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'Oh no, no, not as bad as that, but he has been involved in an accident.'

She whispered faintly, 'Like Daddy?'

'No, darling, he's only broken a leg. Here, you'd better read it.' He handed her the paper. 'As he's a celebrity, there's quite a bit about him.'

Sonya read the article. The reporter, having an odd column to fill, had contacted Sven upon his discharge from hospital. He said facetiously that he could not say where because that would expose the skater to the embarrassing attentions of his many lady fans, and that had been the condition upon which he had been given the interview. Sven, or Steve Peterson as it would be remembered, was ... and here followed a list of his achievements. Of mixed parentage, there had been queries about his nationality, but he was a British citizen and his latter triumphs had been won when he was a member of the British team. His sister from Sweden had come over to look after him and he was probably going back with her when he was fit enough for the journey. He would be a great loss to the skating world, since it was doubtful if his leg, fractured in several places, would be strong enough to permit him to compete again, though Mr Peterson had assured him that he would certainly try.

But Sonya was sure that was only a brave facade. Sven knew his career was finished, and what she had heard in ruined Pompeii was the echo of his despair, and he had called to her.

'Derek, I must go back to England,' she told him.

Derek looked at her appalled. 'Oh, I say, just when you're beginning to look better. You know you were going to stay for another week, and you need to, to feel the benefit of the change.'

'All the same, I must go,' she said feverishly. 'At once, if I can get a plane seat.'

'But why? Because of Sven's accident? Oh, I know he was your skating partner and all that, but he treated you badly, didn't he, and it says in that paper he doesn't want to be bothered by female fans.'

'But I'm not a fan. Derek, I must go—I'm his wife.'

*

Derek's week was up next day, and Sonya managed to obtain a seat on his flight due to a cancellation at the last minute. After her admission she had had to tell him that after their hasty marriage they had quarrelled.

'It was more my fault than his,' she confessed. 'I ... there was a misunderstanding ... Sven is awfully proud ... but I know he wants me now, I... I had a message.' Which was the only way she could explain her strange experience at Pompeii. 'I must go to him.'

Which was not as easy as it sounded because she did not know where he was living. Mr Foster could not tell her; his bank had orders not to disclose his address. There remained the paper whose reporter had interviewed him, but she shrank from approaching it for that would mean disclosing her identity which would give it another story and one she was loth to tell. Before exposing herself, she decided she would try the club. If Jan were still there he might know, or could give her a clue. She had wired the Mathesons to apprise them of her return and went home to be greeted by a rapturous Tessa, having disposed of Derek with a promise to let him know what transpired. She rang the club and learned that Jan van Goort, though officially retired, would be in attendance that evening. Too restless to be able to settle down, she decided to drive there and wait for his appearance. Possibly someone else there might be able to help her.

There was. As she entered the main door she came face to face with Thomasina.

'Hi, stranger,' Tom greeted her. 'What have you come for? Got quite a tan, haven't you? I heard a rumour that you and Derek Barnes had eloped to the Riviera, but you seem to have mislaid him.'

Thomasina had gone back to tight slacks and extravagant sweaters, and wore all her warpaint again, but her eyes were unhappy and there was a weary droop to her mouth.

'Rumour as usual has exaggerated,' Sonya returned. 'I have spent a week's holiday at the same resort as Derek, but we didn't elope.' She spoke slowly, collecting her thoughts. Though it irked her to have to do so, she must ask Tom about Sven for she would know where he was, though she could not be living with him if his sister had come to look after him. 'I came back because of Sven's accident,' she went on. 'I ... I felt I ought to ... after all, we were partners.' She paused, biting her lip, wondering how to put her request and how much Thomasina knew.

'My God!' Thomasina exclaimed. 'You've got a nerve! After treating him like dirt, you come strolling in saying you felt you ought to see him, when the poor devil's whole life has been blasted. You never ought to have gone away, gallivanting on the continent with another man when your duty was to stay here with him. What he ever saw in you, you pie-faced little puritan, beats me, but some men like 'em pure and
innocent. I thought it must be the money, but the lunatic won't take it.' (So Tom knew everything, Sonya thought dully, and she was violently pro-Sven.) 'He's one of the finest men who ever walked.' Thomasina's voice lowered and softened. 'Many women would give their eye teeth just to have a kind word from him, but he had to go and marry you, and you—you threw him away. Some stupid tiff about your inheritance. If I'd all the money in the world I'd think it poor exchange for his love.'

