CHAPTER ONE

      ‘OH, HOLD on a moment, Grace, she’s just this minute walked in.’ As her mother thrust the telephone at her Claire’s fine eyebrows arched in enquiry, and in the next breath her mother whispered, ‘It’s Grace. She sounds... agitated.’

      ‘Grace?’ Claire almost snatched the receiver in her haste to talk to her friend, this friend who had endured so much in her twenty-five years of life but was now so happy—or had been the last time she had talked to her a week ago.

      Don’t let anything be wrong. Please, please don’t let anything be wrong, she prayed quickly as she heard Grace speak her name. Let the baby be all right, let Grace be all right, let everyone be all right... Grace had lost a baby to cot death some years ago, when the child, a little boy named Paolo, was only six months old, and this was her first pregnancy since that terrible time.

      ‘I’m sorry to hound you the moment you get in from work,’ Grace said huskily, the strangeness in her voice emphasised by the miles separating them. ‘It’s just... I needed to speak to you.’

      ‘What’s wrong?’ There was something wrong; she knew it now. ‘You were going for your scan today, weren’t you?’

      ‘Yes, yes—and don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with the baby,’ the disembodied voice said quickly. ‘It’s just that it’s babies. Plural,’ she added as Claire didn’t speak.

      ‘Twins!’

      ‘Twins.’ Grace’s voice was flat.

      ‘But that’s wonderful,’ Claire responded enthusiastically, ‘isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, of course it is.’ There was a little more animation in Grace’s tone now. ‘Donato’s over the moon, and I’m pleased—I am, really—but I just feel a bit overwhelmed, I suppose.’

      ‘But that’s perfectly understandable,’ Claire said softly, her big brown eyes darkening with a mixture of sympathy and concern.

      Grace had been brought up in a children’s home and had never known the support and unconditional love of a mother, and although she had been very close to her husband’s mother, Liliana, almost from the first time she had met her, Liliana had died more than two and a half years ago. It was at times like this that it was reassuring to know that mothers, grandmothers, sisters were all at hand, but Grace had no immediate female family members to encourage her, Claire thought perceptively.

      ‘Claire—’ Grace stopped abruptly, and then, after Claire gave a gentle, ‘Yes?’. continued hesitantly, ‘I don’t suppose there’s any chance you might consider coming out here, is there? To live, I mean?’

      ‘To Italy?’ Claire stared across the hall in blank amazement, much to her mother’s irritation—she was hovering in the lounge doorway trying to make sense of Claire’s end of the conversation.

      ‘It doesn’t have to be straight away,’ Grace said quickly, ‘and it can be for as long or as short a time as you want, but I’d just love to know you’d be around when the babies were born. Oh, I shouldn’t have asked you,’ she continued in a little rush. ‘It’s not fair. I told Donato it’s not fair—’

      ‘Hang on—hang on a minute,’ Claire said slowly as she tried to feel her way in a conversation that had suddenly become extraordinary. ‘Are you saying you want me to come out and stay with you on a semi-permanent basis? More than a holiday or a long break?’

      ‘Yes.’ The reply was immediate. ‘For months, if you could. I’d love to have you here, I really would, and with you having trained as a nanny and everything—’ This time the sudden halt was even more abrupt, and Grace’s voice was hot with embarrassment when she went on, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Claire. I shouldn’t have mentioned that.’

      ‘Don’t be silly,’ Claire said evenly, ‘I’m over all that now. But how would Donato feel about my coming to live with you?’

      ‘It was his suggestion,’ Grace said eagerly. ‘When we found out it was twins he thought I might need some help in the first few months, and he remembered you saying in the summer you