"Did you like school, Katriona?" she asked.

"Like school?" Katriona yelped with laughter.

"Oh sure... I loved it.

I loved sticking out like a sore thumb and being the target of the other kids because I was the one with the dad who taught at the big posh private school. Just like I loved having to spend every damned evening locked inside with him, listening to him ranting on about how important it was for me to have a good education. Well, I soon showed him that as far as I was concerned, there was far more to life than the classics and that when it came to what really mattered, what was really important, I could teach those upper-class idiots he was supposed to be educating some far more important facts of life than anything they'd ever learn from him. Not that he or the head saw it that way. "

She opened her eyes and gave Claudia a vulpine smile.

"So learning how to go down properly on a boy wasn't on the timetable.

So what? I'll bet they got a hell of a lot more mileage out of what I taught them than they ever did from Pa's lessons and it made him realise that I was there. "

Claudia could see the anger and resentment in her eyes now, as well as hear it in her voice, and her tender heart ached for her. Reading between the lines of the sketchy tale Katriona had just drawn for her, Claudia suspected that her father, so much older than his daughter and plainly more used to the company of boys than girls, had perhaps in Katriona's eyes appeared to reject her after her mother's death and that she had decided if the only way she could gain his attention was by behaving 'badly' and breaking the rules, then that was what she would do.

"It's not too late, Katriona," she had said softly.

"You could still go back. You could--' " Of course it's too bloody late," Katriona interrupted her furiously.

"My God, you make me sick, you're so stupid. And what makes you think I want to go back? What the hell is there for me to go back to? He's probably dead now anyway," she added uncaringly, 'and if he's not, then he ought to be. Everyone over twenty-one should be dead. I certainly intend to be," she added broodingly.

Claudia's heart missed a beat. She had already been warned by Janice that given her current lifestyle, Katriona was unlikely to live much longer, just as she had been warned about the danger of allowing herself to become too emotionally involved with any of her cases.

Later that evening working at home, dutifully trying to fill in the empty blanks in Katriona's case history with the fragmented bits of information she had been given earlier, Claudia put down her pen and stared tiredly into space. She had a bruise on her arm where a young boy had tried to steal her bag as she left the flats, and there had been an unpleasant few seconds in one of the stairwells when another addict had tried to hassle her for money. If she was honest with her n self, she knew that she was finding the work depressing and exhausting and without the payback of feeling any satisfaction that she was actually doing anything positive.

Today had been a bad day, she acknowledged as she rubbed her aching forehead. Katriona in particular, despite the rapport she felt she had established with her, or perhaps because of it, seemed to delight in deliberately trying to get under her skin, her barbed remarks designed, or so it sometimes seemed to Claudia, not just to nettle her but to actually inflict damage on her. Katriona was a formidably intelligent young woman and Claudia had no doubts whatsoever that her father had not been overly ambitious in wanting her to go up to Oxford.

She knew what Janice was all too likely to say about the family background Katriona had supplied her with today; she would think that Katriona was likely to have made it up, that it was simply a clever fiction she had created around herself, but Claudia sensed that, for once, the girl had been telling the truth.

As she started to write down the gist of their interview, Claudia paused to nibble on her pen and to ponder on the probable details of her life that Katriona had not revealed to her. That she had been intensely jealous of her father's dedication to his job and the pupils he taught had been patently obvious--and natural. The tragic death of her mother must have traumatically affected them both. It was easy to see why a shy, scholarly man already middle-aged might have retreated from his wife's death and its unfortunate consequences.

Being left the sole parent to a young daughter, he more than likely found solace in his work. As a result, Katriona had undoubtedly tried to make him aware of her presence, her needs, by becoming difficult and rebellious, the classic situation of a child deciding that attention gained through bad behaviour was better than no attention at all.

"So how old were you when you left home, Katriona?" Claudia had asked her casually, slipping in the question, but not apparently casually enough because Katriona had instantly been on guard, her response dagger sharp and instantaneous.

"I was fourteen," she had replied, 'and I didn't leave. I was told to go. "

When she saw the expression on Claudia's face, her mouth curled into a derisive smile.

"You don't believe me. Well, it's true. I was given an ultimatum and so was my father. If he wanted to keep his job, then I had to go. My presence as a teenage girl was too disruptive to the boys for me to stay." She gave a small shrug.

"Of course, my father could have chosen to live outside the school. Ihated living there, anyway, but he liked the Hat we had. The roomswere elegant and classically designed. Sure they were, but rooms withten-foot-high ceilings take some heating and the school wouldn'tinstall central heating in the staff's quarters.

My bedroom windows had ice on them in the winter, we could only have a bath after the boys had had theirs,

the water was always cold. " She gave a small shiver.

"It must have been hard for you Claudia had responded sympathetically.

Katriona had made no response; the drug she had injected was clouding her mind, her ability to think. Claudia recognised the surly, mistrustful look entering her eye and knew that there was no point in questioning her any further.

Fourteen. She sighed now before recommencing her writing. A child still, but the streets of London and far too many other large cities were home to runaways of that age and much younger--a sad fact she had good cause to know.

