CHAPTER ONE

      THE breakfast pots had been washed, the beds made, the washer switched on, the letter from her father-in-law in the morning post dutifully read, and now Selina was about to top up her tan on a sunlounger in the back garden.

      Creamed against the powerful rays of a midsummer sun and wearing a black bikini, she was looking forward to some prime time by herself. Shutting her ears to the noises coming from the main street of the village, which was only yards away, she sank down thankfully onto the soft upholstery.

      Two whole days, she thought thankfully. Time to recharge her batteries before going back on the unit for night duty.

      Tomorrow there was to be a fête on the village green they might go to, and there was a film on in the town centre that she wouldn’t mind seeing afterwards.

      But today she was going to potter. Sunbathe for a while, have a leisurely lunch and then later make a nice meal for the two of them.

      When the phone rang she groaned. Letting the magazine she’d brought out with her fall to the ground, Selina eased herself off the sunbed and padded inside.

      The voice at the other end of the phone belonged to the head teacher at Josh’s school, and her face blanched as he said in subdued tones, ‘I’m glad I’ve caught you in, Mrs Sanderson. I’m afraid that your son has had an accident.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ she cried. ‘What kind of an accident?’

      ‘He ran out of the school yard onto the main road to retrieve a ball during breaktime and into the path of an oncoming car.’

      Don’t let him be dead, she prayed as dread turned the blood in her veins to ice. Not my little one. I can’t take any more.

      ‘We’re not sure how badly hurt he is,’ he went on. ‘We haven’t moved him under the circumstances and an ambulance is on its way.’

      So at least Josh was alive, she thought frantically, but for how long?

      ‘Tell the paramedics to wait for me,’ she shrieked into the receiver, and before he’d had time to reply she was flinging open the hall cupboard and throwing on a long raincoat to cover the bikini, at the same time forcing her feet into the nearest footwear to hand, which happened to be the trainers she wore for jogging.

      She was at the junior school on the outskirts of the village within minutes, and she didn’t have to search for the scene of the accident. The ambulance was already there, standing purposefully at the kerbside outside the gates. Even if it hadn’t been, the crowd that had gathered would have been indication enough.

      As she flung herself out of the car and began to push past the onlookers with frantic haste, Selina’s horrified gaze was on the small figure of her son, lying very still at the pavement edge.

      A paramedic was bending over him and another was stepping down from the ambulance with a red response bag in his hands.

      ‘I’m his mother,’ she cried, falling to her knees on the other side of the small casualty with hands outstretched to do the things she’d done countless times…for other people’s children.

      The man bending over her son was examining him with deft yet gentle hands. Beside herself with panic, she cried, ‘Have you checked that he’s breathing? For spinal injuries? That his tongue is free? That his tubes aren’t—?’

      He didn’t lift his head.

      ‘Yes. I have,’ he informed her levelly, ‘as far as