"Well," Sophie persisted, "if you want it, you've got it."

Cal blinked and looked at her. "Got what?" he said, looking bemused.

"The promotion!" Sophie exclaimed. "I've talked to Gillian about it already, and she thinks it's a great idea. We both think that you'd make a fantastic account manager. You are brilliant at your job, Cal-God knows how, considering you spend most of the day surfing the Internet for vintage Galliano-it's only fair you get recognized for it." Sophie watched Cal watching the heaving crowd below in unexpected silence. She watched the ever-changing disco colors light and relight the halo of his profile with pink, then blue, and then gold.

A small, sweet smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "Really?" he said, his habitual urbane chic guard slipping just a little. And then, "I don't know, Sophie, it's hard work, isn't it? And I'm not keen on change, I'm a Cancer."

Sophie shook her head. "I just think you can do more in the company," she said. "I'm offering you a chance. If this was the other way around, you'd tell me to get out of my rut of insecurities and paranoia and start living my life for once, and anyway you're almost doing all of it already. You'd only notice the change in your pay check."

Cal glanced at Sophie. "That's my kind of change," he said. He looked at her for a moment longer. "All right then. As you're begging me, I accept." Sophie offered him her hand, and they shook on it. "I want more money, of course, and I still won't sleep with you, though you realized that, didn't you?"

Sophie sighed. "That is definitely not in the job description," she said emphatically.

Sophie wondered how she could look at her watch without offending Jake, who had found her forty minutes ago and had her pinned in a corner.

"My God," he'd said, looking her up and down with naked interest the first moment he saw her. "You look stunning."

And he had stared at her for a moment longer, making Sophie squirm a little.

"Sorry," Jake had said. "It's just-Well, you look incredible." He'd smiled, and it was a sweet, boyish smile. That had made Sophie smile and blush too.

And she had enjoyed standing here in Jake's company. He'd listened with real interest to her telling him the latest news about the children and her concerns and hopes about finding Louis. He'd laughed at Sophie's oddly proud tales of Izzy's antics and looked genuinely touched when she told him about her and Bella's heart-to-heart.

"You really care about those kids, don't you?" Jake had said to her a few minutes ago.

"Well," Sophie had replied, "I suppose I do-in a way."

Jake had looked at her with a renewed intensity that made her take a step back from him. "You'd make an incredible mother," he'd said, smoldering at her.

"No, I wouldn't," Sophie had said reactively, scared by the comment.

"You would," Jake had asserted.

"I wouldn't," Sophie had insisted, and then she had clamped her mouth shut, realizing that the exchange was sounding dangerously close to a playground spat.

Jake had cast an embarrassed glance at his toes before looking at Sophie again. "I scare you, don't I?" he'd said.

"You don't," Sophie had lied, shaking her head firmly so that her hair flicked over her shoulders.

"Why do I scare you?" Jake had asked himself more than Sophie. "I think it's because I wear my heart on my sleeve and I show you how much I like you. I'm too straightforward and should be more mysterious and cool, right?" Sophie had shrugged. "I apologize, Sophie," he'd said, and he had looked so sad that impulsively Sophie had closed the space between them and put her hand on his arm.

"Don't be sorry," she'd said. "I'm just a bit rusty, that's all. I haven't done this for a while, and I'm English, you know. Reserved and all that." Jake's smile had faded as he looked into her eyes, and Sophie had felt sure that at any moment she would be swept away by his sexual magnetism and charisma, because if she wasn't, then seriously, she had to be clinically dead.

But to her amazement and dissatisfaction, even as Jake's soft, firm lips had closed in on her in the shadows, she'd discovered she was worried that she should be mingling more. That she should be networking, exchanging business cards and building contacts. She should have checked that the second wave of canapes were ready to go and that the drinks were still flowing, and, most important, that the pyrotechnics people had everything ready for the fake New Year's countdown that was due to take place at 10:30-well, it was a school night.