"You shouldn't be working here," Janice had told her acerbically yet again only the other week.

"You're more equipped for delivering meals on wheels in some pretty country village."

"I'm fully qualified to do my job," Claudia had felt bound to remind her stiffly.

"Academically, yes," Janice had agreed, her upper lip curling, 'but emotionally. " She had shaken her head vigorously.

"No way, you're the sort who'll grit her teeth and pretend until thejob gets too much for her and she cracks. Then we end up having tocope with her workload. You need to be tough to work in thisenvironment. You need to understand what we're working with. Feelingsorry for them won't do it and the only way you can understand them isfrom living with them, from growing up alongside them--' " Like youdid? " Claudia had interrupted her.

"Like I did," Janice had agreed, adding grimly, 'face up to it,Claudia. There are some people who are never going to make it, who areborn simply to die. There you see, I've shocked you, but it's thetruth. They have no purpose, no future, no hope, nothing. "

Claudia hadn't been able to make any response, the pain of what Janice was saying hurting her too much.

It hurt now thinking about Katriona. She wasn't like that; like those

whom Janice had described with such cruel accuracy. Katriona had the intelligence to make something of herself, of her life. If she would just agree to try a rehab programme, Claudia was sure she could be helped to see how much better her life could be.

"She doesn't want to see," Janice had told her.

"And the harder you try to persuade her, the more she'll dig her heels in. Katriona's sole mission in life is to degrade herself just as much as she possibly can. It's her way of punishing whoever it was in her life who hurt her. It gets some of them that way. Be careful, Claudia," she had warned her curtly.

"She'll hurt you if she can-whatever way she can.

She needs to hurt others nearly as much as she needs to hurt herself. "

And Claudia had known that it was true. There had been several occasions when she had sensed a cruelty, a malevolence almost, about some of Katriona's comments to her, just as she had sensed the girl's angry determination to undermine and unsettle her, to denigrate and, if she could, destroy everything and everyone contra n dieting her own warped and destructive view on life.

But understanding why Katriona behaved the way she did did not always lessen the efficacy of her bitingly cruel tongue, Claudia acknowledged ruefully.

Claudia woke up, yawning and stretching, blinking in the dazzling glare of the oncoming headlights of other cars as Garth turned into their street.

They had spent the weekend--his first off since his tour of duty in Northern Ireland--with Garth's parents, and after two late nights and Garth's mother's justly famed cordon bleu cooking, Claudia had fallen asleep on the way home.

It had been an enjoyable weekend--she got on well with Garth's parents, who had never made any secret of the fact that they welcomed her as a daughter-in-law--but Garth had been slightly on edge, not specifically with her, or indeed with anyone. It had been more as though he had been having difficulty in gearing down to everyday civilian life after a high-tension existence with his regiment.

Not much mention had been made of his tour of duty at either of the two dinner parties his parents had given during their visit, but Claudia suspected that it would have been something that he and his father would have discussed when Garth had gone to join him in his study while Claudia helped his mother to prepare Sunday lunch.

An old school friend of Garth's father had been present at the Friday evening dinner party. He ran his own PR business, his clients in the main drawn from the world of politics and high finance. Claudia had heard him telling Garth quite seriously that if he were to leave the army he would certainly be interested in having Garth come to work for him.

"I don't know the first thing about public relations," Garth had said, laughing.

"That's where you're wrong," Nicholas Forbes had corrected him immediately.

"Through your work, you're promoting an image, and that in essence is what public relations work is all about. You're good with people. You know how to deal with them, how to work with them and bring out the best in them," he had continued, and as she listened to him, Claudia had realised that he had judged Garth's character very shrewdly and accurately indeed.

She wondered if he knew through Garth's father that Garth was concerned about how much of a future he would actually have with the army now that he had a wife to consider.

"It isn't that I'm fiercely ambitious," Garth had told his parents over lunch on Friday just after they had arrived and the four of them were seated around the comfortable kitchen table.

"But one day, hopefully, I will have a family to support." He had smiled, giving Claudia a teasing glance, before adding more seriously, 'and besides, I don't want to be an absentee father. "

What Garth wasn't saying to his parents, but what they had both agreed on, was that, unlike them, their own children were not going to be sent away to boarding school--an experience that neither of them had particularly enjoyed.

While Garth brought in their cases and the boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables Garth's mother had insisted on giving them from her own kitchen garden, Claudia went over to the sink to fill the kettle.

She heard Garth come in and close the door, and as she turned her head he came towards her, blocking her into the small space between the sink and his body. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and started to nuzzle the nape of her neck.

"Garth," she protested, "I was just going to make some tea."

"I don't want tea... I want you," Garth growled, tightening his hold on her, one hand covering her breast, the heat of his breath hot against her skin.

When Garth had arrived home on Wednesday, they had had a passionately sensual and sexual reunion; on Thursday night, too, they had made love, and on Friday morning Garth had woken her with the slow suckle of his mouth on her breast.

She had known instinctively that the urgency of his lovemaking and the intensity of his sexual desire for her were heightened by his recent tour of duty. Whenever he came home on leave, he was always hungry for physical contact with her; eager to make love and to make up for the time they had been apart.

