But this was Mr Stebbings, of Fleming Bernsteins. Desperately, I cast about for some way to entertain him, but only one suggestion came to mind.

  ‘We could go swimming.’

  ‘Swimming?’ I could scarcely have astonished him more.

  ‘Yes. It’s lovely. In the river. There’s a pool, and it’s very clean and not polluted at all, and quite deep. You can borrow a pair of my father’s trunks.’

  Suddenly it did not seem quite such an outrageous idea after all. I jumped off the sofa. When he didn’t move, I frowned down at him.

  ‘You don’t want to?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘You’re scared!’

  ‘What of?’

  ‘Being cold. Getting wet. Drowning.’

  He began to laugh. He put out a hand and I pulled him to his feet. He said, ‘What are we waiting for?’

  * * *

  In my room, I found my still-damp bikini and wriggled into it, slipped my feet into an ancient pair of sandals, found my towelling wrap and ran downstairs again. By now it was nearly dark, but there were stars in the sky and a chill dampness in the air. I could feel dew on the grass. I shivered, not from cold, but with a sort of excitement. There has always been something special about the garden at night, as though magic might happen, like in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. When he came I led the way down the sloping lawn towards the sound of the river.

  Beneath the trees he said, ‘I can’t see a blessed thing.’

  ‘Just a few more feet. There’s no mud. Just stones. A sort of little beach.’ I dropped my coat and put a foot into the running stream and it felt so cold I let out a yelp.

  ‘Have you changed your mind?’

  ‘No, of course not, it just that …’

  But he, proving himself much braver than I, had already walked past me, wading into the water and then disappearing with scarcely a splash.

  ‘Come on.’ He swam a few strokes, his feet kicking up a small wake. ‘Come on, you coward, it was your idea.’

  I screwed up my face and courage and followed him. The cold took my breath away, like swallowing knives. When I came up, gasping for air, the darkness seemed total. I looked up, and glimpsed one or two stars twinkling through the branches of the trees. I trod water, trying to get my bearings.

  Out of the darkness his voice said, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Here.’

  There was a soft sound, a ripple, a movement of water. I kicked my feet and swam towards the sound, and the next moment my hand rested on a bare shoulder. It felt very smooth and hard and pleasant. He said my name, and it was as though the strong movement of running water had washed us together. His arms were around me, his mouth on my mouth. And now, for the first time in my life, I wanted to be kissed. I wanted the hardness of his cheek against mine.

  I managed to say at last, ‘I didn’t mean this to happen.’

  ‘No,’ he said gently, ‘I know you didn’t.’

  I was assailed by a sensation of weightlessness. He, so much taller than I, was well within his depth, and I realised he was wading with me to the bank. I tentatively laid my head on his shoulder and my long hair dripped like a wet rope down his back. We came out of the water, out of the shelter of the trees, and I looked up and saw that the sky, once more, was full of stars.

  I had been surrounded by love all my life, the love my parents had for each other, the love they had for me. I had read of passionate love in books, in Romeo and Juliet, in Wuthering Heights. I had watched it in the theatre, on television, had seen how it happened to people I knew, but had never imagined it happening to me. But now it had happened. I would never be the same. Nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  * * *

  The next afternoon John returned to London. I did not mind, because I knew that he would come back. He would write to me, he would ring me up. I went downstairs early each morning to scan the post. Nothing. Each time the telephone rang, instead of loitering in the garden, I went to answer it, disciplining myself not to run. Nothing. I waited for my father to tell me that he was coming back for another visit. But a week passed. Nothing. Another week. Nothing.

  I did all the classic things. Played the piano until my back and my fingers ached. Went for exhausting walks, read books. I even lost my never-very-robust appetite.

  My parents began watching me in a way that drove me mad, their expressions concerned, their eyes sympathetic. Finally, one day, it began to rain. Rain fell in sheets, unrelenting. I stood at my bedroom window and watched it fall. My tears matched the rain. I could not stop them falling. It was over almost before it had begun. He was never coming back.

  My mother, by some marvellous maternal instinct, came to my room and found me face down on my bed and howling. She sat beside me and I turned and hugged her as I had not done since I was a very small child and having nightmares about monkeys.

  ‘It’s about John Stebbings, isn’t it?’ she said at last, when I had cried myself dry and was sufficiently coherent to talk about it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, my darling.’ She sounded despairing. ‘I was afraid of it. I’ve been afraid of it ever since he was here.’

  I blew my nose. ‘Why so afraid?’

  ‘Because he’s the sort of person that he is.’

  I said as calmly as I could, ‘Which is?’

  My mother told me. John Stebbings was ambitious. He had shaken off his background in Yorkshire. He had made, through nerve and a certain shrewd ruthlessness, a lot of money. He was not married, but it was well-known in the City that he had a girlfriend as single-minded as himself, and everybody who knew them agreed that they made a good pair. ‘She has a chain of dress shops, I think–’

  I imagined the woman, cool and slender as a blade of grass, always immaculate. She would never be stuck for conversation. She would never be made speechless by shyness. I supposed that they were living together.

  I said, ‘Do you suppose he loves her?’

