CHAPTER ONE

      ALETHEA was in her bedroom, unsure that she wanted to go to the party. She was not a party animal. A shrill, high-pitched scream rent the air—she changed her mind. Perhaps a party would be preferable to staying home and listening to her niece’s temper tantrums. It had all been so peaceful—once!

      Up until a month ago life had meandered along at a fairly routine pace. Then, without so much as a warning phone call, her sister Maxine had left her husband.

      Alethea had been twelve years old when her sister, her senior by six years, had married Keith Lawrence. ‘It won’t last!’ her mother had proclaimed, not at all in favour of the match. But it had—for ten years.

      Then Maxine was back home, and her mother was triumphant. After the children had been tucked up into hurriedly made beds, Maxine had revealed how her husband had confessed that he had been stealing from the firm he worked for.

      ‘I’m not a bit surprised!’ her mother had stated bluntly. ‘I always knew he was shiftless! That he’s a crook as well is all part and parcel of the man!’

      At which Maxine had started crying, and then her two-year-old, Polly, who should have been fast asleep, started screaming. Before they knew it, seven-year-old Sadie and five-year-old Georgia were out of bed and coming downstairs, in tears, crying that they wanted to go home.

      ‘Your home is here with Nanna now, darlings.’ Their grandmother poured oil on troubled waters, and it took all of an hour to get the children settled again.

      ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’ Maxine fretted when the three of them were in the drawing room again. ‘Keith’s hoping to pay the money back before the theft is discovered. He’s putting the house up for sale and...’

      ‘He’s selling the house!’ Eleanor Pemberton exclaimed. ‘He’s stolen as much as that?’

      ‘We don’t own the house yet. There’s a heavy mortgage on it. But there should still be enough in the difference to repay what he took.’

      ‘Why did he take the money in the first place? He knew it wasn’t his to take. He was in a trusted position at SEC. He...’

      It then transpired that Keith selling their home to discharge his criminal activity was not the sole reason for Maxine leaving him.

      ‘He’s having an affair...’

      ‘Typical! And you the mother of his three children!’ Mrs Pemberton steamrollered in before Maxine could finish. ‘Men!’ she scorned—and went off on her favourite theme of males, their fickleness and how there was not one to be trusted.

      Alethea’s father had left home when she was ten to go and live with someone else. Alethea had grown up having the evils of men being drummed into her daily.

      ‘It’s not the first time,’ Maxine went on. She had a right, Alethea supposed, to sound as bitter as her mother.

      ‘Are you listening to this, Alethea?’ Eleanor Pemberton demanded.

      ‘Every word,’ Alethea replied quietly. Her mother’s warning about men was there in every look and every sentence. ‘Which is why I decided on a career.’

      Later that night, the house was, for the moment, silent, and Alethea had space to consider how best she might help her sister. Maxine was a lovely person and it just wasn’t right that any man should use her so.

      But sympathy on its own would not be much help. It was fortunate that the house had four bedrooms so, with two-year-old Polly sleeping in Maxine’s room, and Sadie and Georgia—protesting loudly—sharing another, they were still fairly comfortable.

      Alethea was up early the next morning. They lived on the outskirts of London and it was an hour’s drive to her office. As usual she took her mother a cup of tea before she left. She contemplated taking Maxine one too. But remembering toddler Polly’s screams of the night before—the tot seemed incapable of doing anything at low decibels—she thought that, on balance, Maxine might prefer her not to enter her room and so disturb the sleeping child.

      ‘Is there anything you need?’ she had asked her mother.

      ‘I expect Maxine and I will take the girls out for an airing. We’ll get anything we need then,’ her mother replied. Then her disapproval of men surfaced again. ‘I would hope Maxine’s learned her lesson after this. My g—’

      Alethea could see that her mother was coiling herself up, ready to give forth on the iniquities of the male species. ‘I shall have to go—we’re very busy at the office just now.’

      They had been too. Alethea worked for Gale Drilling International, a huge company. And, at twenty-two, after two years’ training and two years as a secretary, she had recently been promoted to Assistant to Hector Chapman’s PA, Carol Robinson.

      Hector Chapman, for all he was in charge of the whole concern, had a human side to him and was a pleasure to work for. He and Ursula, his wife, were celebrating their silver wedding anniversary in a month’s time.

      Alethea and Carol, as well as sending out invitations to the dance and buffet, to which they were also invited, were busy in the background dealing