In The Company Of Strangers Part 7

'But there aren't any sides,' Lesley had said, genuinely confused.

'Well I think-' Gordon had begun, but she had cut across him.

'There isn't a triangle,' she'd insisted. 'How could there be?'

So she and Sandi had talked for a while about the new semester, and Lesley had been about to hang up when Sandi said, 'I guess you'll be home soon then?' And there was tension in her voice. 'Dad must be missing you. I hope you're going back soon.'

It was Simon who called next. 'You've never done this before,' he'd said, and Lesley thought she heard an accusation in his tone. 'Is everything all right? Dad seemed a bit weird.'

Lesley, aware that she sounded unconvincing, had endeavoured to a.s.sure him that everything was fine, but added that she might stay on a bit longer than originally planned. And so it was inevitable that the next call was from Karen, the eldest, the one who really needs the status quo to be maintained with no sudden and nasty surprises.

'What's going on?' she'd demanded as soon as Lesley answered her phone. 'What are you doing down there?' Disapproval and anxiety sizzled down the line.

There have been times when Lesley has wondered if her eldest daughter is a changeling. She might look a little like both herself and Gordon but Karen is quite unlike either of them in temperament. She is a total control freak, and although Lesley's mother, Dolly, attributes that same characteristic to Lesley, she herself believes that's unfair.

'You're bossy and you take too much for granted, that's what,' Dolly had said to her recently when she had grumbled about Gordon's presence in the house. 'It comes of having too much money and nothing to worry about. You feel ent.i.tled to be in control of everything, but you're not. One day something will happen where you can't get your own way, and then you'll be sorry.' Lesley thinks of this as she drives into town and makes the clucking noise she always makes when she thinks of her mother talking too much about things she doesn't understand. Karen's obsessive desire to control everything is, she's sure, of her daughter's own making. Karen is also cautious, conservative and conventional, and irascible whenever life turns out to be not quite as she planned. She was clearly suspicious when Lesley told her that she'd just needed to get away on her own for a few days.

'But it's not a few days,' she'd said angrily. 'It's two weeks and Dad seems really worried.'

Lesley had realised that her rea.s.surances sounded wobbly, so it's not surprising that Karen has called every day, sometimes twice a day, since then, to chide her and to ask, yet again, when she's coming home. Lesley finds Karen something of a challenge. She can be sulky when she doesn't approve of something or feels slighted, and she has domestic standards higher even than Lesley's own. It's not as though Karen needs her; she and Nick have a perfectly ordered life running their own interior design business and are usually too preoccupied with their own friends and with wooing new clients to spend much time with Lesley and Gordon. But Karen will still be put out when she finds her mother has extended her time away.

Simon and his partner Lucy, on the other hand, are a different sort of challenge. They rent a pretty but rundown weatherboard house with a hugely overgrown garden, have four-year-old twins, Tim and Ben, and are always needing help of some sort babysitting, short-term loans, the loan of tools or the lawnmower.

For the first time in her life Lesley finds she doesn't want to speak to any of her children. Neither does she want to talk to Stephanie or other friends who have left messages. And she certainly doesn't want to talk to Gordon, although the fact that he hasn't even attempted to call her is unsettling. She could tie herself up for hours speculating on the possibilities of his silence with various levels of anxiety but as she turns into the car park and pulls up near Declan's car, a frisson of excitement brings her back into the moment.

Declan gets out of his car to greet her and open the pa.s.senger door. How nice! She walks towards him, knowing as she does so that she is walking in a way that she hasn't walked for years with a swagger, with just enough confidence to turn a few heads. Declan has scrubbed up well, she thinks. He's wearing a dark blue linen jacket, a lighter blue shirt and he seems to have had his hair cut. Dinner is different, she tells herself, it has possibilities that lunch does not. And as she slips into the pa.s.senger seat Lesley feels herself a different sort of woman, a woman she once might have been had she not opted for safety and security. She feels sophisticated, daring; the sort of woman who breaks rules and worries about it later. Dinner is definitely different.

Gordon stops at one of his favourite places along the cycle path, drops the stand on his bike, takes off his helmet and sits down on a seat dedicated to the memory of a former member of the town council. He'd bought the bike about six months ago in the hope that he might persuade Lesley to get one too.

'You're joking!' she'd said irritably when he'd wheeled it proudly around to the back of the house and suggested they might go and choose one for her. 'Ride a bike! Why would I want to ride a bike now when I haven't been near one since I was seventeen?'

