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      CHAPTER ONE

      HARRIET grimaced to herself as she realised she was not going to make it to the village before dark.

      It was her own fault; she had been later leaving London than she had planned, and then she had made that motorway stop midafternoon. Already it was dusk, and it would be a good half-hour yet before she reached the village and her new home.

      Louise had told her she thought she was mad when she had announced her plans.

      ‘Leave London for a small remote village lost in the Scottish Borders?’ She had shuddered, even at the end of the telephone, but then she and her sister had never had similar tastes.

      Thinking of her sister made Harriet feel uncomfortable and anxious, a legacy from those early years after their parents’ deaths when she had first started to shoulder the burden of her sister’s irresponsibility.

      There were four years between them, and it had surely only been natural that when their parents died she should have immediately abandoned her own plans for teaching abroad, and instead taken a job in London, so that she could take care of her younger sister and provide a home base for her.

      She had been twenty-two then and Louise eighteen. Louise had always been rebellious and self-willed, and when, after a few months, Harriet used her own half of their shared inheritance from their parents’ estate to buy a small house, albeit in a then unfashionable area of London, so that she could provide a home for her sister, Louise had announced that she was going to use part of her own inheritance to pay for an expensive modelling course.

      Louise was a beautiful girl—Harriet had not been able to deny that—but she had still tried to dissuade her sister, knowing full well that Louise was attracted to modelling because she thought it a glamorous life. Privately Harriet had believed Louise lacked the application and dedication necessary for success in such a very competitive world.

      Louise had refused to listen to her. She had flown into a temper and run out of the house, and despite all her attempts to find her Harriet had neither seen nor heard from her for six months. Six months of incredible anxiety and concern, coloured by guilt that she had not handled matters better.

      And then, just as she was beginning to pick up the pieces of her own life—just beginning to settle down and find her way in the very large and busy comprehensive where she was teaching English, just beginning to make one or two friends, and to accept dates from a fellow teacher, Paul Thorby—totally out of the blue Louise had returned to announce that she had been living in Italy, modelling there.

      There was not a word of contrition for the concern she had caused, or for the anxiety and anguish she had put her sister through; all she could talk about was herself and her own plans, but Harriet was too relieved to chastise her.

      She was getting married, she told Harriet, to a wealthy Italian she had met in Turin, adding airily and thoughtlessly that the only real reason she was back in London was to buy her wedding dress.

      When Harriet learned that Louise had only known Guido for six weeks, she pleaded with her to wait a little longer, but Louise, as always, refused to listen.

      They were married in Turin, two months after they had met, and, while Harriet quite liked her new brother-in-law, she was very uneasy about her sister’s ability to adapt to living with her in-laws and the rest of Guido’s large family.

      Paul Thorby reminded her that Louise was an adult and perfectly capable of making her own decisions. He was a nice man, but pedantic, and inclined to be petulant if he didn’t have her full attention. He was an only child, and when he took Harriet home to meet his mother her heart sank as she recognised that she and Sarah Thorby were never likely to get on well.

      She was then just twenty-four years old and aware of a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with her life: what had happened to all her bright dreams of travelling or exploring a little of the world, before settling down to her career?

      Her parents’ deaths had brought a halt to those plans but there was no reason why she shouldn’t fulfil them now. Louise was married. She had no one to account to but herself. Perhaps at the end of the school year…

      Six months later she was just nerving herself to tell Paul that their relationship was by no means as permanent as he seemed to think, and to explain to him her dreams of being able to travel, when without warning Louise suddenly returned home, announcing that her marriage was over and that she was divorcing Guido.

      Dismayed, Harriet tried to persuade her to return to her husband, but Louise was adamant. She found herself a lawyer and instituted divorce proceedings, telling Harriet that she would have to live with her, and when Guido came over to London to see her she shut herself in her bedroom and refused to come out, leaving Harriet to deal with the irate Italian.

      From his complaints against his wife, Harriet suspected that Guido had fallen out of love with her sister with the same alacrity with which she had fallen out of love with him. Neither seemed too concerned about the breakdown of their marriage.

      Guido returned to Turin, and Louise continued to inhabit the larger of Harriet’s two spare rooms.

      Paul, who didn’t like her, announced to Harriet that she ought to tell her sister to find alternative accommodation, but Harriet was far too soft-hearted and besides Louise wasn’t well. She had been sick several times, and she was