He smiled, even though it must have hurt his mouth to do so. 'Which lie? I've told so many.'

She didn't return the smile. 'The one about Miles being Felicity's lover. The game would have been up the moment I confronted him.'

'Ah, but the damage would have been done. Would you have believed his denial? Every time he kissed you, you'd have wondered if his lips had kissed your sister's before yours. I know how you hated the thought of being second best to Felicity.'

Determined not to rise to the bait, she said, 'But the photograph put an end to it all, didn't it? Did you know I would find it eventually?'

'No. I didn't know she'd kept it. We had an agreement that only I would keep pictures of the two of us together. It was a good one, wasn't it? Caught me at my best, I like to think.'

Again she refused to be reeled in. 'It was clear from the last few emails you and Felicity exchanged that she was going to leave Jeff for you. But according to what you said earlier, she'd stayed with him to give the children the stability you couldn't provide. Why the U-turn?'

'What you have to understand is that the really important things in life often happen to us through a snap decision. A decision made by instinct. You don't decide to fall in love; it just happens. When it's the real thing, there's no shilly-shallying involved. You suddenly know for sure that you have to be with that person or life has no meaning.'

'What provoked the snap decision in Felicity's case, then?'

'She'd had enough. Plus Jeff had started to suspect that she was having an affair. He was becoming irrational. He got drunk once and threw some of Felicity's things out of the window. He was also accusing her of being unfaithful in front of the children.'

'Did he suspect you?'

'Why would he? He thought I was gay.'

'You really think - ?'

He suddenly held up a hand. 'Enough! More than enough of you playing the grand inquisitor. Now it's my turn to ask a question. It's the reason I wanted to talk to you in the first place. I've kept it to myself all this time, but I don't want to carry my suspicions alone any more. Have you ever wondered about the accident that killed Felicity and Jeff?'

'What kind of a question is that? I think about it practically every day.'

'But have you wondered if it was an accident that could have been avoided?'

'You're not suggesting - '

He leaned forward, placed his elbows squarely on the table, his battered face inches from hers. 'I'm convinced Jeff deliberately made no effort to avoid that car. I think he was mad at Felicity because she'd finally told him she wanted to leave him, and he took matters into his own hands.'

A tremor of fear ran through Harriet. She swallowed. 'You have no proof of that.' Her voice was little more than a whisper.

'I have the memory of the last conversation I ever had with Felicity. She said she'd just told Jeff that she wanted to leave him.'

The tremor grew and Harriet feared she might be sick. The thought of Felicity knowing, in the last seconds of her life, that she had driven her husband to kill them both was too horrifying to take in. 'Then you must accept your part in their deaths,' she said, fighting hard to keep her composure. 'If you hadn't been so obsessed with Felicity they'd both be alive today.'

'You think I don't wake up every morning reminding myself of that?'

She shook her head wearily. 'Oh, Dominic, how do you live with yourself?'

'I exist, Hat. Nothing more. I'm the swimming lad the mermaid took for her own, and now I'm drowning.'

'Have you told anyone else about this?'

'I just told you, I've kept it to myself all this time.'

'Good. I don't want the children ever doubting their parents. I want them to grow up feeling proud of their mother and father. You must swear on whatever is most precious to you that you will never utter to another living soul a word of what you've just said. Because if my father hears about it, he will kill you. I'm serious; he will tear you apart, slit your throat, rip out your insides. He'll do just about anything to exact his revenge on you for depriving him of his favourite daughter.'

'Who knows, maybe I'll spare him the trouble.'

They left the wine bar at chucking-out time. Harriet offered to give Dominic a lift to Miles's flat down by the river, but he refused. 'I need some fresh air,' he said. 'Unless that was a subtle attempt on your part to see Miles. He'd probably appreciate seeing you.'

'No. I'll talk to him another time. I'm too tired now. I need to get to bed; I have a busy day tomorrow. When are you going back to Cambridge?'

'I think I'll slip away quietly in the morning. I shouldn't take advantage of my brother's hospitality any longer than necessary.'

'I'm amazed he's let you stay at all.'

'That's because he's one of life's incorrigible optimists. A shame he never got into religion; he'd have made a wonderful evangelist, always hoping for a quick conversion. He'd love nothing better than to prove to me his way is better than mine.'

'His way is infinitely better than yours, Dominic.'

'But it hasn't got him what he wanted, has it?'

'I don't know. What is it he wants?'

'Oh, Hat, haven't you figured that out? He wants you, of course.'

She frowned. 'Is that one last try to stir things up?'