  ‘How can one say? Love comes in so many different shapes and forms. Everybody needs something different.’

  I said, ‘I thought—’

  ‘No,’ said my mother. ‘He’s not the sort of person you need. You need someone who will put you first, who will take care of you. The person who comes first in the life of a man like John Stebbings is John Stebbings.’ And then she said, ‘You’ll forget him in time, Victoria, believe me.’

  * * *

  It was September. There was crispness in the air, the beginnings of autumn, blackberries on the brambles, the first falling yellow leaves. My mother was due to go on her Scottish holiday.

  ‘I won’t go if you don’t want me to,’ she told me, but I told her not to talk rubbish, that I was perfectly all right, and that I would look after my father. When the time came my father drove her to the airport to catch the plane to Inverness.

  Three days later, it happened. It was a Sunday. Rosa had gone off for the weekend and I was in the kitchen, starting to cook Sunday lunch for my father and myself. When the telephone rang, I heard him answer the call from his study. I had no premonition, nothing. When he came into the kitchen, I was occupied at the cooker. I said, ‘Do you want white sauce with your cauliflower?’

  He did not reply. I turned to look at him and saw him standing in the doorway, his usually ruddy face drained of colour. Fear dropped like a dead weight into the pit of my stomach. He said, ‘There’s been an accident.’

  She had borrowed her sister’s car to go to early Service. On the way home, she was involved in a collision with a van which had skidded, out of control, on a dangerous bend. The driver of the van had suffered no more than a few bruises, but my mother had been taken to hospital.

  I said, ‘But she’s going to be all right …’ Any alternative was unthinkable.

  ‘Yes,’ said my father, tonelessly. ‘Yes, of course.’

  Sunday lunch was forgotten. We could neither of us have eaten it anyway. I packed an overnight bag for my father while he rang the airport.

  As he got into the car, he said, ‘You’ll be all right?’

  ‘Of course. Rosa comes back this evening.’

  ‘I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve seen her.’

  I had never felt so alone in my life. I could have gone to Roger’s mother, and she would have welcomed me with open arms and been endlessly kind. But I couldn’t leave the house, the telephone. I turned off the cooker, put the uneaten Sunday lunch on to dishes in the larder and left it to congeal. I went into the garden and pulled up weeds.

  Late that afternoon my father telephoned from the hospital. My mother was unconscious.

  * * *

  The dreadful day had become a vacuum, a nightmare. It was nearly five o’clock and I had not eaten since breakfast. I made myself a clumsy sandwich, drank a glass of milk. I went into the sitting-room and turned on the television and then turned it off again. I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror, my face like a ghost, my eyes, by some trick of light, transformed into two holes in my face. I went upstairs, and without knowing what I was doing, put on my bikini and went out into the damp grey afternoon, and down the garden towards the river.

  The cold deep water received me without a murmur. Above me, the trees dripped and the sky was lowering and grey. There was no warmth, but there was some strange comfort in the flow of the river. I swam for quite a time, deliberately exhausting myself. Somewhere a blackbird sang. Somewhere, somebody called my name.

  At first I thought I had imagined it. There was nobody on this still, sad Sunday afternoon who could possibly have called me. And then it came again, unmistakable, robust, a masculine yell of ‘Victoria!’

  I saw him coming down the garden and it wasn’t Roger, the last person I wanted to see. By now I was back on the rock in the middle of our swimming pool. I curled my fingers into the hand-hold and lay against it, waiting and silent.

  ‘Victoria!’

  I saw him coming down the garden and it wasn’t Roger, it was John Stebbings. I realised, in some surprise, that I had not thought of him all afternoon. Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps the whole day had been a dreadful nightmare. Perhaps my mother wasn’t lying in hospital, my father hadn’t gone to be with her, none of it had really happened and in a moment I would wake up.

  He had reached the edge of the water. ‘Victoria.’

  It wasn’t a dream. I was too cold for it to be a dream. He was there, only a few feet away, wearing jeans and a polo-necked sweater that was already beaded with damp. He looked different.

  ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Didn’t you hear me call?’

  I shook my head. My teeth were chattering.

  He said, ‘Come out. Now.’

  I could feel my heart pumping. I remembered everything my mother had told me about him.

  He said, ‘If you don’t come out now. I shall come in and get you.’

  I knew that he would. I let go of the rock and swam across to where he waited for me. He came to help me, wrapping me instantly in my towelling coat.

  ‘You lunatic. What induced you to swim on a day like this?’ He picked up one of the dangling sleeves and dried my face with it, and made one or two dabs at my hair as though he were trying to dry a wet dog.

  I said, through chattering teeth, ‘There wasn’t anything else to do.’

  He hurried me back to the house, and sent me upstairs to have a hot bath. I lay in the steaming water as long as I dared, and then emerged to dress in warm trousers and the thickest jersey I owned. While I did this, I could hear him moving about downstairs and when I joined him I found the sitting-room bright with firelight, and that he had found his way around the kitchen and made a pot of tea.

  He said, ‘Are you warm now?’

  I nodded. He poured the tea and handed me a mug. ‘Get this inside you.’

