"Then why did you bring him here? You must have known it was on the cards."

"You promised me you wouldn't touch him."

"Since when did you and I start keeping promises to each other? You just wanted to see what would happen, didn't you?"

"What sort of a bloody nerve have you got?" she gasped.

Time for a change of tack, Osbert. "Sorry," I murmured.

She blinked. "I said. "What.. ." '

"I heard you the first time, and I said "Sorry". I want to apologise properly for what happened with Susie. I've never really done that, and I should."

"Apology noted," she murmured, 'even if I can't accept it, in the circumstances. And I'm not apologising, for any of what I did; I was more than entitled."

"Not quite," I pointed out. "Not even in the eyes of today's liberal matrimonial courts do two wrongs make a right. Plus, when you decided to get even with me for Susie, you did it with a married bloke. So neither of us.is innocent."

"So, are you just doing it to ease your conscience; telling me that you're sorry you slept with Susie?"

"I don't have a conscience over that."

"Your cock certainly doesn't have one."

"True, and I should have got my terminology right too; apologising doesn't always mean you're sorry. I'd have wound up sleeping with

Susie sooner or later, so I'm not sorry about that. It's just that my timing was a bit off; that was wrong."

"That's about as clumsy as you can get, but at least it's more honest than usual." She ventured a grim smile.

"I'm trying, really. You should, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you and that lump of nothing back there, that Nicky. What the hell are you doing with him?"

"I'm in lo .. ." she began, until my exploding laugh cut her short.

"Stop. Don't be daft. You're no more in love with him than you were with me, in fact probably less; he's a prat and he's not worth your time. You know that. Come on, honest up; you got involved with him because you weren't finished punishing me. Yes or no."

She pursed her lips. "Maybe," she muttered.

"From you, that's a yes. Tell me, did you expect me to come flying down to Mexico, bop the boy there, and take you back with me?"

She looked at me again; her eyes widened, then narrowed as if she was about to start shouting again, then went back to normal. "If I did, then I was a bloody fool, wasn't I," she said, grimly.

"You didn't know then that Susie was pregnant, though, did you?"

I've seen Prim in many states, but I don't think I've ever seen her look as totally stunned as she did then. Her mouth fell open and she gasped, then she sat down hard on the chair by my table, and started to cry. "Oh hell," I heard myself whisper. "You never knew at all, did you?"

I put my hands on her shoulder, raised her to her feet, and held her to me. "Oh, love, I really am sorry about that," I murmured into her ear.

"I assumed that Dawn would have told you."

I felt her shake her head against my chest. "No, she didn't," she mumbled. Then she pushed herself away from me. "But you should have told me."

"Primavera, I can't remember when we stopped telling each other things; maybe we never started. I didn't tell you because I didn't know what to do about Susie, even though she wasn't making any demands of me.

When you ran off with Johnson, that helped me make my mind up."

"And the baby?" she asked. "Is it born yet?"

"We have a daughter."

She sniffled. "I really messed up with Nicky, then, didn't I."

"Both times. I should feel sorry for him, but he's such a creep ...

and he's a fucking awful actor as well."

Her face was blotchy and a bit crumpled; yet it gave her smile a fetching, vulnerable quality that I'd never seen before. "You're so great, are you?" she teased.

"Better than him. If I wasn't I'd go back to the investigating business."

"Maybe you should. Maybe all this isn't really for you; maybe you should go back to being the old Oz Blackstone."

"Whoever the hell he was?" I grunted. "No, make no mistake, love. On balance I like being rich and famous; I admit I'd settle for being just rich, but if I have to I'll take both."

"But it's made you different."

"What's wrong with different?"

"You were never scary before; you were always nice."

"I've told you before; nice was a front. Anyway, you were always nice too; if what you say is true, you've changed as much as me. When I met you I thought you were Mother Teresa; then you started acting like the village slapper."

"That's the effect you have on a girl when you dump her, my love.

Anyway, I wasn't that bad..." She chuckled. "Not all of the time."

There was a box of tissues on the table. I pulled a couple out and dried the tears from her face. "What are you going to do about that poor sod down there?" I asked her.

"God, I don't know."

"Tell me the truth now. Whose idea was it to come over here? Yours or his?"

She smiled again; this time she looked like a kid who'd been caught doing something naughty. "Mine," she admitted. "I booked the trip to Perthshire. When I suggested to Nicky that we should call in here to wish the new movie luck, he jumped at the chance. I reckon he thought it would get him back into Miles's good books."

"Well he knows different now. Come on, Prim, you can't take that guy to meet your folks; he's worse than Steve Miller, that car salesman you had it off with."

When she snorted, cute wee laugh lines that I'd never noticed before creased up around her eyes. "No, he's not," she protested. "No one was worse than him! But you're right; I've been going off Nicky for a while. I only brought him over here to flaunt him in front of you.

I.