soon in her first appointment. To have to ask for help. It was humiliating. She was a grown woman, not a girl. She had fended off dozens of difficult men in her time. So what was different about Kier? She reached across and turned on the bedside lamp. By the dim light she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her hair had pulled free of its clip again. It framed her face and cascaded down over her shoulders, emphasising the luminous quality of her pale skin, the extraordinary clarity of her eyes. She was wearing a V-necked cotton T-shirt and she stared miserably at the small gold cross at her throat. Bloody Kier! He was putting everything in jeopardy. Her career, her future, even her faith! She was startled to see a look of sheer hatred flash across her face. It terrified her.
‘I’ve said no. I’ve said I don’t want to see him any more. I’ve told him I will apply for a transfer. I had to bolt my front door last night! I woke up to see him peering in through the net curtains. I don’t know if he could see me, but it gave me the creeps.’ At the first opportunity she had gone back to her parents’ house, pouring out the story to her mother. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with the man! One minute he seems obsessed with me, the next he’s a little boy who has lost his mum in the supermarket. He’s terrified of something. I’ve had to leave the answer phone on. He keeps ringing. All the time. I don’t know what to do!’
‘Have you told David?’ Laura led the way into the garden.
Abi shook her head. It always shocked her slightly, her mother’s casual friendship with the bishop. It wasn’t till after her appointment to his diocese that Laura had told her, smiling mischievously, of her lifelong friendship with David Paxman, of their adventures growing up together in the Mendip Hills in Somerset, where their families had been neighbours, of the scrapes they had got into, of the early signs of childhood romance. She had frowned, wondering if strings had been pulled to get her the Cambridge curacy. At the very least it explained the personal interest the bishop had taken in such a lowly newcomer to his diocese.
‘You have to tell him. I didn’t like that man the only time I met him. I told you not to trust him!’ Laura’s judgments were always instantaneous and usually right. She leaned forward and broke off a dead rose, crumbling the brown petals between her fingers and letting them fall on the path. ‘Abi, you are a beautiful woman. You are kind and thoughtful and loving and strong. A lot of men are going to fall in love with you.’ She snorted humorously. ‘I know, a lot already have! But when the right one comes along he will support you and cherish you and you will know to give yourself to him forever without hesitation. Until then you have to learn how to deal with this sort of thing, and, yes, I know you think it is probably some sort of test of your faith, but in the situation you are in it will be impossible for you to function properly. Tell David. Tell him you have to leave. Tell him to find you a new parish! One of your own this time!’
Abi bit her lip, staring down into the pond and the circle of small splashes round the water jet. ‘I suppose you are right.’ She sighed. Was Kier in love with her? He fancied her, she had known that from the beginning, but it was more than that. There was something else there besides the fact that he was used to getting his own way and resentful of anyone who turned him down. Something she was only now beginning to recognise for what it was. A neediness. She thought back to the last time she had seen him. His eyes had been full of something very far from desire. She pictured the flashes of panic in his face. That was it. He was terribly afraid. She shook her head slowly and brought her attention back to her mother’s words. They had sounded wistful. Sad. The two women sat in silence for several minutes, then Abi glanced up. She smiled fondly at her mother. ‘Is that how it is with Dad? Does he support and cherish you?’
The silence before her mother’s reply was just a second too long. ‘You know he does, sweetheart.’
There was another long pause. Abi was still watching her mother. She seemed lost in thought. Laura looked ill, Abi realised suddenly. Her face had grown thin and there were shadows around her eyes. She reached across and touched her mother’s hand. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up,’ she whispered.
Laura smiled. ‘We rub along fine, my darling. You know we do.’ She sighed. Then abruptly she stood up. ‘Come with me. The time has come for me to show you something.’
