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Yes, she would miss their support, their friendship, and they would not be easy to replace. She didn’t make friends easily, preferring her own company. Another legacy from her past; a deep-rooted fear, perhaps, of allowing herself to get too close to anyone because she feared the eventual pain of losing them.

No, it was for Lucy’s sake that she had taken this dangerous step into a new world. It was because for Lucy she wanted so much more than she had had herself. Not necessarily more in a material sense; it was going to be a long time before the business allowed them to live any more luxuriously than they had done in the city.

But at least here, with the clean, fresh air and the wide-open horizons, Lucy would have the benefit of an environment a hundred times better than the one she had had in the city.

Already she had told Tania in amazed accents that, in her new school, there would only be twenty other children in her class. In the city she had shared a classroom with almost sixty other pupils. Here the children had access to playing fields, to tennis courts, to a local sports centre, which, unlike the one in the city, was not a long bus ride away through the heart of a city in which no sensible unescorted woman walked after dark, and certainly where no mother could allow her child to venture unprotected.

Yes, she had made the right decision, no matter how many people might shake their heads and predict failure for her.

She might not be able to provide Lucy with the secure emotional background that came from two loving parents who were committed to one another and to the welfare of their children, but at least she was doing the best she could for her.

And, anyway, marriage wasn’t always the blissful, self-fulfilling, self-contained state of happiness and security those on the outside of it tended to imagine.

Take Nicholas Forbes, for instance, her late relative’s solicitor and now her own. He had a beautiful wife, the stepsister of a very wealthy local businessman, two healthy children, a successful practice, a home on the outskirts of the town in one of its most prestigious areas, which Tania had heard a rumour had been given to them as a wedding present by Clarissa Forbes’s stepbrother, and yet, according to local gossip, Nicholas Forbes and his wife were far from happy.

And it was not only gossip. Nicholas himself had indicated as much to her before she could stop him and make it plain to him that the last thing she wanted was to involve herself in anyone else’s private life. That the very last thing she appreciated in any man was what was to her an outright betrayal of the trust and privacy which should exist between a committed couple. Personally she thought it extremely disloyal for one partner in a relationship to discuss the private problems of that relationship with an outsider, especially when that outsider was not a properly trained counsellor or adviser. Besides, she barely knew Nicholas Forbes. As her solicitor, she had found his advice, his willingness to put himself out for her and help her with all the many small problems involved in setting up her small business, heart-warming and encouraging, making her think that perhaps her years of determinedly distancing herself from the entire male sex were now something she ought to outgrow. She had liked Nicholas, but not specifically as a man. She had liked him as a person, a fellow human being, but sexually … She made a tiny moue.

Sexually she was completely immune to any and all members of the male sex and that was the way she wanted things to stay.

She was an intelligent woman. She realised that not all men were necessarily like Lucy’s father, that even he might have found maturity and wisdom as he grew up. But, despite her awareness that logically not all men had to be disliked and shunned, emotionally and as far as her body was concerned, physically, she only felt safe and in control when they were held at a good distance.

She did her best not to communicate her fear, her dislike to Lucy. Idealistically, maternally, she wanted for her daughter all that she had not had herself and that included the self-confidence, the freedom, the belief in herself and in others which would enable her to reach out when the time came and to forge the kind of emotional and physical bonds with another human being which she had never been able to.

For Lucy she wanted it all: happiness, success, security. She would never encourage her daughter to consider herself less of a human being because she was female. She would bring her up in a full awareness of her own assets. Most of all for Lucy she wanted the security that came from knowing that she would never ever have to depend on anyone else, either emotionally or materially.

Lucy was a clever child, a child who would do so much better in a smaller school environment where she would receive more individual tuition and attention. She also made friends easily, something which she herself had never been able to do.

She had no fears of Lucy being isolated or alone in their new home. Already she had made friends with another girl whose family lived half a dozen doors away. Her parents owned and ran a local decorating shop, her father was a decorator, and it had been he who had papered the awkward-to-deal-with ceilings in their own upstairs flat, cheerfully managing the sloping ceilings of the old eighteenth-century building.

Ann and Tom Fielding were a pleasant couple in their late thirties. Susan was their youngest child, and had two older brothers, and, although Tania had felt her normal reticence with Tom Fielding, despite his genuine kindness, she had felt very drawn to Ann Fielding’s warm personality.

The couple had gone out of their way to welcome her to the local community, giving her generous advice about her potential business and making both Lucy and herself welcome in their home.

Their own shop, unlike hers, was double-fronted, with a generous-sized flat above it in which Ann Fielding had allowed her artistic talents full licence.

Tania had marvelled at the effect of her marbled bathroom, a painting technique which Ann had modestly assured her was quite easy to pick up.

