Prologue
Connecticut, 1962

The situation was frustrating and fatiguing, worrisome and distracting. Frances could hear all that Hadleigh was saying and found herself, surprisingly, in agreement with much of what her daughter had to say; but she simply couldn't respond. There was a segment of her brain that wanted very much to engage itself at long last in this dialogue. She'd waited years for a confrontation that didn't seem now as if it would take place after all. Not only could she not respond, she was also exhausted. She just hadn't enough energy to deal with Hadleigh. Which was, really, a great pity.

Another surprise: She enjoyed the sound of Hadleigh's voice and found it rather like an anchor, grounding her to this time and this place, giving her a clearly defined point to which she could return. The disadvantage, however, lay in the distraction factor. The more closely she listened to what her daughter was saying, the more difficult it became for her to fix her focus. Impossibly, she wanted to be able to do both: to respond to and deal with, finally, Hadleigh's lifetime accumulation of unanswered questions; she also wanted to think of the past. This duality of purpose was exhausting her further.

Mercifully, a time arrived when Hadleigh was silent, and Frances was able to review her daughter's words, finding in them undeniable elements of truth and, more significantly, evidence of Hadleigh's emergence as a person in her own right. It had been a long time happening and Frances was in no small way responsible for the retardation of the process. She'd long since acknowledged her culpability, but hadn't ever made any sort of declaration to Hadleigh. She'd been unable. After a lifetime of refusing either to explain or to apologize - at least in any direct fashion - it appeared she might never have an opportunity to do either. It was a pity. Their time together would have been far more successful, their relationship would have been infinitely more compatible had Frances been able to step out from behind the barricade of her carefully calculated defenses in order to make herself visible and comprehensible to her daughter. Certainly over the years she'd found all sorts of justification for why this had never occurred, but she could readily see now that no amount of justification could ever recompense Hadleigh. How could one possibly say to one's child, "I couldn't, simply couldn't tell you?" It was worse than no explanation at all.

There were fragmented memories, recollections that made Frances wince with distaste, particularly in view of that sense of eminent justification she'd felt for so long in a mode of behavior that could only be described as off center, even mad. Madness, yes, was unquestionably what she'd indulged in when, faced with the options, she'd discovered herself unable to pursue safely any other course. And even after the madness had passed, she'd dragged it out upon occasion - like a well-worn, comfortable disguise - to shield herself from the need to deal with situations that rarely evolved as she'd have wished.

A pathetic excuse, really, but she had been mad for a time; quite mad. Hopelessly, helplessly mad. And the crime lay not in her madness but rather in her refusal ever afterwards to make good in tangible fashion some portion of the damage she'd done - especially to Hadleigh. The truth would, at last, be made clear to Hadleigh very soon now, but she doubted the skeletal facts would offer sufficient release. No. What Frances most wanted was for Hadleigh to experience an infusion of understanding that would bring with it all the basic elements of forgiveness. It grieved her now to think that her actions, whatever the cause, had impaired Hadleigh to such an extent that she'd never be able to live fully; that she'd blinded Hadleigh to the truth of Hadleigh's own strengths.

Never complain, never explain! Really! What sort of credo was that for a life, for a mother? Viewed from this point, it had been nothing more than a frightful cover for her inability to confront matters head on. Yet there were things she couldn't explain, things that defied rational explanation. And she gave up the right to complain when, one dismal afternoon, she decided to resurrect a love that she now knew hadn't ever existed, except within the confines of her own distorted imaginings.

Much of the past was rain-drenched, its boundaries and details smeared beneath a permanent downpour. But she could remember with alarming clarity even the slightest detail of that afternoon when, in the course of a telephone conversation, she'd made the decision to abandon everything for the sake of a self-indulgent fantasy. That telephone conversation had been the embarkation point for her journey into madness. No one and nothing else was responsible. It was extraordinary to recognize how little it had taken to send her on her way. It was as if all her life up to that moment had been nothing more than a pastel prelude to everything that followed. She'd assembled her emotional baggage, and off she'd gone, allowing her nerve endings rather than her intelligence to lead her.

