LITMIR.BIZ

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      CHAPTER ONE

      ‘MUMMY, CAN HEATHER come home and play with me and then stay for tea?’

      Looking down into the pleading blue eyes of her six-year-old daughter, Claire once again blessed the totally unexpected inheritance from her unknown great-aunt that had made possible her move away from the centre of London to the small village of Chadbury St John.

      Lucy had blossomed out unbelievably in the short month they had been here. Already she seemed plumper, healthier, and now she had made her first ‘best friend’. The huge block of council flats they had lived in before had not led to any friendships for either mother or daughter. They had been living an existence that had virtually been hand to mouth, and with no way out of the dull misery of such poverty.

      And then, miraculously, almost overnight everything had changed. How on earth her great-aunt’s solicitors had been able to track her down was a miracle in itself, but to learn that she had inherited her cottage, and with it a small but very, very precious private income, had been such a miraculous event that even now Claire sometimes thought she was dreaming.

      ‘Not today, Lucy,’ she told her daughter indulgently. ‘Heather’s mummy won’t know where she is if she comes home with us now, will she?’ she reminded her crestfallen child gently.

      ‘Heather hasn’t got a mummy,’ Lucy informed her quickly, speaking for the brown-eyed little girl clinging to her side. ‘She only has a daddy, and he goes away a lot.’

      Another quick look at the little girl standing close to her own daughter made Claire aware of several things she hadn’t noticed before. Unlike Lucy’s clothes, although expensive, Heather’s were old-fashioned, and too large. Her fine brown hair was scraped back into plaits, and the brown eyes held a defensive, worried look.

      Another victim of the growing divorce rate? Claire wondered wryly. Even here in this quiet, almost idyllic village twenty miles from Bath, they were not immune to the pressures of civilisation.

      Everyone in the village seemed to accept her own status as that of a young widow. Her great-aunt had apparently not been born locally but had retired to the village after her many years as a schoolteacher, and had, according to what gossip Claire had picked up in the local post office, been the sort of person who believed in keeping herself very much to herself.

      Would she have approved of her? Claire’s soft mouth twisted in a tight grimace. Probably not. She had learned over the years that people drew their own conclusions about young girls alone with a baby to support, and that they were not always the right ones. It had been hard work bringing Lucy up alone, but once she had been born there was nothing that could have induced her to part with her. The love she felt for her child was the last thing she had expected … especially …

      ‘Mummy, please let Heather come back with us.’ Lucy tugged on her jeans, demanding her attention.

      ‘Not today,’ she responded firmly, smiling at Heather to show the little girl that her refusal held nothing personal. ‘I’m sure that there’s someone at home waiting for Heather who would be very worried if she didn’t arrive, isn’t there, Heather?’

      ‘Only Mrs Roberts,’ the little girl responded miserably. ‘And she won’t let me have soldiers with my boiled egg. She says it’s babyish.’

      Compassion mingled with amusement as Claire surveyed the childish pout. Boiled eggs and soldiers were one of Lucy’s favourite treats.

      ‘Mrs Roberts is Heather’s daddy’s housekeeper,’ Lucy told her mother importantly. ‘He has to go away a lot on—on business—and Mrs Roberts looks after Heather.’

      ‘She doesn’t like me.’

      The flat statement was somehow more pathetic than an emotional outburst would have been. And the little girl did look unloved. Oh, not in any obvious way—her clothes were expensive and clean, and she was obviously healthy—but she was equally obviously unhappy. But surely the blame for that rested with the child’s father, and not with the housekeeper? Perhaps he was too involved in his business—whatever it was—to notice that his child was miserable.

      It was the look of stoic acceptance on the child’s face as she took Lucy’s hand and started to walk away that decided her.

      ‘Perhaps, if Heather doesn’t live too far away, we could walk home with her and ask Mrs Roberts if she could come to tea,’ she suggested.

      Two small faces turned up towards her, both wearing beaming smiles.

      What manner of father was it who would allow his five-year-old daughter to walk home unescorted? Chadbury St John was only a small village, but it was also a remote one. Children disappeared in Britain every day … were attacked in the most bestial and horrible of ways … She … Claire shivered suddenly, things she didn’t want to remember obliterating the warm autumn sun. She had been eighteen when Lucy was conceived. An adult legally, but a child still in so many ways, the adored and protected daughter of older parents who had never taught her that the world could be a cruel and hard place.

      They had been killed in a road accident shortly after her eighteenth birthday. She had lost everything then—parents, security—everything.

      It had been their intention that she would go on to university after school, but her father’s pension had died with him, and the small house they

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