He had spoken with such quiet conviction that all the doubts she had been harbouring about the thought of making such a huge emotional commitment had immediately been banished.

"We won't ever have any secrets from one another, will we, Ry?" she asked him now as she snuggled deeper into his arms.

"And we'll al n ways tell each other the truth... everything. I don't want there ever to be anything about you that! don't know."

"You mean like the fact that I turn into a werewolf at full moon?" Ryland teased her, but although he was laughing, deep down inside he was guiltily aware of the fact that there were facts about himself that he had withheld from her. Facts that she had every right to know.

He would tell her before they left for Boston, he promised himself as he stroked the bare flesh of her hip. There was plenty of time yet for him to prepare her for the truth, and after all, marrying a millionaire had to have some advantages--one of which surely being that she could fly her mother out to visit them whenever she wished.

The year Estelle turned eleven, her mother had suddenly announced that she was to spend her summer holiday with her father.

"I don't want to," Estelle had protested.

"The farm's miles from anywhere. There's nothing to do. I hate it.

Why can't I stay here in London?"

"Ethian and I will be going away," Lorraine told her coolly."You can't stay here.""Going away? Where?" Estelle challenged her sharply."You were away at Easter.""That was business," her mother told her crisply."You went skiing," Estelle reminded her."It was a business trip. I simply accompanied your stepfather, which is exactly what I shall be doing this time. He's been invited to join a group of other businessmen on someone's yacht."

"Some business trip," Estelle sneered.

"Estelle," her mother warned, her eyes starting to harden, 'if you're going to be difficult about this. "

"You'll do what?" Estelle demanded."Leave me here on my own? That's illegal.""Estelle, I'm really getting quite out of patience with you," Lorraine berated her.

"You're going to stay with your father and that's that."

"You shouldn't have had me if you didn't want children," Estelle threw angrily at her.

"No, you're quite right. I shouldn't have," her mother retaliated evenly, 'and believe me, Estelle, increasingly I rather wish that I hadn't. "

Later that night, listening outside their bedroom door, Estelle had heard her mother complaining to her stepfather.

"Estelle's being dreadfully difficult about going to her father's. I think she's jealous of me, Ethian. She obviously resents the idea of my having any fun, and after all that I've sacrificed for her. John never wanted her."

"Perhaps you should tell her that, make her realise how lucky she is," Estelle had heard Ethian responding.

"I'm beginning to think you're right and that I should have sent her away to school."

Estelle's visit to her father hadn't been a success. She had hated the farm and her stepbrother Ian. Sophie's presence in her father's life she treated with cool disdain, and as for Rebecca-she loathed and detested her.

"You don't want me here," she had accused her father after he had taken her to task for deliberately trying to upset Rebecca and Ian.

"You never wanted me...."

She hadn't known which of them she had resented more, her mother or her father. Neither of them loved her, and her father had compounded his lack of love for her by so obviously and generously giving his second family the love he had never felt for her.

It had caused her to feel a mixture of anger, bitterness and sharp resentment deep down inside to see the way he played with Rebecca, to see the love in his face, hear it in his voice when he was with her.

Ian, her stepbrother, she felt nothing but contempt for. The way he tried to placate her as though he actually felt sorry for her because he lived with their father made her despise him even more. Well, Ian could keep their father. He was the last person she wanted in her life, the very last.

When she grew up, she was going to find herself a rich man, richer than Ethian and much, much richer than her father and he would always, always put her first.

Estelle despised Ian and Sophie for trying to make friends with her.

Why should either of them like her? She certainly didn't like them.

She didn't like anyone, not really. People only pre and Betray 303 tended to like you because they wanted something from you. Her mother pretended to like her, to love her when she wanted to get her to do something like coming here so that she could go away and enjoy herself. Having children meant that you couldn't enjoy yourself.

Estelle was openly scornful of her father's very evident love for his second family and openly hostile towards his attempts to include her in their family activities.

She couldn't wait for the visit to end. At least in London she had the freedom to do what she wanted. Her mother was far too busy with her own life to interest herself over-much in Estelle's. Just so long as she kept out of her way, Estelle was pretty free to do as she pleased.

Determinedly ignoring all Sophie's warm overtures and her father's attempts to reach out to her, Estelle grimly sat out her visit in contemptuous loathing.

It pleased her to know that she was upsetting her stepmother by arguing with her father, the whole household, making them unhappy. Why shouldn't she? She hated them all, but most especially she hated her father. Oh, yes, she hated him.

But she was determined that, unlike Blade, she was not going to allow her father to send her away to boarding school.

He alternately fascinated and ant agonised her. Although her mother and Ethian had been married for almost four years, in all that time Blade had probably spent less than four months at home with them. Her mother and stepfather had refused to have him living with them full time.

"Having Estelle at home is bad enough," Estelle had heard her mother complaining to Ethian.

"I'm not having Blade here, as well." And so Blade had continued to do as he had done before his father's second marriage. He spent even some of his holidays at school.

