'I don't think so, but are you sure you want to go anywhere near the shops? They'll be horrendously busy.'

'I'll cope. Besides, if I don't do it today, I never will.'

It was good to hear Harriet sounding more positive and upbeat. Nothing had been said, but Eileen knew that the death of Will's daughter had affected Harriet deeply; a whole raft of painful memories and emotions that had just begun to settle must have been stirred up by it. 'I don't suppose you'd take this box across to Will before you go out, would you?' Eileen asked. She had decided that whatever had caused the rift between Harriet and Will, it had gone on for long enough.

'I will, but only if I can leave it in his porch.'

Eileen recognised the scratchy warning look Harriet was giving her but, undaunted, she said, 'Don't you think it would be better to give it to him in person? Who knows, he might be ready to talk to someone now.'

'If he is, I guarantee it won't be me.'

In the spirit of openness between them, and determined that people were going to open up to one another whether they wanted to or not, Eileen said, 'Look, Harriet, I know there was something a lot more than just friendship going on between the two of you, but whatever went wrong, I don't think now is the time to - '

'Mum!'

'Oh, please, after everything we've been through, don't be shocked that I know what you've been up to. I'm concerned about you. And Will. Something was obviously working well between you, and now when he most needs someone close to him, you're not there.'

Her face a picture of forbidding censure, Harriet muttered, 'How did you know?'

'It wasn't difficult. You were spending nearly every evening together, often coming home with a glow that no amount of computer fixing could have put there.'

To Eileen's relief, Harriet's. .h.i.therto unyielding expression softened and she smiled faintly. 'I don't know whether to be embarra.s.sed or outraged,' she said.

'Neither. So what happened?'

'I ended it with him. It wasn't right between us.'

'Was it the age gap?'

Harriet frowned. 'It was more complicated than that, but that was the excuse I used.'

'That would have hurt him.'

'I think he's got more to worry about than me right now, Mum. I doubt I even figure on his radar any more.'

'But you're upset about it, aren't you?'

'Yes. I behaved badly. I turned into the kind of person I've always despised. And please don't expect me to explain what I mean by that.'

Knowing she'd gone as far as she could with her taciturn daughter, Eileen said, 'I'd still like you to take this food over to him. It would be an olive branch of sorts.'

'You realise, don't you, that you're as subtle as Carrie when it comes to matchmaking?'

Eileen smiled. 'You think so? I didn't think you'd noticed Carrie's crafty hints. Mind you, she seemed quite keen on the idea of you and Miles for a while.'

'Well, she got that completely wrong. And if it's allowed, I'd appreciate a change of subject. Tell me what's going on with Dad. I think he's depressed, and I don't mean a bit down in the dumps, I mean clinically depressed. In my opinion, he needs help. Will thought so too.'

Surprised at the turnaround in the conversation, Eileen reminded herself that openness was her new watchword. 'I agree with you. But it's not as straightforward as you think.' She took a deep breath. 'Your father's having an affair. It's not the first time it's happened. He did it years ago before Felicity was born, when I had all those miscarriages. It seems to be his way of handling grief.'

Harriet's jaw dropped.

Half an hour later, Harriet went upstairs to tell the children they were going out. Leaving them to tidy the war-zone they'd created in Joel's bedroom, she went into her room and stood at the window that overlooked the garden. She had only brought up the subject of Dad to stop her mother interrogating her, but after listening to Mum's revelations, she suddenly felt displaced. Her family was falling apart around her. Her father wasn't the man she'd believed him to be. In fact, he was a virtual stranger. How dare he treat her mother so shabbily! Just let any man treat her that way! No wonder Mum had decided to play him at his own game. It was difficult to say why exactly, but Harriet was glad Mum had thought better of it. There were some people in the world who had to be beyond reproach.

Perhaps as shocking as what her mother had shared with her was the fact that so much had been going on right under Harriet's nose. Could their lives become any more complicated? And how likely was it, given Felicity's affair with Miles, that adultery was hereditary?

But that was ridiculous. There was no such thing as an adultery gene. She was on the road to madness if she started buying into irrational nonsense like that. Stick to plain old logic, she told herself. However, there was something that her mother had said that struck a chord with her; something she couldn't dispute. Felicity's death had set off a chain reaction of events that would leave none of them the same.

Her mother's last words on the subject had been to make Harriet promise that she wouldn't say anything to her father, or treat him differently. 'I want to get Christmas behind us, then I'm going to talk to him,' Eileen had said. While her mother had been telling her all this, it would have been the ideal opportunity to confide in her about Felicity's secret affair, but she hadn't. Her mother had enough to worry about as it was. Coincidentally, Harriet had decided the previous night that she wanted to clear the air with Miles. She wanted to tell him that she knew about him and Felicity. As brief as her relationship with Will had been, it had taught her something vitally important: to be less judgemental of what Miles and her sister had done.