But this time, there had been a new sense of urgency, an edge not of aggression towards her but of some tautly controlled male emotion.

Lying in bed next to him at his parents', profoundly thankful for the size of their house and the fact that their bedroom was the full length of the house away from his parents' room, Claudia had suddenly been acutely aware of how very fragile human life was. All the time Garth had been in Belfast, she had steadfastly refused to allow herself to dwell on the fears that she knew must be experienced by everyone for the safety of someone they loved when that someone was in a dangerous and hostile environment, telling herself that to give in to her fears, even subconsciously, might somehow or other weaken Garth and make him more vulnerable. But the first night he had been home, she had woken constantly in the night, reaching out to touch him just to reassure herself that he was actually there beside her and safe.

She had not even objected when he had insisted on making love to her at his parents' home, something that normally made her feel acutely self-conscious and unable to completely relax. But her urge to be close to him, to be held by him, to be a part of him, had been so strong that it had overwhelmed her usual inhibitions.

"Garth," she protested again, but already she could feel her body starting to respond to his touch, tiny shivers of delicious sensation quiver n ing across her skin where his mouth was caressing it.

"Mrrun..." was the only response he made to her half-hearted protest.

Against her body as he pressed closer to her she could feel the hard throb of his erection.

The hand caressing her breast slipped inside her top, pushing away her bra while the other hand tugged at her skirt.

"Garth, no," she told him breathlessly.

"We can't, not here...."

"Oh, yes, we can," he told her thickly in response, his hand already touching her body, caressing her sex, his own reacting to the hot, wet feel of her just as she was reacting to the hard male pressure of him.

The musky aroused male scent of his body was making her feel dizzy just as he enveloped her. She could feel the hardness of his thigh pressing against her leg. She could hear the urgency in his voice as he started to move rhythmically against her.

"Lean forward," she heard him instruct her. A fierce thrill of shocked excitement raced through her.

She had never been particularly adventurous in bed and, compared with what one heard and read, her sex drive seemed nowhere near as high or as demanding as that of other women of her age, but suddenly, with Garth caressing her with his hand at the same time as he started to penetrate her with quick, fiercely hungry thrusts, to her own bemusement she found herself grinding her own body back against his, panting with a mixture of urgency and excitement as she started to quiver from head to foot with the onset of a need for him that was almost as intense and immediate as his for her.

When his thrusts became slower and more deliberate, she moaned in taut feminine frustration, which elicited a hot, savage groan of excitement from Garth as he moved faster and deeper within her body, responding to the message of her demanding and wholly female body language.

When it came, her orgasm was so swift and so intense that for a few seconds Claudia actually felt as though she might pass out. When Garth withdrew from her, she was trembling so much that he instinctively wrapped his arms protectively around her, rocking her gently as he soothed her back down to earth.

"Do you know what we're going to do now?" he whispered lovingly to her as he scooped her up in his arms. When Claudia shook her head, he told her huskily, "We're going to go to bed and I'm going to make love to you all over again, only this time... this time, it's going to last all night."

"Garth..." Claudia began to protest and then stopped. She didn't even have the energy left to tell him they should rest never mind make love a second time.

Only somehow or other she had found the energy and they did make love again, and it was only in the early hours of the morning, when she got up to go to the bathroom, that she suddenly realised what she had done or rather what she had not done.

Her packet of oral contraceptive pills lay reproachfully on the vanity unit where she had left them by accident when she was packing to go to Garth's parents.

Numbly, she stared at them. That was three pills she had missed taking. Three nights. three days when they had made love without using contraception. Her heart sank and then rallied. She had only missed three days. Surely she couldn't. surely that didn't. In the morning when she told Garth--before she would allow him to make love to her--he didn't seem anywhere near as concerned as she had expected.

"So you might be pregnant. We are married," he reminded her wryly, 'and we were planning on having a family at some stage. "

"Some stage, yes," Claudia agreed, 'but not yet, not here, not while I'm still working. We can't bring a baby up here in this flat. Garth," she told him, shaking her head and grimacing.

"And we certainly can't afford to move somewhere else, not in London."

"No," he agreed 'but would it really be so bad? "

"They'll be furious at work," Claudia told him.

"I know that Janice doesn't really think I'm up to the job as it is. She's never really approved of me."

"I know how much being able to work means to you," Garth responded, 'but. " He paused and then put his arms around her, tucking her head under his chin so that she could hear the rumble of his voice in his chest and smell the early- morning man smell of him, something she had missed desperately the first few days after he returned to the regiment following his leave. Now, instinctively, she drew it deeply into her lungs to savour and treasure it for the time when she would be alone.

"Are you really happy here... living and working in London?"

Claudia opened her mouth to tell him that of course she was, but instead, she found herself shaking her head, her eyes filling with tears as she admitted tiredly, "No... not really. Perhaps Janice ;s right after all. Perhaps I'm simply not equipped to deal with the kind of problems I'm having to face. Perhaps all I'm fit for doing is delivering meals on wheels and opening village fetes."

"Don't be silly," Garth reassured her gently.