Jake's fingers were entwined in the hair at the nape of her neck and his hand pressed firmly into the small of her back until finally, nudged out of her detached reverie, Sophie returned his kiss. She felt his reaction with a physical jolt. She broke off the kiss and took a step back.

"You're incredible," Jake said, his voice dark with longing. "Let's get out of here. I've got a room onboard tonight."

Sophie looked at him uncertainly. In the last few moments of that embrace, she had wanted to kiss him, she had wanted his hands on her, or at least her body had wanted him.

"I don't know," she said. "I mean the canapes and the fireworks..."

"Come on," he said, brushing aside her protest as he took her hand and started to lead her through the crowd and back to the cabins. Sophie let him lead her because part of her wanted to go, part of her wanted to know what it would be like to be undressed by Jake in the state cabin of a luxury cruise liner, but a much bigger part of her knew with some relief that it wasn't going to happen. Not here, not tonight anyway, and especially not with her brothel pink pants on.

"Jake," Sophie said, pulling him to a stop and then letting go of his hand. She lifted her chin and took a step back, conscious of the crowd around them.

"I can't," she said, shaking her head. "I'm at work here! Gillian would kill me." She laughed awkwardly, but Jake looked disappointed.

He sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "A little too much good champagne and not enough beautiful you. It's made me a little crazy. Of course you're right."

Sophie smiled at him gratefully. "I have to go," she said, gesturing at the party that was simmering all around them. "I've got to check the last lot of arrangements, and then I've got to get back to the girls before they burn the house down or something."

Jake grinned and shrugged. "One day I'll get you to myself," he said.

"You will," Sophie said, wanting to give him something.

"I could take you home," he offered hopefully.

"No," she said. "This is your party! Stay and have a good time."

She turned on her heel and walked quickly into the crowd without looking back, knowing that Jake would be watching her.

"God, you are shit," Eve said, appearing at her elbow with barely a rustle of her long, extremely clingy green dress. Sophie thought she looked like the snake in the Garden of Eden.

"Thanks," Sophie said, drily. "And how are you?"

"I mean with Jake there-the poor bloke's been trying to shag you all night." Eve squinted at a shocked looking Sophie. "Can you really not tell, or is it all an elaborate hoax to make you more elusive and alluring?"

Sophie shook her head. "There is nothing going on between me and Jake," she said firmly. She could trust Cal, but it would be disastrous if any gossip found its way onto the office treadmill. Not that Eve needed any hard facts. In this case, Sophie's reputation as an oblivious ice queen seemed to be standing her in good stead.

"Good God, woman," Eve said. "He's so hot for you they practically had to raise Tower Bridge to accommodate his hard-on!"

Sophie shrugged. "It's been lovely chatting with you, Eve," she said. "But I've got a few more details to sort out for my party."

"Bitch," Eve said as Sophie glided off toward the kitchen, and Sophie knew that, even though Eve had had the last word, she had won. The event had won for her. It was truly brilliant.

And somewhere out there in the crowd, Gillian would be thinking exactly the same thing.

The tramp sitting on her doorstep took the shine off Sophie's triumphant glow. When she saw him, she sighed and considered walking past her own home and lurking about around the corner for a bit in the hope that he would get bored and move on. She watched him for a second from behind a plane tree. He was a hulking big man with one of those seriously suspect beards that look as if they might harbor mini-ecosystems all their own. He was leaning back, resting his elbows on the steps, looking for all the world as if he were enjoying the view from his balcony across the Italian Alps.

It wasn't that Sophie didn't have sympathy for homeless people, she did. After all, she gave five pounds ninety-nine a month to Shelter and ticked the box about the tax refund bit, so she knew that she cared. She just didn't care for one of them being on her doorstep. Nevertheless, he looked like he was there indefinitely. There was no way around it, Sophie decided. She'd just have to go over there, ask him very politely to move, and hope he wasn't the belligerent type. She scooped up the loose change in her pocket and held it in her fist.

"Here's three twenty-eight," she said, holding out the change. She was alarmed to see that she made the tramp jump, which she thought could never be a good tactic. "Move on, please, my husband's a policeman. He'll be home in a minute."

