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      CHAPTER ONE

      HE STOOD in the bay window, his eyes scanning the dimly lit street with quiet contentment. It was a pleasant street, the large houses set back from the road and shielded from prying eyes by an avenue of old flowering cherries.

      Their branches swayed in the wind, leafless still, the whispered promise of spring barely showing in the brave shoots of daffodils nudging the earth under the garden wall, but the signs were there, and he guessed it would be glorious when the trees blossomed.

      A movement in the house opposite caught his attention, and he focused on it. There were lights on downstairs, and he could see people moving about, settling down for the evening.

      His house was settled already, silent now except for the running footsteps on the stairs. They ground to a halt by the door.

      ‘Adam? I’m going out now, OK?’

      He looked towards the disembodied, slightly accented voice with resignation. ‘OK. What time will you be back?’ he asked, without any real hope that he would like the answer. He was right. He didn’t.

      ‘Late,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the pub again—maybe meet my new friends. I’ve got my keys.’

      ‘OK. Goodnight, Helle.’

      The front door slammed behind her, echoing through the house and making the windows rattle. Her feet crunched against the gravel of the drive, and she slipped through the gateway and disappeared, swallowed up by the eerie night. Adam dropped his head back against the edge of the window and let out a quiet sigh.

      He was tired. It had been a hectic week. The move had taken three days, and he’d spent the next four unpacking and slotting things into their new places while the children had got under his feet and rushed about excitedly and Helle had done the bare minimum. The big Edwardian semi still seemed empty, the huge rooms swallowing up their meagre possessions with ease, but given time he could decorate all the rooms and buy more furniture to fill them.

      It was a daunting thought, but there was no hurry, and just for now they were enjoying the novelty of having too much room. After nearly three years of battling for elbow room and falling over toys and clutter, it was wonderful to have the space to spread out.

      Skye had her own bedroom for the first time, the boys’ room was big enough to have a separate area for each of them, and Helle, their Danish au pair, had a room on the top floor, a huge room with a little shower off it next to the spare bedroom that would double as his study. That gave her privacy, and he had privacy and space of his own in the master bedroom suite at the front—most particularly space.

      The size of his bedroom was the only incongruous thing. Like Helle’s room above him, it ran across the full width of the front of the house, excluding the bathroom at the end, absurdly big compared to the middle bedroom he’d had at the other house and somehow highlighting his loneliness in a way which that cluttered little room had never done.

      He dropped into a chair and closed his eyes, suddenly weary, and wondered how the children and Helle would cope without him tomorrow, his first day in his new job. How would he cope, come to that? It was not only a new job, but his first consultancy, and he felt a little rush of adrenaline at the thought. Nerves?

      Absurd, Adam told himself. He was more than capable of doing it, more than ready for the responsibility and the challenge. It was just that with the move to a new area and a new house, a new school for Skye and Danny and a new nursery school for Jaz, there was so much change, so much to deal with.

      Someone to share it with would have made it all so much easier, he thought with an inward sigh, but that hadn’t been an option. And Helle had been more of a hindrance than a help since they’d moved. She’d been unhappy before, restless and discontented, and now, since they’d moved, she’d seemed permanently attached to the cordless phone, drifting aimlessly around and talking into it in Danish whenever she thought

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