Mr. Sarotzini smiled. "Mrs. Carter, to choose a parent for one's child when one's criteria are high is.not an easy matter. Good looks are required, a sound medical history, high intelligence. You have all these qualities."

  She rounded on him, unable to hold back the flash of anger at his casual arrogance. "Oh, yes? How do you know I have these qualities? How do you know I don't have a wonky circuit in my brain, or some inherited disease?"

  The banker allowed her the outburst with no hint of rancour. "Because - forgive me the intrusion - I have done the necessary checking on you." He gave a placatory smile and raised his hands. Then his voice became profound and sincere. "Mrs. Carter, I appreciate that what I am asking of you carries an enormity of implications and emotions. I am not expecting an answer from you tonight, and I would not like one tonight. This is something you must think over very carefully, and that you must discuss privately between yourselves, that you must be absolutely certain about before giving an answer."

  Susan turned to John again and said, accusingly, "What have you told him about me? What have you said?"

  "Nothing, darling." He shook his head and said weakly, "Nothing. I didn't know anything about; this."

  There was a long silence. Unable to face Mr. Sarotzini's stare, Susan looked anywhere but at him. She studied the paintings, the faded curtains, the furniture, the badly worn carpet. Frightened, and feeling desperately insecure, she slipped her hand down the side of her chair, searching for John's, wanting to feel it, to hold it, but it wasn't there.

  In the back of the Mercedes as they travelled home, she held John's hand, and then suddenly she pulled away from him, leaned against the window, feeling the cold glass on her cheek, and the sensation of the darkness and the lights gliding silently by, beyond.

  There was just the driver and themselves. Mr. Sarotzini had remained at his club, and maybe he was staying there, she wasn't sure, she didn't register his plans, she was just relieved to have got away from him. She had a strong urge to tell John to stop this car, she wanted to get out, determined not to be in Mr. Sarotzini's pocket one second longer. But she checked herself Her heart was pounding. She was angry with John, he had set this up, he must have known about it. John and Mr. Sarotzini had been planning this.

  Why the hell hadn't he told her? Had he really thought she was just going to sit there and say, "Yes, of course, darling, anything to help the business?"

  Suddenly she hated him.

  Since they left the club John had barely spoken. He put an arm round her now and tried to pull her towards him, but she did not budge. HonI 'm sorry, I had no idea. No clue. You have to believe me."

  His voice sounded so small, so miserable, so helpless. Maybe he was telling the truth, after all. She took his hand again and held it, squeezed it, squeezed her rock, and her rock squeezed back.

  She thought about how they had set out so happily this evening, and about the hopelessness of the mess they were in. The takeover of Magellan Lowry and the job she might no longer have in a month's time. DigiTrak. The house. Casey.

  One and a half million pounds.

  Nine months was not that long. And, who knows, she might not get pregnant anyway. If she tried, perhaps Mr. Sarotzini would let them keep the money. And it wasn't that big a deal to have a baby. What the hell? She could have the baby, it would be taken arid they'd have their life back.

  And then she started to think how having this baby would affect their love for each other. Her carrying another man's child. Could it ever be the same between them again? She turned to John and looked at his face. She loved this man so much. He was her world. Was anything worth risking this love for?

  And John, sitting in his silence, was turning the same thoughts over in his mind. He was trying to gauge how he'd feel seeing Susan with another man's sperm inside her, another man's child growing inside her, and the notion upset him. He was angry with Mr. Sarotzini, angry about the way in which he had been manipulated and had been made to look a fool in front of his wife.

  "It's out of the question," he said.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  "Einstein said, "I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.""

  That was fine, Susan did not have a problem with it. She read on "Einstein said, "People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.""

  She rubbed her tired eyes. Her whole body felt weary today after a restless night of lying awake, tossing and turning, churning Mr. Sarotzini's proposal over and over in her head.

  One moment she decided that as John had never wanted a family, this might be her only chance to experience childbirth; at the next the thought of being impregnated by someone else, however clinically, filled her with horror. And the knowledge that she would have to live with that not just for the nine months of the pregnancy but for the rest of her life made her decide each time that no, she could not possibly do it.

  In the corridor outside her tiny office an animated conversation was taking place about a copy-edit deadline on a book that was being rushed into print. Susan sat surrounded by piles of manuscripts. She chugged down some coffee, then noticed the flashing icon on her computer, and checked her e-mail; it wasn't important, just a memo about a two-week shift in a publication date.

  It was pelting outside. Hard summer rain lashed the rooftop that was her view; high above it, a crane was swinging a steel girder across the slate-grey sky. She liked this attic office. Magellan Lowry had moved into this building over seventy years ago, and most of the offices, like her own, appeared not to have been redecorated since. But it didn't matter, it added to the character of the place, to the pleasure of coming here. Cracks in the walls, gaps where chunks of plaster had come away and ugly damp stains were all pasted over with jacket designs, cartoons and photocopies of brilliant reviews. And how many other people in London, she wondered, had a working gas fire in their office?"

