LITMIR.BIZ

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room was poorly lit and even more poorly furnished. She shared a bathroom with the other inhabitants of the run-down Victorian terrace. The drains smelled and the bathroom walls ran with damp.

      She could never go back to her aunt and uncle. They would never forgive her for Gary’s death. They would never cease blaming her for what had happened to him, and she in turn would never ever be able to feel the same way about them again.

      She had looked upon them as her parents. She had loved them and thought they loved her, even though she had always known that Gary, their own child, would come first. The last thing she had expected was that they would turn on her the way they had done. It had left her feeling as though her whole world had slipped out of focus, as though nothing had ever really been as she had imagined it.

      Now what she really wanted to do if she was truthful with herself was to escape—but escape to where or to what? She had always been a rather solitary sort of person, perhaps initially because of her parents’ death. The abrupt shock of suddenly finding herself alone in the world at the age of eleven had had a profound effect upon her. Both at school and then later at university, she had been wary of too close a contact with others, of making friends, of allowing other people inside her carefully erected barriers; perhaps because, subconsciously, she was frightened that they would one day desert her as her childish mind had considered that her parents had done.

      Logically, of course, she knew that their deaths had not been their fault, but children’s emotions did not respond to logic, and left scars which even adult analysis could not wholly remove.

      Smart, businesslike clothes, bought for her new job and hanging on a free-standing rail in her shabby room, reproached her. Now it was hardly likely they would ever be worn. Certainly not for the purpose she had originally envisaged.

      During the long, dark days when the court case was pending, she had taught herself to live just one hour at a time. To look no further than one hour ahead, if that. In fact, there had been times when she had felt so depressed that she had wondered whether it was worth being alive at all, but she quickly dismissed such dangerous thoughts.

      Life was a gift, she had reminded herself fiercely. A gift that must not be wasted the way Gary had wasted his. She shivered again, but this time not because of any lack of heat. What had driven Gary to do what he had done?

      She had known, of course, that he had always been a weak character, someone who did not like taking the blame for his actions. She had discovered that when they were children. Whenever they had been naughty and about to be found out, he had always somehow managed to ensure that she was the one to shoulder the blame. She had not objected in those days—perhaps because she had known instinctively that his parents would always support him against her. Had she known that? The thought was vaguely shocking. Could it be that she had somehow taught herself to love her aunt and uncle because she felt that her love was what she owed them? Could it be that she had never really felt that depth of affection for them at all, just as they had never felt any true affection for her? Had they perhaps always resented having to take her in, a solitary child, orphaned by the death of her parents? Parents who had not had the foresight to provide financially for a secure future for her.

      Her uncle had had a good job, but there had always been a consciousness of money in the household. She remembered that, when they were children, her aunt had constantly reminded them how much their clothes had cost, how much their food had cost. She had never thought about it before, but could this have been what had led to Gary’s absorption with money? Could this have been what had led him into embezzlement?

      Surely not! How many times over the past few months had she gone over and over the events leading up to Gary’s suicide? How many times had she queried what lay behind his actions? Had it simply been the fear of discovery? The knowledge that such discovery would lead to imprisonment? Or had there been something more—a more deep-rooted fear and unhappiness?

      Despite the fact that his parents had spoilt him, they had not been physically affectionate adults. She remembered that, as children, she and Gary had constantly been reproved for demanding physical signs of affection.

      Her parents had been different, and how she had missed their hugs and kisses during those first two years with her aunt and uncle! Gradually she had learnt to accustom herself to their differing ways. Gradually she had learnt to keep her emotions to herself, and realised that if she was to gain her aunt and uncle’s approval she would have to learn a different code of behaviour.

      How much of her true self had she repressed deliberately over those years? How much had she become the person that her aunt and uncle expected her to be rather than the person she genuinely wanted to be?

      It was pointless thinking about that now. Nothing could change the past, but there was still the future, and somehow she was going to have to find a way to live through it. But how? No money; no job; no true home; no friends; no family. All she could see ahead of her was a black void of nothing.

      It was true that she had made friends with some of the old men who worked the allotments down by the railway when, out of desperation, she had one day wandered down there from the Victorian terrace where she lived, looking for something to do.

      She had stopped to chat to one of the men, and then later on had offered to help him with his weeding. The hard physical work had helped her over those initial, dark, early days when she had first discovered that Crichtons intended to prosecute her. One thing had led to another, and within a matter of weeks she had found that she was helping several of the elderly men work their plots. None of them knew who she was or what she was involved in, and there had been a certain kind of relief to be found in tugging up the weeds and digging the rich, moist soil.

      Lark had discovered that she enjoyed gardening. Neither her aunt nor uncle really bothered much with the small, neat suburban garden that surrounded their house. Someone came in twice a week to mow the lawns and keep the beds tidy during the summer months, and once a month during the winter.

      Her aunt and uncle preferred the small, select dinner parties they attended, the bridge games with their small coterie of friends. Their lives were very regimented, Lark now realised. It was something which she hadn’t really been aware of before, but then, of course, she had been living away from home for some considerable time, first at university and then later in her bedsit.

      Gary, too, had moved out of the parental home, but unlike her he had found a job in the local market town where his parents still lived. Crichtons had opened up there several years ago, with brand new offices, all based on computer technology, and Gary had soon found a niche for himself there, with his skill as an advanced computer operator. Quite where and when he had met Lydia Meadows, Lark didn’t know.

      When she had asked her aunt and uncle about Gary’s relationship with the other woman, they had denied vigorously that he had ever known her, but that seemed improbable because Lydia was a local girl, albeit one who was several years older than both herself and Gary. Even so, Lark remembered reading several years ago in their local newspaper that Lydia won a nationwide beauty competition. She had gone from there to modelling, her name cropping up regularly in the local paper.

      Her marriage to Ross Wycliffe, a local businessman, had been widely publicised. Ross was many years her senior, a widower with grown-up children of his own. He also had a reputation for being very shrewd and hard-headed in business. He was reputed to be a millionaire. Certainly the photographs that Lark had seen of Lydia showed a very soignée young woman dressed expensively in furs and jewellery. How on earth had Gary got involved with her, if involved he had been? He had been in love with her, that much had been obvious on the one occasion when Lark had seen them together.

      She had gone home unannounced for the weekend, wanting to collect some books that were still in her bedroom at her aunt and uncle’s. Her visit had just happened to coincide with a time when her aunt and uncle themselves were away on holiday, and so she had gone round to Gary’s to ask him if she could borrow his key to his parents’ house.

      His car had been parked outside. When no one had responded to her knock, she had gone round to the back of the small, semi-detached house. Neither of the participants in the passionate embrace she had witnessed through

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