Hadleigh was speaking again, and Frances listened. Her listening was a kind of counterpoint; she italicized certain of her daughter's remarks, underscored others. She was saddened, rendered regretful by the words, yet made increasingly optimistic. Hadleigh was gaining on her own sources of courage; she was locating her strength, perhaps even drawing it right from Frances's own rapidly diminishing supply. Good! she thought. It was a slim gift, but a gift none the less. Perhaps this is how it ends, she thought, with my feeding you directly from my cells as I once fed you from my breast. She had loved the infant; she'd even, briefly, loved the process by which she'd provided that inchoate nourishment. They'd been part of one another in a primal, never to be duplicated fashion, at a point in her history when nurturing had been well within Frances's capabilities. It had been a brief period, but one, perhaps, that had seen the formation of an enduring bond between them. The bond did exist; it always had.

Hadleigh was - and how Frances wished she could tell her this! - an infinitely more lovable person than the woman who'd carried her to completion and then heaved her into the daylight. Hadleigh's determination to love and be loved by so impossible a mother was nothing short of remarkable in Frances's eyes. That Hadleigh could still care for her, that she could go on demonstrating her caring was almost more than Frances could bear. It would have been infinitely more appropriate if Hadleigh had separated herself once and for all. It was what Frances had always expected, but Hadleigh obviously had her own form of selective vision, and chose to see qualities in her mother Frances had spent a lifetime trying to conceal.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden image of Arthur that brought with it fully her undiminished loneliness for him. His features filled the screen of her mind and she studied them for several long moments, remarking upon the quality of the light that surrounded him. Chagrined at her own actions, she feared she was becoming one of those dreadful aging women who drifted off into vague recollections that rendered them unbearably dewy and nostalgic. Nevertheless, the sight of Arthur chewed at her, making her impatient with the limitations of her body. Without the body she might have traveled anywhere in time; she might have been young again, but with finer insights and the skill to replay events to a more satisfactory conclusion. She was sliding toward self-pity and refused adamantly to fall into the cloying trap. Yes, all right, she did love, had cared - for Arthur, and for Hadleigh. And, yes, it might be too late to make restitution to Hadleigh, but there was Bonita; still a final answer to be found. Go on! Frances mutely urged. It's coming closer. We'll have all we need to know very soon now. And then, when it's ended at last, perhaps I'll rest for a bit.

PART One

Despite the war, or perhaps because of it, there was an element of repressed gaiety, even of anticipation, in the air. Frances couldn't help but be aware of it; it seemed to swell in the darkness like some actively growing organism. It was probably frivolous of her to be on her way to a New Year's Eve party, and probably even indiscreet. But with Arthur sequestered somewhere within the confines of the Ministry, and for heaven only knew how long, and the children safely ensconced with her mother in Leamington, she had no reason to feel guilty for accepting Mandy's invitation. In fact, this evening's festivities had been the focal point of her days since Mandy's telephone call.

"Edwin's back from America," Mandy had told her a fortnight earlier. "Isn't that super? The party's to be at his flat. There'll be masses of people. We've been on to everyone we ever knew - rather a combined reunion/New Year celebration. What fun!"

"I thought he'd moved permanently to New York," Frances had said, trying not to reveal either her surprise or the sudden excitement she felt at the prospect of seeing Edwin again after so long.

"I expect he thought he had," Mandy had said, "but all too evidently it hasn't worked out that way. Everyone told him Elsa was simply too American for it to work, and never mind all her pots of money. That marriage was doomed from the outset. Anyway" - Mandy had pounced explosively on the word - "he's still got that marvelous flat. You remember, don't you, Fanny? That extraordinary place off Kensington Church Street?"

"I remember," Frances acknowledged.

"Come any time after nine. And don't be shy about contributing. A bottle of something or other, if you can manage it, or any sort of food. We're really scavenging, I'm afraid."

"I'll see what I can find," Frances had promised, eager to be done with the conversation. She wanted to sit down quietly somewhere and consider the implications of Edwin's divorce and what, if anything, this might mean to her.

Now, making her way up Kensington Church Street - she'd elected to come by bus and underground in order to have additional time to think - with a bottle of gin in her handbag, she told herself she was too old to be thinking and feeling the way she was. Duty stated clearly that she should be with her mother and her children, instead of hurrying over the shiny wet pavement, buoyant with curiosity at the prospect of seeing Edwin Raines-Baker again after close to fifteen years. She felt a surging expectancy so physically overwhelming it caused her flesh to shrink.

