After getting off the bed, he pulled on his jeans and opened the bedroom door. Abruptly he tensed, slamming the door closed as he wheeled round to face her.

"What is it... what's wrong?" Estelle asked him uneasily, struggling into her dress.

"She's gone, you stupid bitch, that's what's wrong," he shouted, cursing her as she opened the door to stare in disbelief at the empty living area.

"She can't have," she protested, half-stammering.

"She was out cold, she--' " Christ, but you're stupid," she heard him saying, moving too fast for her to dodge the blow that caught her on the side of the head, sending her reeling back against the headboard. Her head exploded with pain, and as he hit her a second time, she bit through her tongue, the blood spurting into her mouth. She tried to scream, to fight back, but he held her down on the bed, imprisoning her.

It had been a long time since he last punished her like this. Violence did not arouse him sexually, but he knew how to hurt her and where, the pillow he was holding over her face silencing her screams.

"Stupid, stupid bitch," he swore savagely at her as he hit her.

"You stupid, stupid bitch..."

"Just coffee, please," Tara told the girl as she came round with the refreshment trolley. She felt completely sober now, but her stomach was churning too nervously for her to be able to eat.

The train was surprisingly full, but she had managed to find a seat at a table opposite a young woman in her early thirties who smiled warmly at her as she, too, merely ordered a coffee.

"Do you live in Dorchester?" Tara asked her. She was feeling slightly calmer now that she was over the shock of what she had done. It had been an impulsive decision to go to Dorchester and one she was already beginning to regret. What was she expecting to find? Not her mother, not even her grandfather; they were both long dead and. "No, but my parents live there," the other woman was answering with another smile.

"I'm going to collect my daughter. She's been staying with them. The first time she's stayed with them on her own and we've missed her horribly."

The very way she had spoken about 'my daughter' had struck Tara like a blow. There had been so much love and pride in the words and it was politeness rather than any genuine interest that led her to ask, "How old is she?"

"Eight. Would you like to see a photograph of her?" she volunteered.

Suppressing a faint sigh, Tara nodded her head. After all, what else did she have to do to pass the journey?

"She looks like you," Tara offered when she had dutifully studied the snapshot she was handed of a pretty brown-haired little girl.

The other woman's smile broadened.

"Every] one says that she agreed, 'which is ironic, really, } because Gemma is adopted."

; Tara's whole body went stiff, the colour draining from her face.

Quickly, she picked up her coffee-cup, her hands trembling. This was taking coincidence too far and if she had any sense , she'd end this conversation right here and now. She could almost see and feel the dark shadow of fate looming over her.

"I didn't find out until after we'd been married several years that I couldn't have children. I was devastated. We both were. We tried everything." She paused and shook her head.

"Conceiving a child, my own child, became the most important thing in my whole life. Even, in some ways, more important than my husband in the end.

"Well, David gave me an ultimatum. He wanted a normal life, he told me, a life that wasn't totally focused on my getting pregnant. We'd put our names down for adoption early on when we knew I couldn't conceive, but we never really had any hopes of getting a baby.

"Then totally out of the blue, we got a call to say there was a baby for whom the agency thought we would make suitable parents. I couldn't believe it, and there are still some days when I have to pinch myself just to make sure that it's all true, that Gemma is ours. We've been so lucky, so blessed..."

The woman's eyes had started to fill with tears, and as she drained her now cold coffee, Tara blurted out, "But it can't be the same as having your own child. You can't love her as much as though..."

The other woman was staring at her.

"Gemma is my own child," she told her with quiet dignity.

"Yes, another woman carried her in her womb, but Gemma was six weeks old when she came to me. She was undernourished and underweight because she had not been feeding properly. Her mother, a teenage girl, already had two other toddlers by different fathers, and at first the paediatrician thought that Gemma might have suffered some small degree of brain damage during her birth because she was so slow to feed. The moment I held her and looked at her, though, I knew she just needed someone to love her properly.

