Helen straightens from dropping the newspapers into the recycling box and stares coldly at Kester as he walks up the front path. ‘Again?’ she snaps. ‘What now?’

‘I was just going to slip this through your letter box’ he holds out a small envelope. ‘I heard about your cat. I’m sorry’

‘Nothing escapes anybody’s attention around here does it?’ She ignores his outstretched hand and tries the latch on the side gate. Finding it locked and her only option to walk past him, her scowl deepens.

‘What is it with you?’

‘All this sudden concern for my welfare?’ she looks over her shoulder as she reaches the front door. ‘I’m not interested, Mister James’ she says pointedly

‘In me?’ Kester sighs his impatience. ‘I’m not interested in you either.  Not like that. This was meant to be a friendly gesture from someone who cares and understands what you’re going through’ He turns away with another sigh. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’ He rips the envelope in two.

‘What do you know about the way I’m feeling? What could anyone like you know about it?’

‘Believe me, Ms Marchant, I’ve done my fair share of crying’

‘Over spilt milk and cold beds?’

Her sarcastic remark brings a flush of hot colour to his cheeks and he swings round. ‘No! Over a pup that held my life together when I first came here and the dog shot while we were out walking in the woods because some prat saw a movement and thought it was deer. My dog!’ he shouts. ‘It could just have well have been me!’ He lowers his voice to a snarl. ‘But perhaps that would have suited you better. Forget it.’

He throws the pieces of the letter in the air as he turns to stride away. ‘Live like a bloody hermit, I don’t give a shit!’

Pennywell, Bower Lane.

Glebe House,

Woodbury Margins

The gravel crunches and spits as Nathan turns at the top of the curved driveway and pulls up outside the front entrance to Vince Wilson's home. His face looks sullen and determined as he steps down from the car and slams the door behind him. Thrusting his hands in the pockets of his open jacket, he skirts the rear of the 4x4 and mounts the two broad steps beneath the portico to reach the bell push. He jabs it hard and stands staring at the planked oak of the door, occasionally dipping his head to listen for any movement from inside. He rings again.

‘Nathan.’ Danielle Wilson sighs his name. With the carefully manicured fingers of one hand folded around the edge of the door, she smiles. ‘Hi’ she breathes, opening the door wide enough to slip through and then carefully pulling it closed. She takes a swift look over her shoulder. ‘Can’t be too careful. Little eastern bloc ears have little eastern bloc mouths and they don’t understand enough to keep them shut.’ She forces a smile to soften her obvious annoyance with the unseen staff. Laying her hands flat against his chest, she closes in and gazes up at him. ‘You came back.’

Nathan grasps both her wrists and takes a step backwards as he lets her hands drop. ‘Not here to see you. Vince about?’ he says brusquely.

Her eyes spark briefly and a tic throbs at her jaw. ‘Not right now.’ She snaps.  ‘You didn’t show.’ Her voice returns to its previous breathy tone.

‘Show?’

‘I thought we had…an arrangement.’ The tip of a diamante adorned fingernail traces its way over his tee shirt towards the waistband of his trousers. ‘Didn’t we?’

‘You thought that was still on after….’ His mouth twitches with incredulous disbelief..

‘We could always work something out…’ The nail scrapes against the leather of his belt as it continues its teasing journey downwards.

He glowers. ‘I made a mistake, Mrs. Wilson.’ He stands stock-still, refusing to react.

‘Mrs. Wilson?’ ‘I don’t remember that being what you called me when…’

‘There wouldn’t have been any when if…’

‘Consciences are terrible things aren’t they?’ She slides her hands inside his jacket. ’Come on, Nathan’

Nathan turns away from her and steps down onto the gravel driveway. ‘You tell him I want to see him, ok?’

‘When I see him.’ She pouts. ‘He’s a very busy man.’

‘Just tell him.’ He strides purposefully towards his car.

‘Or what, Nathan, you’ll tell him you were planning on screwing his wife not his daughter?’ Her laugh is contemptuous. ‘That would stuff your contract wouldn’t it?’