'It'd be good,' he'd said. 'Really, you should give it a go, it's a very liberating feeling after years of driving a car. It's something we could do together, and it'll keep us fit.'

'I'm fit already, thank you,' she'd said sharply, and had promptly disappeared inside and up to her room.

Gordon thinks about it now as he sits here looking out over the river to the tall buildings of the city on its opposite bank. Her sharpness had wounded him. When did it all go so wrong? Was it just when he retired? But no, it began before that, during the time before Sandi left home. It had become so different then, the atmosphere often strained and tense as though the three of them hadn't known how to talk to each other. It wasn't as bad as recently but it was often pretty uncomfortable.

The evening is still and warm and out on the river half a dozen pelicans float calmly as a flurry of gulls scramble for something in the shallow water by the rushes. Gordon sighs, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He has tried to keep the whole thing low key with the children, although yesterday, when he and Simon were fixing the ladder to the tree house, he'd found it hard to maintain that. What he'd felt like doing was to rant and rave and throw himself on his son's sympathy, but that would just generate more anxious calls from Karen and then from Sandi. No point upsetting them when this might all come to nothing, but Gordon knows that nothing is what it has become. The s.e.xual fire dimmed years ago but that, he thought, was not uncommon. He knew that intensity eventually gives way to something gentler and richer, but not, apparently, for them. It's more as though a slow drip of cold water has extinguished what they once had, leaving the coals dull and smoking in the grate of their life together. Does he still love her? He realises he no longer knows. He feels like a toy that has had all the stuffing ripped from him. His emptiness is frightening.

According to what she'd said when she left, Lesley should have been home two days ago, but this morning she had sent him a text saying that she'd be staying on for a while, but no mention of how long, and no explanation. It drove the final nail into the coffin of Gordon's attempts to get things right. As he sits here now watching the pelicans turning pink and orange in the light of the setting sun, Gordon knows he's had enough. He has, he thinks, two choices. He can get in the car, drive down to Margaret River and confront her, ask her to come home so they can try to make things work again, or he can opt out and do his own thing, just as Lesley is doing hers.

A small dog with a rough white coat, one black ear and a couple of black and tan smudges on his body appears around the end of the seat and stands looking up at him. Gordon leans forward, arms on his knees, and strokes the dog's head, scratching behind its ears. 'Are you a Jack Russell?' he asks, and it moves closer and sits down, leaning against his leg. Gordon looks around for the owner but there is no one in sight. The cycle path and the recreation area beyond it are empty. Everyone, he thinks, has gone home to their families, to a gla.s.s of wine and a meal on a beautiful evening. Everyone except him. He strokes the dog again.

'Where did you spring from then, mate?' The dog c.o.c.ks its head to one side, as if indicating that the other ear needs scratching. Gordon obliges. The dog is wearing a green leather collar with an ident.i.ty disk and Gordon takes his gla.s.ses from the pocket of his shirt to read it. Bruce, it says, and on the other side is a phone number.

'Bruce?' Gordon says, and the dog p.r.i.c.ks up his ears and springs suddenly up onto the bench beside him. Gordon looks around again still no sign of an owner. 'Perhaps I'll give them a call,' he says, reaching into his top pocket for his phone. Bruce looks up and wags his tail ever so slightly. The number has been disconnected.

'Now what?' Gordon asks, and Bruce, in what seems like an extraordinary stroke of emotional manipulation, leans against Gordon's leg and looks up at him, his whole face a question mark. 'Abandoned, are you?' Gordon says. 'Well join the club. I suppose you'd better come home with me and tomorrow I'll try and find your owner.'

Out on the water something disturbs the pelicans and they flap their wings and sweep forward majestically lifting their ungainly bodies from the water and heading off up river towards the city.

'So it's just you and me then,' Gordon says, and Bruce stands bolt upright and gives a short bark and wags his tail furiously. 'Have you ever ridden a bike before?' Gordon picks him up and dumps him in the canvas saddle bag, and Bruce gives another bark and settles into the bag as though he has lived there all his life.

