagerly.
'Feel free,' Emma had shrugged. No words had ever been so hard to utter, but despite her own hurt Emma had retained enough rock-bottom honesty to recognise that her two dearest friends had had no choice in what had happened. She had seen it hit them at first glance.
'I've never felt like this in my life before,' Fanny had told her, quite unnecessarily, for that was obvious. 'My head's full of bright lights…rainbows and fireworks…Em, I wish I could tell you what it's like.' She had giggled. 'He even hates tomato ketchup! Isn't that providential?' Her blue eyes had darted at Emma gleefully, waiting for her response to this old intimate joke of theirs. It had once been their standard test. Did he like tomato ketchup? If he did…goodbye!
Somehow Emma laughed, but it was wrung from her painfully, and it was at that instant that she decided to go away. She couldn't bear to stay here and be a polite observer at this love affair. Her courage was not up to suc
h a test. She, too, had begun to learn such small, delightful things about Guy. She had found out that he, too, hated tomato ketchup and loved cats. She had been enchanted to hear that he liked to read detective stories in his bath, and hated finding spiders when he turned the taps on in the morning.
How could she stay and hear Fanny going through the same delightful discoveries? It was not their fault. She was not angry with them. They could not help falling in love. Her anger was all reserved for fate—fate, that had dug this pit for her, and gleefully watched her fall headlong into it.
If one could fall into love, though, she told herself fiercely, one could fall out of it, and old proverbs flitted through her mind. Out of sight, out of mind…many a pebble on the beach…
She would forget Guy once she was away from him. She would not even have too many memories to take with her—he had been honest when he had told Fanny that they had been just good friends. She had loved that friendly warmth in him, misreading it for patient growth of love. A careless arm around her shoulders had seemed like a declaration. How easy it was to deceive ourselves when we wished to believe something!
So she had invented this trip. The commission was real enough, but she had had no real need to make the journey down to Dorset. She could have found the necessary historical details in London museums, as she usually did—sketching costumes, furniture and architecture from old prints and books. However, she had planned no holiday this year, so a few weeks in the country were quite justifiable, and she could do a number of sketches while she was down there. They might come in useful at some time.
It was a stroke of luck that her chosen profession allowed her such freedom. Freelance and fancy free, she told Fanny with a pretence of cheerfulness. She had drifted into doing freelance book illustrations by sheer chance—she had originally intended to work in her uncle's advertising agency, but a commission while she was still at art college had turned her feet into this other path, and they had stayed in it ever since.
She slowed down to read a road sign, then turned off to the left. Only another half an hour, she told herself, and she would be signing in at her hotel. She was beginning to feel hungry. A good sign, she thought, with grim self-mockery. Didn't you lose your appetite when you were in love?
The deep banks on either side of the road hemmed in the sky. A few clouds seemed to be moving in from the north, and she wondered if some bad weather were not on the way.
Suddenly a dog ran out from an open farm gate, right into the road in front of her. Jamming on her brakes, she began to pull up, but her reflexes had not been as fast as they should have been, and the car skidded over to the left a little. She wrenched on the wheel, righting herself, then felt a jolt and heard a violent crashing.
Her head slammed forward against the windscreen. The wheel rammed into her, forcing the air out of her lungs. For a few seconds she did not know what had happened. Then she shook herself clear of confusion, climbed out and ran towards the rear of her car.
Another car had crashed into the back of hers and she saw, at a horrified glance, that their case was far worse than hers.
Their windscreen was shattered. The driver, a young woman, lay forward over the wheel, blood visible on her face. In the back of the car three children were crying, 'Mummy…Mummy!' The passenger seat was occupied by an older woman, slumped to one side, her forehead covered in blood.
Fortunately, another motorist slowed down at that moment, leaned out and said crisply, 'I'll telephone for an ambulance. Can you cope until they get here?'
She nodded, breathless and shivering. The driver of the wrecked car was beginning to stir. Emma opened the car door and crouched beside her, gently brushing back the hair from her white face. The lids lifted and blue eyes stared at her blankly.
'Don't get upset,' Emma pleaded softly. 'The children are quite unhurt.'
The pale lips shaped the word. 'Children…' Panic came into the woman's face. She tried to turn her head. 'Children…'
'They're fine,' Emma reassured her. 'Really.' She looked at them. Two of them were quite young, she saw, but one girl was around seven, and looked intelligently alert. 'Say something to your mother,' Emma whispered to her.
'We're all right, Mummy,' the girl said bravely, her dark hair pushed back by one nervous little hand.
Their mother gave a rough sigh of relief. 'Thank God!' Then she glanced sideways and gave a cry of horror. 'Nanny…good heavens, she isn't…?'
Emma said quickly, 'No, no, of course not. I'll take a good look at her, but I think we ought to leave her until the ambulance men arrive.' She went round and bent over the older woman, examining her as well as she could in the bad light. There was a great deal of blood, but she was pretty certain that it was only a surface head wound. Even a small cut bled quite a bit, as she said to the other woman.
'Her pulse is quite strong, so she can't be badly hurt,' she added.
'Thank heavens for that!' The driver closed her eyes. A tear trickled down her cheek. 'What a thing to happen tonight…what rotten bad luck, that car suddenly braking. I couldn't avoid it…I saw it swerve over the road and I knew I could never stop in time…'
Emma bit her lip, wincing. She hurried back to the other side of the car and took the driver's hand. 'I'm sorry…so sorry, but there was a dog…I had no time to think. It was my fault…'
The other woman opened her eyes and looked at her, astonished. 'Oh, it was you?'
'Yes,' Emma said guiltily.
'A dog?'
'It ran out into the road right in front of me—I saw it and instinctively slammed on my brakes. The wrong thing to do, I suppose. I caused a much more serious situation by braking, but I had no time to think about what was the best thing to do. I just acted instinctively. I'm sorry.'
The driver smiled wearily, not unkindly. 'I expect I would have done the same.' She tried to sit up again, and winced. 'Oh!' Her hand flew to her chest and she looked at Emma in panic. 'My chest…ribs…'