The tramp looked her up and down with a distinct air of bewilderment. "Fuck," he said, half-laughing. "You really startled me. But anyway, you're here now, thank God. I'm freezing."

Shit, Sophie thought, he isn't belligerent but he's delusional. And he sounded younger than the average tramp, although, to be honest, Sophie had no idea what the average tramp age was.

"Look," she said, wondering if he looked yellowish because of the streetlight or if he was in fact yellow. "I understand that it must be hard being homeless and everything, but..."

The tramp stood up abruptly, causing her to stumble backward down the step and lose her balance momentarily. She felt the man's arm encircle her waist and steady her before withdrawing to a respectable distance. It was then that she realized he smelled rather nice for a tramp.

Sophie took a step back and squinted hard at the vagrant in the glow of the streetlamp. "Oh," she said bluntly. "It's you. Hello, Louis."

He looked older than Sophie remembered, which would be partly because of the beard and partly because of the fact that he was older, six years older, as was she.

"Your mum wouldn't let me in at all," Louis said amiably as they stood in the shared hallway. "She said you'd kill her if she did and that I'd better wait until tomorrow to talk to you. But I've waited so long-I couldn't wait until then. So I sat here until you came back. At least it's warm in here. It's freezing outside." He looked her up and down once again, with the benefit of electricity.

Sophie blinked at him in the bright hallway. The lights in this communal part of the converted house were set to stay on for only five or so minutes at a time. In two or three minutes, they would blink out, and she found herself hoping that when she turned them back on, he'd be gone. Now that she could see him clearly, it was obvious that he wasn't a tramp, he was just rather travel-worn and scruffy. He had a sort of red quilted parka on over a thick sweater, and until he had taken it off a moment ago, a cap pulled down over thick, longish black hair. And his beard wasn't initially as bushy as Sophie had first thought-at least a third of it was actually just the fringe of his black scarf tucked up under his chin against the cold.

"I didn't think you were coming," she said, glancing up the stairs to the front door of her flat and suddenly wishing that she was on the other side of it. "I mean, you said you were coming right away-about a week ago."

It seemed unreal to be standing here in the hallway with Louis. She had almost stopped believing that he was real, and now that he was here, now that his physically imposing presence was making even deeper ripples in her previously tranquil life, Sophie found she did not know what to say to him. She had totally and uncharacteristically failed to prepare. Besides, she was irritated with him for being so relaxed. She unwound her pink beaded scarf from her neck and slipped off her faux fur coat. She suddenly felt very hot.

"Wow," Louis said, and then, seeing Sophie's expression, added, "Really nice dress I mean. I like pink."

Sophie raised an eyebrow, gratified to see him unsettled at last by the oddness of their situation. "So what now?" she asked, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders, a haughty gesture Carrie used to tease her about endlessly.

"Well," Louis said, looking around the hallway and showing a great deal of interest in the cornicing, "you know, just, right then, let's...get on with it?" He clapped his hands and rubbed them like a classic silent movie villain. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't get here right away, but I couldn't leave the school totally in the lurch. I had things to sort out. I had to get money together for a flight. Luckily, I already had most of it saved up. Look, I know I hung up on you-that was stupid and rude. I don't think I really knew where my head was at just then, if you know what I mean." Sophie supposed she did. "Anyway, I'm sorry about that and sorry it took me so long. It's been a nightmare getting here, believe me." If Louis expected any sympathy, he was disappointed. "So, like I say, I couldn't just leave people in the lurch," he finished.

"Couldn't you?" Sophie heard herself say, her voice crisp with frost. "I rather thought that was your forte."

Louis's open, friendly smile froze and wilted. "Look, I'm here now, and I want to see my girls. My daughters. I've come a very long way, and all I've been thinking about is this moment. Let me see them, please."