Gordon kicks away the bike stand, swings his leg over the crossbar and takes off along the path back towards home, and as he does so he's absolutely clear about what he's going to do. There will be no begging dash to Margaret River, no painful discussions about what has gone wrong, because he no longer has the energy or the desire for it. It's gone, Lesley's gone, and his heart has abandoned the fight. He feels nothing. Somehow he has unhooked himself from the central drama of his life and is free, free to do what he's wanted to do for ages and what he has tried to persuade Lesley to do with him. Tomorrow morning he'll find the dog's owner and then he'll get it organised. It shouldn't take long he might even be on his way before she gets back. It's weird to feel the machinery of more than three decades of his life grinding to a halt, but he's absolutely clear that he's banged his head against the same wall for long enough. Something has died and he can't bring himself to try, yet again, to resuscitate it.

Declan has been wondering if this was such a good idea after all. Having someone to talk to has been good, he'd meant what he said about the value of talking to strangers, but now he feels he might have had enough. It's his pattern, really, he knows that, moving in close and then backing off at a million miles an hour. On the other hand she's a good looking woman, and his ego can do with a bit of a boost.

'Sorry,' Lesley says, slipping into the pa.s.senger seat. 'I lost track of the time. Hope you haven't been waiting long.'

'Just a couple of minutes,' he says gallantly, because it's nearer fifteen. 'It's okay, we've got plenty of time, I booked the table for eight.' And he looks across at her. 'Nice perfume.'

'Thanks,' she says, buckling her seatbelt. 'It should be, it cost a fortune.'

Declan smiles and pulls out onto the main street. She is, he thinks, very attractive for a woman of her age not that he knows how old she is but she's a good bit older than him, ten years perhaps, maybe more. She pulls her skirt down but it's still rising above her knees and he is trying to ignore them.

'I extended your booking, like you said,' he tells her when they are free of the town. 'How did your husband take the news that you weren't heading home?'

'I don't know,' she says, 'I didn't talk to him, just sent him a text.'

'Really?'

'Yes, why not?'

Declan hesitates. 'It's a bit . . . it seems a bit blunt.'

Lesley shrugs and Declan looks across at her, uneasy suddenly. It seems odd to break that kind of news by text, and certainly not the best move if you're trying to sort things out. But what do I know about relationships, he thinks, except how to stuff them up? He gives her a sideways glance. He hasn't had much to do with women like this, older, strong minded and, more significantly, married. Lesley, he thinks, is a challenge; everything she's told him about this current stand-off with her husband has rung warning bells. He can sense the neediness in her as well as the inability to entertain compromise. Everything she has told him about what she sees as her husband's failure to adjust to retirement seems to Declan to be perfectly reasonable for a man going through such a significant change.

'Retirement must be pretty confronting for him. It just sounds as though he wants to make things work between you,' Declan had ventured. But it hadn't gone down well.

Catherine, he is sure, would have disliked Lesley; they were too similar. And he suspects Lesley's neediness may have a ruthless streak and that is both scary and s.e.xy. Tonight it seems to be more of the latter.

'So how's it all going?' Lesley asks when the waiter has taken their order. 'Are things getting sorted out?'

Declan nods. 'It's starting to look more manageable now we've taken on some promising staff for the cafe and Alice is almost ready to open it. Ruby is making sense of all the piles of paper in the office. It feels quite good, really.'

'And you've still got that boy staying there?'

'Todd? Yes, he'll be with us for a while yet, I suspect. We'll find a decent job for him. Catherine was very fond of him.'

'Paula says he should go,' Lesley says, indicating to the waiter to pour her wine.

'Paula?'

'Yes, I was chatting to her the other day. She seems to know the place really well, and she says he's nothing but trouble.'

'She told me that,' Declan says, biting into a bread stick, 'but she didn't back it up with any evidence. I suspect that Paula herself is a far greater potential source of trouble than Todd.'

Lesley shrugs and picks up her gla.s.s. 'Cheers . . . oh, you're not drinking again?'

'I don't drink at all,' Declan says, knowing that the time has come to make this clear.

'Not ever?' Lesley asks. 'Oh I'm sure we can do something about that.'

Declan shakes his head. 'Not you, not anyone,' he says, and he holds her gaze until she drops her eyes. It feels like a tiny victory, but why does he feel he needs one? Because she's older, perhaps, and he was brought up to defer to and humour older women? But then he's never been out with one before. Perhaps this whole evening was a mistake. Her comment about Todd has annoyed him. He wishes that he was back at Benson's Reach eating dinner with him, and with Alice and Ruby, because right now he feels he's dipping his toes into dangerous waters.

'So what next?' she asks.

