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'But I haven't needed it for ages.'

'And this is her favourite doll. Isn't she gorgeous?'

'Her name is Rosalinda Loveheart Splendourfiore. Daddy and I thought of that together.'

'And
she
is splendour-fiorious, isn't she, Mummy? Even nicer than my Debbie. Except I'm not going to call her just Debbie any more. Ellie is going to help me think of a better name.'

Lucy was fascinated...and oddly churned up...by the relationship that was strengthening and developing daily between the two girls. Physically, Ellie seemed so small and frail compared to farm-bred Charlotte, and Lucy knew that Malcolm's concerns in the past about his daughter's health would have been well founded. Charlotte was the more talkative, too.

Despite this apparent dominance, however, Ellie was by no means the humble follower. She had a wonderfully well-developed imagination—witness the elaborate name and even more elaborate life history of the fair Rosalinda—and Charlotte was both spellbound and stimulated by this.

Lucy could fully understand that Debbie, named after one of the sheepdogs on Granny's and Grandad's farm, was simply not going to make the grade from now on. She only hoped she could help Charlotte come up with something suitably 'splendour-fiorious' in its place.

When their tour was finished, having encompassed most of Ellie's possessions but very little of the house itself, Malcolm announced that dinner was ready and the girls set the table. This left Malcolm and Lucy briefly alone together in the bright, modem kitchen.

She seized the opportunity to ask him, 'Has there been any friction between them today?'

'Not since I've been home,' he answered. 'And Jenny didn't mention anything. Why? Has Charlotte been upset?'

'No, not at all. I was just thinking how beautifully they seem to mesh together and wondered if there
was
friction that I hadn't happened to hear about.'

'Not that I know of.'

'It seems unnatural!'

'Don't borrow trouble,' he drawled, and his grey eyes twinkled. 'I'm sure they'll
have
to argue at some point, if the friendship lasts.'

As if to confirm this theory, they both heard raised voices coming from the dining room just a moment later. 'No, I was going to do the cutlery!'

'No,
I
was!'

'But you did the plates.'

'Funny, from here I can't even tell whose voice belongs to who,' Malcolm observed.

Lucy nodded quickly. 'All little girls sound the same.'

'Do you think so?'

'When they're fighting at least.'

'I expect you're right,' he conceded.

The girls weren't fighting any more by the time the two adults brought in the food. Lucy noticed that Charlotte looked a little sulky, so perhaps the decision on the cutlery hadn't gone her way. She soon recovered her spirits, however, and they shared a delightful meal.

The girls munched on hamburger patties sandwiched in buns with tomato sauce and lettuce, while Malcolm and Lucy had their patties with salads. Malcolm's ambitious experiment was a delicious success, and they each drank a glass of wine. Red wine, which only assumed significance later.

Of necessity, the conversation was pitched mostly at five-year-old level, but the girls finished eating first and received permission to leave the table and go and play so that Malcolm and Lucy were alone once more.

Can I really do this? Lucy found herself wondering. I don't think I can. It's bound to be difficult, under the best of circumstances, if a single father and a single mother find that their children are best friends. I expect it happens reasonably often these days when there are so many single-parent families around. Children end up as matchmakers for their parents. But not this time. Not when we have to work together, and when we both only want to forget about what happened that awful night after Bronwyn's death.

'Shall I put on some music?' Malcolm asked. 'Or the news?'

Lucy realised she had been silent for too long. 'Whichever you want,' she answered quickly.

'Music, I think,' he decided. 'Ellie and Charlotte are playing in the living room, and I don't always think the news makes suitable viewing for children.'

He went to the compact disc player in the next room, leaving Lucy with time to start plotting.

Could she possibly manage to break up Charlotte's friendship with Ellie? How? Change schools? That would be the only way, and there were half a dozen arguments against it. Charlotte had only just started there. She was happy. It was close by. It had a very sensible approach to dealing with gifted children...

Lucy heard the sound of her daughter's laughter—or maybe it was Ellie's—once more, just before Malcolm's music began to swell.