'But he never loved me,' Sonya said.

Thomasina's pencilled eyebrows rose incredulously.

'Are you dumb or merely stupid, Sonya Vincent?' she demanded. 'Would any man behave in the idiotic way Sven has done ever since he met you, unless he was blinded by love?'

'He'd a funny way of showing it.' Sonya in her turn was equally incredulous. That Sven had been in love with her throughout their association was impossible to believe, though she always had wondered why he had chosen to partner her. 'In fact,' she went on, 'I always thought it was you he cared about... in that way.'

He must have gone to Thomasina when he had left herself and poured out all his woes to her or she could not have known all she did.

'In no way,' Thomasina said sadly. 'It was always you. Oh, I tried my damnedest to get him, and I'd have murdered you with pleasure if I'd had the opportunity. But he didn't want me, only, as
a ...
what did they call it in old-fashioned plays? The confidant. When you threw him out he confided in me. And then I think he regretted that he'd told me. He isn't a man who expresses his feelings easily.'

'Have you been living with him?' Sonya asked bluntly.

Thomasina stared at her. 'So you think that? And why shouldn't he, when you were off with young Derek? But he wouldn't. Oh, he was ever so sweet about it, but he said he couldn't, he only cared for one woman —you, you mutt. He went back to that little hole in Chelsea he calls a flat and stayed there eating his heart out. He had to withdraw from the International because you let him down, not that he seemed to care. "Find another girl," I told him. "There must be heaps of efficient skaters around." "There is no other girl," was all he would say. You must have a heart of ice, Sonya; we used to call you the ice maiden when you used to go stalking through the club with your snooty superior airs, and how apt that was!'

'I was only shy,' Sonya defended herself automatically. Brain and heart were in a turmoil. Could what Thomasina had revealed possibly be true? And if it were, how could she ever make amends to Sven? He had so effectively concealed his real feelings for her except for his rare outbursts of passion, which had been more punitive than affectionate, that she had some excuse, but there had been small signs, which deceived by her belief in his yen for Tom, she had failed to heed.

'What have you come for tonight?' Thomasina asked abruptly. 'You haven't been here for ages. Oh, I suppose you're meeting Derek. How you can possibly prefer him to Sven is quite beyond me. You must need your head examined!'

'I don't,' Sonya told her. 'Derek's just a friend who's stuck by me when I needed friends. Actually I came
here to see if anyone could give me Sven's address.'

She looked at the other girl wistfully. Thomasina would know it, but there was little hope that after her storm of invective she would reveal it.

Thomasina began to laugh. 'That's rich I' she gasped. 'You don't even know your own husband's whereabouts?'

Sonya flushed miserably. 'That's not my fault if he chooses to keep me in ignorance,' she returned with spirit. Then her voice broke. 'Oh, Tom, I seem to have made a dreadful mess of everything. I didn't know Sven cared like you say, but I do love him and I want to find him. Please, please tell me where he is.'

'Why should I tell you?' Thomasina demanded. 'Do you suppose he'll want to see you after all you've done to him?'

Sonya hung her head. She might have known it would be useless to appeal to Tom. At the moment when she had at last realised that she was not only in love with Sven, but loved him with a depth of feeling that she would be unlikely to ever feel again, she was debarred from him by another woman's resentment.

'It isn't very likely,' she admitted humbly, and then she remembered Pompeii, 'but I think he does.'

Thomasina regarded her maliciously; it did her ego good to have her rival at her mercy, but her own love for Sven was genuine and transcended her normal selfishness.

'You may be right,' she conceded. She drew a deep sigh. 'I'll take you to him, though if I'd any hope that he'd forget you and turn to me, I'd see you dead first.'