Sophie studied Louis, standing casually in her hallway. He looked perfectly comfortable with the situation. He didn't look anything like a man whose ex-wife had recently died, leaving his abandoned children virtual orphans. Sophie had not expected him to come tonight, but now that he was here, she had at least expected him to be nervous, full of regrets and remorse, and sort of guilty-looking. He was none of those things, and that made her furious.

"The girls are asleep," she told him briskly, stepping onto the bottom stair so that she was almost equal with his height. "Surely you must realize that you can't just walk back into their lives, wake them up, and say, 'Hey, girls, Daddy's back!' after three years!" She found she wanted to say something, anything to shake his almost indecent composure. "Besides, Izzy doesn't really know who you are," she told him bluntly. "And Bella doesn't even want to see you."

Louis's face did not move a muscle as he returned Sophie's direct look. "Listen," he said in measured tones. "You are the one that found me. I thought you'd be glad to see me. And anyway-they are my children. And if I want to, I can go up those stairs and take them out of here tonight. You can't stop me."

Sophie moved up another step. She knew that he was right, at least about the first part: she had been the one to find him and should be glad to see him, but still, she had to will her simmering fury not to manifest itself by igniting her skin. She didn't know why she was reacting to his arrival the way she was, perhaps because she was unprepared to find him on her doorstep, perhaps because all of the emotions she had been battling over the last few weeks had reached a critical mass. Sophie felt that somebody should be angry with Louis Gregory for leaving his family behind, and as she didn't see anybody else available to do the job, she felt that it might as well be her.

"Actually, no, you can't take the children," she said, taking one step at a time. "And yes, I can stop you. I have been granted a residency order, and in the eyes of the law I'm their legal guardian. You'll need a court order to take them anywhere." Sophie stretched the truth a little, gambling that Louis knew as little about the legalities as she did.

"But I'm their father!" Louis looked crestfallen, and Sophie saw that he was not as bullish and confident as he had first appeared to be. She took a breath and evened out the tone of her voice. She realized she wanted something rather complicated from Louis. She wanted him to feel guilty and contrite, to show the level of remorse she thought appropriate for his crime. But she didn't want to scare him off completely; she couldn't afford for him to leave and never come back. She had to push her own emotional reaction to him to the back of the queue and remember the girls.

"Louis," she said, "this is what I suggest you do. I suggest you go away and find a place to stay. And in the morning, when you look less like an escaped convict, you can come back." She reached the top of stairs and looked down on him. "I'll tell the girls you are here in the morning. We'll take it from there, okay?"

Louis stood stock-still, his eyes locked on Sophie's for a moment, and then shrugged. "I don't have much choice, do I?" he said, heading for the door. "I'll be back first thing."

Just at that moment, the lights blinked out. Sophie stood at the top of the stairs in the darkness and held her breath. But when the light returned, Louis was still by the front door. Sophie watched as he unlatched it and zipped up his parka against the cold air.

"Oh, by the way," she said, "the girls are coping really well, considering they've lost their mother. Thanks so much for asking."

Louis's face flashed with anger as he slammed the door behind him.

Sophie took a deep breath and found that she was shaking. Not once while she had been waiting, hoping for Louis to turn up had she considered that her reaction to him might be so physical, so visceral. Bright red blotches had already begun to blossom on the skin under the thin material of her dress, and her blood was ringing in her ears. Sophie knew that speaking to him the way she just had wouldn't solve anything. But the moment he had stood in her hallway, his presence filling every corner, it had been as if he had ignited a spark in Sophie. She couldn't just stand by and make this homecoming easy for him. She had to stand up to him for Carrie and her children.

Sophie let herself into the flat and found her mother standing in the hallway. "Has he gone?" she asked in a whisper.

"Yes, Mum, thanks for making him wait," Sophie replied, following her mother back into the living room.

"How did it go?" Iris asked her. "He seemed like a very nice young man. He was disappointed when I said he couldn't come in, but he didn't make a fuss."

Sophie thought carefully about her five minutes with Louis. "I don't really know," she said. "But your're right-he seems normal, nice."

And then Sophie realized. That was it. That was the reason he had made her so angry.

If he was so normal and nice, then why did he run away?