But this new-found tolerance did not extend to her father. What he had done, and was continuing to do, was unforgivable. At a time when Mum needed him most, he'd betrayed her in the worst way possible.

Harriet's change of heart towards Miles was the reason she wanted to go shopping. She planned to go to Novel Ways in Maywood, to buy her parents Christmas presents and at the same time ask Miles out for a drink.

But before then she had to perform a far more difficult task.

Leaving the children with one final mind-boggling challenge - to find their coats and put on their shoes - she took the plastic box of food across the road. It was a gloomy, cold day with a sky the colour of pewter. It looked as if it might snow. A lamp was glowing softly in the room at the front of Will's house and that, with the presence of his car on the drive, led Harriet to think he was in. But whether or not he would open the door to her was another matter. She rang the doorbell; just one short ring. Anything too loud or strident would have seemed offensively inappropriate. In the immediate weeks after Felicity's death, Harriet had frequently thought that in times of mourning doorbells and door knockers should be m.u.f.fled. For all she knew, the Victorians probably had come up with such a rule of etiquette.

Having got no response, and reluctant to press the doorbell again, she bent down to leave the food parcel on the floor of the porch. To her surprise, just then the door opened and Will stood before her. His face was gaunt and unshaven, his hair unwashed, his clothes crumpled. But it was the pain in his ravaged eyes that shocked her most. Feeling stupid and inadequate, she held out the box like a gauche child delivering Harvest Festival boxes to the needy. 'Please just say if you'd rather my mother and Dora didn't keep on doing this,' she said.

He looked straight through her, his expression blank. The blankness hurt her almost as much as when she'd tried to comfort him at the hospital and he'd shrugged her off. He took the box from her. 'Tell them no more after this. I'm okay.'

No you're not! she wanted to shout. I know how you feel. I've been there. Whatever you're feeling, I felt the same when Felicity died. But all she said was, 'My mother wants you to know that if there's anything we can do, just give us a call.'

Without another word, he closed the door.

Carrie was in one of her investigative journalist moods during the drive to Maywood. 'Why does Grandma keep cooking for Will? And why don't you go to see him any more? Don't you like him now? I heard Dora saying he - '

'Which of those questions would you like me to answer first?' Harriet cut in.

'Um ... the first one.'

'He's not feeling very well at the moment and we're all trying to help him.'

'Has he got flu?'

'Yes,' Harriet lied. She and her mother thought the children had been touched by enough death in their young lives and had decided to say nothing about Suzie dying.

They would cross that bridge of truth as and when it was necessary.

'Is that why you're staying away from him?'

'Yes.'

'So you still like him?'

'Yes.'

'When he's better will you help him with his computer again?'

Maywood was crowded with Christmas shoppers intent on getting themselves so far into the red that it would make the Third World debt look like a quid had been pinched from the petty-cash box. 'With each Christmas that pa.s.ses, I'm becoming more and more cynical,' Harriet thought disconsolately. But this festive period was going to be particularly difficult, especially for Carrie and Joel, and she knew she had to make an effort for their sake. Carrie no longer believed in the strange spectre of a white-bearded man coming down the chimney bearing gifts, but Joel did and there would have to be an element of subterfuge to satisfy him.

After depositing the children in the children's section at Novel Ways, with the promise of a milkshake and a chocolate-chip cookie from the coffee shop to follow, Harriet went to find the latest Alan t.i.tchmarsh gardening book for her father and the new Delia for her mother.

When she'd found the books and queued for ten minutes to pay for them, she asked the teenage girl behind the counter if Miles was around. She was told he was upstairs with a customer in the Mind, Body and Spirit section. How apt, she thought as she went to find him.

'Got anything to improve my mind?' she said when the customer he'd been helping went to pay for a copy of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.

'Harriet!' he said. 'How ... how are you?' There was no disguising his awkwardness. Which made her feel even guiltier. There he'd been, silently grieving for the woman he loved, and she'd come along and metaphorically kicked him in the teeth. How could she have been so insensitive? Again she was reminded that she never seemed to be quite in step with everyone else. Perhaps Dominic was right and she really was incapable of genuine affection. And hadn't she proved that already by using Will? Realising that Miles was waiting for her to speak, she said, 'I think I must be suffering from a severe case of jingle-bells madness to be out shopping on the last Sat.u.r.day before Christmas. How are you? The shop seems manically busy.'

'It's been like it for days. As if that wasn't enough, I'm organising an event here for the writing group I belong to.'

Thinking that this was something else he'd kept quiet about, she said, 'Is that a recent thing? The writing group?'

