'And we all know his influence in the States' affairs.'

'Precisely.'

'Then I'll come.'

'How sensible.'

'How much coaxing did your mother have to do?'

'Not much. She relied on threats.'

'Hard to imagine your father being afraid of anybody.'

'You don't know Mother. She may seem all sweetness and light on the surface, but there's a hidden streak of steel underneath it all that frightens even me sometimes.'

'At least it's nice to know she likes me.'

'Oh, I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say she's not totally against you.'

He laughed quietly. 'I'm really looking forward to the evening.'

'You know, I think she's quite intrigued by you. A darkly attractive man with a shady past, and all that'

For a moment, Childes looked down into his beer. 'Is that how she sees my past?' he asked.

'She thinks you're mysterious and she likes that.'

'And dear Daddy?'

'You're not good enough for his daughter, that's all.'

You sure?'

'No, but it's not important. He respects my feelings, though, and I haven't disguised how I feel about you. Pigheaded as he is sometimes, he would never hurt me by going against you.'

Childes wished he could be sure. The financier's hostility on the few occasions they had met was barely masked. Perhaps he didn't like divorces; or perhaps he distrusted anyone who did not conform to his own standards, his perception of 'normality'.

In danger of becoming too serious again, Childes asked with a grin, 'Do I need a dinner suit?'

Well, one or two of his business associates have been invited - and that includes a member of La Roche's governing body and his wife, incidentally - so nothing too informal. A tie would be nice.'

'And I thought the soiree was for my benefit.'

Your being there is for my benefit.' She looked intently at him. 'It may seem a trivial thing, but it means a lot to have you with me. I don't know why there's this antagonism between you and my father, Jon, but it's unnecessary and destructive.'

There's no animosity from me, Amy.'

'I know that. And I'm not asking you to bend his way. I just want him to see us together at a normal gathering, to let him see how well we go together.'

He could not help chuckling and she gave him a reproving look. 'I know what you're thinking and I didn't mean that. I'm still his little girl, remember.'

'He'd never understand how much of a woman you are.'

'He doesn't have to. I'm sure he doesn't imagine I'm still as pure as driven snow, though.'

'I wouldn't be too sure. Such things are hard enough for any doting father to face.' The intimacy of their conversation charged his body with a flush of pleasure and he felt good with her, warm in her presence. It was the same for Amy, for her smile was different, not secretive but knowing, and her pale green eyes were lit with an inner sharing. She looked away and gently whirled the melting ice in her glass, watching the clear, rounded cubes as if they held some meaning. Conversations from other tables drifted in the air, occasionally punctuated by soft laughter. An aircraft banked around the western tip of the island, already over the sea just seconds after take-off from the tiny airport, its wings catching the reddening sun. A slight evening breeze stirred a lock of hair against Amy's cheek.

'I should be going,' she said after a while.

Both were aware of what they really wanted.

Childes said, 'I'll take you back to La Roche for your car.'

They finished their drinks and stood together. As they walked through the garden towards the white gate leading to the car park, she slipped her hand into his. He squeezed her fingers and she returned the pressure.

Inside the car, Amy leaned across and kissed his lips, and his desire was tempered and yet inflamed by her tenderness. The sensation for them was as paradoxical as the kiss: both weakening and strengthening at the same time. When they parted, breathless, wanting, his fingertips gently touched a trail along her cheek, brushing her lips and becoming moist from them. He realized that recently their relationship had unexpectedly, and bewilderingly, reached a new peak. It had been slow in developing, gradual in its emergence, each always slightly wary of the other, he afraid to give too much, she cautious of him as a stranger, unlike any other man she had known. It now seemed that they had just passed a point from which there could only be a lingeringly painful return, and both recognized the inexorable yet purely sensory truth of it.

He turned away, unprepared for this new, plunging shift of emotions, unsure of why, how, it had happened so swiftly. Turning on the ignition and engaging gear, Childes drove into the lane leading away from the hotel.

Childes pushed open the front door of the cottage and briefly stood in the small hallway, collecting his thoughts, catching his breath. He closed the door.