'We still need to find someone to take over from Fleur. She makes all the lavender products, the creams and toners, all that stuff. But we've got time for that.'

Lesley leans forward across the table. 'How interesting. I remember your aunt telling me about all that when I was here before. In fact she showed me her workroom. I'd love to see it again.'

'Just ask Fleur,' Declan says. 'Catherine taught her and she's been doing it for a few years now. Letting people see how it's done was always part of the deal. She'll show you around.'

'I'd rather you showed me,' Lesley says.

Declan feels sweat p.r.i.c.kle the back of his neck. Dinner is so much more complicated than lunch, he should have known that, but it might be less complicated if he could work out why he set this up and what he wants from it. He has always found it difficult to read the signs that women give out and has frequently erred by reading too much into too little and too little into the obvious. As a result he's been both slapped down and missed out on some tantalising possibilities. He has never thought of himself as an attractive man and is usually surprised to find himself the object of a woman's attention. Is he reading the signs right tonight? Perhaps his hormones have taken over from the rest of his brain? . . . And what would Alice think?

'So tell me about Alice,' Lesley says, pouring herself another gla.s.s of wine. 'You were very lucky she could come and help out when you needed her. How did you two meet and what was she doing before this?'

or more than five years Alice's sleep has been broken by agonising dreams and attacks of anxiety so intense that her heart pounds in her chest and she has difficulty breathing. They force her out of bed, movement being the only solution for her restless body and mind. In prison she had longed to be able to go outside, gulp down the fresh night air and walk or run until the demons were exhausted. But prison rules didn't accommodate such idiosyncrasies and bellowing with grief and rage and pummelling one's mattress with fists was not an option when sharing a cell. The rules and the accommodation at the pre-release facility were less restrictive but they certainly didn't include the freedom to walk in the grounds at night. Benson's Reach has granted her many freedoms and this, Alice thinks, is a particularly precious one. Now she can let herself out in the dead of night or at dawn to walk off the night terrors. Contained weeping, even roars of anger, are possible now, thanks to Declan's generous decision to let her have a cottage to herself. It's all helping. She can see it in her own face, the colour of her skin and the way the shadows beneath her eyes have lightened. She's fitter too, but the dreams remain the recurring one, of the night it all happened, replays itself through her sleep time after time and she suspects it always will. It's always the same: the rain driving against the windscreen, the lights ahead of her, the other car and the screech of the tyres as she breaks and spins out of control, the noise and then the silence. That overbearing claustrophobic silence and what it means, what it says about what she has done. Nothing, Alice believes, absolutely nothing will change the dreams, and nothing can ever change what they represent.

Even in this beautiful place, which has soothed and settled her, those dreams still hang like a stone around her neck, sapping her energy and stopping her from feeling fully alive. This is the real punishment and it's what she believes she deserves, a life sentence; prison was just the start. It will always be there, just as there will always be someone who knows hiding ready to blow her cover. She wonders sometimes if Ruby has guessed her secret because occasionally she catches Ruby watching her as though she is looking for clues. Does she look like a woman who has spent years in prison? But if Ruby does know she has said nothing about it. And here at least the days do not begin with locks and keys, with the yelling of orders and crude rejoinders. Here she can have what she has missed for so long, the chance to start the day gently and alone. Often in the evenings or at daybreak she sits, as she does now, here on her balcony, practising meditation, naming the emotions that drive the anxiety the shame, the guilt and the fear, because naming them for what they are seems to give her some control over them, to minutely reduce their power.

This morning she sits, hands curled around a mug of tea, watching the dawn break, waiting for the kangaroos to emerge cautiously from the cover of the bush and pause, ears p.r.i.c.ked, before hopping across the path and between the trees to the field which, before long, will be home to the music festival. She is learning the landscape, spotting tiny changes in the plants, and learning, too, the early morning activity of guests but, more particularly, of the people with whom she now lives. Declan is not an early riser and is rarely seen before seven-thirty while Todd, although not emerging from his room until later, has usually thrown back his curtains before seven. It's unusual for a teenager, Alice thinks; her own children had to be prised from their beds at his age. But the person who interests her most is Ruby, who is not only up at dawn but walks out, circling the lavender beds and the boundaries of the property, often ranging far beyond them. More interesting still is that Ruby also walks outside at night. Her movement lacks the frantic energy of Alice's own sorties, but she is, nonetheless, walking, absorbed in thought. Alice is convinced that, just like herself, Ruby is walking off the burdens of a troubled mind.

