LITMIR.BIZ

       Table of Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      IN spring and high summer the lofty fells and mountain-shadowed lakes echoed with the sounds of tourists, eager to escape from the steel and concrete jungles of the cities. They came in their thousands, car after car, picnicking and camping, and towing their caravans behind them like an invasion of giant snails. Climbers, many of whom had never before put on spiked boots, trekked to Wast Water and Skafell Pike. Traffic jammed the narrow roads which skirted the more frequented lakes like Ullswater and Windermere. There were card shops and gift shops, and exhibitions of local crafts. On the lakes themselves the white sails of yachts mingled with orange-sailed dinghies and noisy outboard motors. Almost everywhere one looked there were people in parkas and sailing gear, all trying to look as though this was their natural habitat. The hotels were filled to capacity – the bars did a roaring trade.

      And the locals watched and waited and longed for the city dwellers to return to their city homes and their city jobs, and leave the Lake District to those whose heritage it had always been.

      It was that summer lakeland that Helen remembered. When they had had their home in Leeds her father had kept a boat at Bowness, and in the summer holidays when she was free from school, he had taught her to sail. In retrospect, it seemed an idyllic period in her life. It was in the days before her father became ambitious, before he allowed his small company to be amalgamated with Thorpe Engineering, before he married Isabel Thorpe and became such a rich and influential man with interests in more sophisticated sports than sailing …

      But now the fells were clothed in snow. It had apparently been snowing for days, and even the lakes themselves had a film of white coating their surfaces. When she had stopped at the last village for directions to Bowness she had found herself well off her original route which wasn’t altogether surprising when half the signposts had been covered with snow, too, and she had been too warm and snug in the car to bother to get out and wipe it away. She had been foolish, she acknowledged it now, but her memory did not go as far as recalling the dozens of minor roads that spun off the so-called major ones, and as they all looked much the same in these ghastly conditions she had obviously taken several wrong turnings.

      Still, she consoled herself, with a glance at her wrist watch. It was only two o’clock and she had plenty of time to find a hotel before nightfall. Any hotel would do, just so long as it provided food and shelter. She could continue on her way tomorrow.

       Tomorrow!

      She spared a thought for her father. By tomorrow he would have discovered she had gone away. What would he do? Would her note that she needed to get away on her own for a while satisfy him, or would he institute some sort of search for her? The latter seemed the most likely. Her father was not the kind of man to be thwarted, and he would, no doubt, be furious that his daughter, his only offspring, should try to defy him.

      But the chances of him discovering her here were slim. In fact, Helen congratulated herself, deciding to come north had been an inspiration. In recent years her most usual haunts had been the West Indies and the South of France, and if her father looked anywhere for her it would be somewhere warm. He

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