'Not really. It's just a case of lights and bushels.'

She smiled, wanting him to relax. It pained her that he was so ill at ease in her company. 'What kind of event are you putting on?'

'Poetry and short story readings. It's on Monday evening. I ...' His voice broke off and he fiddled with the pen behind his ear. 'I don't suppose I can interest you in a ticket?'

She smiled again, filled with relief that a bridge was forming between them. 'Why not? And how about a drink afterwards? Or will you be luvving it up with your fellow writers?'

He viewed her sceptically for a brief moment, his expression tense and unsure.

'I'd really appreciate talking with you, Miles,' she said, pressing the point. 'There's something we need to discuss, isn't there? And I think we'll both feel a lot better once we've got it over and done with.'

The tension disappeared from his face. 'A drink would be great. But you'll have to hang around after the event while I tidy the shop and lock up.'

'No problem. I can give you a hand if you like. What time does it start?'

'Kick off's at eight o'clock and tickets are available on the door.'

A sudden burst of schmaltzy Christmas music had Miles cursing. 'I've told them no boy bands or Americanised c.r.a.p with sleigh bells, only traditional carols. But will they listen? You'll have to excuse me while I commit some festive genocide amongst the Sat.u.r.day staff.' He put a hand on her arm, kissed her cheek - sealing an end to their estrangement - and hurried away. 'Oh, by the way,' he called over his shoulder, 'Dominic's coming home for Christmas. Latest estimated time of arrival is some time on Monday. But who knows with my brother? He might grace us with his presence on Boxing Day, or with any luck, not bother to show up at all.'

Harriet went downstairs to round up the children for their promised milkshake, hoping that Dominic's impending visit wouldn't cast a shadow over Christmas.

She knew of one person, though, who would be delighted at the news: Carrie.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Will opened the plastic box Harriet had delivered earlier that morning, and without looking at the foil packages he put them straight in the bin. As he'd done with all the others. He wished he could feel more grateful for what his neighbours were doing, but he couldn't. Grat.i.tude was beyond him. His feelings were centred on the one agonising and inescapable truth that would haunt him for the rest of his life: he'd failed Suzie. He knew in every fibre of his being that if he'd only acted differently that night, his daughter would still be alive.

Every day, over and over, he replayed the sequences of that dreadful night in his mind.

If only he hadn't insisted on taking Harriet out for dinner.

If only he and Harriet hadn't thought it would be better to go directly to the hospital.

If only he had gone straight to his mother's.

Jarvis, Marty and his mother kept telling him on the phone that it was futile to think this way, that Suzie's death had occurred after events that no one could have foreseen. As though it would make him feel better, his mother had pointed out that Maxine's guilt was far worse than his. Apparently, when Ruby had let herself in with Gemma's key, she had found Maxine lying comatose on the sofa.

But he didn't care a d.a.m.n that Maxine had to live with the knowledge that she'd been so drunk she'd been oblivious to the constant ringing of the phone. That was her problem. She'd have to find her own way of dealing with it.

The post-mortem had revealed, as the medical staff at the hospital had suspected it would, that the cause of Suzie's death had been a ruptured aneurysm - a subarachnoid haemorrhage - on the right side of her brain. There had been a fatal loss of blood and severe damage. Time, they had been told, was of the essence if there had been any chance of saving Suzie. The wheels of an official enquiry had been put into motion, and while Maxine was determined to fight tooth and nail to sue the ambulance service, Will knew it wouldn't make any difference. Suzie was dead. No amount of legal wrangling would bring her back. Somehow he would have to learn to live with the incalculable weight of his grief. A grief that went far deeper than mere tears and words. His heart and soul had been crushed. He was regularly consumed by the need to lay waste to anything that got in his way. To tear out his own insides. To roar and howl. The gut-wrenching anguish he felt at times left him in a state of catatonic numbness when he could think of nothing but the futility of carrying on.

He raked his hands through his unwashed hair and, feeling sick to his stomach, filled the kettle to make some coffee. But when he plugged in the kettle, he remembered he'd run out of coffee. It was just about all he was surviving on. That and toast. After checking the breadbin and finding just a pair of crusts left in the bag, he knew he had to summon the energy to go to the shops. He couldn't face going into town - all those cheery-faced shoppers preparing to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones - but thought he could manage the short walk to Edna Gannet's. He searched the mess on the work surface for his wallet and keys, pulled on his coat in the hall and locked the door after him.