What she'd scarcely dared admit to herself until this time was her immense desire to do something that might seem to others to be utterly out of character, but which would, in truth, be totally in keeping with the person she privately knew herself to be. She yearned for a state of total vulnerability wherein all possible sensations both physical and emotional would become known to her; she wanted something she believed only Edwin capable of providing: She wished to experience the full impact, a complete knowledge, of passion. Since Mandy's call, she'd been unable to think of anything or anyone else but Edwin. It didn't seem to her odd or unusual that she was readily able to reconstruct his image in her mind. She knew he wouldn't have changed all that much. He'd still be tall, with a tendency towards overweight; he'd still have that wonderfully racy sense of humor and cascading laugh; he'd still dress with extravagant good taste; he'd still have an appetite for rich foods and fine French wines. No, all that would have changed was his status.

She'd never known him as a single man. He'd married Elsa two years before Mandy had introduced Frances to him in the foyer of the Haymarket Theater between acts of a play she could no longer remember. Of course she'd met Elsa then, too, and recalled her as a woman of startling bluntness given to expressing herself, without thought, in a harshly grating New York accent. Elsa had had execrable taste in clothes, and not even her wealth had been sufficient to keep her from the arena of constant criticism. She was a woman who'd always been determined to be at the forefront of whatever was going on, yet who had absolutely no flair for adapting to the latest fads. The result was that her bobbed hair had accentuated the sharpness of her features rather than softening them, and the formless dresses heavy with hand-done beading gave her an amorphous appearance, as if she'd either finished growing too early or had yet to complete the process. Frances had never been able to make sense of the marriage. Edwin and Elsa hadn't visibly had anything in common except, perhaps, money. They had operated, as far as Frances had been able to see, on completely separate planes and not at all in tandem. It came as no surprise, really, that they'd finally divorced. What was surprising was that the marriage had lasted as long as it had. Frances gave all the credit for this to Edwin. He was the sort of person who'd have driven himself half mad trying to make things come right - despite the obvious impossibility - before ultimately conceding failure.

Frances had fallen in love with him at their first meeting. Since he was married, she'd felt fairly safe within the perimeters of her secret state of loving. There had been only a few occasions - some long minutes in conversation together at dinner parties, sharing taxi cabs on several evenings - when she'd been so overcome both by her awareness of his inaccessibility and of her own terrible attraction to him that she'd been rendered almost incoherent, and had literally suffered a kind of anguish until she'd found herself once more at a reasonable distance from him. She was quite sure she'd never allowed him to see her accurately; she'd been less sure, less honest in her dealings with him, because she'd been so desperately afraid of finding herself involved in a sordid affair with a married man. Her great fear of operating beyond the bounds of social acceptability had prompted her to marry Arthur the year after Edwin and Elsa had departed to take up life in America.

Her fearful adherence to convention seemed ludicrous to her now in view of the war that was going on, and the stilted narrowness of the path of her marriage to Arthur. She had married him because she wasn't as defiant as she'd have liked to be, and she'd grown weary of answering the less than discreet questions about her future that her mother's family seemed to take a special delight in asking. There were, too, her own friends who, having married and settled in Surbiton or Kent or Twickenham, had begun to urge her to follow their lead, reciting the benefits of married life and motherhood.

It was most ironic that the chief of the instigators, the unquestioned champion of marriage and life in the suburbs, had been none other than Mandy Adams, who turned out to be the first of the group to grow fashionably fatigued and seek a divorce. It was Mandy who'd moved back into London, bought herself a trim little flat in Portman Square, and returned to her job as secretary in the firm of barristers and solicitors Edwin's grandfather had founded. Everyone was carefully informed that the job was simply to save her from boredom. Certainly Mandy had never had a need to work; she had several inheritances providing her a substantial annual income. "One must," she'd forever declared, "display one's independence." The secretarial job was the flag of her particular country and she flew it with dauntless bravado. It was at Mandy's insistence that Frances was on her way to the party, despite her initial misgivings.

