The Price Of Deceit. Cathy Williams

a second his fingers brushed against hers. How painful to think that this, the last time he touched her, it would be with hatred and bitter disillusionment.

      His fingers closed around the box and he flung it into the water. There was cold satisfaction on his lips when he looked at her.

      ‘Some things are better buried, don’t you think?’

      Then he turned and walked away. She followed him with her eyes all the way until he disappeared from sight, then she sat back down and stared at the pond. All her dreams were lying there at the bottom. The ring that would never be hers, and, the love which she had been compelled to reject.

      She only stirred when it began to get chilly and the park started emptying of people.

      Then she made her way back to Emma’s flat, packed her suitcase, left a note and headed for the station. She would call her friend in the morning and explain what had happened, but omitting the details.

      Better this way, she kept telling herself. In many ways, better for him. She kept thinking that all the way back to her home town.

      Better for him to leave her with an anger he could understand. Nebulous reasons, however true they were for her, would have not been a clean break for him. How would he ever have understood that she wasn’t the woman he thought she was? Would he have accepted it as easily as the thought of another man?

      Her house was waiting there for her, patient and faithful. Katherine stood on the path up to the front door and sighed.

      I did what I did for myself to start with, she said silently in her head, shutting her eyes. But in the end I did what I did for you.

      How could you have coped with the truth? How could you have coped with the fact that I’m dying? Would you have felt betrayed or would you have felt obliged to stay with me through pity? Wouldn’t either have been more destructive than the way I took?

      She opened her eyes, raised her hand and, without thinking about it, coiled her hair into a ponytail, then went inside.

      CHAPTER TWO

      KATHERINE looked around her at the roomful of bright, young faces. Outside, the warm sunshine spilled over the green playing-fields, poured through the open windows and generally helped to propagate the illusion that maybe, this year, winter would hibernate to another country.

      September was always lovely. New term, a few new faces, back to work after the long summer holidays. Every year the holidays loomed in front of her, waiting to be filled, threatening to depress if they weren’t, and she was always glad to get back. Back to the sanctuary of her teaching. Away from thoughts of events that had happened six long years ago. Six years! So long ago that she was vaguely ashamed that the memory of them could still plague her with such force, especially when time hung heavy on her hands and there were no demands of work to keep her mind in its harness.

      There were two new girls. Victoria, who seemed to have settled in already in the space of a few hours, helped by the fact that she already knew some of the children in the class, and Claire, small, dark-haired, with far too grave an expression on her face for a child of barely five.

      Katherine introduced them both to the rest of the class, all girls, and briefly contemplated the dark-haired addition. She would have to take this one under her wing. She could spot at a glance those little pupils who would need over and above the average attention. Usually they were the quiet ones who, left on their own, would easily retreat into their natural shyness.

      This little one, she thought, was far too serious, anxious, even, and quite handicapped by the fact that her first language was French, so much of the good-natured chattering of the rest of the girls was literally incomprehensible to her.

      The good thing was that the girl would, at least, be at the start of the learning curve, only slightly behind the other girls who were largely au fait with simple reading. She smiled, touched the neat little bun pinned at the back of her neck, and began class.

      ‘What do you know about her?’ Katherine asked a week later, when she was in the staff-room with Jane Ray, the head of the preparatory school.

      Jane Ray was a small, capable woman with short dark hair and darting black eyes, largely hidden behind a pair of spectacles. Katherine found it very easy to talk to her. She and the other teachers appreciated the way they were generally left to their own devices, free to implement their teaching in whatever imaginative methods they found the best.

      ‘Not a great deal,’ Jane admitted. ‘She came to the open day at Easter, quite desperate for a place here because of a company move of some kind or another, but I couldn’t extract very much background information. She was being dragged from room to room by a young woman, her nanny in France, I gathered, who either didn’t speak any English or, from the looks of it, had decided to conceal the fact that she did. Lived in France all her life, somewhere near Paris, I gather. Never been to school before. Why?’

      Katherine shrugged, frowning. ‘She looks as though she’s carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.’

      ‘You shouldn’t worry overmuch about that,’ Jane laughed, but her dark eyes rested on Katherine thoughtfully. ‘Children adapt far more easily than adults expect. By next week Claire Laudette will be well on her way to settling in. Even the language barrier will cease to be a problem. Have you ever noticed how children communicate? It’s all hands and expression at that age!’ They laughed, and Jane continued seriously, ‘Your problem will be that you’ll leave this school in the afternoon and you’ll take your worries about Claire home with you, and you mustn’t do that.’

      ‘I shan’t!’ Katherine protested. ‘I don’t!’

      ‘I’ll speak honestly, Katherine. I worry about you sometimes.’

      There was a little silence. Katherine dreaded it when people decided to speak honestly to her. She knew how her life must appear to outsiders. Calm, placid, a lovely job, but lacking in excitement.

      ‘Do you mean that I’m not doing my job properly?’ she asked, deliberately misreading the statement, and Jane shook her head.

      ‘Oh, no, we were delighted when you reapplied for your job here after your six months away. You’re an extremely good teacher. You stimulate the children, get them interested in the basics—no, I can’t fault that.’ She sighed. ‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’

      ‘I’m happy.’ Katherine looked down at her fingers. Yes, I am happy, she told herself. I have a roof over my head, a job I enjoy, friends—what else could I ask for? In her more optimistic moments, she even tried to convince herself that in time she would be able to put that disastrous episode behind her. It couldn’t haunt her for the rest of her life, could it?

      She should, she knew, be grateful that she had been given this second chance at life. She could still remember the private anguish of thinking that she was living on borrowed time, just as clearly as she could remember her dizzy, weak euphoria when she had returned to her cottage all that time ago and found that letter on her doormat, sandwiched between the usual circulars and out-of-date bills. The letter that had informed her politely about the confusion with her notes, apologised courteously for an error of mistaken identity, informed her gaily that she was perfectly healthy. Too late for her, of course, but, yes, she had told herself, I am grateful and I am happy, and she had continued telling herself that as time passed.

      ‘Perhaps I’ll give little Claire a bit of private tuition. Just a few minutes after class. She isn’t collected until four.’

      ‘I’m sure that would be very helpful,’ Jane said with a resigned smile, ‘but you mustn’t forget that you have a life of your own to live.’

      Have I? Katherine would have liked to ask. Living, she thought, truly living, was something that entailed joy and despair, hopes and dreams and all the ups and downs that gave life its pleasing tempo.

      Her life, when she thought about it, was like the flat, undisturbed, glassy surface of a pond. She was content, but she knew that contentment was