Sonya looked straight into the round blue eyes, fully appreciating what this concession had cost her.

'You're very generous, Tom,' she said quietly. 'I'll never forget what you've done. But there's no need to come with me. If you'll give me the directions I'll find it on my own.'

'I doubt it,' Thomasina returned. 'It's not easy to find if you don't know the neighbourhood.' She smiled wryly. 'Don't deny me the satisfaction of seeing Sven's face when you walk in on him. It's all the fun I'm likely to get out of this reunion, which'll be more pain than pleasure to me.'

Sonya hesitated. To meet Sven again under Thomasina's jealous eyes was not the way she wanted it at all, especially as she was not sure of her reception. It might be Tom would triumph after all.

Thomasina opened the door and looked back.

'Come along, what are you waiting for? Hasn't he waited long enough?'

Sonya went.

Thomasina
picked her route through the stop-go traffic chaos of the metropolis with the familiarity of habit, and Sonya realised unhappily that she had come that way only too frequently. Even so, she was not a good driver, admitting that she had not owned a car for very long. Prior to that she said she had been dependent for transport upon the goodwill of her boy-friends.

'But they expected too much recompense,' she observed laconically.

Sonya had rather dreaded further upbraidings, but Thomasina chattered away about her own affairs. She was booked for several foreign assignments in the summer, displaying British styles in Continental houses.

'So when you're swelling with Sven's baby, you can think of me showing the latest silhouette,' she said maliciously. 'I suppose you want a baby?'

Sonya said she did.

'Sooner you than me. I'm not maternally-minded, though ... her expression changed, the hard brightness softening, 'perhaps I wouldn't have minded Sven's, but I'd be a rotten mother,' she resumed her lively chatter. She jumped traffic lights with cheerful disregard and Sonya began to wonder if they would arrive in one piece. But arrive they did; after reaching Fulham and turning into a maze of side streets, Thomasina pulled up in front of a tall Victorian house which had been converted into flats.

'Here we are. Hop out. There's a place to park the car round the corner, and I'll be with you in a sec.'

Sonya did as she was told and gazed up at the unlighted windows. Only in one flat on the top floor, did the residents appear to be at home. So this was where Sven lived, had lived during all the time she had known him, but he had never taken her there or said much about it. The house looked as secret and unrevealing as the man himself.

Thomasina came to join her and led the way into an entrance hall from which a concrete stairway wound its way upwards.

'I'm afraid there's no lift,' she remarked, 'but the climb is good for one's figure. Sven declares that Londoners don't take enough exercise.'

She quoted him with the casualness extended to intimate friends, and Sonya could not help asking:

'You've been here often?'

'Many times, but though the ascent may burn up my calories, it never got me any further with him,' Thomasina said bitterly.

Sonya wondered if she came by invitation or on her own initiative. Her doubts began to revive. Tom seemed to have been seeing an awful lot of Sven for a platonic friendship.

The door into the top flat was open, so Sonya had no means of discovering if Thomasina had a key, but she wanted to believe Tom's statements were genuine, and though she had been a frequent visitor, welcome or otherwise, she had not lived with Sven.

The little hall had four doors, and accommodated a hatstand and a telephone on a small table. Sonya saw with a pang Sven's leather coat hanging on the stand;

how often had she seen him wearing it. In this strange place it seemed like an old acquaintance.

The door into the kitchen was ajar and as Thomasina pushed it further open, a modernised kitchen was revealed. It was large for the size of the flat and everything was very clean and bright. The walls were tiled in pale green half way up, the remainder painted white. Gaily patterned curtains hung at the window, matching the linoleum on the floor. There was a plastic breakfast counter and plastic-topped stools. At the sink a woman was standing wearing a white overall, her fair hair the same colour as Sven's.

'Hi, Ingrid,' Tom hailed her. 'How is he today?'

'Not too good,' the woman replied without turning round. 'He broods. Once I've got him back to Stockholm I hope he'll forget that tiresome bitch.'

She looked round and saw Thomasina was not alone.

'Oh, who is the friend?'

'The tiresome bitch,' Thomasina announced, enjoying her moment.