"My dear," she had declared with typical ennui, "it's all so frightfully do or die, what with this war business and the wretched rationing. There's not an excuse in the world I'll accept, Fan. Leave the children with your mother - How is your mother? Is she well? Do give her my love - and put yourself on the train. I'll collect you at Paddington, if you're feeling frail and have a need to be met. I'll even put you up at my flat, if you've suddenly got the collywobbles about staying on your own. Surely, Arthur wouldn't object to your having a bit of fun."

"I'm not concerned with what he would or wouldn't mind," Frances had declared recklessly. "And I'll be fine on my own in the flat."

She'd stopped by the dusty, airless Chelsea flat to deposit her overnight case in the bedroom. It was clear Arthur hadn't been home in weeks. Neither had the char been round. The only evidence of Arthur's having been there was an unwashed teacup perched on the side of the kitchen sink, and one silvery blond strand of hair coiled into the indentation on his pillow. He'd napped on top of the bedclothes; the impression of his body's weight still remained. Impatiently, she'd tidied the bed before unpacking her bag.

In a shockingly low-cut black jersey dress with heavily padded shoulders, her hair especially golden from recent lemon rinses and framing her face in meticulously sculpted rolls, Mandy greeted Frances at the door, deftly plucked the bottle of gin from her hand, left a kiss hovering in the air near Frances's left cheek, then pushed out of sight back into the crowd, leaving Frances on her own in the foyer.

Frances didn't mind. She took off her coat, gratified to see that the flat was almost precisely as she'd remembered it. The main room - one certainly couldn't call an expanse perhaps forty feet wide by sixty feet long a lounge - was more than half filled with people, and the noise level was high. She stood with her coat folded over her arm, taking in the details of the place: the immense windows at the far end - covered by heavy blackout curtains - that started some five feet above the floor and rose to the ceiling fifteen feet above; the three-foot-deep "sill" of the window, beneath which were storage cabinets; the tiny kitchen, like a child's building block, to the left of the room, and the bathroom/lavatory on the right. At the entry, where Frances stood, a space had been divided to create a small foyer and, to the right as one entered, a good-sized bedroom whose windows gave onto the street.

Edwin's father had been posted for some time in India, and the furnishings of this flat were from that bachelor era. A heavy wood screen of six large, carved panels was positioned to hide the kitchen. Between the screen and the main portion of the room stood a massive refectory table and eight straight-backed, hand-carved chairs. Here and there were chests of varying sizes with elaborately carved tops which depicted acts of a decidedly sexual nature. A number of brass pots and trays were placed on the mantelpiece and window sill, and three outsized, brilliantly colored Indian carpets were arranged on the floor to minimize the vastness of the space by creating oasis-like areas - by the refectory table, by the fireplace, and to one side of the front door where there was a comfortable arrangement of large floor pillows and low-slung leather chairs.

In younger days, when she'd come here, Frances had felt slightly disreputable, as if this was not a place where someone actually lived, but rather a theatrical stage-setting contrived initially by Edwin's father in order to enhance his image and, then, passed down to his son in order to perpetuate some rather nonsensical male legacy having to do with masculinity and sexual license. The impression she'd always had was that neither Edwin nor his father had thought it enough to be a successful barrister. That would have been too dreary for words, especially after those thrilling years spent in "the colonies." Edwin, almost inadvertently, managed to give the impression that he wanted people to realize that, despite the prosaic aspects of his daytime life, he was someone whose true tastes - in matters overtly sexual and faintly bizarre - had in no way diminished, either with marriage or with time; he was someone of character and unpredictability; he could ride on the crest of an impulse as well as any art student or theater type.

Frances had believed then, and still did, that depictions of bared breasts and erotic acts had no place on display in one's lounge. None the less, as she'd done since her first visit here with Mandy eighteen years before, she assumed a tolerant attitude. She was, after all, forty years old; she was married and had twice given birth. In the overall scheme of things it hardly had significance that a forty-two-year-old man still had a fondness for the trappings of his youth. If anything, she found it touching to note how completely unchanged were the furnishings of the flat. It was as if an entire era had somehow been preserved here, and she thought whimsically that if she listened very closely, she might even hear an echo of that rowdy American prohibition era jazz Elsa used to play day and night on her gramophone.