"The only reason he married your mother is because he wants someone to have regular sex with," Blade had told Estelle the previous Christmas--Christmas was the one time when her mother made an exception and had him at home with them.

"You do know what sex is, don't you?" he had demanded when Estelle made no response.

Of course she did. She had heard the sounds emanating from the room her mother shared with Ethian. She had seen people having sex on television, giggled about it with her school friends, and besides, her mother had had other men friends before meeting Ethian.

Blade hated his father as she did hers.

Their mutual distrust and hatred of the parents who controlled their world formed a strong bond between them and added to that there was something about Blade, something about the dark, brooding, deliciously frightening maleness of him that attracted Estelle.

He was so different from everyone else she knew--the girls at her all-girls' school; her mother, Ethian, her father and his family.

was. Blade was. dangerous. dangerous and exciting, but even more importantly, underneath they were the same kind of people. Estelle didn't know how she knew that fact; she just knew that she did.

1 he noisy sound of a toddler indulging in a terrible two's tantrum with his mother outside her car window snapped Claudia out of her reverie, bringing her sharply from the past to the present. Her body felt stiff and cold and she was shocked to see that it was late in the afternoon.

How many hours had she spent sitting in the car reliving the past? Far too many.

And what had possessed her to do such a thing in the first place, to abandon her responsibilities and come here? Why ask herself a question to which she already knew the answer?

Guilt and pain had motivated her. Guilt and pain and fear. Not guilt because she had taken Tara--that was something she could never feel guilty about doing, she told herself fiercely. Holding Tara close to her own body as she carried her away from the squat, she had promised her that from her, Claudia, she would have every bit as much love as she would have received from her own mother. She had promised her, too, that she would love her just as dearly, just as closely, just as much as she would a child conceived within her own body. That to her, Tara was and always would be hers. No, it wasn't guilt for taking Tara that she felt but guilt because she had let Tara grow up in ignorance of the truth, not just to protect her daughter but to protect herself, as well.

"One day, you will have to tell her the truth-for her own sake," Garth had warned her gently the first day Tara started school.

She had promised him that she would--when the time was right. Then before she could. before the time had been right, she had found out the truth about Tara's conception, had found out that Garth, her own husband, was Tara's father, and after that there was no way, no way at all, she could bring herself to tell Tara whose child she really was--no way she could even begin to admit to herself whose child she was.

At every point in Tara's life when the truth might have been discovered, Claudia had held her breath in dread, but to her relief no one had ever questioned anything and the lies she had told in order to register Tara's birth had never been exposed.

But all it would take for her deception to be revealed would be for someone to check at the hospital or at the surgery where Claudia had claimed a doctor had attended after Tara's unexpected early home birth.

When they initially moved to Ivy House, she had got away with claiming that their medical records had been lost. No one had ever questioned the fact that she had registered Tara's birth some weeks after it had actually taken place and Tara had a completed birth certificate naming Claudia and Garth Wallace as her parents.

Well, one part of that at least was true even if Claudia herself hadn't known it when she registered Garth and herself as Tara's father and mother.

But everyone knew how meticulous American embassies were about checking people out, and according to Tara, Ryland's aunt was even more particular.

Claudia could feel her heart starting to beat far too fast. Garth was right. She couldn't allow Tara to find out the truth from someone else, but how on earth was she going to tell her? And what would happen when she did? Would Tara understand or would she turn away from her, reject her, end up hating her? Tara loved her, she knew, but Claudia also knew how terrifyingly quickly love could turn to bitter hatred when the loved one was discovered to have lied and cheated, when one's trust in them was destroyed, when one's belief in them was shattered.

She would certainly never forget how she had felt the day she discovered that Garth was actually Tara's father.

It had been an ordinary enough day to begin with, apart from the fact that Claudia and Garth had had an appointment with the ear, nose and throat specialist at their local hospital to discuss the forthcoming removal of Tara's tonsils.

She had suffered very badly from throat infections ever since first starting school and their doctor had finally persuaded Claudia, much against her initial feelings, to seek the advice of a specialist.

Since Tara's birth, Claudia had been very wary of any contact with members of the medical profession, but only Garth knew that this sprang not so much from her memories of the baby she had lost, but her fear of anyone's questioning the supposed facts surrounding Tara's birth, and it was for this reason that Garth was taking time off work to accompany her to the hospital to see the specialist who had examined Tara the previous week and who now wished to discuss with them his belief that she would benefit from an operation to remove her tonsils.

The years since Tara's arrival and their move to Ivy House had passed so quickly that sometimes Claudia simply didn't know where they had gone. Garth's business had flourished and become extremely successful, involving his being away from home and working very long hours. But Claudia had been so involved and absorbed in motherhood and Tara's needs that there simply wasn't time for her to miss him.

Occasionally, she was guiltily aware that Garth was being pushed to the periphery of her life--a life that revolved almost totally around Tara and their home, but although Garth was inclined at times to make slightly acerbic comments about the fact that even on the rare occasion when they did have time to themselves, inevitably the sole topic of her conversation was Tara, deep down Claudia knew that he adored her just as much as she did herself.