What are Ruby's demons, she wonders? Declan told her that Ruby and Catherine met when they were sent to Australia as children and Alice knows enough about the treatment of the child migrants to know that cruelty and neglect were a reality for most. How important that friendship must have been, and yet Ruby left Australia in 1969 left her oldest friend and has never returned until now. And Todd has told Alice that Catherine and Ruby didn't write or speak to each other for more than twenty-five years, until Catherine turned up on Ruby's doorstep in London. So why did Ruby leave? What caused that rift?

Alice feels drawn to Ruby but can't quite reach her, and she wonders whether Ruby, like her, has the ability to appear approachable, relaxed and open whilst hiding behind an internal defence mechanism toughened by time and circ.u.mstance. Ruby is the sort of person you want to run towards while fearing that you might make a complete a.s.s of yourself if you do. And who is she anyway? Alice's curiosity is eating away at her. She is not usually a nosy person but in this case a little information would help. This morning, she thinks, she'll risk it. Ruby and Declan have an appointment in town with Catherine's solicitor; it's her chance to pop over to the office and see what she can find out. Just a Google search will do it, nothing more intrusive than that. People do it all the time.

The kangaroos have completed their morning trek across the path and are disappearing through the trees. It's almost five-thirty and Alice is contemplating the ethics, or rather the lack of them, in this plan, when something very surprising happens. Another creature breaks cover, this time a human one. A door opens and Declan appears on the balcony of cottage six. He is wearing the clothes he was wearing when he went out last night, his shoes are in his hand, and he looks around just as the kangaroos had done, only rather more furtively. Then he sits on the top step, slips on his shoes, creeps quietly down the stairs and sets off at a brisk walk towards the back door of the house.

Alice grimaces and sips her tea. So she was right, he did have a date, but Lesley Craddock is the last person she would have expected. Is this why she has extended her stay? Alice is not keen on Lesley Craddock, who she thinks is imperious and condescending. Indeed, the more she thinks about it the more surprised she is that Declan usually so cautious, diffident and lacking in confidence has fallen so quickly into this . . . this . . . whatever it is, with such an unlikely person.

Declan disappears through the kitchen door and closes it behind him, and Alice finds that she is suddenly uneasy. Declan has an awful lot to cope with right now, the last thing he needs is someone like Lesley Craddock complicating things. 'But it's none of your business,' she tells herself, and then remembers that it actually is. She might be working for Declan but she was once and still is his sponsor. The worst thing for Declan, and indeed for Alice herself, now is complications. One of the most valuable lessons she learned in AA was the importance of navigating stressful periods in her life by avoiding extremes and complications. For some people, getting sober involves a commitment to stay out of relationships until a period of sobriety is established. Declan had fallen foul of that rule in his first year and had hit a crisis that set him back months. Admittedly that was a long time ago, but Alice's unease niggles. On the other hand, perhaps this is Declan's way of looking after himself uncomplicated s.e.x works for some. The trouble begins when one party takes it more seriously than the other. So what about Lesley Craddock, is she looking for a way to sort out some crisis in her life? Alice knows she can't confront Declan as she might otherwise have done. They are friends and colleagues but Declan is also her employer now. Their lives have become linked in a different way. All she can do, she thinks, is try to keep an eye on things and hope that Lesley Craddock will soon disappear back to wherever she came from.

'Jackson Crow!' Declan says, practically choking on a flake of croissant. 'Jackson Crow is coming here?'

Ruby nods. 'Yes. He's some obscure saxophonist from North Carolina, and he seems to have struck up a working relationship with Catherine. He sounds like a bit of a poseur to me. Anyway, he's the person who's mustering the local bands through some sort of jazz and blues online network. Why, what's wrong?'

Declan bursts out laughing. 'There's absolutely nothing wrong. It's just that Jackson Crow is not some obscure saxophonist, Ruby. He may not be as famous as John Coltrane or Charlie Parker, but for serious blues fans he's a musical legend. You must've heard of him.'

Ruby shakes her head. 'Never. I just a.s.sumed he was some weirdo that Catherine latched on to. If he did all that why is he bothering to come here to the wilds of south west Western Australia for some little music festival?'