Coats were piled haphazardly on the bed. Frances added hers, paused to check her image in the dressing-table mirror - the bedroom furniture was very ordinary, almost disappointingly so - then moved, smiling, out into the main room. Her reunion with Edwin was going to be momentous, she knew. Her sense of this had been so strong that, in order to calm herself, she'd spent a number of hours during the previous week committing her thoughts about him to paper. She planned she would one day present these letter-type documents to him. She had, throughout the time of writing, pictured him in the act of reading her words. The image had stirred her to frame her thoughts most precisely in order that he might appreciate not only her sentiments but her skill with language. She was, belatedly, going to reveal herself completely, and he would be deeply moved and more than a little impressed. He would see how very well suited they were to one another.

It had occurred to her, while in the midst of writing these letters, that she was allowing her imagination to run unchecked. Edwin might be involved with some new woman; he might be about to remarry; he might be entirely altered, and not someone she'd find in the least attractive. Not so, she'd argued. Edwin would be even more Edwin. She had long suspected that he was someone who would become more and more himself until he'd succeeded in creating a prototype. She knew she was not mistaken in her impression of him as a man determined to create himself entirely in his own image. But on the off chance that her intuition might have been impaired in any way - by marriage, by child-bearing, by the stresses of the war - she'd placed a telephone call to him at his office. He'd come on the line at once, exclaiming, "Frances! This is a splendid surprise! How are you? Are you in town? If you're in town, I insist we dine together straightaway!"

She'd laughed, greatly reassured by his enthusiasm. "Mandy rang me about the party and I simply wanted to say hello and welcome you home from the land of the twang."

"My timing rather leaves something to be desired." He laughed. "Twang, indeed! When will I see you? And where are you?"

She reasoned that he couldn't possibly display so keen an interest in her were he involved with another woman. This was such a comforting piece of logic that she was able to relax, answering, "I plan to be at the party. It's just that I was so delighted to hear you'd come back, I thought I'd tell you so directly."

"That's my Fan!" he declared happily. "Well, if I'm not to see you before then, I want your promise right now that you'll dine with me after the party."

"I'd adore it!" she'd told him.

"Perfect!"

They'd talked another minute or two and then rung off.

Heartened, she'd commenced the second of the "letters" that now reposed, discreetly hidden beneath a box of unopened stationery, in her desk. Putting her thoughts and feelings on paper seemed to her as almost, and perhaps more, significant an act than delivering a child out of her body. It was exquisitely painful, undeniably real and alarmingly final. One could no more wish the child into non-existence than one could will away the caring one felt for certain people. At moments she felt terrifyingly helpless in the face of her love for a man other than her husband.

The reality of the reunion was bound to be a letdown. She'd over-rehearsed it in her mind. She told herself it simply wasn't possible for anything or anyone to live up to the floridly embellished dreams she'd concocted.

Edwin did appear very pleased to see her and placed a chaste little kiss on her lips. It had been absurd of her to expect him to draw her into a fevered embrace especially when, as they began to talk, she realized that as far as Edwin was concerned she was safely married to Arthur. How could she have forgotten to apprise him of the truth? No matter. It would only take a moment or two to make it clear to Edwin that she was neither safe nor married in any true sense of the word.

"Let's find somewhere to sit," he suggested, his hand on her arm propelling her towards the window. They sat together on the deep sill, taking a moment to look closely at each other.

"You haven't changed in the least," she lied, finding him more corpulent and somehow, oddly, less direct than she'd recalled. His features were smaller, his mouth more cautious in the shaping of words than she'd remembered. The prudence he exercised in speaking belied the seeming spontaneity of what he actually said. How strange, she thought, to be seeing all this!

He laughed and looked down at himself, placing one large hand over his midriff. "I'm two stone heavier." He shook his head. "Lack of exercise, among other things. You now, Fan, look exactly as you did, precisely as I remembered you."

His complimentary tone and his admitting to memories of her seemed confirmation of her intuitive powers. There was something between them. All it required, on both their parts, was acknowledgment.

"Bring me up to date," she said eagerly. "I want to hear about America, and why you've come home, and what you plan. Everything."

"We need drinks. Is it still gin?"

He really did remember her, even to her preference in drinks.

