PROLOGUE

      AS FERN saw Nick walk into the kitchen, her stomach muscles tensed.

      She had heard him arrive from upstairs, had witnessed the impatience with which he had slewed the car to a halt and climbed out, slamming the door, and then glancing up at the house.

      She had stepped back from the window then, an automatic and very betraying gesture, pausing as she caught sight of herself in her dressing-table mirror. She looked strained and tired, her eyes empty and lifeless… as empty and lifeless as her marriage to Nick?

      Abruptly she had turned away from the mirror and hurried downstairs.

      It was her own fault that Nick was in a bad mood, of course. She should not have raised the subject of how much time he was spending working last night. He had always hated her ‘interfering in his life’, as he called it. She had learned early on in her marriage that Nick loathed any form of restraint, even the mildest hint of criticism.

      What was wrong with her? he had demanded to know last night. Didn’t she realise how fortunate she was, how many women would gladly change places with her?

      ‘You’re my wife,’ he had told her. ‘Nothing can change that.’

      A promise, or a threat?

      She tensed now, guiltily trying to suppress her rebellious thoughts. Nick was right. She was lucky to be married to him, especially after…

      As he came towards her, her tension increased, her muscles locking. Automatically she looked away from him, pain a hard-edged lump in her throat. Nick was a very handsome man, and yet these days she found that sometimes she could hardly bear to look at him.

      ‘I love you… I need you, and I’m never, ever going to let you go,’ he had told her when he’d proposed to her, and she, swept off her feet, totally overwhelmed by his intensity, his insistence, dizzy and bemused by the speed with which he had taken over her life, had been unable to resist the pressure he had put on her.

      Then she had been flattered; reassured; filled with gratitude and joy by his words.

      Then…

      Now, even with the width of the kitchen between