September

to look at, immensely elegant, the sort of woman that would always turn heads, excite a certain envy. I liked being seen around with her. I was very proud of her. The sexual, loving part of our relationship wasn't quite so smooth. I don't quite know when it all started to go wrong. I'm sure it was as much my fault as Caroline's, but she was a strange girl. She used sex as a weapon and frigidity as a punishment. Before the first year was over, I was sleeping as often as not in my dressing-room, and when she realized that she was pregnant with Alexa, there was no joy, only tears and recriminations. She didn't want a baby, because she was frightened of childbirth, and as things turned out, she had every reason to be afraid. Because after Alexa was bom, she went into a post-natal depression that lasted for months. She was in hospital for a long time, and when she was fit to travel, her mother took her off to Madeira to spend the winter there. In the early summer of that year, Archie and Isobel were married. He was my oldest, closest friend. I'd seen little of him after I went to London, but I knew that I had to be at his wedding. I took a week's leave and came home. I was twenty-nine. I came back to Strathcroy on my own. I stayed here, at Balnaid, with Vi, but Croy was filled with house guests and spinning like a three-ring circus, and on my first day home I went up to see Archie and become involved in all the fun.

'And Pandora was there. I hadn't seen her for five years. She was eighteen, finished with schools, finished with childhood. I'd known her for ever. She was part of my life, always there. A baby in a pram, a little girl tagging along with Archie and me, never missing a trick. Spoiled as hell, wayward, wicked, but utterly enchanting and endearing. I saw her again, and knew that she hadn't changed. All that had happened was that she had grown up. I saw her coming towards me across the hall at Croy, and I saw her eyes and her smile, and her long legs, and an aura of sexuality about her, so potent, almost visible. And she put her arms around my neck and kissed my mouth and said, 'Edmund, you horrible man. Why didn't you wait for me?' And that was all she said. And I felt as though I was drowning, and the deep waters had already closed over the top of my head.'

'You were lovers.'

'I didn't seduce her. She was only eighteen, but somewhere along the line, she had already lost her virginity. It wasn't difficult to be together. There was so much going on, so many people in the house, that nobody missed us if we went off on our own.'

'She was in love with you.'

'She said. She said she always had been, ever since she was a small girl. The fact that I was married only made her more obdurate. She'd never been denied anything that she wanted, and when I tried to talk reason to her, she put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes and refused to listen. She couldn't believe that I would leave her. She couldn't believe that I wouldn't come back.

'The wedding was on a Saturday. I had to drive back to London on the Sunday afternoon. On the Sunday morning, Pandora and I walked up the hill, on the road to the loch. But we stopped at the Corrie and lay on the grass, with the sound of the burn trickling at our feet. And I finally convinced her that I had to go, and she wept and protested and clung to me, and finally, to quieten her, I promised that I would come back, that I would write, that I did love her. All the stupid bloody things you say when you haven't the courage to end something. When you haven't the courage to be strong. When you can't bring yourself to destroy another person's dream.'

'Oh, Edmund.'

'I made such a fucking cock-up of it all. I was such a bloody coward. I went back to London, and as the miles lengthened behind me, I started to hate myself for what I'd done to Caroline and Alexa, and for what I was doing to Pandora. By the time I got back to London, I determined I would write to Pandora and try to explain that the whole episode had been a sort of fantasy; stolen days that had no more substance, no more future, than a soap bubble. But I didn't write. Because the next morning I went into the office, and by that evening I was in an aeroplane with my chairman, flying to Hong Kong. A huge financial deal was on the stocks, and I'd been picked to handle it. I was away for three weeks. By the time I returned to London, that time at Croy had dissolved into a sort of distant unlikelihood, like days stolen from another person's life. I could scarcely believe that it had happened to me. I was my own hard-headed business man, not that indecisive romantic, swept off his feet by a fleeting sexual infatuation. And there was too much at stake. My job, I suppose. A way of life that I'd worked my guts out to achieve. Alexa. Losing Alexa did not bear thinking about. And Caroline. My wife, for better, for worse. Back from Madeira, suntanned, well, recovered. We'd gone through a bad time together, but we'd come out on the other side. We were together again, and it wasn't the right time to blow it all apart. We picked up the threads of life, the warp and woof of a convenient marriage.'

'And Pandora?'

'Nothing. Finished. I never wrote that letter.'

'Oh, Edmund. That was cruel.'

'Yes. A sin of omission. Do you know that dreadful feeling, when there is something immensely important that you should do, and you haven't done. And with each day that passes, it becomes more and more difficult to accomplish, until finally it passes the bounds of possibility and becomes impossible. It was over. Archie and

Isobel went to Berlin, and immediate ties with Croy were severed. I heard nothing more. Until that day that Vi called from Balnaid to say that Pandora had gone. Run away, eloped to the other side of the world with a rich American old enough to be her father.'

'You blame yourself?'

'Of course.'

'Did you ever tell Caroline?'

'Never.'

'Were you happy with her?'

'No. She wasn't a woman who engendered happiness. It worked all right, because we made it work, we were those sort of people. But love, of every sort, was always thin on the ground. I wish we had been happy. It would have been easier to accept her death if we'd had a good life, and I could have been certain that it hadn't all been just a'-he searched for words-'waste of ten good years.'

There did not seem to be anything more to say. Across the distance that divided them, husband and wife regarded each other, and Virginia saw Edmund's hooded eyes filled with despair and sadness. She got up then, off the low stool, and went to sit beside him. She touched his mouth with her fingers. She kissed him. He reached out his arm and pulled her close.

She said, 'And us?'

'I never knew how it could be, until I met you.'

'I wish you'd told me all this before.'

'I was ashamed. I didn't want you to know. I'd give my right arm to be able to change things. But I can't, because they happened. They become part of you, stay with you forever.'

'Have you spoken to Pandora about all this?'

'No. I've scarcely seen her. There's been no opportunity.'

'You must make it right with her.'

'Yes.'

'She is, I think, still very precious to you.'

'Yes. But she's part of life the way it used to be. Not the way it is now.'

'You know, I've always loved you. I suppose if I hadn't loved you so much, you wouldn't have been able to make me so miserable. But now I realize that you are human and frail and make the same idiotic blunders as the rest of us, it's even better. I never thought you needed me, you see. I thought you were quite self-sufficient. Being needed's more important than anything.'

'I need you now. Don't go away. Don't leave me. Don't go to America with Conrad Tucker.'

'I wasn't running away with him.'

'I thought you were.'

'No, you didn't. He's actually a very nice man.'

'1 wanted to kill him.'

You must never tell Edmund. Still untouched by guilt, she felt protective of her husband, holding her secret like a proud and private trophy. She said lightly, 'That would have been a dreadful waste.'

'Will your grandparents be very disappointed?'

'We'll go some other time. You and me together. We'll leave Henry with Vi and Edie and we'll go and see them on our own.'