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possible. Is there any coffee?’

      Coffee...

      She didn’t need the smell; the word was enough. She just about managed a strangled ‘No—’ before, clamping a wet hand over her mouth, she ran for the cloakroom.

      Afterwards, she splashed her face with cold water and when she looked up Cleve was leaning against the door frame, arms folded, his face unreadable.

      ‘Am I the last to know?’ he asked.

      ‘No!’ This was a nightmare. Exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen. ‘No one knows.’

      ‘I think Lucy might have a good idea.’

      ‘I haven’t told her. I haven’t told anyone.’

      He nodded. ‘So when were you going to tell me?’

      ‘Can I...?’ She indicated the doorway he was blocking. ‘I could do with some fresh air.’

      He moved aside, following her through the snug to the veranda. She sat on one of the steps and if he’d sat beside her, reached out to take her hand, if he’d said something...

      Instead he leaned against one of the pillars and the silence stretched out like an elastic band that you knew was going to come back and sting you if you didn’t do something.

      ‘I haven’t seen you, Cleve.’

      ‘You were the one who left that morning. You arranged your schedule so that we wouldn’t be in the office at the same time.’

      She stared at him. ‘What? No.’ She shook her head. ‘You did that.’

      ‘Me? Why would I do that? Damn it, Miranda, you saved me that night. If I’d got in the Mayfly I would have flown in a direct line to the coast and kept going until I ran out of fuel. You knew that,’ he said. ‘It’s why you stopped me.’

      ‘Yes...’ The word was no more than a whisper. His eyes had been dead.

      ‘It’s why you flew her back the next morning and left me your Nymph. I understood that and I came after you but you didn’t stay to see if I got her safely back to base.’

      ‘I knew you’d never do anything to damage her.’

      She’d seen him through his moment of crisis, given him the comfort of her body when he was in despair and then again in an act of healing. She’d seen him laid bare, held him while he’d wept in her arms. Watched him sleeping, all the tension of the last year wiped from his face.

      ‘Immi was expecting me.’

      ‘For the dress fitting. That was much more important, obviously. How did it go?’

      ‘The fitting?’ She frowned. Why on earth would he care? ‘Fine. No frills,’ she said, but in truth she scarcely remembered the dress, or Immi’s excited chatter about food, flowers, music.

      Her senses were totally swamped by the night she’d spent with Cleve.

      It was as if he’d been starving and he’d filled himself with every part of her, filled her with every part of him and she was hanging onto the memory of every touch of his hand, his mouth, his tongue. Storing it up like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter.

      The dressmaker, pinning the hem, had looked up as one of the tears that had been running, unnoticed, down her cheeks had dropped onto the dress. She’d passed it off, telling Immi that she had been remembering how sick she’d been, how there was a time when none of them could have imagined her becoming such a beautiful bride.

      But the tears were for Cleve, still so desperately in love with Rachel. And for her. Because, as for him, there could only ever be one love.

      Then, realising that he was making some kind of point, she said, ‘Does it matter?’

      ‘I imagine she’ll have to let it out. The dress. If you’re keeping the baby.’

      ‘If—’ She was on her feet without knowing how she’d made it, facing him.

      ‘Isn’t that why you haven’t told anyone?’ he demanded, before she could say another word. ‘Why you’re hiding away in this crumbling pink birthday cake of a house? Why you’re running away?’

      ‘No—’ Her mouth was so dry that the word snagged in her throat.

      ‘It never occurred to me...’ He caught himself, staring up at the sky as if for inspiration. ‘How could you have taken such a risk?’

      ‘Risk?’ She took a step back, stumbled and if he hadn’t shot out a hand and grabbed her arm she would have fallen, but the minute she regained her balance she shook him off. ‘The only thing on my mind that evening was you, falling apart in front of me. Not contraception, not STDs. And my only concern since the stick turned blue has been that the news would be the final straw that broke you. Well, clearly I need have no worries on that score. You’re about to become a father. Live with it.’

      ‘Andie—’

      He reached out to her but she lifted her arm out of reach and, because she didn’t want to go back into the house with its cobwebs and spiders, turned and headed into the garden, pushing her way through overgrown shrubs and weeds until she found the hidden stone arbour where she and Immi had hung out.

      It was too early for the roses that scrambled over it but the buds were beginning to form. Another few weeks and the air would be full of their scent.

      * * *

      Cleve put his hand to his heart as if he could somehow slow it down, catch his breath. Miranda Marlowe was going to have his baby and it was as if time had just been turned back, he was twenty-four again with the most beautiful girl in his arms and a world to conquer.

      He wanted to roar, shout the news to the world, punch the air, but he had to think about Miranda, how she must be feeling, and he rubbed his hands over his face to erase the grin before he went to find her.

      The paint had peeled from the bench leaving bare, silvery wood but it looked solid enough. She was sitting, eyes closed, legs stretched out in front of her, when she heard Cleve thrashing through overgrown paths as he searched for her. Muttering a curse as something whipped back at him.

      He didn’t call out, maybe he thought she wouldn’t answer and he was right, but eventually he stumbled onto the hidden arbour and the bench gave a little as he sat beside her.

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      She didn’t open her eyes. ‘I don’t want you to be sorry, Cleve. I don’t want anything from you. I’m nearly twenty-five years old and having a baby is not going to ruin my life.’ On the contrary his baby was a precious gift... ‘You can go now.’

      ‘I didn’t mean...’ He paused. ‘Will you look at me, Miranda?’

      It was easier when she wasn’t looking at him, but she raised her lids and turned to him. ‘You’ve scratched your face,’ she said.

      He raised his hand to his cheek and his fingers came away smeared with a little blood. ‘It was a rose that hasn’t been pruned in years.’

      ‘Sofia loved her garden.’ She found a clean tissue in her pocket and, resisting the urge to lean forward and wipe the scratch, she handed it to him. ‘It’s sad to see it so neglected.’

      ‘I think the house has more problems than an overgrown garden.’ He pressed the tissue briefly to the scratch then tucked it in his breast pocket without looking at it. ‘I’m sorry for what I said, implied...’

      ‘It was the natural thing for you to think but I didn’t run away. I left that morning without waking you because I didn’t want either of us to have to go through one of those awkward morning-after moments where you don’t know what on earth to say.’

      She’d lain, wrapped in his arms, until dawn. Not moving, willing him to stay asleep, drawing out the moment for as long as she could, only moving when

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