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full, in case it was her last. And Harry was at the centre of it all, with a look, a word, a scribbled message, a smile, and they had tumbled closer together. At least, that’s the way he remembered it. Never had they made love so generously, or so frequently, and Julia had taken the lead. It was as if she was in her own race against time.
    He hadn’t realized how desperate she was to become pregnant, and hadn’t even realized she had succeeded, not until the doctors in his Swiss hospital had told him. She may not have known herself. Harry had lost not only Julia, but their child.
    There had been plenty to fill his life these past ten years – enough, in truth, to fill quite a number of lives. Plenty of women, too, even another brief marriage, but no one like Julia. And in the lonely reaches of this night, it seemed to hurt as much as it had done that first day when he had returned home from the Alps, entirely alone. Now he sat in the dark, with his drink and his coruscating guilt, as streetlights pointed sharp fingersof accusation at him through the half-drawn curtains. He began to mutter feebly, his tears washing the dribbles of whisky from around his lips, his voice like ripping sandpaper.
    ‘ So I called to the barman to pour me another,
    Me soul was fair bleeding— ’
    He choked on the words. Harry drank to forget. Yet no matter how hard he tried, it had all been stirred back into his life by two words.
    Zac Kravitz.
    Kravitz had never been a true friend, a soul mate, he had been too much of a head-banger for that. Impetuous. Sometimes arrogant. Harry sat and began ticking off all the reasons why Zac didn’t matter to him any more. He owed him, of course, for Julia, but hidden somewhere deep inside was a voice that kept insinuating it would have been better if Julia had gone down with the boat. Harry would surely have found that easier to deal with than Switzerland. Then he wouldn’t have felt it was all his fault.
    Julia, in those last six months, had brought more light into his life than he had ever known. He owed Zac for that.
    The American had been callous with his own wife, P.J. She’d eventually left him, but that wasn’t so strange. Delta types often demanded too much, or too little, from those who loved them: Harry knew the same might be said of him – would be by Bernice. So P.J. had left the scene, taking their three kids and thedog with her, and soon afterwards Zac had gone missing, deliberately hidden himself away, turned his back on everyone, his badly burned back. That’s why he’d been forced to quit, honourably discharged, his career gone down in flames with Guinevere . Yet the same could have happened to anyone in Special Forces, at any time, and often did, because when you live on the edge there’s always the danger you will fall. Harry would have done anything for Zac, and had tried, but he couldn’t do a damned thing after Zac had taken himself off and hidden in the shadows. He was a man who knew how to cover his tracks.
    Besides, it was all so very long ago. What the hell was the point? Harry cried, first in despair, then in anger at Zac for coming back to screw up his life. He fumbled for his glass, grabbed at it with both hands, only for it to fall, spilling the last of the whisky on the rug.
    The bedside clock showed it was shortly after 4 a.m. Harry sat bolt upright in his bed, naked, and sweating profusely. He stared round in alarm. The bed beside him was cold, empty. Distant memories of his evening began creeping back. Yes, he’d screwed up again.
    Fragments of the dream that had woken him began to return. He scrabbled for the elusive pieces, but the only thing he was able to see was Julia’s face. Under the water – or was it melting ice? Fading. Sinking. Her lips forming one word.
    Goodbye.
    In fear and impotence Harry began pounding the empty pillows beside him. He’d have given his life to have again those last six months, and his soul to have had six months more. But as