Sixteen.

Izzy had chosen to wear her new party dress for the occasion, over an orange jersey top with her favorite green and black striped tights, which had once belonged to a Halloween outfit. She was sitting on the edge of Artemis's chair, drumming her heels against the leather-clad base with infuriating regularity, utterly unaware of the murderous looks she was incurring from the cat, which was balanced on the back of the chair just above the girl's left shoulder. If it had been anybody else-apart from Bella-Sophie was fairly sure Artemis would have dealt with them by now with her usual violent efficiency.

"Is it time now?" Izzy asked, exactly thirty seconds after the last time she had asked when the man who was her daddy was coming.

Tess, who had arrived over an hour earlier, shook the silver bangles on her wrist until she could get a clear look at her watch. "No, darling. We'll just have to wait a bit longer." She raised an eyebrow at Sophie, who was standing in the small kitchen cradling a cup of coffee more for its warmth than for its contents.

"Okay, Bella?" Sophie asked the girl, who was lying on the floor where the rug had once been, staring blankly at the ceiling. She nodded and blew out a puff of air angled upward so it fanned out her thick bangs. Somehow, she had managed to dress herself entirely in black, quite a feat considering that black wasn't exactly the color of choice in most six-year-olds' wardrobes. Of course, when Sophie had looked closely, she'd noticed that Bella had committed a cardinal sin and gone into her wardrobe without permission. There she had found a black shirt, a black sweater, and a black belt, and had used the belt to adapt the other two items into a sort of dress, which she was wearing over a pair of Sophie's black woolly tights, which even though they must have been pulled right up to her armpits, still wrinkled around her ankles. Bella must have judged that the gravitas of the occasion would prevent Sophie from being cross with her. She was right, of course, and also it was hard to be cross with someone who had shown such initiative and managed to look so funny when she was trying her best to look foreboding and cross. Perhaps it was the one small detail Bella hadn't quite managed to cover that made her so sweet instead of surly. Her boots were still pink.

"We're not going anywhere with him, are we though?" Bella asked after a while, her voice anxious despite her defiance.

"No," Tess said, giving her a little pat on the shoulder. "Not today."

Sophie put her mug down on the kitchen counter and, walking into the living room, knelt on the floor next to Bella and looked at her. Bella returned the look with her much practiced scowl.

"Are you going to be okay?" Sophie asked her.

"I said I was, didn't I?" Bella replied.

It was true, Bella had said that at just after three that morning. About two-thirty she had padded into the living room and, kneeling by the side of the sofa, had stared at her godmother until finally Sophie's sluggish and underused sixth sense had kicked in and she'd opened her eyes.

"Oh, good," Bella had said. "You are awake."

It had turned out, probably inevitably, Sophie concluded, that she had not had to break the news of Louis's imminent arrival, not to Bella at least, because Bella already knew. She had overheard Sophie talking about him to her mother when she came in and heard her say that he would be back in the morning. Bella had tried to go to sleep and pretend she didn't know about Louis, like she'd had to at Christmas, when she'd pretended she didn't know that it was Grandma who put the presents at the bottoms of their beds and not Father Christmas. Obviously it wasn't Father Christmas, because no one had told him where they had moved to, and she knew for a fact that Grandma hadn't posted their letters to him because Bella had found them in her knitting basket. And anyway, even if she hadn't seen Grandma doing it, she would still have known, because Father Christmas would have got her a real Barbie and not a fake one, whose head fell off almost right away. Sophie had nodded and rubbed her eyes, trying to keep up with six-year-old logic.

"But then," Bella had told Sophie gravely, "I realized that I had only pretended about Christmas so that Izzy wouldn't find out and get upset, but as Izzy is going to know about him in the morning anyway, I thought it would be better to get up and come and see if you were awake than to worry about it all by myself. And luckily you were," Bella had finished. "After a bit."

Sophie hadn't known whether to be touched or terrified, but she'd somehow made room for Bella, who had clambered over her and tucked her feet under Sophie's duvet.