"Gin would go down beautifully," she said. "A light anesthetic mildly diluted with bitters."

With a laugh, he moved off towards the makeshift bar set up at one end of the refectory table. While he was gone, she opened her bag, found a cigarette and got it lit, somewhat surprised by the faint tremor in her hands. She inhaled the smoke gratefully. It was something she didn't dare do within her mother's viewing. Whatever pleasure she derived from an occasional cigarette simply wasn't worth the lecture the sight of one would inspire her mother to give. They were filthy things, props for film actresses, tarts; they certainly weren't fit to be found in the hands of a self-respecting matron, a mother of two, wife of a well-placed government employee.

"Mandy tells me you've left town for the duration," Edwin said, giving her her drink.

"Not entirely." She took a welcome swallow, then explained. "I come in at least once a week to collect the post and to make sure nothing's gone amiss in the flat. It's really for the children ... I'd be more than happy to stay and take my chances, but one can't take risks with the children ..." She lifted her shoulders to express her powerlessness as well as her disdain for the possible dangers of London. "As for Arthur, we scarcely see him now. It's to be expected, I suppose, in view of his position in the Ministry." Her smile was deprecating, intended to indicate her boredom both with Arthur and his not-to-be-discussed work.

"I suppose," Edwin agreed, not sure how to interpret her gestures and facial expressions. Were the messages mixed, or was he well on the way to being squiffy?

"Enough of that." She tossed her head impatiently. "I want to hear about you, Edwin. Are you back for good now?" Perhaps he'd be leaving again in the near future. She'd be willing to go with him, anywhere.

"That's been taken out of my hands for the present," he answered before taking a swallow of scotch. He found it truly amazing how little she'd altered with time. It was also surprising and highly flattering to rediscover her intensity and to be on the receiving end of it. He'd forgotten this aspect of her, and wondered how he could have failed to recall so integral an aspect of her nature. Frances's appeal had always been compounded and heightened by her intensity, if she cared to make one the subject of her attention. Conversely, she was capable of making one wretchedly uncomfortable if she chose to show her dislike. Her wit under those circumstances, he reminded himself, could be lethal.

From an entirely superficial viewpoint, she was an undeniably handsome woman. Handsome, he mentally chided himself, wasn't quite the right choice of words. She wasn't beautiful in any classic sense, although her lifelong thinness - no doubt a direct result of that almost simmering intensity - gave her clothes a highly stylish look so that she invariably appeared elegant. She had interesting cool gray eyes, slightly slanted; arching cheekbones and fine, pale skin. Tonight she was wearing a deep blue velvet frock, very simply cut, with long sleeves and a bit of a flare to the skirt. He glanced approvingly at her carefully crossed knees and slim calves.

"You do look wonderfully well, Fan." He gave voice to his approval.

"And you," she replied, more truthfully now. He was growing increasingly familiar to her, thereby validating her thoughts of their potential as a couple. As she watched his mouth shaping additional, careful words, it occurred to her, with a near violent inner shiver, that she wanted to be alone and naked with this man. It had been one thing to daydream, using recollections and intuition; it was something else altogether to be side by side with the living embodiment of all her expectations, and realize the extent of her longings. "Sorry," she said. "I missed what you were saying. The lowing cattle" - she cast her hand in the direction of the other guests - "set up rather a din."

He leaned slightly closer to repeat himself and she had to concentrate on the sounds in order not to succumb to the temptation to touch with her open hand the appealing curve of his boyishly round cheek.

"I was asking how is Arthur."

Hadn't they already dispensed with Arthur as a topic of conversation? Possibly she'd only done it in her own thoughts. "He's been all but invisible for months, since the start of it all, really." She spoke quickly, as if the speed of her words would hasten the end of Arthur's impedimentary status as her husband. "I've no idea when he'll next be allowed home."

"I expect you and the children must miss him," Edwin said politely.

"Actually," she answered, slowing her speech, "I don't. The children do, of course. He's a wonderful father." For the first time she experienced a pang of guilt at her disloyalty. In truth, Arthur was not only a fair and demonstrably loving father, he'd always been a kind and tolerant husband. The problem lay in her inability to love him passionately. "I'm afraid," she went on, "I don't miss him at all."