  I took it, closing my fingers about its warmth. I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re doing here.’

  He told me. It seemed that my father had had an appointment with him in the City the following morning. Somehow Father had found the time to ring John at his flat, to tell him that he would be unable to keep it. He had then told John the reason.

  ‘I asked about you,’ said John, ‘and he told me you were on your own. So I came down to be with you.’

  I said, ‘Rosa’s coming back tonight.’

  ‘Is your mother going to be all right?’

  ‘We don’t know. My father’s going to ring me when he knows more.’

  ‘Have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘I had a sandwich.’ I looked at him again, trying to make myself believe that he was here, he was really here. He had come from London, on a Sunday, in order to be with me, when what I needed more than anything else in the world was the company of another human being.

  I said, ‘I didn’t think I’d see you again.’

  ‘I didn’t exactly expect it, either.’ His eyes, those dark, bold eyes, went suddenly tender. ‘Would you rather I hadn’t come?’

  The horror of the day had destroyed all my inhibitions. ‘It’s just that I’m not very good at being hurt like that. It never happened to me before.’

  After a little, he said, ‘You may not believe this, but I didn’t mean to hurt you. You’re so young, and … innocent, I suppose. And it was a completely new experience for me, and you must believe I was just as shattered as you.’

  ‘You’ve got a girlfriend in London. My mother told me. After that, I understood.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. It’s finished.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You. You being alone. Your father’s phone call came just as we were going out. I said I couldn’t go because I was coming here. She was livid. It’s not the first time we’ve been disenchanted with each other. And suddenly I found I was taking a long, cool look at myself. It seemed to me that perhaps for the first time for a long time, I was doing something that was completely right, and honest, and wasn’t centred on myself. I’m afraid that sounds faintly self-righteous and sanctimonious.’

  ‘What did your friend do?’

  ‘She easily found a substitute for me, and I came here.’

  ‘I’ve spoiled it all for you.’

  ‘You spoiled nothing. You opened my eyes.’

  ‘Just because you’re sorry for me.’

  ‘There’s more to it than that.’

  I hadn’t drunk any of the tea he had made me. Now I laid down the mug, carefully, as though it were important not to spill a drop. I said, ‘I don’t want to be hurt again.’

  ‘I won’t hurt you ever again.’

  * * *

  The telephone rang. The double peal slashed across the silence of the house, loaded with foreboding.

  We looked at each other. I said, ‘That’ll be my father,’ but I couldn’t move.

  ‘Do you want me to answer it?’

  I nodded. He went into the study and I stayed by the fire, kneeling on the hearthrug, and feeling the warmth of the flames on my face. I closed my eyes and prayed. I heard his voice through the door, low, firm, giving nothing away. After a minute he came back into the room. I still couldn’t move. My mother was going to die.

  He pulled me to my feet, saying, ‘It’s all right. It’s not as bad as they feared. She’s conscious now and she’s going to be all right. Your father was slightly surprised when I answered the phone, but I think quite relieved to know that you weren’t alone. He’s asked me to stay till he gets back. He says Rosa can chaperone us …’

  I had stopped listening. I was in his arms again, howling like a baby all over the front of his sweater. Partly because of my mother, partly because I had been so miserable, but mostly, although I had no idea of what was to become of us, because he had come back to me.

  Through the Eyes of Love

  At Christmastime we all see things differently, for there is magic in the air and anything can happen …

  There was, Julia Prescott decided, only the finest razor-edge between depression and despair. Depression had been constant for weeks, familiar, creeping up on her like a prowler in tennis shoes. But despair was the dreaded spectre behind the closed door, springing forth just when you least expected it.

  This happened on a dark Tuesday afternoon two weeks before Christmas. One moment she was typing busily; the next in a flood of tears. She sat there, and her typewriter and the letter she had been working on melted into a blurred pool of misery.

  She might have pulled herself together, wiped her eyes, and blown her nose before anyone could have been the wiser. But just then footsteps came hurrying up the hall, and Dennis Erdmann himself burst through the door.

  He stopped halfway across the room.

  ‘My darling girl, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. Everything. I …’

  ‘Julia.’ Somehow he was at her side, gathering her into a kindly embrace, pressing her face against his monogrammed shirt, stifling her grief in the soft luxury of silk and the scent of King’s Gold.

  After a little while, Julia felt better. Later still, she was strong enough to draw away from him.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

  She looked up at him with swollen eyes. ‘Just a sort of build-up.’

  ‘I’ve been working you too hard.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘Then it’s Phillip.’

  Julia started to deny this but she stopped and gazed at him. She saw the ageless face, boyish despite the soft halo of greying hair. She thought of the millions of women who owned jeans with his name emblazoned across the seat, who slept beneath his flowery sheets or drenched themselves in his exclusive scents – Queenie for women, King’s Gold for men.

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is Phillip.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s just that he went to New York a month ago on business and that’s it. No letters, no phone calls.’

  It made her feel marginally better just to talk about it. Perhaps because it was to Dennis she confided. Dennis, who was such a comforting mixture of sympathy and hard-headed good sense.