Amy's presence was still with him, floating intangibly in the air, and again he wondered at the startling new pace of their feelings for one another. He had held his emotions in check for so long, enjoying her company, taking pleasure in all her aspects, her maturity, her innocence, not least her physical beauty, aware that their relationship was more than friendship, but always in control, unwilling to let go, to succumb to anything deeper. Wounds from his broken marriage were not yet entirely healed, a bitterness still lingered.

He could not help but smile wryly. He felt as if he had been zapped by some invisible force.

The ringing phone made him start. Childes moved away from the door and picked up the receiver.

'Jon?' She sounded breathless.

'Yes, Amy.'

'What happened?'

He paused before answering. 'You too?'

'I feel wonderful and terrible at the same time. It's like an exciting ache.'

He laughed at her description, realizing its aptness. 'I should say the feeling will pass, but I don't want it to.'

'It's scary. And I love it.'

He could sense her uncertainty and her voice was quiet when she added: 'I don't want to be hurt.'

Closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall, Childes struggled with his own emotions. 'Let's give each other time to think.'

'I don't want to.'

'It might be better for us both.'

'Why? Is there anything more to know about each other? I mean, anything important. We've talked, you've told me about yourself, your past, how you feel: is there any more that I should know?'

'No, no dark secrets, Amy. You know all that's happened to me. More, much more, than anyone else.'

'Then why are you afraid of what's happening to us?'

'I thought you were.'

'Not in that way. I'm only scared of being so vulnerable.'

'That's the answer, don't you see?'

'You think I would do anything to hurt you?'

'Things can happen that we have no control over.'

'I thought they already had.'

'I didn't mean that. Events can somehow interfere, can change feelings. It's happened to me before.'

'You told me your marriage was shaky before those dreadful things happened, that they just widened the gulf between you and Fran. Don't run away, Jon, not like . . .'

She stopped and Childes finished for her. 'Not like before.'

'I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I know circumstances had become intolerable.' Amy sighed miserably. 'Oh, Jon, why has this conversation turned out like this? I was so happy, I needed to talk to you. I missed you.'

His tenseness loosened. Yet a gnawing, subconscious disquiet remained. How could he explain his own almost subliminal unrest? 'Amy, I'm sorry too. I'm being stupid. I suppose I'm still masochistically licking ancient wounds.'

'Bad past experiences can sometimes distort the new.'

'Very profound.'

She was relieved the humour was back in his voice, yet could not help but feel a little deflated. 'I'll try to keep a tighter grip on myself,' she said.

'Hey, c'mon. Don't mind an old man's self-pity. So you missed me? I only left you ten minutes ago.'

'I got home from school and felt so . . . so, I don't know a flushed. Happy. Mixed-up. Sick. I wanted you here.'

'Sounds like a bad case.'

'It is, God help me.'

'I've got it too.'

'But you-'

'I told you: pay no attention. I get moody sometimes.'

'Don't I know it. Can I buy you lunch tomorrow?'

'Creep.'

'I don't care.' The warmth was quickly returning.

'Tell you what,' he said. 'If you can stand it, I'll cook you lunch here.'

'We'll only have an hour.'

'I'll prepare it tonight. Nothing fancy; freezer stuff.'

'I love freezer stuff.'

'I love you.' He'd finally said the words.

'Jon . . .'

'I'll see you in school, Amy.'

Her voice was hushed. 'Yes.'

He said goodbye and barely heard her response. The line clicked dead. Cradling the receiver, his hand still resting on the smooth plastic, Childes stared thoughtfully at the wall. He hadn't meant to let the words slip out, hadn't wanted to breach the final barrier with an admission he knew they both felt. Why did it matter when it was the truth? Just what was he afraid of? It wasn't hard to reason.

The bizarre vision followed by the nightmare a fortnight before had left him with a dispiriting and familiar apprehension, a rekindling of the dread that had once nearly broken him. It had ruined his life with Fran and Gabby; he didn't want it to hurt Amy. He prayed that he was wrong, that it wasn't happening all over again, that his imagination was running loose.

