"Mother love?" Garth teased gently.

"For me, Tara is my child," Claudia told him fiercely.

"My love for her is the love of a mother. She is a part of me in a way I simply can't explain. I knew it the moment when I held her as a baby and she looked straight into my eyes. I couldn't love her more if I had actually given birth to her. Garth."

"I know that," he assured her, 'and so deep down inside does Tara. "

The police had asked him to supply them with what details he could of Estelle, so after drop and Betray 443 ping Claudia off at the apartment and telling her that he would call her in the evening after she had returned to Ivy House, he went back to the police car.

Sophie saw the police car first, hesitating just those few vital seconds before calling out to John, who was in another room.

Instinctively, she knew if not what the news was that somehow it was bad. As the car stopped, it seemed to be enveloped in an ominous stillness, a darkness.

The policeman broke the news as gently as he could, but Sophie could see in John's eyes how ill-prepared he was for the shock, his eyes blank, his mouth trembling slightly as he mouthed the words.

"No. Not Estelle.-she can't be... it can't be..."

Immediately, Sophie reached out to grasp his hand and held it tightly.

Through his tears, John looked at her, his expression dazed.

"It shouldn't have come to this," he told Sophie brokenly.

"She shouldn't have come to this. My poor Estelle.-my poor, poor girl."

Too late now to wish that they had tried harder, acted sooner, done something to repair their broken relationship with her, Sophie recognised, and knew as the thoughts formed that what she really meant was that it was too late now to save her.

"Rest in peace, Estelle." She sent up a silent prayer to her stepdaughter.

"Be at peace now wherever you may be."

n * *

Tara was already awake before she received her wake-up call. Halfway down the country road that led to her destination last night, she had abruptly changed her mind and turned round.

Because she had listened to the voice of good sense and reason advocating that her quest could best be accomplished in daylight or because she had suddenly become afraid of what she might actually find?

What was there that could possibly be worse to discover than what she already knew? Katriona, brought up by an elderly distant father, had run away when he had refused, failed to recognise, that her bad behaviour was an unspoken plea for him to give her the love and attention she craved. And having run away, she had turned to prostitution to finance the drug habit she had developed.

It was, after all, almost a drearily mundane story, a modern cliche almost too commonplace to merit more than a dismissive shrug from any outsider learning of it, but she wasn't an outsider. And then there was Ryland.

Ryland. How was he going to feel when she had to tell him what she had discovered? Ryland loved her, she knew that, and her reaction yesterday to the kind of life Katriona had lived made it more than plain to her, if she had needed any kind of confirmation, that her mother's way of life could never be for her.

From Claudia she had learned to feel compassion for others and to make allowances for their weaknesses and vulnerabilities, but she knew that no amount of hardship would persuade her to abandon the ideals she so fervently believed in.

Because, through her un stinting love, Claudia had given her what Katriona's parents had never been able to. Quite simply, she knew she was loved, Tara acknowledged. By her parents, by Ryland and, most importantly, by herself.

Very shortly she got out of bed. The sky beyond her bedroom window was a soft, clear blue, the sun shining warmly, no cloud on the horizon to disturb the promise of a perfect day. If she wished, she, too, could dismiss the clouds on her horizon by merely turning round and going home.

Like Claudia, if she wished, she could choose to carry the burden of her real parentage in secret. Nothing need be any different and Ryland need never be put in a position where he would feel honour bound to disclose it to the world, to his own family. The choice was hers, but she knew she simply didn't have that kind of strength, that she would never be able to keep her silence.

Tara left the hotel around mid-morning She found the village easily enough, then parked her car and got out to walk its length. From her map, she had discovered the whereabouts of the school where her grandfather must have taught. It was a few miles outside the village, a large old house set in its own grounds, the headquarters of some multi-national organisation now apparently, the school having closed over a decade ago.

Tara tried to visualise her mother living in the village as a child, although Claudia had told her that she had actually lived at the school with her father. Had she made friends here in the village, been a happy, well-adjusted part of the community as Tara had been in her own home town? Or had she been an outsider, rejected by the other children, not really one of them?

The church was at the end of the village street, set back from the cottages and separated from them by a pretty stone-built rectory. It was the kind of church that brides dreamed of, small, its stone walls softened by time and its lych-gate crying out for artistic floral decorations.

Tara walked up to the church door, opened it and stepped inside. The church felt cold although light flooded in through the stained-glass window beyond the altar. Around the walls, other stained-glass panels bore the names of those who had donated them to the church.

Her mother had known this church, might perhaps have stood where she was standing now, Tara reminded herself, but instead of feeling the rush of emotion she had expected, all she actually felt was a rather detached sense of curiosity. The photograph Claudia had given her, which she had taken from Katriona's file, depicted a pretty, dark-haired young woman. Try as she might, though, Tara could not imagine her as flesh and blood, could not breathe warmth and life into her. And most tellingly of all, as her mind had formed the words 'my mother', the image flashing across her brain had not been of Katriona but of Claudia.

A graveyard lay beyond the church. Slowly, Tara made her way towards it, tensing as she saw the familiar back of the woman crouching on the grass beside one of the gravestones.

When she had left Garth's apartment, Claudia had not intended to drive down to Dorset, even though she suspected it might be where Tara had gone. She had no right, she realised, to be part of Tara's life now.