It was a while before he noticed how cold it was and that a heavy stillness had settled on the day. The light was fading, drawing the afternoon to an early close. Snow had begun to fall. A delicate flake landed on his nose: it melted instantly, prompting a memory that made his eyes sting with tears. Suzie had been two years old when she'd first seen snow. She'd stood at the open kitchen door, a red-booted foot hovering cautiously on the brink of exploring the magical whiteness, but only when she'd taken his hand had she plucked up the courage to venture forth. Before long she'd been giddy with excited wonder and had helped him make a snowman, patting the snow with her tiny gloved hands and refusing to go inside even though her nose was turning as red as her boots.

Edna Gannet's was empty when he pushed open the door, and completely quiet. He felt a wave of grat.i.tude towards Edna for not filling the shop with piped carols or the meaningless chunterings of a local radio station. From where she was restocking a shelf of Christmas cards and wrapping paper, her infamous steely gaze fell on him as he ducked behind a shelf to find some coffee. He picked up two of the largest jars so that there was no danger of him running out and having to make another trek to the shops, and went to look for some bread. Then, picking up a packet of b.u.t.ter, half a dozen eggs and bacon - who knows, he might get around to eating it - he put his purchases on the counter, behind which Edna was now standing. He knew that she would know about Suzie; it had been front-page news in local paper: 'Young Girl Dies Because of Ambulance Blunder.'

Avoiding any eye-contact with Edna, he opened his wallet while she rang up his bill. To his annoyance, he found that it was empty, save for a twenty-pence piece and a petrol receipt. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been to the bank or the cash machine. 'I'm sorry,' he mumbled, 'I don't seem to have any money with me. Will you take a credit card?' Without meaning to, his eyes had found hers and he flinched when he felt the full force of her scrutiny.

'I'll have to add on a charge if you pay that way.'

'So be it.'

'Cheaper not to. Why don't you pay me another day?'

Will had lived in Maple Drive long enough to know that this was an unheard-of proposition: Edna Gannet never put anything on a tab. 'No, really, I'd rather pay now.'

'It's a one per cent charge.'

'I don't care.'

'Any time you're pa.s.sing.'

'I don't plan to be pa.s.sing for some time,' he said, his voice rising. 'Please, just take my card and charge me whatever you want.' He pushed it across the counter. If he didn't get out soon, he'd end up doing or saying something he'd regret.

'Suit yourself.'

Back out on the street, it had stopped snowing; it was almost as if he'd imagined it. If only the last week could vanish as easily, he thought as he walked home, his head down so as not to attract any more eye-contact with pa.s.sers-by. He'd had enough of that from Edna. He recalled Harriet telling him how Edna had once tried to be nice to her and the children because of her sister's death. 'It's too much of a shock to the system if people you rely upon to behave brutally suddenly act out of character,' Harriet had said. 'Unexpected acts of kindness should be outlawed.'

She was right. Just as she'd been right to end things between them. He didn't know what he'd been thinking of to get involved with her. Perhaps he'd been trying to prove something to himself. He wasn't sure what, but it no longer mattered. Harriet was in the past. As was any semblance of a normal life. His mother and Jarvis had been on at him since the funeral that he should get back to work. 'Laddie, you need something else to think about,' Jarvis had said during one of his many phone calls. 'Just do a few half days to begin with.'

'I'll give it some thought,' Will had said, instantly putting it far from his mind. How could anyone expect him to work when it was as much as he could do to get up of a morning? Sometimes it was hard to breathe for the pain. This trip to Edna's had been a major expedition. It was also his first step beyond his front door since the day of the funeral. If it hadn't been for Jarvis and Marty he didn't know how he'd have got through the service; they'd sat either side of him in church, literally propping him up.

Outwardly he'd looked calm enough, so Marty had said, but inwardly as he'd stared at his daughter's coffin and at the pitifully small one next to it - containing the grandson he would never know - he'd been howling like a madman. He had no recollection of anyone else at the funeral. Not until afterwards, when everybody had a.s.sembled at Maxine and Steve's. By this stage Maxine had disappeared. Later he was told she'd gone to bed, too traumatised to talk to anyone. It had been down to Steve and Ruby to dole out drink and food. To Will's eternal shame, Steve had been the one who'd taken charge of organising the funeral. Despite the cold, Will had wanted to spend most of the time outside in the garden. But Marty, still not a hundred per cent from his operation and now embarking on a course of radiotherapy, had forced him to come inside for a drink. It was a mistake, because once he'd started to drink he couldn't stop and he began bludgeoning himself with snapshot memories of Suzie, in particular the day he'd driven her to the abortion clinic and she'd asked him to sing 'Scarlet Ribbons' to her. He didn't think he'd ever forget that day.

He'd been drinking solidly for some time when he'd caught sight of a group of youngsters - friends of Suzie's from school and university, Gemma had said.

'Who's the lad all done up in the suit and tie?' he'd asked, curious. He stood out, being the only boy in the group of girls.