The Limes was large and square, built of grey stone some time in the 1920s in the centre of an acre of gardens. It was gracious, more restrained than some of its neighbours, but still a little extrovert with the architectural details, built on three storeys with a small rather skittish turret at the eastern corner. The top floor of the house was sparsely furnished. From time to time when the cousins, the children of Laura’s two sisters, had descended into Abi’s solitary childhood the rooms had echoed with laughter and music but as they all grew older and their jobs took them across the world the family gatherings had grown smaller and more infrequent. Now only one of the top floor rooms was used. It was her mother’s den. There was plenty of room downstairs but Laura preferred this low- ceilinged attic with windows on three sides, constantly full of sunshine and, when she opened the windows, the scent of flowers and the songs of birds.
The large table in the centre was strewn with papers and books and sketches of flowerbeds. Three chests of drawers lined the walls, some with their drawers so stuffed full of papers they wouldn’t shut properly.
Abi had always suspected Laura loved this room because it was away from her husband’s eagle eye. She had never seen her father up here. Not once, in her whole life. Maybe he came, but she suspected he couldn’t be bothered. He had no interest in gardens other than as places to sit, or probably in anything his wife did which did not involve or revolve around him.
She followed Laura in and as always succumbed at once to the feeling of security and happiness which filled the room. It took her back to her childhood which had been in some ways idyllic. The room smelled of flowers and paint – her mother often painted and sketched the flowers she loved so much, leaving the paintings stacked in careless heaps on the chests of drawers. She never bothered to frame any of them, laughing off Abi’s suggestion that they were worth hanging on the wall.
Abi threw herself down on the chaise longue which stood near the open window looking out across the garden. This piece of furniture, lovingly rescued by her mother from a local house sale, draped with a succession of bright Spanish shawls, had led to the christening of the room as Aunt Laura’s Boudoir by one of her cousins. The name had stuck.
Following her inside Laura closed the door behind her. She was pale, Abi noticed again, and she was slightly out of breath after the climb up the stairs. She sat up. ‘Are you sure you are all right, Mummy? You look tired.’
Laura smiled at her. ‘I’m fine.’ She came over to Abi and, stooping, caught Abi’s hands in her own. ‘Sweetheart, there’s something I have to show you and I want you to promise that whatever you think of it, whatever you feel, you will do as I ask.’
Abi frowned. ‘That sounds a bit portentous.’
Laura grimaced. As though realising how odd it must seem she released Abi’s hands and sat down beside her. ‘Promise, darling. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything if it wasn’t important.’
‘Of course I promise.’ Abi felt a shiver of apprehension creep down her spine.
‘This is something I have kept hidden from your father. He must never know I have told you about it.’ Laura stood up again. She hesitated, then she moved across the room to the chest of drawers standing in the alcove which had once been the fireplace before the attic chimney had been sealed. She knelt before it and dragged out the bottom drawer. At the back was a tin box which she extricated with difficulty. Abi sat without moving. She felt suddenly frozen. Outside a breeze rustled through the leaves on the beech hedge far below on the edge of the lawn. Standing up with a grimace at the sudden twinge in her back Laura lifted the box and put it on the table. Prising off the lid she extricated the contents, something heavy wrapped in a white silk scarf. Returning to the chaise longue she sat down again with the bundle on her lap. Her hand rested gently on the scarf. Abi stared down at it. She didn’t say a word. The room seemed heavy with foreboding.
Laura took a short, almost painful breath and slowly began to unwrap the scarf. Inside was a smallish round lump of rock.
Abi glanced from it to her mother’s face, puzzled. ‘What on earth is it?’
Laura gave a hesitant smile. ‘Take it. See if you can guess.’
Reluctantly Abi held out her hands. The rock, although only about the size of an apple, was surprisingly heavy and she found she had to grasp it tightly to prevent herself from dropping it as in an identical gesture to her mother’s she lowered it onto her knees. Slowly she turned it over, studying every angle. ‘There are shiny bits, like windows. Rock crystal. It looks as though it is crystal inside a rock casing.’ She paused. ‘How weird. It’s almost as if my fingers are tingling.’ She looked up, startled. ‘It’s not radioactive, is it?’
Laura shook her head. She was smiling. ‘No my darling, it’s not radioactive. And it is rock crystal. You are right.’
Abi stared down at it for a few more seconds, then abruptly she gathered it up with both hands and stood up. ‘Here, take it!’
