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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘YOU’RE doing what?’ Jenneth asked her oldest and closest friend in astonishment, almost unable to believe what she was hearing, despite the crystal clarity of Louise’s excited voice.

      ‘Married. You know…to have and to hold, et cetera et cetera…A mortgage…kids…the whole bit,’ Louise repeated obligingly, while Jenneth’s astonishment almost hummed along the telephone wire from York to London.

      Jenneth clutched the receiver and said protestingly, ‘But you’ve always sworn you’d never marry! You wanted to be independent. You…’

      ‘That was before I met George,’ Louise told her unrepentantly.

      George! Jenneth almost boggled, not just at the thought of her high-flying, career-orientated girlfriend getting married, but at the thought of her marrying a man called George…Had she ever been asked to stretch her imagination to the almost impossible lengths of visualising Louise getting married, she would have believed it would be to someone with a far more exotic name than George…

      Sighing faintly, she ignored her cooling cup of coffee and the fact that unless she terminated her telephone call right now she was never going to get the preliminary sketches for the McGrath mural finished by lunchtime, and said severely, ‘You never said anything two months ago when we met for lunch.’

      ‘I hadn’t met him then,’ said Louise simply, and then added quickly, ‘Look, Jen, I want you to be there…on the day, I mean. We’re getting married in three weeks’ time, at home, in the village church. We’re having the whole bit…George says we might as well, since neither of us will get the chance again. I can’t wait for you to meet him. I wish we could get together before the wedding, but George is going to be away in Japan on business…’

      She chuckled richly as she heard Jenneth saying in a faint voice, ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing any of this.’

      They had virtually grown up together and had been close friends all their lives, living in the same small village, going to the same school, and even later on to the same university, and then Jenneth’s parents had moved further north and she had gone with them, eventually setting up her existing small studio in the barn attached to her parents’ house outside York, while Louise had found herself a job in London in the frenetic world of advertising.

      That had been seven years ago. Now Louise had her own agency, while Jenneth had developed her artistic talents to the point where she was greatly in demand locally for the murals which had become her speciality. In addition she had a half-share in a small private gallery in York itself. She and Louise had never totally lost touch, but these days it was impossible for them to meet as often as both of them would have wished.

      Jenneth’s parents had been killed just after their move to the north, leaving Jenneth solely responsible for the welfare of her then pre-teenage twin brothers…

      There had been times when they had been a heavy responsibility indeed, but the knowledge that her parents would have wanted them all to stay together, coupled with her own deep-rooted sense of duty and responsibility, had helped her through the worst of the bad times.

      The twins had now just finished their last year at school, two tall fair-haired males who towered over her and at times almost swamped her with their fierce protectiveness towards her…

      Well knowing why Jenneth hadn’t given her an instantaneous response, Louise coaxed, ‘Promise me you’re going to be there. It’s three weeks on Saturday. I’m not having any bridesmaids or anything like that, but I need you there, Jenneth…Seriously…’

      There was just enough emotion in her voice for Jenneth to check the automatic refusal hovering on her lips, and Louise took advantage of her silence to add, ‘I’ve booked you a room at the Feathers. Can’t put you up at home, I’m afraid, the place will be brimming over with aged aunts and the like, although Mum and Dad are both looking forward to seeing you…’

      ‘I don’t know if I can make it, Louise,’ Jenneth told her, staring unseeingly out of her studio window and into the verdant jungle of the house’s back garden.

      The house had a very large garden, far too large for her to manage, but she and the twins loved their home. The barn which she had had converted into her studio was ideal for her work, and none of them had wanted to move after the accident, although once the boys were at university…They had been arguing about it ever since Christmas, Kit and Nick both determined to persuade her not to put the house up for sale, even though she had pointed out to them that once they were at university it would be far too large for her, and that the money from the sale would realise lump-sum nest-eggs for them when they set out into the world.

      Her hand clenched around the receiver, her palm suddenly sticky with tension, with all that she wanted to say and could not—partly because the words simply refused to be spoken, clogging her throat, and partly because of the old habit of ingrained reticence. So unlike Louise’s outgoing, frank inability to do anything other than say what she was thinking and feeling.

      She did it now, taking a deep breath that Jenneth could actually hear, and then, while a bird soared and sang overhead outside, she heard her friend saying softly, ‘Luke won’t be there, if that’s what’s worrying you. He’s away in the States on business. Please say you’ll be there.’

      Although she hadn’t moved, Jenneth experienced a familiar dizzying, frightening