"It's not something you can explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. People assume that you need to physically give birth to a child to love it, but that's not true. If it was, then there wouldn't be any abused or unloved children, would there?" she observed with a sad smile.

"Does she... does Gemma know she's adopted?" Tara asked her, dry-mouthed.

"Oh, yes, she knows that her mother simply wasn't able to look after her and that because she loved her, she wanted her to be with someone who could. We talk about it quite often. To tell you the truth," she added, her face instantly softening, 'if anything, I love Gemma more because I didn't give birth to her. To me, to us, she is our most precious and wonderful gift and she knows that no matter what happens in her life, the bond of love I feel for her will never be broken. When she's old enough, if she feels she wants to seek out her birth parents, then that is her right, and David and I have both agreed that we would do everything we could to help her. "

"Aren't you afraid that she might--' " Love them more than she does us? " the other woman supplied gently for her.

"Yes, of course I am, but at the end of the day, as any adoptive mother would tell you, what matters most is not that your child loves you but that you love him or her."

"But you must feel concerned about... about what she might have inherited from her birth parents," Tara persisted, her questions far more intense and personal than those she would normally have asked a stranger because they were due to her own very intense and personal feelings.

"No child is born good or bad," the other woman told her positively.

"Gemma's birth parents were a couple of teenagers who had sex without any real thought of the consequences. Gemma's mother ran away from home to escape an abusive stepfather. She was pregnant with her first child at fifteen, had her second at sixteen and Gemma herself a year later. That doesn't make her bad. The only thing that makes it bad is the system, the society that failed to love and protect her.

"Gemma is her own special self and we love her because of her individuality. David, my husband, loves animals, and Gemma is like him in that. The pair of them are always bringing home injured creatures they find, but although neither David nor I have ever had any special talent for it. Gemma is becoming a very good rider. She has a natural ability, her riding school has told us-something she must have inherited through her parents.

"Having an adopted child is so very special in so many ways. Every day is an adventure full of new discoveries. You have no preconceptions and it's your responsibility to give your child the emotional nourishment to help them reach their full potential.

"Gemma knows how special she is to us and she will carry that knowledge with her wherever she goes in her life. Every adopted child shares that special ness "But what would have happened if you'd gone on to have a child of your own?" Tara asked her forthrightly.

The other woman frowned and then responded gently, "I don't think you understand. Gemma is my own. It is impossible, inconceivable, that I could love her any more than I already do."

Her frown was deepening now and Tara could see that she was perhaps beginning to regret having spoken to her.

"I'm sorry," she began to apologise.

"It's just that--' Before she could finish her sentence and explain about her own past, the guard was announcing that they would shortly be arriving in Dorchester and her travelling companion was All ready getting her things together and looking tot wards the window in eager anticipation.

^ Tara saw her again briefly after they had both 1 left the train. She was holding out her arms to a i small, pretty, dark-haired little girl who came ] flymg down the platform to fling herself against i her, crying out, "Mummy... Mummy..."

1 Tears filled Tara's own eyes as she watched them. Had she perhaps been wrong to accuse Claudia of claiming that she loved her because she had had no other choice? Because it had been ] either her or nothing? But even if she had been i wrong, Claudia had still hidden the true facts of : her birth from her. Had she done it because she ; was ashamed and afraid of what she had done, of being found out and losing her, as she had i claimed to Tara? Or because, as Tara believed, she was ashamed of who Tara really was and afraid that she would turn out to be like her biological mother?

The receptionist at the hotel Tara booked into was far too well trained to show any curiosity at her lack of luggage and vagueness about the length of her stay. But how could Tara answer that question when she didn't know the answer herself, when she still didn't even really know what she was doing here in Dorchester?

As she turned to walk away from the reception desk, she paused and turned back, saying, "Ex and Betray 423

cuse me, but I wonder, do you happen to know if there's a village locally that has a public school? "

The girl frowned.