'He dropped out of the big time years ago because he was sick of it. Disappeared off the scene for quite a while and then, about twelve years ago, he turned up as a lecturer in the music school at Duke University in North Carolina, teaching saxophone in the jazz and blues program. They also set up a radio program for him on the university radio station, but it goes out all over the world. You know how people love the Garrison Keillor radio show? Well it's like that unique. He's got a really dedicated audience, of which I am one.' Declan stops to finish the remains of his croissant.

'I see I've done him a disservice,' Ruby says, although not entirely convinced. 'He seems to have been fond of Catherine.'

'She was always going on about Jackson Crow,' Todd says through a mouthful of cereal.

'There, you see,' Declan says triumphantly.

'But this must be a tiny event to him.'

'These days he and The Crowbars just get together a couple of times a year to go to small festivals. It's a fun thing for them. I bet you Catherine ha.s.sled him for years to get him to come here the first time. I don't know why she didn't tell me about it.'

'He's pretty old.' Todd says. 'I've seen a picture of him.'

'Well then he and I will have something in common,' Ruby says. Declan is looking as though he won the lottery and it seems unkind not to show an interest. 'Have you seen any of the publicity from last time, Todd?' she asks, turning to him. 'Maybe we should have a look at it and get some ideas for this time.'

Todd nods. 'There are some posters and stuff in a big plastic box on the top shelf in the office. She asked me to get the ladder and put it up there one day when she was tidying up.'

'Well I think we'll keep you off ladders for a while,' Ruby says, looking at Declan. 'Maybe you . . . ?'

'Oh absolutely,' Declan says. 'I'll get it down today. I'll look after all that, Ruby, the posters and so on, just try and stop me.'

'Excellent,' she says. 'I'm a musical fossil and it needs to be done by someone with a feel for it.'

'If he'd agree to do something big in Perth, maybe at the Burswood, I bet they'd fill the place,' Declan says, spreading marmalade on another croissant. 'But he won't go that way, I think he prefers teaching and the radio program these days. I'd better rethink the parking arrangements. Good thing there's plenty of s.p.a.ce.'

'But where will they stay?' Ruby asks.

'We'll be able to fit some of them in here, but there's going to be a h.e.l.l of a lot of caravans and tents. Come on, Ruby, you remember what it's like. And I bet quite a few will make for the caravan park and campsite on the other side of town. I'd better warn them. And I might just talk to the people who own that vacant land opposite, see if they'll let people park and camp there. But we'll need some volunteers to direct the traffic and we might not have enough toilets maybe have to order a second block of portaloos. I'll talk to those guys that play at the pub. They may have been involved last time, they should be able to tell us what it was like.'

Declan gets up to make more coffee and mimes playing the saxophone as he waits for the kettle. 'Jackson Crow,' he says again, 'at Benson's Reach. Good thing Alice is ready to go with the cafe. We'll need a whole lot more than that though. We've already got Rotary doing the hot dog stand. I wonder if the fish and chip shop would bring that caravan along, the one that they take on the road sometimes. It'll be huge.'

He looks incredibly young, Ruby thinks, fooling around over there by the sink, making saxophone noises and dancing. So often he seems burdened but this is another side of him, playful, energetic, that she's not seen before. This is the young crop duster, running wide circles, arms outstretched, emitting a low buzz to simulate the aircraft engines. Something about him touches her deeply and she realises how fond she has grown of him in just a few weeks. He looks only remotely like Harry so is it the link to Catherine, or just Declan himself, that endearing mix of indecisiveness and competence, and now the boyishness? But he's not a boy anymore. This morning, as she set out for her early walk, she had turned the corner at the end of the house just in time to see him putting on his shoes outside Lesley Craddock's cottage and then skulking back to the house. At the time she'd laughed to herself. 'Oh really, Declan, if you're going to bonk the guests don't be so furtive,' she'd murmured, but as she walked on amus.e.m.e.nt evaporated to be replaced by concern. Declan, she suspects, is vulnerable. He hates confrontations and would probably go a long way to avoid an argument. Lesley Craddock, on the other hand, is a very different sort of person, Ruby thinks; one determined to get what she wants in the way she wants it. Of course, she reminds herself as she watches Declan, it's none of her business. All being well Lesley will be gone soon, and Declan will have more than enough on his plate with the festival.