No, I won't do it. I
couldn't!
she realised, and it had nothing to do with the issue of schools. Quite simply, she knew she wouldn't be able to bring herself to deliberately break up such a successful and happy friendship, and that was the only thing that counted. The baggage that came with this friendship she would just have to live with, no matter what it cost.

'I'll put on the jug for tea or coffee, shall I?' she suggested to Malcolm ten minutes later, when they'd finished eating.

He nodded, 'Yes, do.'

So they stayed at the table and drank their hot drinks while the two girls played, and it was all quite dangerously, seductively pleasant.

They even washed up together. It took three rounds of polite protests on the subject before he agreed to let her help, and as soon as they'd started she wished she'd let him win on the issue, because they'd done this together too many times before.

She didn't need the reminder of those sad, weary evenings six years ago when they'd rinsed and stacked plates, wiped down bench tops and scoured saucepans in each other's company. Often silent, sometimes talking, never ill at ease with each other.

She could still remember some of their conversations.

'Today, for the first time, I really felt she'd accepted it,' Malcolm had said one evening.

'Did she say something?'

'Not overtly. But she was holding my hand, and...'

'Don't talk about it, Malcolm, if you don't want to.'

'But I do. I
do!
I need to! Oh, damn!'

There had been a splintering, high-pitched sound at this point, because he'd dropped a glass. She'd cleared it up for him at once, and he'd barely even noticed. He'd still been aimlessly wiping an already spotless sink, staring at it without even seeing it as he'd tried to articulate what he'd felt, and what he and Bronny had said to each other.

Not for the first time, Lucy had sensed that it hadn't been an easy, effortless marriage by this time. They'd been together, she'd known, for twelve years, and married for nine. He'd only been eighteen when they'd first met, while Bronwyn had been a year older. Had their difficulties been purely sourced in Bronwyn's illness, or would they have cropped up anyway?

Perhaps no one would ever know. Her illness had been an unavoidable presence in their marriage, and to imagine it away and conjecture about their lives and their relationship without it had been impossible.

Even Lucy's own life had been irrevocably changed because of it. If Bronwyn hadn't been dying, Lucy and Malcolm would never have met, would never have made love, would never have—

'Finished,' Malcolm said, pulling her back across six years to the present. 'A quarter to eight already.'

'Past Charlotte's bedtime,' Lucy answered. 'I'd better get home. She still finds school very tiring.'

'So does Ellie. I have to make sure she— But hang on, we had this conversation the other day, didn't we?' he interrupted himself, then grinned wryly. 'Sorry.'

'It's all right.' She laughed. 'Everyone does it. I'm afraid I lead rather a routine life these days. Subjects for conversation are finite.'

She looked up at him, still with an easy smile on her face, and found that he was looking at her.

'I suppose so,' he said. 'But do you really think that you and I have covered them all already?'

It had been lightly said. Or had meant to be. But Lucy knew that Malcolm was thinking of past evenings spent together now, too, and had belatedly realised that his words had been a little too resonant, a little too significant.

Suddenly their presence together in this airy kitchen wasn't safe any more. Not safe for Lucy, anyway, with her vivid memories. Malcolm's own memories had to be fuzzier, with the wine factored into it, but at the moment that didn't seem to indicate that they were any the less powerful.

'I— Not that I want to revisit— Damn!' he finished expressively.

'It's all right,' she assured him, speaking too fast. 'I'll tell Charlotte it's time for us to go. Thanks, Malcolm. The girls have enjoyed themselves famously, of course, and the meal was delicious. I'll reciprocate, obviously.'

'Don't feel that you have to.'

'Believe me, I have to!' She chuckled, forcing it a little. 'Do you really think Charlotte would let me get away with
not?'

'This is all for the sake of the girls, isn't it?' he said quietly.

He'd hung up the last teatowel and put away the last glass, and now he was standing in the doorway next to the cupboard where the glassware was kept, leaning his forearm on the frame. He wasn't quite blocking Lucy's path as the doorway was wide, but she would have had to brush right past him to get to the living room, and at that moment she just wasn't prepared to do it.