'You really are hopeless when it comes to matters of the heart, aren't you? Why do you suppose Miles did this to me?' He raised a hand to his face. 'Think also of the poem he read that night at Novel Ways. It was written for you, when you were s.h.a.gging Will and he thought he'd lost you. Now give me a gentle hug goodbye so that I know we're friends again.'

In spite of everything that he'd said and done, Harriet put her arms round him and kissed his cheek. He was such an integral part of her life - and her sister's - she couldn't say goodbye without making her peace with him. A car went slowly past in the slushy snow, illuminating them with its headlamps. A voice shouted out, 'Phwoar! Give her one mate!'

They both smiled. 'Take care you horribly sick, perverted man,' she said.

He kissed her again. 'Take care yourself, you hard-hearted b.i.t.c.h. I shall await an invitation from you to eat crumpets by your cosy fireside one day. Maybe Miles will be there too. Oh, and just so that I can be sure of having the last word, remember that in a really dark night of the soul it is always three in the morning, day after day. Also, the big, crucial questions are unanswerable. Goodbye, sweet thing.'

Harriet watched him b.u.t.toning his coat as he walked away. A sadness came over her as she wondered what would become of him. And what had he meant by that reference to the mermaid?

February 'Imitation of Life'

This sugarcane

this lemonade

this hurricane, I'm not afraid

C'mon c'mon no one can see me cry.

This lightning storm

this tidal wave

this avalanche, I'm not afraid.

C'mon c'mon no one can see me cry.

R.E.M.

Chapter Fifty-Nine.

At weekends, and when the children's social engagements permitted, Harriet liked to sit up in bed and look at the view from her bedroom window. If she was really lucky, Carrie and Joel would bring her a cup of tea and a slice of marmalade toast. Her luck was in this particular bright and sunny Sat.u.r.day morning and she was munching on a piece of toast while enjoying the sight of the ca.n.a.l and the field beyond where a light frost was melting in the sun. There were drifts of snowdrops along the towpath and their delicate flowers were swaying in the breeze. It was a perfect morning, Harriet decided.

A month had pa.s.sed since she and the children had moved into number one Lock Cottage; a month too, since she had last seen Dominic and he had made those comments about never knowing all the answers, that life's loose ends weren't always tied up. His words still had an irritating resonance for her. At work she was so used to resolving, reasoning, evaluating, a.n.a.lysing, processing - thinking her way through problems - that she found it particularly galling she couldn't do the same in her private life. She could approach Dominic's revelations with all the logic in the world but it would resolve nothing. She had to accept she would never know what had really happened that night when Jeff and Felicity died. If Jeff really had been so out of his mind with jealousy that he had decided, in a split second of madness, to kill them both, he had taken the truth to his grave.

She knew, though, that she had to let go of the thoughts Dominic had planted in her brain. If she allowed them to grow she might well go mad. But what he'd said went a long way to explaining his episodes of inexplicable behaviour ; the unpredictable mood swings, the volatile outpourings. Of them all, Dominic had the most to live with. As long as she'd known him, he'd given the impression that he didn't have a conscience, but it turned out he did. How he would learn to live with the knowledge that he may well have been instrumental in killing the woman he'd loved, Harriet didn't know. He needed help, but she doubted he'd ever seek it. It wasn't in his nature. She felt enormous pity for him.

As to him being Carrie's father, whether he was or not was immaterial for now. It was one of those loose ends that had the potential to come together when the time was right. She had tried pushing Dominic that night in the wine bar, about there being a responsibility on his part if he was Carrie's father, and had asked him if he wasn't curious to know the truth. 'What's the point?' he'd replied.

'The point is, it could be important to Carrie.'

'I'd be a hopeless father, Hat. I'd only screw her up. She's better off always thinking Jeff was her dad.'

Despite the apparent indifference, he appeared, in his own way, to be adopting the role of avuncular uncle to Carrie and Joel. He'd sent them both cameras and photograph alb.u.ms with instructions to fill them with pictures of things they thought he'd approve of. He'd also sent Harriet a book of Yeats' poems. The accompanying card read: Time to educate yourself! Best wishes from your oldest friend, Dominic.

'What does he mean?' Joel had asked. 'Pictures that he would approve of?'

'He wants us to think before we stick any old picture in our alb.u.ms,' Carrie had said, perceptively.

'Well, I'm going to put a picture in of Tom and me in the garden.'