  She turned her attention back to Fergus Donleavy's manuscript, but almost immediately her phone rang. It was her secretary, Hermione, a seriously bright Sloane whom she shared with Kate Fox, telling her that Mark Rivas was on the phone. It was the second time he'd rung this morning, and he had said it was urgent.

  She took the call. "Hi, Mark," she said. "Sorry I didn't get back to you, got stuck in an editorial meeting that went on longer than I expected."

  Mark Rivas was an agent she particularly liked. He had the knack of finding good new science writers with original ideas, and he had a finger on the pulse of what was wanted.

  "How's things?" he asked. "What's the latest on...?"

  He didn't need to finish the sentence. Everyone had their own personal shorthand for the takeover of Magellan Lowry, and this was his.

  "Not much change in the last week. Rumours about job losses still flying.

  Denials in the trade press."

  I saw."

  "So?" she said.

  "Susan, I have a hot new writer, name of Julian DeWytts, Dr. Julian DeWytts. He's stunningly good-looking, very charismatic, and is hosting his own seven-part series on genetics for BBC 2 this autumn, called The Gene Lottery. He's written an accessible book on inherited diseases, and I thought of you immediately."

  Me and how many others?" she asked, good-humouredly. "Four," he said, which, Susan knew, probably meant eight. "Is there a floor?"

  "It's going out to everyone simultaneously."

  "And what kind of money are you looking for?"

  "A lot," he said.

  Susan was a little dubious. "There's already been a ton of stuff on genes and inherited diseases," she said. "Steve Jones has covered the territory pretty thoroughly, in his books and on television. And Dawkins."

  "Julian's in a different leagUe. Take a look at the manuscript - you won't be disappointed."

  She told him she would, and promised that if she was interested she would get back to him with an offer within ten days, mentally shifting further back into the future the other five manuscripts she had to read.

  Then she started to concentrate again on the first six chapters of FergUs Donleavy's rewrite. He was anxious to hear if she felt he was now on the right track. She struck her pencil through the second Einstein quotation, putting a note in the margin, which said:

  "Not necessary, you already made this point on page 28." Then she added, because her tiredness was making her feel punchy today, "I'm not even sure this entire chapter's necessary. What does it contribute?"

  Kate came in, holding a book. She was a couple of years older than Susan, married to an economics researcher, and had two children. Tall and well-built, Kate had a booming, jolly personality, and a handsome face beneath a bob of straight brown hair. Susan liked her because she was one of that rare breed of people who are totally unfazed by anything life throws at them.

  Kate was the first person in whom she had confided when she and John had decided to buy the house - and they had snuck down to see it in an extended lunch hour. Kate thought the place was wild, and loved it. "This the one you meant?" Kate asked.

  Susan looked at the cover. It was a photograph of a pregnant woman's abdomen, except, as if by X-ray, the foetus was visible inside, snugly curled up. The book was titled Pregnancy - The Myths and the Reality, by Dr. Maria Ariscombe.

  Susan turned it over, glanced at the back of the jacket, then looked up at Kate. "It's the one you edited, right?"

  "It's brilliant. She's a terrific communicator. I found it really helpful myself- it's the best guide to pregnancy." Kate gave Susan a quizzical look, then smiled. "Hey! Is there something you're not telling me here?"

  Susan shook her head, but could not prevent herself blushing. "It's for a friend."

  She waited until Kate had left her office, then pushed Fergus Donleavy's manuscript to one side, opened the book and started to read.

  "So?" Archie said, as he padded, naked, across the cork matting into the men's shower room, sweat was running off him. John was looking at Archie's flesh. Great flaps hung from his belly; he was beginning to develop a figure that would make a Sumo wrestler proud, and yet he had just thrashed John on the squash court. Trounced him.

  Archie turned on the shower, adjusted the temperature, tilted his face up into the spray. "Tell me your friend Sarotzini's terms."

  John's lungs were aching - he had really tried in this game today. But his mind hadn't been on it. "They're crazy," he said. "I mean, the guy's not in the real world."

  Archie soaped his hair. "You seem pretty pissed off with him."

  "I am pissed off with him. He made me look a fool."

  "So what does he want to do? Sleep with Susan?"

  John had been on the verge of telling Archie, but he held back. What if-and he knew it was a crazy notion - but what if they decided to accept Sarotzini's terms? Susan wouldn't want any of their friends knowing, and neither would he. And, in any case, someone else had come into the shower room.

  "No, not that kind of a scene. It's - it's guarantees," John said. "Percentages. Control."

  Archie turned off the shower and began to towel his hair. "Better to have ten percent of something than a hundred percent of nothing, isn't it?"

  John did not reply. As he sat on the locker-room bench, tying his shoe laces, Archie sat down beside him and patted his thigh gently. "Listen, it might not seem that great a deal, after you've had this long run owning the business yourself and doing what you please. But this is the real world, John, and few people get to hang on to their businesses. Sarotzini is offering you a deal. Would it enable the business to survive?"

  John nodded.

  "Would it enable you to keep your house?"

  John hesitated. "Yes."

  "Would you be able to draw out the same income you're currently getting?"

  "I don't know, I presume SO."

  "Do you get to keep shares?"

  "Yes."