Neither was she prepared to go the long way around, through the kitchen's other door behind her. It would have looked like much too significant an avoidance.

'Yes, it
is
for the sake of the girls,' she answered him. 'Isn't that the best reason in the world?'

'It is,' he agreed. 'But does it seem like such a sacrifice to you?'

'Yes. It does.'

'You weren't to blame for what happened six years ago, Lucy.' He was still watching her, his eyes raking over her body as if he could see its sudden heat of awareness.

'Nor were you,' she replied. 'That doesn't change the fact that it was wrong.'

'Wrong
then.'

'Yes.'

'But there's nothing wrong with what we're doing now, is there? Fostering a successful friendship...an
ideal
friendship, I'd go so far as to say...between our two daughters by making it possible for them to get together outside school hours. Don't get tense about it, please. Don't act as if there's something dangerous about it.'

'Dangerous? Of course there isn't! That's— Your word choice is too confrontational, sometimes, Malcolm.'

'You prefer euphemisms?'

'I prefer accuracy! And I'm not tense.' But she couldn't lie to him in such a bold-faced way. '
Trying
not to be,' she amended more honestly. 'Because I agree with you. I want this for Charlotte. I wish we didn't even have to think about anything else.'

'We don't. We won't. That's what I'm trying—very clumsily—to say. I'm asking you to weather this...this inevitable initial awareness, because of the past, until it fades. Which it will.'

'Do you think so?'

'Yes! New memories and new events will overlay it. The link is only one of memory, and it will be broken. Since, otherwise, yes, it's too uncomfortable for both of us. We both want it. To forget that dreadful, sinful mistake. And so we will.'

'OK.' She nodded carefully. For a man, he was unusually courageous in talking about difficult things. 'Your attitude makes— Well, I like your confidence that
wanting
it will be enough. I—I'm not— Perhaps we—'

'We've said enough, haven't we?'

'Yes. I think so.'

'I can hear the girls getting tetchy with each other again. Let's get them to bed.'

He straightened in the doorway, then stood back to let her through so that she had no choice now. She had to pass close to him, and it was every bit as hard as she'd known it would be. Again, easier for him! Alcohol must have blunted the details. He couldn't possibly remember her body as clearly as she remembered his.

Even the way he smelt. It hit her as she brushed past, that potent mixture of soap and salt and wine. Red wine. That was what he'd binged on that night six years ago. She hadn't even thought of it over dinner, but now it came flooding back. Smell was the most evocative of the senses, and right now it seemed to have the power to carry every other sense along with it.

Hearing. The sound of his shuddering groans and incoherent words. Touch. The feel of her hands kneading his shoulders and pressing flat against his chest. Taste...

My God, had she
tasted
him that night? Yes. She had. She'd pressed her lips against his neck, almost biting him. She'd licked the wine from the corners of his mouth. She'd run the tip of her tongue down his neck until she'd reached the springy curls of hair on his chest and had tasted them, too. She'd pressed her mouth hungrily against his shoulder, his jaw, his forehead, mapping each different sensation in her sense memory as if she needed to have it with her for ever.

She was passing him now, but could feel his hand behind her, hovering at the small of her back, not quite touching her there but getting so close that if she'd hesitated for a second in her stride his palm would have rested there as a warm support.

She wanted it, and it would have been so easy. Perhaps the only thing that gave her the strength to resist was that two-edged sword, her memory. She remembered how quickly and easily the flame of passion had been ignited between them six years ago. If their bodies still sang in harmony the way they once had, then a single hand against her back might well be more than enough.

'Time to go, Charlotte,' she told her daughter brightly.

'Oh, Mummy, no, not yet!'

'Past your bedtime already, love, and both of you have school tomorrow.'

'Well, then, Ellie's going to have to come and have dinner at my place,
soon!'
Charlotte threatened, in the sort of truculent tone which Lucy wouldn't normally have let her get away with.

Tonight, all she cared about was getting her daughter home, so she simply threw an apologetic glance at Malcolm, managed a few more polite comments about the evening and a goodnight to Ellie, and bustled her daughter down under the house through the ferny greenery to the car.