"Well, there's Wheatly Park down the road, and Darlington, of course," she informed Tara, 'but. "

Tara thanked her and turned away. It was going to be impossible trying to trace her unknown family without more detailed information. She had been an idiot to come rushing down here like this. There was a public telephone in the foyer. Determinedly, she headed for it, then picked up the receiver and dialled the number of her father's apartment, telling herself that Claudia might not even still be there, never mind be willing to answer her questions.

When she heard Claudia's voice on the other end of the line, she almost lost her courage and replaced the receiver. Instead, taking a deep breath, she said rustily, "It's me, Tara...."

Standing in Garth's living room, Claudia wound the flex of the telephone receiver nervously round her ringers, her heart thumping frantically. When Tara had rushed out of the apartment, she had felt as anguished, albeit in a different way, as she had done when she learned that her baby was stillborn. The only difference was that this time the pain was even more acute, a searing agony that felt as though her heart was being ripped mercilessly out of her body.

"Leave her," Garth had cautioned her.

"Give her time." Now it seemed that he had been right.

"Tara darling... where are you ... are you...?"

Tears choked her voice, preventing her from going on.

"I... need to know something," she could hear Tara shakily demanding, her voice almost youthfully defiant, bringing back memories of a much younger Tara resolutely standing her ground as she enlisted Claudia's aid for whatever philanthropic project she had impulsively undertaken.

During the years Tara was growing up, their home had often become a sanctuary for whatever and whomever Tara was currently championing, be it animal or human.

"I need to know my mother's surname... and... where she came from," Tara told her abruptly.

Claudia's heart sank. She felt instinctively that Tara was not ringing because, miraculously and no doubt on her part undeservedly, she had changed her mind, but simply because Claudia was the only point of contact she had with the woman who had given birth to her.

Silently, Claudia swallowed, blinking back her tears. Well, it wasn't as though she didn't deserve Tara's rejection and she had no one but herself to blame for what she was suffering. But Tara was also suffering, and that, too, was her fault, her responsibility.

"Your mother's name was Katriona Spencer," she responded quietly.

"She was brought up in a village called Upton Villiers. It's near--' " Dorchester, yes, I know," Tara acknowledged curtly, her palm so wet with nervous sweat that she had to wipe it on her jeans before she could write down the information Claudia had given her.

Tara darling, I know how upset you are," Claudia sympathised, but please, darling, you must believe me. I love you so much, Tara, so very, very much," she went on brokenly, 'and I can't bear to think that. that you would ever feel that I hadn't loved you. You were never in any way second-best to me and I have never thought of you as anything other than. than the most precious, wonderful thing that life could possibly have given me. "

Claudia's heartfelt words virtually echoed the words the woman on the train had used to describe her feelings for her adopted daughter. Tara had to fight hard to resist the overwhelming temptation to run home to London and to Claudia just as fast as she could, fling herself into her arms, knowing they would close safely and lovingly around her as her travelling companion's had around her much younger daughter. So overwhelming was it, actually, that she was just on the point of giving in to it when she reminded herself of the reality, of the fact that despite the love she claimed to have for her, Claudia had deliberately deceived her.

"I have to go," she told her abruptly, then immediately replaced the receiver before she could change her mind.

As she heard Tara cut the connection, Claudia's eyes welled with tears. Garth had gone into the office, promising her that he would be back as soon as he could, and she wished desperately that he had been here when Tara had telephoned. He would have dealt with the situation so much better than her.

It was amazing how easily and naturally she had slipped back into the role of being his, of how easily the years of their being apart had melted away, of how frighteningly quickly she had come to depend on him again.

No doubt her own life, her own affairs, her business, all needed her attention, but how could she concentrate on them. on anything, while all she could think about, all that really mattered, was Tara's happiness?

After she had ended the conversation with Claudia, Tara simply stood in a daze beside the telephone for several minutes, her hand clenched tightly over the piece of paper on which she had written the information Claudia had given her.