  "Then what the fuck are you worried about? Go for it! Bite the man's hand off!"

  They dressed, went up to the bar, and ordered their usual beers. John drank his straight down and requested another. Archie, puffing on a cigarette, reminded him that Mr. Sarotzini was the only game in town.

  John knew this. He'd lain awake thinking about it all last night, and he'd been thinking about it all day today. Susan had. told him this morning that she could do it. Sure, she could do it. He wouldn't be affected, physically, but. And that was where his thoughts hit the buffers each time.

  After her initial anger had subsided, Susan seemed to have taken the proposition better than he hid, and he admired her for that. But he didn't know how she felt now about motherhood. They hadn't talked about it for a long time, and on the rare occasions he'd thought the subject might rear its head, he had quickly steered the conversation away. Did she still feel the same way as he did?

  He suspected not. When they had got engaged, he'd tried to encourage her to be sterilised, but she'd resisted. He had made no big deal about that, and she took the pill instead. But he had seen the way she had been looking at babies recently. The way she had held Liz and Alex's new baby at their barbecue last week. The way she doted on Kate Fox's two small children. Maybe Sarotzini's proposition had touched a nerve inside her. That this would give her the chance to experience pregnancy and, perhaps, to be a fulfilled woman.

  Did he still feel the same way?

  Uncomfortable, suddenly, he tore that thought straight out of his mind, balled it up, threw it in the bin. Are you going crazy, John Carter?

  But the money was sitting there. One and a half million pounds under Mr. Clarke's lock and key.

  All they had to do was say yes.

  But Archie didn't know the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  John stayed downstairs long after Susan had taken her manuscript up to bed. He went out into the garden and sat there for a while, Archie's advice resounding in his head. The skies had cleared and the air was fresh and cool. Then he went into the kitchen and poured himself a whisky on the rocks. Gloomily he looked at a pile of interior-decorating magazines, that, only a month ago, they had been leating through, tearing out pages of anything that interested them.

  At last he went upstairs, dragging his weary legs up each step. Susan was sitting up in bed in a baggy white T-shirt, reading the manuscript. He could tell that she was finding it hard to concentrate.

  As he came in she smiled, her face pale with tiredness and stress. Some loose strands of hair, which she hadn't bothered to flick away, hung down over her forehead. She looked so vulnerable, and he felt an almost overwhelming tenderness towards her. She was so lovely. He adored her. There hadn't been a day, an hour, a moment since they'd met when he had faltered in his love for her. Susan was everything to him.

  He still had the card in his briefcase that she'd given him soon after they were married. There was a soppy-looking bear on the front, and inside was printed: I LOVE YOU MORE THAN I DID YESTERDAY, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS I WILL TOMORROW."

  And he felt the same way. After seven years, he still found himself loving her more every day.

  Mr. Sarotzini's presence hung in the air so strongly, it could have been written on the walls in Dayglo lettering. All evening, between long silences in which Susan had read and John had channel-surfed the television, they had talked about Mr. Sarotzini's offer. Shortly before going up to bed, Susan told him that she would do it. John had not replied.

  Now he sat on the end of the bed. He was still holding the tumbler and shook the ice cubes around before he drained the last of the whisky. "There's no way," he said. "I'm telling him no. I could get the backing to start again, and you can get some freelance work if you lose your job. And if we lose the house, we lose it. What the hell? We were happy before in our little house. Right?"

  "And Casey?" she said.

  The way she said the name startled him. It was a rebuke. It was a reminder that, to Susan, Casey mattered more than anything else -including him.

  He remembered all the times he had sat with Susan at Casey's bedside in the clinic. That stunning apparition, lying there, ventilator tube cannulated into her windpipe, drip line in her wrist. Her eyes were mostly closed, and even when they were open she couldn't see the fine view of the canyon right outside her window, and she was never going to see it. He knew in his heart, but dared not say it, that it would make no difference to Casey whether she was in a state home or a luxury clinic. Casey had no idea where she was; she was never going to know where she was.

  In the morning, Susan sat at the breakfast table, The Times unopened in front of her, toying with a grapefruit. She looked up at John, who was spooning yoghurt onto his cinnamon crunch cereal.

  "You'll tell him," she said. "Hon?"

  He pushed a slice of wholemeal bread into the toaster.

  "Please?" she said. "If it's not for us, it's for Casey, OK?"

  But it was not OK. John had made up his mind too. He was not going to put either of them through this humiliation. Mr. Sarotzini must have a heart, he was thinking. Perhaps he could buy time by dangling the bait that he and Susan might agree at some point in the future if he would help DigiTrak now.

  He rummaged around inside The Times and pulled out the Interface section, which he propped against a tub of Flora. They just needed time. If the Microsoft deal came good they would be out of the woods - a couple of months, tops, that was all they needed.

  Avoiding Susan's eye, he scanned the pages of computer and Internet technology, forcing each mouthful down to give himself some energy, aware that he was feeling a little weak from having eaten barely anything lately.

  He needed to be alert today. In his judgement, he would get just one shot at bringing Mr. Sarotzini round. It was not going to be easy.