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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘OF COURSE I haven’t met him yet, but, from what Don has been telling me about him, he’s going to prove a marvellous asset to us locally. I mean, all that money, for one thing. It’s a pity he’s involved with someone, though. Not that they’re married, but they are living together, at least they will be once she comes back from New York. Apparently she’s over there on some kind of secondment. I’m arranging a small dinner party…just eight or ten of us, to introduce him into the local community, and of course we’ll want you to be there. Lucy, are you listening to me?’

      Lucy forced herself to smile.

      ‘Yes, of course I am, Verity. You were telling me about Don’s new client.’

      ‘Yes, I was, but I don’t think you were listening properly,’ Verity complained. ‘I suppose you’re still worrying about that stupid old man. Honestly, Lucy, why don’t you simply sell the place and—?’

      ‘I can’t sell it because he’s a sitting tenant,’ Lucy interrupted her patiently, ‘and I haven’t got the money to do the repairs that are needed.’

      ‘He must know that. I’ll bet that’s why he’s complaining.’

      ‘He’s complaining,’ Lucy corrected her gently, ‘because he has every right to do so. The house is in a bad state of repair, but I can’t use it as security to borrow money against to have it seen to and I don’t have any other way of raising any money. Unless I sell my flat.’

      ‘But you can’t do that,’ Verity protested. ‘Where on earth would you live?’

      Lucy shook her head. Verity was kind-hearted enough, but she was also a rather self-centred and slightly spoiled woman who had never had to confront any major kind of financial problem in her whole life.

      Lucy knew she did not really understand her own position, and if it had not been for the fact that Don, her husband, was Lucy’s boss, coupled with the other fact that in her grandparents’ time Lucy’s family had been rather well-to-do and very well known in the neighbourhood, Lucy doubted that she would have been accepted socially by Verity.

      Now both Lucy’s grandparents and her parents were dead, and all that was left of the assets her family had once owned locally was the small, very run-down cottage property which Lucy had recently inherited from a several-times-removed cousin.

      Lucy had been appalled when she had first heard the news from her cousin’s solicitor. She knew the cottage, of course, but she had assumed that her cousin had sold it long ago to its long-time tenant. The news that she had not done so, and that she, Lucy, was now its owner and responsible for its appalling state of repair, had stunned her.

      She had tentatively suggested that old Mr Barnes might wish to consider buying the cottage, but the letter she had received direct from him had made it plain that he had no intentions of doing any such thing…of wasting his money on repairing the cottage when it was her responsibility to do so.

      Lucy had taken what advice she could, and as far as she could see there was no way out of the situation. She was undisputedly the owner of the cottage.

      If she had been the type to give way to tears she would have given way to them then. She had struggled so hard to repair her life since the dreadful accident in which her parents had lost their lives. She had been seventeen then, with her whole future ahead of her. Her parents weren’t wealthy, but with careful management they had decided that it would be possible for them to send Lucy to university.

      With their death that had become impossible. Her father had been a lovable and loving man, but a rather impractical one. He had not been properly insured; the house had had a large mortgage, and Lucy had quickly come to realise that her tiny inheritance was nowhere near enough to support her through university.

      At first she had been too shocked, too filled with grief to think of the future…of her future, but, kind though everyone was, there had eventually come a time when Lucy had realised that she could not go on living with the family friends who had taken her in; that the pitifully small amount in what was now her sole bank account was not going to last forever and that it was time for her to make plans for her future.

      She had taken a secretarial course, one that concentrated on the basic secretarial skills and computer familiarisation. It had been an expensive intensive course, but very worthwhile, giving her a thorough grounding in those basics. To them she added the languages she had learned at school and then polished at night school, so that she was proficient in both German and French.

      Initially she had planned to look for work in London, but, excellent though the salaries had seemed, she had soon realised that with the very high cost of living she would barely be able to manage, and so instead she had taken a junior typist’s job locally, and, taking her solicitor’s advice, she had used her small inheritance to buy a tiny one-bedroom flat in a conversion development being built on the outskirts of the town in what had once been a large Victorian house.

      That, she now acknowledged, had been one of the best pieces of advice anyone could have given her.

      There was certainly no way now she could ever have afforded to buy even such a modest property of her own at present-day costs. Don paid her well, she lived comfortably, ran a small compact car, took her annual holidays abroad, entertained her friends, and even occasionally splurged on good clothes, but there