Childes rubbed a hand over his eyes, aware of how sore they had become. Drawing in a deep breath, then releasing the air as if ridding himself of festering notions, he went into the tiny, ground-floor bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. After taking out a small plastic bottle and his lens case, he closed the cabinet door to be confronted by his own image, reflected in the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot and he thought there was an unnatural pallor to his skin. Imagination again, he told himself. He was foolishly allowing the morbid introspection to build, to become something other than it was. Which was a throwback, a long-delayed reaction to something past, and that was all. When he had nearly drowned it was probably because he had stayed too long beneath the water, not noticing his lungs had used up precious air, lack of oxygen bringing on the confused images. The nightmare later was . . . was just a nightmare, with no particular significance. He was attributing too much to an unpleasant but unimportant experience, and perhaps it was understandable with past memories to goad his thoughts. Forget it. Things had changed, his life was different.

Peering close to the mirror, Childes gently squeezed the soft lens from his right eye, cleansed it in the palm of his hand with the fluid, and dropped it into its liquid-filled container. He repeated the procedure with the left lens.

Outside in the hallway, he dipped into his briefcase and withdrew his spectacles, his eyes already feeling relief from the irritation. He was about to go through into the kitchen to discover what he could come up with for lunch the following day when a soft thud from upstairs stopped him. He held his breath and gazed up the narrow stairway, seeing only as far as the bend. He waited, going through that peculiar middle-of-the-night sensation of not wanting to hear again a mysterious, intrusive noise, yet seeking confirmation that one had been heard. There was no further sound.

Childes mounted the creaky, wooden stairs, unreasonably nervous. He rounded the bend and saw that his bedroom door was open. Nothing wrong in that: he had left it open that morning a he always did. Climbing the rest of the stairway, he walked the few feet along the landing and pushed the bedroom door open wider.

The room was empty and he admonished himself for behaving like a timorous maiden-aunt. Two windows faced each other across the room and something small and delicate was clinging to the outside of one. He went over, feeling the bare, wooden floorboards giving slightly beneath his weight, and clucked his tongue when he saw the shivering flotsam was no more than a feather stuck to the glass, either a gull's or a pigeon's, he couldn't be sure which. It had happened before: the birds saw sky in the window on the other side of the room and tried to fly through, striking the window-pane on that side but rarely doing more damage than giving themselves a shock and probably a severe headache, leaving a plume or two on the glass. Even as he watched, the breeze caught the feather and whisked it away.

Childes was about to turn around when he caught sight of the distant school. His heart stopped momentarily and his hands gripped the sill when he saw the fiery glow. His relief was instant when he quickly realized the white building was merely reflecting the setting sun's rubescent rays.

But the image remained in his mind, and when he sat down on the bed his hands were trembling.

It watched from beneath a tree, the cheerfully sunny day giving the lie to the misery witnessed in the cemetery.

The mourners were grouped around the open grave, dark clothes struck grey by the sunlight. Stained white crosses, slabs, and smiling cracked angels were dispassionate observers in the field of sunken bones. The mushy cadence of traffic could be heard in the distance; somewhere a radio was snapped off, the graveyard worker realizing a ceremony was in progress. The priest's voice carried as a muffled intonation to the low knoll where the figure waited in the yew's shadow.

When the tiny coffin was lowered, a woman staggered forward as if to forbid the final violation of her dead child. A man at her side held the woman firm, supporting her weight as she sagged. Others in the group bowed their heads or looked away, the mother's agony as unbearable as the untimely death itself. Hands were raised to faces, tissues dampened against cheeks. The features of the men were frozen, pale plastic moulds.

It watched from the hiding place and smiled secretly.

The little casket disappeared from view, swallowed by the dank soil, green-edged lips eagerly wide. The father threw something in after the coffin, a bright-coloured object a a toy, a doll, something that had once been precious to the child a before earth was scattered into the grave.

Reluctantly, yet with private relief, the bereaved group began to drift away. The mother had to be gently led, supported between two others, her head constantly turning as if the dead infant were calling her back, pleading with her not to leave it there, lonely and cold and corrupting. The grief overwhelmed and the mother had to be half-carried to the waiting funeral cars.