Edwin's eyebrows lifted. "How wicked of you, Fanny!" He smiled admiringly, as if wickedness, in all its degrees, was a quality he especially deemed valuable in a woman.

"I suppose it is," she agreed. "I didn't used to be wicked, did I?"

"I don't think so. But then we've all changed. It's the times."

"No. I do believe I have grown wicked. It hasn't anything to do with the war." Again he smiled, and she felt his approval almost as a caress. "And what of you? What have you become, Edwin?"

His smile dimmed. "Oh." He sighed. "I've become middle-aged and frightfully weary, I'm afraid."

"You're none of those things," she contradicted. "It must be peculiar, though, living on your own again after so long with the uncontested queen of the prohibition era."

He didn't laugh as she'd hoped, but seriously assured her, "It's delightful, actually. It became very sticky towards the end. Elsa and I did battle endlessly. It was most unpleasant, even rather sordid."

"How long has it been since the divorce?"

"Almost two years now. It took quite some time to sort things through. You know, who had the right to what, that sort of thing. In the end, I said the hell with it and let her take whatever she wished. Except, of course, for this flat. She had the effrontery to try to claim it, if you can imagine. Put paid to that in short order, I can promise you."

"You don't mean it!" Frances was appalled. "She wanted this place?"

"Bloody unbelievable, isn't it?" he declared, patently pleased to find her in agreement with him.

"It is a bit. I am sorry you've had such a dreadful time of it," she sympathized, her hand on his arm. "I would say, though, that the timing couldn't be more perfect. I always could cheer you up, and I'll do it again."

"What a good sort you are!" Once again his features held surprise. "I was always very fond of you, Fan."

"And I you," she responded, confident now of the reunion's outcome. The two of them would make love, if not tonight, then in the very near future. Edwin would come to recognize the power she had to make positive changes in both their lives, and he'd fall in love with her - if he hadn't already done. The details were unimportant; they'd take care of themselves. She'd made the decision to allow this to happen, and she hadn't been mistaken. Now she'd assist him as Edwin caught up to her thinking.

Never had she felt anything remotely comparable to her present confidence. Once she made known her feelings, this man would love her. Her sense of precognition was extraordinarily potent. Slipping her arm through his, she inched closer to him gazing upwards through her lashes to say, "I realized this past fortnight that I know quite a good deal about you, Edwin."

"Oh?"

"Not historical fact," she reassured him, certain he had any number of fascinating skeletons hidden away in locked closets. She laughed softly and withdrew her arm from his to light another cigarette. "What I mean to say is I realized that I know you, know the sort of person you are, the things you like and dislike. Does the idea of that disturb you?"

"You have my complete attention." He struck her now as a rather large-sized, mischievous boy, eager to hear and, possibly, challenge her claims to knowledge. "I'm the first to admit the joy of being the primary and sole topic of any conversation."

She found this remark vain, and would have bridled at it at another time, but she was too eager to proceed to pay overmuch attention just then.

"But I'm keeping you from your guests," she said suddenly, looking around, hoping he'd say he preferred to remain with her.

"Not at all," he said gratifyingly. "We'll get to everything in time." He drank more of his scotch, then looked at her mouth. She did have a lovely mouth. He didn't think he'd ever noticed before, but now that he studied her, she seemed far more aggressively female than he'd recalled. Not her actions or words, but her sheer physical presence - that almost palpable intensity - was most compelling. He could picture himself bending her to his need; heady images of a wildly compliant Frances, nakedly open. He was going to have to proceed with cautious discretion. Frances was the sort of woman who might be dangerous simply because of her capacity for purposeful single mindedness. Since he no longer knew clearly what he wanted, either immediately or for the future, he would have to take care not to allow either his own physical interest or her evident willingness to direct events. Still, he reasoned, there was no need to go overboard. It was a new year, and it was splendid to be home again, here with old friends at the outset of a new decade, with the second half of his life yet to be lived.

He glanced appreciatively at the neckline of her frock, rather stirred by the gentle swell of her breasts. He drank more of his scotch, at the same time redirecting his eyes to the crowd.

At his side, Frances commented, "You could, you know, part them like the Red Sea."

He laughed loudly, as ever tickled by her irreverence.