Tom was Joel's new best friend. He was two months older than Joel and lived in the house three doors down the terrace of cottages. He'd made his first appearance the day they'd moved in, bringing with him a confident, breezy disposition and a bunch of flowers, along with his mother, who invited Harriet and the children to join them for a cup of tea and a slice of cake when they fancied a break from unpacking. It turned out Tom's father, Stewart, was a programmer like herself and his wife, Diana, was a freelance graphic designer. Harriet took to them straight away; they were friendly and welcoming without being at all pushy. The perfect neighbours, in fact. Especially as their son Tom, who, although he attended a different school, was doing wonders for Joel's self-confidence. These days Harriet nicknamed her nephew Motor Mouth. There was no ignoring him, either. He was suddenly an unstoppable cruise missile of self-discovery. How did the remote control for the television work? Why did the microwave hum? Why was there always fluff between his toes? Where did gooseb.u.mps come from?

But for all his questions, Harriet was only too delighted with the change in him. He still worried over the slightest thing, but she was getting better at winkling out his concerns and anxieties and dispelling them for him.

All in all, the move to number one Lock Cottage was proving to be the refuge she'd hoped for. It was as if, from the day they moved in, it had cast an aura of calm over their lives. Perhaps it was because it gave them all something new to think about.

Miles had been a G.o.dsend, too. Despite being so busy himself, he was always offering to help with any odd jobs that needed doing, and while she was quite capable of wielding a paintbrush or a hammer and a screwdriver, it was good having him around. The children enjoyed his company as well and he often had supper with them. He was joining them this evening for a Chinese takeaway after he'd finished work.

There had been a lot of cautious side-stepping around each other in the days after New Year's Day, particularly on Harriet's part. She kept thinking what Dominic had said about Miles and his feelings for her. Wanting to be sure just how she felt, she was determined to take things slowly.

Having rushed into things with Will, she didn't want to make a similar mistake. Being with Miles made perfect sense, though. They had a shared history, were the same age, and best of all, she didn't need to be anything other than herself with him. They'd even wandered the aisles of B & Q together!

Once they'd opened up to each other and had put the misunderstandings and embarra.s.sing memories of New Year's Day behind them, they were again able to talk more freely, just as they used to. She had showed him the decoded email that she had thought proved he had been Felicity's lover. 'Like the fool I am, I read it the way I'd been primed to. It never occurred to me that it could have been Dominic referring to that sweltering hot day in the cornfield. Your guilt had been so firmly planted in my head, I simply leapt to the conclusion I wanted to. I've been very stupid,' she'd admitted.

'No you haven't. Given what Dominic had said, you interpreted the email in the only way you could. Anyone would have made the same mistake. And for the record, I got over my crush on Felicity a long time ago.'

'I always suspected that you had a thing for her. What changed?'

'I grew up.' He then shyly confessed to having had a soft spot for Harriet for some years.

'Why did you never say anything?' she'd asked.

'Don't laugh, but I was also a bit scared of you. You were so fearless. There was always Dominic to consider too. I was convinced you preferred him to me. He was, and still is, the more dynamic and interesting of the two of us.'

'Now that's just the kind of talk I don't want to hear from you ever again.'

She'd told him the reasons she'd got involved with Will, and in turn he said he regretted not being more forcible in making his feelings known to her before, particularly that day on the ca.n.a.l. 'I'd been trying to pluck up the courage for weeks to tell you how I felt,' he'd said, 'and when you started asking me about what I wrote in my poetry, whether I wrote about love, I thought perhaps you were hinting that you knew how I felt. But then for no reason at all you went rushing off and the next thing, you and Will were organising a cosy evening out together. You couldn't have made your feelings clearer, as far as I was concerned. I was crushed.'

'I'm sorry,' she'd apologised. 'I was scared that you might tell me about your affair with my sister. I just couldn't stand the idea of hearing you open your heart to me about her. I grabbed at the easiest and nearest thing to shut you up.'

The first time Miles kissed Harriet, Carrie walked in on them in the kitchen. 'This isn't going to be easy, is it?' he'd said with a half smile as Carrie turned bright red, giggled loudly and thumped her way back upstairs to share the big joke with Joel.

He was right. Carrying out any kind of romantic manoeuvre was proving impractical. This didn't worry Harriet too much, as the last thing she wanted was to rush into anything. She suspected Miles might see it differently because he had hinted several times that maybe she could arrange a babysitter - her parents, perhaps - and come to his place where they could be alone. But her parents had their own problems and she was reluctant to ask them to babysit just so that she could have s.e.x with Miles. The juxtaposition was too weird for words.

As was the strained relationship between their respective parents. Eileen had extended the olive branch by speaking to Freda, but Bob and Harvey were definitely not in the mood for a reconciliation.