Tara herself had made that more than plain to her, but Claudia had been irresistibly drawn towards the village and not just because of The woman in the small florist's shop had smiled at her in recognition when she walked in. After all, she had been a regular visitor to the village for a good number of years, always taking care and time over the flowers she chose. Today, though, she had seemed more preoccupied than usual, less inclined to stop and talk, the shop owner noticed as Claudia paid for her flowers and left.

Unlike Tara, Claudia did not linger in the village or go inside the church but instead headed straight for Katriona's grave. It was in a far corner of the graveyard, protected from the wind by a yew hedge that separated it from the countryside beyond it and close to the graves of her parents.

The headstone was cream, decorated with dancing, fat-cheeked cherubs, and had inscribed on it:

Katriona Spencer Daughter of Robert and Patricia Mother of Tara Rest in Eternal Love

As Claudia arranged the flowers in the small vase at the foot of the stone, filling it first with the ice she had bought from the florist, the movements of her fingers deft and swift, she paused to brush her fingers over Katriona's name.

"I never meant to lie to her or deceive her, Kat/ she told her.

"But she's right. I was afraid of losing her, of losing her to you,just as I felt I had lost Garth. I always felt so dull and stupidcompared with you. You had an air of excitement and I envied you that.Tara has that special magical quality, too. She would have beenfascinated by you.

"She was wrong to say that she was second- best, though. Tara couldnever be that. You know how it was. That first time I held her, yousaid then that you could see how much I loved her and I did.

"She has been the most precious gift that life has ever given me.

Loving her has been the easiest, the most natural thing I have everdone. All those years when I fussed and worried protectively over her,when she was growing up, you know what I mean. I told you, didn't I,that time when I thought she had pneumonia, and then again when she hadto have her tonsils out.

"You laughed at me then. I knew you would. Just as you laughed when I worried about her teenage desire for independence.

"Let her grow up, you told me. She needs to have her freedom. All those years when I tried to protect her, and yet now I'm the one who has damaged and hurt her.

"I should have told her. I know that, and by not doing so, I'vecheated you both. She's right. She had a right to know about you, tomake you a part of her life, and I've denied her that right because I was jealous of you, jealous and afraid that she might love you more than she did me. I could almost hear you mocking, saying to me, " Yes, but I am her mother. "" "But she isn't. You're my mother."

Claudia knocked over the vase of flowers as she stood up clumsily, her face flushing. Tara, I didn't know. How. "

"I saw you here when I came out of the church," Tara said.

"I've been listening to you."

Claudia bit her lip and looked away.

"You have every reason to be angry with me--' " Yes, I have," Tara agreed, cutting her off.

"Every reason, and I am angry, but..." Now it was her turn to look

away.

"I... I do understand and I'm sorry for what I said about your not loving me as much, about my being second-best. I know that isn't true."

"Oh, darling," Claudia told her shakily, 'if only you knew how much it

isn't and never could be true. "

"What else have you told her about me?" Tara asked Claudia, nodding in the direction of the headstone.

"Everything," Claudia replied simply after a small pause.

"I told her when you started to walk, and how your first word was "

pretty" but how I couldn't be upset that it wasn't " Mum" because you

said it to me. I told her that she was the one who really deservedthat description.She was, you know, Tara, she was the most. she was very like you," she declared emotionally.

"But you have a different nature. Katriona was like a diamond, sharp, brilliant " Hard," Tara suggested wryly.

"You are more like an emerald, deeper, richer, full of warmth and

light."

"While you are like a pearl," Tara returned softly.

"Warm, pure, lustrous, glowing with inner beauty. Did she deliberately

try to conceive me with Dad?" Tara abruptly asked her, watching her.Claudia took a deep breath. This time she wasn't going to lie.

"I'm not really sure. She was a creature of moods. I doubt that was in her mind when she broke into the flat, but when she found Garth there..."

"Do you mind talking about it?" Tara asked her.

"Not now." Claudia shook her head.

"When I thought that Garth had been unfaithful to me with her, then, yes, I would have minded. I couldn't bear to think that, like you, he would have preferred her to me."

"Why should I have done that?"

"She was your mother. I was just... a substitute."

"But you told me yourself that love does not depend on genetics," Tara reminded her.

"You said that when we looked at one another, you and I, woman and baby, we bonded with one another, loved one another. The way you described it, you made it sound like a two-way exchange."

"Yes, it was," Claudia agreed.

"You gave me this look, this old knowing look as if you just knew. It seemed you were willing me to pick you up and hold you and when I did--' " Perhaps I knew instinctively that you would give me the mothering I needed," Tara suggested.

"I've always liked to think so." Claudia gave a small sigh.

"But that doesn't alter the fact that what I did was wrong. I never meant it to happen. I genuinely intended to hand you over to the authorities. Only you were there and... I couldn't help myself, and once I had taken you home... Tara, I can't ask or expect you to forgive me but what I do ask is that you at least try to accept that you truly, truly are loved by me as my most dearly loved child. I cannot believe that it would be possible for me to love a child from my own womb any more than I love you because, quite simply, it just isn't possible."

T do accept it," Tara asserted gravely, and as she said the words, she knew she meant them.

Listening to Claudia as she talked to her mother, she had seen illuminatingly just how much she was truly loved.