He turns back. ‘What do you know about a contract?’

Danielle smiles triumphantly. ‘He tells me everything. He’s soooo worried about his darling daughter’s education.’

‘And you’re not?’

She shrugs. ‘Couldn’t care less. I keep telling him there’s no point.’

‘Nice.’ Nathan notices for the first time the steely hardness of her eyes and the fine lines of displeasure around her mouth. And I thought she was a babe? ‘Glad she’s got such devoted parents.’

‘She’s not mine! Good God, you really thought…’

‘There are…certain similarities.’ he sneers, walking away. ‘Just tell Vince I called. And if he tells you everything, you can return the compliment. Just tell him I don’t want the bloody contract. Save me coming back.’

He hears the front door slam as he gets into his car.

Hill House, Boundary Road

‘Thing is, Mum, I know I upset him but I just didn’t know what to say.’ Leonie Ward folds the ironing board back into its cupboard and lifts the pair of trousers she has been pressing from the back of the chair.

‘Leonie, you’ve known Nathan as long as Andy has. You think what people are saying about him is true?’ Marilyn asks, shaking the last of the water out of the iron into the sink and winding the cord round the base in swift sharp movements that demonstrate her exasperation.

‘You know I don’t’ Leonie pouts, knowing she is in the wrong.

‘Then why on earth didn’t you just say that?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Marilyn slots the iron into its holder and closes the cupboard door with a less than gentle hand. ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ She looks at Leonie from under lowered brows.

‘No-o.’ Leonie hedges uncomfortably.

‘Leonie.’ Marilyn elongates her daughter’s name in warning tone.

‘It’s just that…’

‘Yes?’

‘This…this..Lindsay.’

‘Mmmm?’

‘Mum, she’s bad news.’ Leonie says at last.

Marilyn laughs. ‘Bad news? Good God, she’s only fifteen. How much bad news could she be?’ she says scornfully.

‘Oh, forget it!’ Leonie turns on her heel, her pout even more pronounced.

‘No, come on tell me. From what Andy says, Nathan knew she was probably sleeping around right from the start.’

‘She’s a right slag’ Her lip curls. ‘More than’

‘Meaning?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Leonie, if there’s something I should know…about Nathan…is that what you’re trying to say?

‘Nothing’s going to undo what that cow put out about him … Why the hell did he take that job? I just wish he hadn’t got involved in the first place!’

‘I think we all wish that.’ Marilyn glances at the clock and takes the kettle to the sink to fill it.

‘No, you don’t understand.’ Leonie sighs.

‘I won’t unless you tell me.’

‘Nobody has anything to do with her…or the people she mixes with if they can help it, nobody decent anyway. There’s a lot going on there, Mum, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’

‘What’s to tell?’ Marilyn asks, dropping potatoes from a plastic bag into the sink ready to peel. ‘If she’s as bad as you’re making out, Andy would have said something. They both would have known, surely?’ She shakes the rest of the potatoes into the vegetable rack and puts the bag into the waste bin.

‘Andy?’ Leonie rolls her eyes. ‘Huh! Andy’s become an old man since he got married, he hardly goes out anymore let alone clubbing or anything’ she says disparagingly ‘And Nathan’s sort of moved on without him to hang around with.’

‘I don’t suppose either of them would take any notice of a bunch of schoolgirls anyway even if they did go to the same places. They’re so much older and…’

‘Mum!’

‘Well, what am I supposed to say?’ Marilyn retorts. ‘You tell me she’s bad news but that’s all I’m getting.’

‘She doesn’t hang around with any bunch of schoolgirls!’ her voice rises ‘It’s bigger than that. The whole thing’s bigger than that!’ She groans between gritted teeth.

‘Leonie Ward, you can be bloody annoying when you try! How am I supposed to know what you’re on about?’

Leonie takes a deep breath and lets it out noisily. ‘Gerry Bartlett mean anything to you?’

‘Good God!’ Marilyn stands with a potato in one hand, the knife stilled in the other as she gapes.

‘Precisely.’

Chapter Two