And if their sex life had dwindled to the odd hurried, early-Sunday-morning coming together interspersed by the even less frequent, slightly more leisurely intimacy, well, she had concluded from what she heard from other women that she was not alone in finding it difficult to combine the roles of lover and mother, and fortunately Garth seemed to accept the situation.

It was a crisp autumn morning, and as they set off for the hospital, Claudia tried to relax and enjoy the novelty of being driven instead of being the driver.

"Remember the first time I took you out for a drive?" Garth reminisced as though he had picked up on her thoughts.

"Mmm..." Claudia returned.

"The car heater wouldn't work and--' " I pulled off the road to check it," Garth went on, adding wickedly, " I never got the heater working, but I certainly enjoyed the way we eventually ended up keeping warm. "

"Garth," Claudia reproved him, 'mind that cyclist. "

Garth gave her a wry look. Increasingly recently, Claudia had been stonewalling him whenever he brought up the subject of sex. Because she no longer wanted sex or because she no longer wanted him?

He understood how involved she was with Tara, how absorbed, how besotted, a less kind man might have said. And he knew, too, it was illogical of him to feel excluded and jealous, even resentful sometimes, of the way that Tara's needs always seemed to take precedence over his own, or rather the way that Claudia accorded Tara's more importance than she did his own. It was not so much that he was jealous of the time and attention Claudia gave to Tara but rather more that it hurt him to feel that Claudia preferred Tara's company to his; that he himself was somehow no longer of any real importance to her.

He understood, too, of course he did, that it just wasn't possible for them to share the same kind of uninhibited sex life they had enjoyed as a newly married couple living on their own, now that they had a soon-tobethirteenyear-old daughter running around everywhere--a very intelligent, aware, inquisitive daughter at that.

Worriedly, Claudia frowned, staring blindly out the window. She knew logically that there was nothing to fear from seeing the specialist; that everyone accepted that Tara was hers . their daughter. But she still felt apprehensive, her face clouding as Garth turned into the hospital car park.

When he saw her expression. Garth silently berated himself. Poor Clo.

He ought to have been more sympathetic even if . even if what? Even if he felt that Tara ought to be told the truth or at least as much of it as she was capable of understanding.

Initially, Claudia had agreed with him, but recently he had noticed that she was becoming increasingly defensive whenever he brought it up.

"How can I tell her?" she had demanded the last time he tried to broach the subject.

"She's too young to understand. And anyway, what would I say ... that I'm not your mother?"

"She'll have to know one day, Clo/ Garth had reminded her gently.

"She might not," Claudia had denied stubbornly.

"Everyone believes that she's mine... ours," she had hastily corrected herself.

"If anyone had been going to find out, they would have done so by now."

Garth had sighed, not wanting to provoke an argument with her that he knew would upset her. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps Tara might never need to know. But what if she did . what if the truth were to come out by accident?

"One day I'll tell her," Claudia had promised gruffly, 'when . when the time is right. "

"The appointment with the specialist shouldn't take too long. Do you fancy having lunch somewhere afterwards? There's that new Italian place. You always enjoy Italian food."

"Oh, Garth, I can't," Claudia had protested fretfully.

"I've got to get some material for the fancy-dress costume Tara wants to wear for her friend's birthday party, and anyway, it's my afternoon at the centre."

Several times a month, Claudia gave her time and her expertise free to a local community centre, offering counselling services to those who needed them.

Garth knew that she enjoyed her work, but she had always stressed that she could only do it so long as it fitted in with Tara's routine.

"I want to be there for her. Garth," she had pro 3 tested when he once made the comment that she seemed to have precious little time for herself-and for him, he could have added but hadn't.

"It's not a sacrifice ... it's what I want to do."

The specialist had smiled warmly at them both when they were shown in to see him.

"It's a simple enough operation," he assured them as he checked through Tara's file, 'and I would certainly strongly advise that you go ahead. The infections she's been having can be quite debilitating although unlikely to cause any permanent damage--at least to her health. We do find that children who are subject to these problems can fall behind with their school work and it's certainly a procedure that's better carried out now than when she's an adult. In fact, right now she's at the optimum age for it.

"The only problems we could have would be with her extremely rare blood grouping, but I can see from checking your records--' here he looked at Garth '--that you and she both have the same blood group."

With what he obviously intended to be humour, he added jovially, "I know they say it's a wise child who knows its own father, but in Tara's case there could be no possible doubt."

Claudia had glanced towards Garth, expecting to see him looking as astonished as she was herself, but instead and to her shock, she realised that he was looking instead highly uncomfortable and almost. almost guilty. She had known then immediately, instinctively, even if illogically, as she grappled with the shock not just of what she had seen in his face but of her own swift acceptance of it, that the specialist was right and that Garth was Tara's father. Even worse was the realisation that he must have always known it and kept that knowledge from her, and most painfully of all, that Tara, her child, was, in effect, not her child at all but Garth's.