Penny Jordan's Crighton Family Series. PENNY JORDAN

ever being quite so … I suppose it’s very difficult for her. She’s always relied so much on her looks as a means of bolstering her self-confidence and she still looks stunning, of course, but …’

      ‘But she’s getting older … and more desperate,’ Caspar supplied for her.

      In the darkness Olivia nodded her head.

      Because a part of her had always secretly wished that Tiggy could be more like Jenny … more of a traditional mother and not the almost fey, childlike creature she actually was, the whole issue of her mother and her mother’s vulnerability and her own feelings of guilt was one that even now Olivia didn’t feel entirely comfortable with.

      It was bad enough feeling the way she did without adding to that sense of betrayal by discussing her mother’s shortcomings even with someone as close to her as Caspar. She had seen earlier how much he had disliked her mother’s overcoy, flirtatious behaviour and had felt torn between protecting Tiggy and agreeing with him.

      Slipping out of the narrow bed, she told him, ‘I’m thirsty. I think I’ll go down and make myself some tea. Would you like some?’

      ‘Please. Want me to come with you?’

      Olivia shook her head. ‘I shan’t be long,’ she promised, bending down to kiss him lightly on the mouth before pulling on her robe and padding barefoot to the door.

      She knew the house well enough not to need to switch on any light, and besides, the moon was almost full, casting a sharp, clean light in through the windows.

      Only the odd creaking board betrayed her presence as she went downstairs. In the hallway she could smell the scent of the white lilies that were her mother’s favourite flower.

      The kitchen door was ajar and she paused outside it, tensing as she heard the sound of a packet of food being torn open. Biscuits by the sound of it, she guessed as she heard the crunch of someone eating them far too quickly for the health of their digestive system.

      It must be Jack. He had obviously sneaked downstairs to get something to eat, Olivia decided as she heard the fridge door being opened. Growing boys were notorious for their appetite, and according to her father’s complaints at dinner tonight, Jack was no exception.

      Hesitating no longer, Olivia walked into the kitchen and reached for the light switch as she did so. Light flooded the kitchen, revealing the figure crouched almost coweringly in front of the half-open fridge door.

      All around her the floor was littered with empty food cartons and packages and even cans, Olivia noticed in shocked bewilderment and disbelief as she stared from the rubbish-strewn floor and work surfaces to her mother’s ashen face.

      ‘Tiggy …’ she whispered, ‘what is it … what’s …?’

      But even as she asked the question, Olivia knew the answer, just as she had known earlier that morning when she’d walked into her mother’s bedroom and seen those glossy, expensive bags of brand-new, unworn clothes scattered all over the room and had smelled that sickening, nauseous smell of fresh vomit overlaid by the heavy, cloying, non-disguising scent of her mother’s perfume. Had known and had tried desperately all day to ignore what she had seen just as she had tried to ignore her own shaming feelings of anger and resentment at having been confronted by the evidence of her mother’s abject misery and despair. For whatever else could be responsible for what her mother was so plainly doing and what, Olivia had guessed with a burst of unwanted, sickening self-awareness, she must have been doing for many, many years?

      Anorexia, bulimia—these were the words one associated with vulnerable, almost self-destructive young adolescents and surely not adult women in their forties, but there was no escaping the evidence of her own eyes.

      ‘Oh, Mum,’ she whispered chokily, still half-hoping that it was all a mistake, that her mother would stand up and smile at her and that somehow the chaos, the carnage all around them would disappear; yet it was all too clear from the remains of the food her mother had obviously just forced down for whatever reasons of self-hatred and hunger and need that she had been motivated into the kind of behaviour that left the kitchen looking as though it had been ravaged by a dozen or more starving people.

      Torn food wrappers, empty cans, opened cartons of ready-made meals, scattered remnants of a loaf of bread and more, were tossed on the floor as though someone had just emptied a dustbin on it.

      Sickly Olivia stared at the mess. How could any one person possibly eat so much? She looked at her mother, her face waxy and sallow, her eyes dull and heavy. She was struggling to breathe properly, her hand surreptitiously massaging her stomach beneath her robe.

      ‘Why?’ Olivia whispered achingly. ‘Why …?’

      ‘I don’t know … I don’t know …’

      Tiggy had started to shiver and cry, wrapping her thin arms around her bent knees and rocking herself to and fro as she pleaded with Olivia.

      ‘Don’t tell anyone … don’t tell your father … I didn’t mean to spend so much … I couldn’t help it…. You understand, don’t you?’ she appealed to her daughter.

      But Olivia, remembering how the sight of all the bags of unwrapped and unworn clothes strewn across her floor had shocked her, could not find the words to give her mother the reassurance she so desperately needed.

      ‘Don’t tell your father,’ her mother was repeating. ‘I promised him I wouldn’t do it again. He doesn’t love me when I’m sick,’ Olivia heard her mother saying, her eyes filling with fresh tears as she looked pathetically at her daughter. ‘He tries to pretend, but I can tell … he won’t come near me….’

      She was sobbing noisily now like a small, hurt child. She even looked like a child with her thin arms and her hunched-up body. Olivia wanted to go over to her and put her arms round her, hold her, but the stench of the food she had consumed, the memory of how her bedroom had smelt after she had voided whatever she had stuffed herself with previously, made her gorge rise and she simply couldn’t do it … couldn’t bear to be near her.

      As she swallowed against her own nausea, Olivia wondered why it had taken her so long to realise what was happening, why she had not guessed … questioned—

      ‘Olivia?’

      She tensed as she heard Caspar coming into the kitchen. She had forgotten all about the tea she had promised him, and now as her eyes met his across the width of the room she saw that he had recognised what was going on as immediately as she had done herself.

      ‘I didn’t know,’ she heard herself whispering to him as though there was some need for her to justify her own ignorance.

      Behind her, her mother was struggling to stand up.

      ‘I want to go to bed … I’m tired,’ Olivia heard her saying. She was speaking and moving like someone heavily sedated or drugged, which Olivia recognised dully she possibly was with so much food crammed into her body.

      ‘Let her go,’ Caspar told her as Olivia started to protest.

      Could this really be her mother? Olivia wondered wretchedly as she watched her shambling out of the kitchen, heading, not for the stairs, but for the downstairs cloakroom.

      ‘Oh God,’ Olivia whimpered. ‘Oh God, Caspar. I don’t …’

      Automatically she started to pick up the debris her mother had left behind. Then abruptly she paused and turned round, her eyes filling with tears. Wordlessly he held out his arms to her.

      Still too shocked to articulate her feelings, she half ran, half stumbled into Caspar’s open arms, closing her eyes against the too-vivid images of her mother that refused to stop tormenting her as she buried her head against his chest.

      In a world that had suddenly become frighteningly unreal, the warmth of Caspar’s embrace as he held her felt as blessedly familiar as the hardness of his body. She could feel the steady beat of his heart, so much calmer and slower than the frantic, raised pace of