Alice, in the cafe kitchen testing some of her recipes, watches from the window as Ruby and Declan pile into his car and head off down the drive. She stops what she's doing, rinses her hands under the tap, dries them on a tea towel, and stands there for a moment contemplating her next move. It still doesn't seem quite right but she knows she's going to do it anyway so it might as well be now. Closing the cafe door quietly behind her she walks quickly to the office. It's a pity Todd hasn't gone with them but a few minutes ago she saw him hobbling up the slope to the workroom. He likes Fleur and Alice knows that he often gives her a hand in there so he's unlikely to appear in the office in the next ten minutes or so.

There are no restrictions on her use of the computer so, feeling very shifty, Alice slips into the chair, types Ruby's name into Google and hesitates briefly, her hand on the mouse. It's probably a waste of time. People think you can find anyone on the internet but it's not true hundreds of thousands of people slip through the nets of cybers.p.a.ce because they are just ordinary law-abiding people who live quiet lives and don't attract attention; others are invisible behind aliases. Alice takes a deep breath, clicks the mouse and leans forward in amazement. There are 91,207 results.

'No,' Alice murmurs, 'surely not? There must be someone else with that name.' So where will she start? Wikipedia seems a good bet; she should at least be able to see if she's got the right Ruby Medway. The picture makes it clear that she has. It was obviously taken some years ago a black and white portrait of an unmistakable Ruby, the unflattering bun, the characteristically fierce expression and she's wearing some sort of insignia, because she is 'Oh my G.o.d!' Alice clasps a hand over her mouth she is not Miss, Mrs or Ms but Dame Ruby Medway, born (Eleanor) Ruby Medway 23 January 1940 in Lewisham, London. In 1947 Medway was transported to Western Australia under the British Government's Child Migration Scheme and returned to England as an adult in 1969.

Alice stops, leans back and studies the photograph again. Declan has said nothing of this maybe he doesn't even know? When Ruby's arrival was imminent he had speculated on what sort of person she might be and it was nothing like this.

Alice scrolls down past the index and reads on.

In 1971 Medway campaigned tirelessly against the decision by then Secretary of State for Education, Margaret Thatcher, to withdraw school milk from children over the age of seven. She was twice arrested for disturbing the peace and for damage to property for which she served a five-day sentence in Holloway Women's Prison. In 1978 she started a 'day home' where single or deserted mothers could leave their babies, night or day, in times of crisis.

'Free, twenty-four-hour childcare,' Alice says aloud, exhaling slowly. 'Brilliant.'

Medway went on to open four more centres in the Greater London Area, and established the Child Rights Foundation. She also advised on the establishment of other centres throughout the country. During the years of the Thatcher Government (19791990) and the subsequent conservative Government under John Major (19901997) Medway continued her advocacy for underprivileged women and their children leading the fight for safe, reliable and affordable childcare, and for subsidised childcare for women on benefits, or low incomes.

In 1998, she was appointed by the Blair Labour Government to head the controversial committee to determine the rights of children in Britain which resulted in the establishment of the Office of Children's Rights. In 2000 she was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to women and children.

There's more, lots of it, but Alice is so gobsmacked by what she's read so far that she stops, sitting back to think. She wants to print it out to read back at the cottage, but she doesn't want to be caught in the act not, of course, that they will be back anytime soon. Glancing up she sees Todd outside the workroom, laughing with Fleur, who is standing in the doorway. And as Alice watches he does a sort of hopping turn on his crutch and sets off down the slope towards the office. Alice feels a bolt of panic, clicks back to the home page, remembering as she does so that something in the computer stores the history of searches or websites visited where is it? Her skin is p.r.i.c.kling with tension. The last thing she wants is for Ruby to discover that someone has been doing a search on her. She'd be pretty sure to guess that it was her rather than Declan. 'History', she murmurs, 'search history, how do I find it? Can I delete it?' And she starts. .h.i.tting various keys in panic. Todd adores the computer and has a habit of walking into the office and around the desk to look at the screen. A drop-down list of searches appears at the top of the screen, but she can't get rid of it. And as she stares at it in dismay she sees something else, something far worse, a name, Alice Fletcher, her name, and below that the web link to the Prisoners Review Board of Western Australia and, worse still, the link to 'Decisions of the Board'. She knows that website, it lists all the prisoners who have been granted or refused parole, the details of their sentences, reasons why parole was refused or granted.

There is a knock at the door and she doesn't answer. Someone has been searching for her and has found her. Not Declan, obviously he knows everything, but Ruby it must be, can only be, Ruby. Alice closes her eyes, dizzy with panic.