Innocent On Her Wedding Night. Sara Craven

      There was a brief, odd silence, then he said quietly, ‘Of course.’

      Christmas, Laine thought ecstatically. He would be back at Christmas. He and Simon. And that would be the best present she could have.

      Hero-worship, she told herself wearily, as she got up from the sofa to take the bag of melting ice cubes back to the kitchen. That was what it had been. The world’s most gigantic crush. A childish phase that she should have outgrown quite easily.

      However, for the next five years, her entire life had seemed to take its focus from school and university vacations, and she’d waited for them with almost painful eagerness, knowing that Daniel would join them for a week or two at least.

      Not that the holidays had been unalloyed delight any more. As she’d got older Laine had become aware that were undercurrents beneath Abbotsbrook’s seemingly tranquil surface. And that Mr Latimer’s all too regular visits were invariably a cause of friction.

      She’d been curled up on the window-seat in her room one spring evening, when her mother’s voice, raised in complaint, had reached her from the terrace below.

      ‘I thought everything would change when you were eighteen,’ Angela was saying. ‘That you could persuade the wretched little man to keep his distance.’

      He said tiredly, ‘Ma, the trust will stay in force until Jamie and Laine are both eighteen. You have to accept that.’ He paused. ‘And you’d see less of Latimer if you curbed your spending a little. Fewer weekend parties, maybe?’

      ‘Your father started them. And it’s the only way I can keep in touch with our friends when I’m buried down here all year round. I wish to heaven I could sell the place and move back to London.’

      ‘You know the terms of Dad’s will,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to wait until Laine comes of age for that—if you still want to.’

      ‘I’ll want to,’ she said. ‘If the house is still standing, that is. The damned place is falling apart, and Latimer won’t release enough money to do what’s necessary. Then I have to put up with people treating the place as a shrine—turning up in droves so they can see the room—the desk—where he created “all those amazing fantasy novels, Mrs Sinclair”,’ she added, in a savage mimicry of a Transatlantic accent.

      ‘And I’m sick of them telling me what a tragedy it was he was taken so soon. Do they think I don’t know that? I’m his widow, for God’s sake. And he wasn’t “taken”. It was a heart attack, not abduction by aliens.’

      ‘Well, don’t knock the faithful fans,’ Simon advised crisply. ‘After all, it’s Dad’s royalties that have been paying the bills, and frankly they’re not as good as they were a few years ago. In fact, I wonder …’