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past.

'Kirstie ' He took two rapid steps forward, held out one hand.

'I'm so sorry. For everything,' she told him. The pain rose in her eyes, now grey as a rain-

filled summer day.

'It doesn't have to be like this, you know.'

'I know of no other way it can be.' He had been the victim in all ways, in this messy

cauldron of mixed emotions. She could give him one more thing; she had that much left

in her. She smiled just a little, saw the sight of it hit him like a blow and said, 'Goodbye,

Francis. Be happy.'

Kirstie's trip with her sister down the lift to the lobby of the apartment building was

made in utter silence.

Victor the doorman was kept rather occupied as they passed him, for he held the leashes

of three excitable afghan hounds who had run around him enough times to effectively

truss him like a turkey. As Kirstie stared at the scene without really taking it in, Louise

led the way to her parked car.

Although the older woman still looked shell-shocked, the colour was beginning to flood

back to her cheeks in two red spots and her eyes regained their bright diamond glitter.

When Kirstie had climbed into the passenger seat, it was to confront her sister lounging

comfortably, one slim arm over the top of the steering-wheel, the blue eyes vivid.

After a moment, Louise said, softly, 'Whoever would have thought it?'

Kirstie closed her eyes. God, if it was one thing she wasn't in the mood for, it was a post

mortem. 'What do you mean?' she asked tiredly, although she knew full well.

'You,' said Louise. Her fingernails tapped a gentle rhythm against the wheel. 'Braving the

lion in his den, so to speak. You must have broken all sorts of records in returning from

your trip. Have you even been home yet?'

She raised one hand to run it through her short-cropped hair, making the wispy ends

even more wild. Then she turned her head, met Louise's curious stare and said flatly, 'I

never went. There was no business trip. I took the helicopter, took Francis and flew to

Vermont for the weekend.'

That shook Louise's new-found composure. The fingernail tapping stopped, her pretty

mouth dropped and she all but shrieked,
'You what?'

'You heard what I said.' Kirstie turned away to look out of her window. She saw nothing

of the wide city street but thought again of the hot, bright sunshine reflected off the still

lake waters. She made a wry, sarcastic gesture. 'Not that he wanted to go, of course. I

forced him. I was going to keep him away from you until your wedding on Saturday, but

he—convinced me it was better to get hold of you so that we could all talk about it face

to face.'

'You—forced—Francis?' Parrot-like, her sister repeated the words as if they were a

foreign language. Then she started to laugh. 'You're joking! Aren't you?'

'Not,' said Kirstie, heavy with remorse, 'quite.'

'But how? I mean—Francis, of all people—forgive me, darling, but you couldn't exactly

have twisted his arm!'

'No,' she agreed, her grey eyes empty. 'I used Dad's old gun. Oh, there weren't any

bullets in it, but he didn't know that, and at first he didn't know me from Eve.'

'But how could you?' Louise demanded incredulously. 'How dared you?'

The shock in her sister's voice made her throw her hand out in a sudden, sharp

movement. 'Oh, I don't know!' she exclaimed. 'I admit it was a lunatic thing to do, but '

Kirstie stabbed her sister with .a fierce, painful glance. She whispered fiercely, 'Maybe

you just thought to cover your tracks, but you don't know how convincing you can be!'

'Oh, Kirstie,' Louise murmured, her cornflower eyes filling with easy tears. Her right

hand fluttered out to touch Kirstie's shoulder. 'And you did all that for me. I—I don't

know what to say.'

'Don't say anything.' She slid down in her seat, put her elbow to her open window and

covered her eyes in an effort to hold on to her control. It was her responsibility. It always

had been. She was the one who had to live with the fact that what she had done to

Francis was unforgivable. 'Just don't ever do that to me again.'

Left with nothing to say, Louise moved at last to start the car and take them home. The

gaudy, multicoloured lights advertising off-licences, fast-food restaurants, late-night

grocers, hotels, all flashed past them with what seemed like brilliant speed. It was a

totally different world from the log cabin, and it was the real one.

Kirstie stared at it all passing by until she was shaken out of her brooding by the light

sound of Louise's sudden inexplicable laugh. 'Fancy that,' said Louise softly, as her small

foot pressed down on the accelerator as they reached the freeway. The wind whipped her

sister's long silken strands into a luscious, honeyed cloud. 'You and Francis spending a

whole, secluded weekend up at the cabin. It sounds—it sounds so very intimate!'

'Don't make me laugh!' Kirstie snarled, as if lashed by a whip.

But Louise must have misunderstood and thought she meant it light-heartedly, for at that

her sister laughed again.

CHAPTER SIX

SUMMER percolated into July, with no significant letup from the heat. Shirts stuck to

sweaty backs, the Coke machine in the Philips Aviation offices broke down from over-

use and tempers were undeniably short.

One Friday morning, Kirstie perched cross-legged on a wooden crate in the small hold

of the cargo plane and took inventory of the stock being brought aboard. She was

dressed in a khaki flying suit made of the lightest possible fabric, and still she was

baking. Her grandfather Whit was grumbling and roaring at the ground crew; the

irascible shouts echoed up the hatch and seemed magnified in the confined space where

she crouched.

She'd volunteered for the inventory job, for, though it was physically rather

uncomfortable, it was purely mechanical and left her free to huddle in a corner and let

her mind wander where it would.

It had been four smouldering weeks since the Bomb. Kirstie always referred to Louise's

wedding fiasco that way. It had her shaking her head just to remember the day. The

invited guests had arrived, the minister had been dressing in the choir room, Neil had

been to one side talking with his best man, and Louise had refused to budge. Point-

blank.

