CHAPTER ONE

      ALIX NORTH had fallen in love with Rhys Stirling the first time she had met him. Her parents had moved to a new house in Kent, to be within easy commuting distance of her father’s new job in Canterbury. It was high summer. Alix had gone out to explore the garden, looked through a hole in the hedge, and lost her heart. Rhys had been tall, lean-faced, and good-looking. He still was. But then he had been fourteen and Alix just four years old.

      ‘Hello,’ she’d called to him through the gap.

      Looking up from the book he was reading, Rhys had spotted her face framed by leaves and came to squat down to her level. ‘Hello. What’s your name?’

      ‘Alix. What’s yours?’

      ‘Rhys. Have you come to live here?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘I expect you’ll be going to the local school, then—BABS.’

      ‘Babs?’ Alix frowned in perplexity.

      ‘It stands for Barkham All Boys’ School.’

      ‘But I can’t go to a boys’ school—I’m a girl.’

      ‘Really?’ Rhys leaned closer. ‘How can you be a girl with a name like Alix?’

      ‘Well, I am.’ Putting her arms through the gap, Alix suddenly launched herself through like a diver, disregarding scratches and torn clothes as she struggled to the other side, then scrambled to her feet in front of him, somehow knowing that it was vital that he should be convinced she wasn’t a boy. Rhys, too, had got to his feet and loomed over her, almost as tall as an adult, but she put her hands on her hips and looked up at him with a determined chin as she said in a tone she’d heard her mother use, ‘Look! I am most definitely a girl!’

      That had made him laugh. ‘Well, you’re a tomboy at least,’ he’d told her, and taking hold of her hand had led her to meet his mother, who’d given her lemonade and cake. Afterwards Rhys had lifted her on to his shoulders and taken her home, the long way round. Alix had clung on, her arms tight round his neck, and knew herself in heaven.

      It had been his turn to meet her mother, but he didn’t stay long. When he left Alix ran after him and caught him up in the drive, gazed up at him with a flushed face framed by springy corn-gold curls. ‘Please,’ she said earnestly, ‘will you marry me?’

      He laughed again, patted her head, and said of course he would. But he hadn’t taken her seriously. He still didn’t. But Alix had meant it then and went on meaning it all through the years when the gap in the hedge had been made ever bigger as she pushed her way through, until the two fathers had given in to the inevitable and put in a gate, which saved her mother a lot of mending.

      Their two families had become very friendly, all of them diverted by Alix’s open adoration of Rhys. He had continued to treat her with good-humoured amusement, playing games with her or letting her come with him when he went walking or fishing in the summer vacations, helping her to learn chess and letting her listen to his music collection in the winter holidays. During term-time Alix didn’t see so much of him because he boarded during the week, only coming home for weekends, when he always had loads of studying to do. But when he was free she was a regular visitor, becoming as much at home in his house as her own, and treated almost like the daughter they didn’t have by his parents. Alix didn’t mind that, but she objected strongly when Rhys treated her like a sister. ‘No, you’re going to marry me,’ she always insisted, supremely confident that he would keep his socasual promise.

      It became a standing joke with their parents, all of whom were confident that she would grow out of it, but was referred to less when Rhys went away to college and then got a job as a civil engineer which sent him to South Africa for a couple of years, and then to build a bridge in Botswana. During those years, when he was home, Rhys was as tolerant of her as ever, enjoying the fuss she made of him and her joy at seeing him. He let Alix go jogging with him every morning and would play a few sets with her at the tennis club from time to time. But a twenty-year-old young man didn’t want to be seen by his contemporaries in public with a ten-year-old he’d nicknamed ‘urchin’; he met girls of his own age and went around with them, fancied himself in love and gained some useful experience.

      When he came home from Botswana he was twenty-eight. His face was tanned now, his features almost as lean, but his body had filled out, become that of a man instead of a boy. He had found strength, not only physical strength but mental self-assurance, too. He had been in charge of an important project and a great many men, and it had given him an authority which showed.

      Alix, too, had met a lot of boys and young men,