She needed a change of clothes, a map, a hire- car. It was already early evening.

The receptionist was able to suggest an out- of-town shopping mall that stayed open until late in the evening, and at Tara's request offered her a taxi to take her to it, promising to have the paperwork ready for her to complete on her return to enable her to rent a car.

Angrily, Estelle stiffened her body against Blade's grip. He was holding her too hard, hurting her too much, his hands locking round her throat as he shook her violently. Instinctively, she fought back, raking her nails down his arm and then gouging them into his face as he refused to let her go.

Her dress was twisted up around her body, but as he swore at her, removing one hand from her throat to reach out and grab hold of the hand she had raised to claw him, twisting it painfully behind her, Estelle recognised that this time his anger wasn't being fuelled by sexual desire.

"Bitch, stupid, useless bitch," he swore at her, punctuating the words with a series of blows to the side of her head that left her reeling.

"Stop it," she demanded thickly through her swelling mouth.

"Stop it, you're hurting me."

"Good," he snarled.

"I want to hurt you. You deserve to be hurt."

As he raised his hand to hit her, Estelle managed to wriggle free, catching him off guard. She had never known him to act like this before, and suddenly she was afraid, overcome with a fear that had nothing whatsoever of the usual thrill of sexual excitement she had experienced along with such fear. That fear was hot and arousing, enticing; this one was cold and foreboding. After struggling off the bed, she made straight for the door of the flat, pausing only to snatch up her jacket as she did so.

Behind her. Blade was pursuing her, still cursing her. She could see Tara's car parked outside the flat where she had left it; the keys were still in her pocket. Acting instinctively, she ran to it, jumped in and started the engine, ignoring Blade's shouts for her to get out.

Then racing dangerously away from the curb and into the traffic, she left him standing on the pavement, watching his face contort with savage fury.

Her heart was pounding with the adrenalin- fuelled instinct for flight.

She started to shiver and reached out to switch on the car's heating system. God, but she hated him sometimes. Hadn't she always done every thing he asked? Given him everything he wanted? It wasn't her fault that he had got him self in so deep with the drugs scene.

If he needed to buy people off, pay them off, then that was his problem, not hers. Why the hell should she offer to help him out? What the hell had he ever done for her?

Narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing the road, she put her foot on the accelerator and cursed him. She had no idea where she was going but the sensation of speed, of power, was giving her an outlet for her fear and making her feel that she was strong and in control. Deliberately she aimed the car for the small gap she could see coming in the traffic ahead of her, laughing as she ignored the right of another driver to take it, her sense of urgency and excitement increased by the challenge of narrowly making it through the space. The sense of danger- She could drive like this all day. It made her feel good and it made her feel even better remembering the way she had left Blade standing impotently behind her on the pavement. Let him wait. Let him curse.

She wasn't going to go back until she was ready. And she wasn't ready yet . no, she wasn't ready yet.

o the apartment.

"But she wouldn't tell me where she was it was a public phone somewhere. She wanted to know Katriona's surname and where she had come from. Garth. Garth... what is it?" she demanded anxiously when she saw his expression.

Garth sat down, reached out and took hold of both her hands. There was no easy way to tell her what he had to say or any way to keep the information from her, either.

"When Tara left here earlier, she went straight to the office and cleared her desk. I've checked her flat. There's no sign of her there, just a tom- up message from Ryland saying that he's been summoned home urgently by his father."

"She's cleared her desk7' Claudia stared at him with huge, haunted eyes.

Oddly, contrary to what he might have expected the trauma of what was happening had, instead of ageing her, somehow or other made her look endearingly youthful and vulnerable, like the Claudia he remembered from their shared younger days, a Claudia who needed and valued him and who had no qualms about showing it.

"She... perhaps she's followed Ryland to America," she suggested eagerly.

"She could have phoned from the airport."

Garth hated to disappoint her but he knew he had to.

"I doubt it he told her regretfully, shaking his head.

"I've phoned the main airports."