Their eldest brother Paul had tried to reason with her. The minister had come. Neil had

come. So had Grandma and Whit. They had all talked. The bridesmaids had cajoled. The

minister had left and called off the wedding in a formal announcement to the

congregation, while, tucked away in a corner, Kirstie had watched the commencing

drama with horror and her other brother Christian had laughed.

Something of Kirstie's perspective had changed since the time spent in Vermont with

Francis, and she had begun to see a disturbing pattern developing in Louise's behaviour.

After the ruckus had died down, after the guests had left and the wedding decorations

had been dismantled and carted away, Kirstie had gone back to the house she had shared

with Louise with a cold feeling in her heart, and waited.

The scene she had expected was not long in coming. . .

Louise came in later that evening, her eyes swollen with crying, her pretty face wearing

an expression of haggard distress. When she saw Kirstie curled up at one end of the

battered comfortable sofa, she made a move as if she would throw herself into her

younger sister's arms, but something in Kirstie's expression stopped her.

Kirstie watched Louise pause and drag in a deep, shuddering breath. 'Well,' said Louise

heavily, 'that's it. It's done.'

'Yes,' replied Kirstie quietly.

The china-blue eyes flickered and one of Louise's shapely, graceful hands fluttered up to

press against her wrinkled forehead. 'How could I have waited so long without

realising?' Louise murmured. 'How could I have fooled myself into believing that

marriage with Neil was the right thing to do?'

'I don't know,' said Kirstie, and she was rewarded with a sharp glance.

Louise glided over to an armchair and flung herself into it, burying her face in her hands.

'It's just that it seemed so expected. Everyone believed we would marry! His family did,

Grandma, Paul, you. It was so easy to go along with it.'

'Until the last moment, when everyone was hurt.' Kirstie didn't feel cold or condemning,

nor did she sound it. She was merely detached, and she couldn't give Louise the

sympathy she was so obviously angling for.

Louise lifted her head, her blue eyes flooding with easy tears. 'Until today,' she

corrected, 'when I just couldn't go through with it. No matter how painful it was, no

matter how unbearable the look in Neil's eyes, I had to call it off, for his sake as much as

for mine. The marriage wouldn't have worked and he would have been hurt as well. It

was best to end it before we both put years into a marriage that was destined to fail.

What if we'd had children? What would have happened to them?'

'Why are you explaining all this to me?' Kirstie asked, her hands clenched on the

cushion she was holding to her stomach, her mouth tight. She already knew what her

sister's answer would be. She'd heard it before.

Louise said softly, gently, 'Because you don't understand. You never would have left it

until the last minute. You would have seen. You're stronger than I am.'

Now, perspiring in the metal hold of the little plane and immersed in her gritty work,

Kirstie realised that something inside her had been waiting for Louise to back out of the

wedding, ever since that final confrontation in Francis's apartment. All the signs had

been evident. Louise had thought she had wanted Neil, then was presented with a bigger,

more glittering toy, so she'd thrown away the one she had had.

It was not, she knew, that her sister was malicious or wicked. It was just that Louise was

supremely selfish. She did whatever she wanted to do, and she justified it to whichever

person she was talking to in their own language. She enjoyed acting out the required

emotions. Everyone thought they knew her well, Paul, Grandma, Neil—even she had.

Christian knew better. Kirstie had always wondered at Louise's coolness towards him,

and now she knew why. Her tall, charmingly irresponsible brother saw Louise for what

she really was and was unaffected, even amused by her. If it was one thing Louise did

not have, it was a sense of humour. She was as incapable of laughing at herself as she

was of passing a mirror without looking into it.

Kirstie's newer, more complete understanding of her sister changed her definition of

Francis's kidnap from being a terrible misunderstanding to a ridiculous farce, except she

couldn't bring herself to laugh at it. Louise had thought she was being so clever in

manipulating her, until Kirstie had gone off at the deep end and had done something

totally uncalculated. Louise was not a creative thinker. There was no way she could have

foreseen it.

And Francis—an appalled sound bubbled out of Kirstie—Francis had been totally in the

dark. Every incredulous look she could remember, every sign of incomprehension was

now, to her, hideously appropriate. How carefully he had worked at bringing her around

to a reasonable point of view! What a lunatic he must think her!

No, Kirstie couldn't laugh about it. Depression settled in the pit of her stomach at just

thinking about that whole catastrophic weekend. If she were ever to come face to face

again with Francis Grayson, she would pull up the carpet and crawl right underneath.

Not that it would ever happen. She had no doubt that she was enough reason to make

him avoid the whole state of New Jersey.

She wondered, cynically, how long it would take Louise to get in touch with him again.

Then she told herself, as she already had, so many times, that it was none of her

business. Of course she didn't care.

Why would she?

Footsteps stomped up to the open hatch, and her grandfather stuck his grizzled head

inside. 'Hey! That's the last. Didn't you hear me?'

The testy exclamation made Kirstie jump. She shook herself out of her reverie and

stared at him. 'Sorry, no. I was thinking of something else.'

'Well, I hope you got the tally right,' he said. 'We ain't unstacking and repacking in this

heat just because you were daydreaming.'

'No, it's all right,' Kirstie said, checking her figures. 'I got them all down. I just wasn't

listening to your shouting.'

'That's the trouble,' mumbled her grandfather, screwing his face into a frown. She stared,

amused. Heavens, he enjoyed a good grumble. 'If people listened to me more, I wouldn't

have to shout, would I? Well, what are you waiting for, Christmas? Climb on out of there

and get this crate off the tarmac. You should have left a half an hour ago.'

'Yes, Grandpa,' said Kirstie meekly, a smile trembling at the corners of her lips.

His faded blue eyes twinkled at her, making a lie of his behaviour. Then he ducked back

out and howled at his ground crew, 'Go on, get out of here! Go get some lunch, and give