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his teeth for the task, and had asked her to leave the next day.
    And she had. And now that he knew about Charlotte he felt to blame for that, too. Lucy had only been twenty-two. She'd nursed both Bronwyn and the baby with such tireless tenderness and commitment. He didn't know why she'd initially accepted his love-making that night. It could only be, surely, that she'd felt sorry for him.
    But it must have confused the hell out of her! She wasn't the type that slept around, and he was eight years older, the one who should have been in control. So she'd fled home and rebounded into some doomed relationship with a local boy, and Charlotte was the result.
    Yes, he could be in great danger of feeling very responsible for Charlotte's existence. And this at a point in his life where he'd been sure that he'd resolved all the issues of grief and guilt connected with Bronwyn's death a long time ago.
    He hadn't resolved them alone. He'd had a close friend, Adam, who'd been training for the Anglican priesthood at the time, and Adam had helped to an incalculable degree. After hours of Adam's constructive listening on many occasions over several months, Malcolm had felt so—to use a current buzzword— healed. So at peace with himself about all that had happened, in fact, that when he'd first seen Lucy at her front door on Friday evening, as neat and attractive as ever in a pale green summery cotton skirt and a matching top, and had realised who she was, he'd felt more pleasure than anything else.
    So Ellie's new best friend's mother was someone he knew and trusted! Marvellous! You had to be careful these days, and their phone conversation the day before had been impossible. He'd been somewhat concerned at knowing so little about where his daughter had been spending the afternoon. And it had been good to see how well Lucy Beckett was doing for herself, too. A pleasant house, a bright, healthy child...and a face and figure only a little changed in six years.
    Oddly, Bronwyn had been the one, six years ago, to point out just how attractive Lucy Beckett had been. Many women might not have done so, but Bronwyn had always possessed such driving confidence in herself that it would never have occurred to her that it might have been dangerous to draw her husband's attention to another woman's charms.
    'And it wasn't just confidence in herself,' Malcolm remembered, speaking the words under his breath. 'She had confidence in me, too. She made me believe in myself when we first got together at university years earlier, after that lonely, over-sheltered childhood of mine, in a way I'd never done before. That was one of the reasons I loved her...'
    Bronwyn's confidence and her strong convictions, the most powerful features of her emotional make-up.
    How terrific to have a really nice-looking nurse!' she'd said to Malcolm after they'd interviewed several candidate, chosen Lucy and had experienced her sunny efficiency and care for over a week. 'I'll tell her so when this is all over. Lovely trim, graceful figure. Beautiful green eyes. Really warm, sweet smile.'
    'Yes, she does, doesn't she?'
    'Her hair, too. It's only that insipid pale mousy brown, so it could be awful, except that she keeps it so clean and silky and bouncing, and tricks it up into all those pretty, imaginative styles with clips and combs and so forth. So far I don't think she's worn the same one twice, and it really looks nice. Don't you think, Mal? Don't you think it's going to help enormously in me keeping a positive attitude to have someone pretty and bright like Lucy around me all day long?'
    There was a plaintive, fatigued and slightly desperate note to this last question. Bronwyn was losing strength and focus daily.
    'Definitely,' he agreed, hiding his doubt—not about Lucy's prettiness, but about the power of it to do Bronwyn any good.
    'We must tell her not to bother with a uniform,' Bronwyn decided with her usual authority. 'I'd much rather see her in nice colours and softer