Payment Due. PENNY JORDAN

but had had no alternative.

      Even so, just as soon as she could, just as soon as Lucy had been at school, she had found herself a part-time job and somehow or other she had managed to make ends meet, but the pressure of her perilous financial situation had been constant and draining. There was no relief from it, no money for even the smallest of luxuries or extras.

      So many, many times she had looked at Lucy, wearing the second-hand clothes she had lovingly washed and pressed, and ached to be able to clothe her daughter in things that were hers alone, ached to give her the kind of treats Lucy saw being enjoyed by other children.

      It had hurt her sometimes to see the wistful longing in Lucy’s eyes and to know that it was out of love for her, out of a knowledge that no child of her age should ever have had, that she never once begged or pleaded for treats.

      She had not been the only single parent living in the massive, desolate tower block of council flats. She had made friends with several of the other mothers, and she knew she would miss their down-to-earth company, now that she and Lucy were finally established in Appleford.

      Before leaving she had pressed upon them fervent invitations to come and see her, anxious not to lose touch with the few people with whom she had managed to form a genuine bond.

      All of them had tragic, unhappy tales to tell: some of husbands who had deserted them, leaving them with young dependent children; some who had done the leaving, driven from their homes by men who abused them physically and emotionally.

      Some, like her, had found themselves mothers virtually before they were adult themselves. All of them shared a gritty, fierce determination to see that their children would not suffer as they had, to ensure that somehow their children would inherit a better, wiser, more compassionate world.

      Yes, she would miss their support, their friendship, and they would not be easy to replace. She didn’t make friends easily, preferring her own company. Another legacy from her past; a deep-rooted fear, perhaps, of allowing herself to get too close to anyone because she feared the eventual pain of losing them.

      No, it was for Lucy’s sake that she had taken this dangerous step into a new world. It was because for Lucy she wanted so much more than she had had herself. Not necessarily more in a material sense; it was going to be a long time before the business allowed them to live any more luxuriously than they had done in the city.

      But at least here, with the clean, fresh air and the wide-open horizons, Lucy would have the benefit of an environment a hundred times better than the one she had had in the city.

      Already she had told Tania in amazed accents that, in her new school, there would only be twenty other children in her class. In the city she had shared a classroom with almost sixty other pupils. Here the children had access to playing fields, to tennis courts, to a local sports centre, which, unlike the one in the city, was not a long bus ride away through the heart of a city in which no sensible unescorted woman walked after dark, and certainly where no mother could allow her child to venture unprotected.

      Yes, she had made the right decision, no matter how many people might shake their heads and predict failure for her.

      She might not be able to provide Lucy with the secure emotional background that came from two loving parents who were committed to one another and to the welfare of their children, but at least she was doing the best she could for her.

      And, anyway, marriage wasn’t always the blissful, self-fulfilling, self-contained state of happiness and security those on the outside of it tended to imagine.

      Take Nicholas Forbes, for instance, her late relative’s solicitor and now her own. He had a beautiful wife, the stepsister of a very wealthy local businessman, two healthy children, a successful practice, a home on the outskirts of the town in one of its most prestigious areas, which Tania had heard a rumour had been given to them as a wedding present by Clarissa Forbes’s stepbrother, and yet, according to local gossip, Nicholas Forbes and his wife were far from happy.

      And it was not only gossip. Nicholas himself had indicated as much to her before she could stop him and make it plain to him that the last thing she wanted was to involve herself in anyone else’s private life. That the very last thing she appreciated in any man was what was to her an outright betrayal of the trust and privacy which should exist between a committed couple. Personally she thought it extremely disloyal for one partner in a relationship to discuss the private problems of that relationship with an outsider, especially when that outsider was not a properly trained counsellor or adviser. Besides, she barely knew Nicholas Forbes. As her solicitor, she had found his advice, his willingness to put himself out for her and help her with all the many small problems involved in setting up her small business, heart-warming and encouraging, making her think that perhaps her years of determinedly distancing herself from the entire male sex were now something she ought to outgrow. She had liked Nicholas, but not specifically as a man. She had liked him as a person, a fellow human being, but sexually … She made a tiny moue.

      Sexually she was completely immune to any and all members of the male sex and that was the way she wanted things to stay.

      She was an intelligent woman. She realised that not all men were necessarily like Lucy’s father, that even he might have found maturity and wisdom as he grew up. But, despite her awareness that logically not all men had to be disliked and shunned, emotionally and as far as her body was concerned, physically, she only felt safe and in control when they were held at a good distance.

      She did her best not to communicate her fear, her dislike to Lucy. Idealistically, maternally, she wanted for her daughter all that she had not had herself and that included the self-confidence, the freedom, the belief in herself and in others which would enable her to reach out when the time came and to forge the kind of emotional and physical bonds with another human being which she had never been able to.

      For Lucy she wanted it all: happiness, success, security. She would never encourage her daughter to consider herself less of a human being because she was female. She would bring her up in a full awareness of her own assets. Most of all for Lucy she wanted the security that came from knowing that she would never ever have to depend on anyone else, either emotionally or materially.

      Lucy was a clever child, a child who would do so much better in a smaller school environment where she would receive more individual tuition and attention. She also made friends easily, something which she herself had never been able to do.

      She had no fears of Lucy being isolated or alone in their new home. Already she had made friends with another girl whose family lived half a dozen doors away. Her parents owned and ran a local decorating shop, her father was a decorator, and it had been he who had papered the awkward-to-deal-with ceilings in their own upstairs flat, cheerfully managing the sloping ceilings of the old eighteenth-century building.

      Ann and Tom Fielding were a pleasant couple in their late thirties. Susan was their youngest child, and had two older brothers, and, although Tania had felt her normal reticence with Tom Fielding, despite his genuine kindness, she had felt very drawn to Ann Fielding’s warm personality.

      The couple had gone out of their way to welcome her to the local community, giving her generous advice about her potential business and making both Lucy and herself welcome in their home.

      Their own shop, unlike hers, was double-fronted, with a generous-sized flat above it in which Ann Fielding had allowed her artistic talents full licence.

      Tania had marvelled at the effect of her marbled bathroom, a painting technique which Ann had modestly assured her was quite easy to pick up.

      In addition, their property, like her own, had a long rear garden, but, unlike her wilderness, theirs was neatly segmented into a pretty courtyard for sitting in, plus a well-maintained vegetable plot, the sight of which had made her own fingers itch to get to grips with her smaller garden.

      Lucy was round at the Fieldings’ now, and Tania broke off her contemplation of her shop window, with its artistically draped ‘branch’ and its tumble of fallen gold and russet leaves in shades that toned with the display of winter brogues and boots, to glance at her watch.