In addition, their property, like her own, had a long rear garden, but, unlike her wilderness, theirs was neatly segmented into a pretty courtyard for sitting in, plus a well-maintained vegetable plot, the sight of which had made her own fingers itch to get to grips with her smaller garden.

Lucy was round at the Fieldings’ now, and Tania broke off her contemplation of her shop window, with its artistically draped ‘branch’ and its tumble of fallen gold and russet leaves in shades that toned with the display of winter brogues and boots, to glance at her watch.

Heavens, was it really that time already? Lucy would be beginning to think she had abandoned her. The window display had taken longer than she had expected, and then there had been that long telephone call from a supplier. It was time she changed out of her scruffy working jeans and T-shirt and went round to the Fieldings.

Ann Fielding had very kindly invited both of them to join her family for tea, an invitation which Tania had hesitantly accepted, not wanting to take too much advantage of Ann Fielding’s generosity and uncomfortably conscious that as yet she was not in a position to repay her hospitality.

In fact it was an invitation she would probably have refused if it weren’t for the fact that last night, totally out of the blue, just as she and Lucy had been about to sit down, her solicitor, Nicholas Forbes, had arrived unannounced and unexpected, explaining that he was on his way past and had thought he would call.

Tania wasn’t used to having men in her home and neither was Lucy, and Tania had been conscious of a feeling of resentment and irritation which she had tried to repress. After all, Nicholas Forbes was merely being kind, merely being friendly. And yet … And yet …

Was she wrong in imagining that there had been something in the way he had eyed her T-shirt and jeans-clad figure, something that, while not remotely lustful, had not been entirely without sexual curiosity either?

She had come a long way from the inexperienced girl of eighteen who had silently endured the painful fumblings of the much stronger and heavier boy who had been her first and only sexual partner. She knew a good deal more about the human race now at twenty-nine than she had done at eighteen. Sex was something she avoided, something she had cut out of her life. She felt no sexual desire, no sexual curiosity, and had no need of a man in her life in any sexual sense, and that was the way she preferred it.

There had been men who had attempted to change her attitude, but she had always firmly and determinedly rebuffed them, making it clear that they were wasting their time, and she had no idea why on earth a man like Nicholas Forbes with a wife as attractive as Clarissa Forbes should show any interest in a woman like her, who could not afford to dress in anything other than the cheapest chainstore clothes, who could never afford the money or the time to visit a hairdresser or beauty salon, whose hands were serviceable rather than elegant, with short unpainted nails—hands which were far more used to the hard realities of life than the sensual pleasures. Unless it was because she was on her own.

She had come up against that particular phenomenon too often and from too many unlikely sources to be naïve about it any more. The most unlikely men could betray the most unwelcome sexual harassment when it suited them. There had been that teacher of Lucy’s who had called round to the flat on the pretext of wanting to discuss her work. There had been her superior at the shoe shop. There had been countless others, all of them no doubt respectable and well-thought-of men, but all of them, as far as she was concerned, men who were being disloyal to their wives and families, to whom they most owed commitment.

Personally she could think of no reason why Nicholas Forbes should want to spend time with her. She was not pretty, not in the way that his wife was. Tania had seen her once when she had called at Nicholas’s office, bursting into the room and totally ignoring Tania, and she was a pretty, fluffy blonde woman in her early thirties, with a slightly petulant, spoilt expression and the mannerisms of a little girl.

Tania hadn’t been particularly drawn to her. Just listening to her pouting little girl demands as she persuaded Nicholas to agree to her plans for redecorating their drawing-room had confirmed Tania’s initial view that as women they were complete opposites.

She doubted if Clarissa Forbes had ever wanted for anything in her entire life. The clothes she was wearing were expensive designer models, her hair, her hands, everything about her proclaimed that Clarissa was an adored, petted woman whose single most important preoccupation in life was herself and her own needs.

She was barely five feet two with round blue eyes and a pretty-pretty face, making Tania at five feet seven, with her thick, heavy mane of conker-brown hair and her cheap cotton skirt and blouse, feel uncomfortably conscious of the difference between them.

Perhaps because no one had ever told her so, Tania herself was unaware of the classic beauty of her oval face, with its high cheekbones and well defined lines. She had no idea that the length of her neck and the fullness of her mouth gave her a sensual vulnerability that men found fascinating, or that her lack of artifice, her inability to pretend and pout, might be like a much-needed glass of clean, pure water to a man who had come to feel sickened by the syrupy mock sweetness of a wife who could turn into a virago the moment she was opposed in any way.

Because she had no wish to attract the male sex, Tania assumed that they felt no attraction towards her. Certainly she did nothing to attract their attention or desire. Certainly she never encouraged them to believe that she wanted or needed them in any way, and, because she was the woman she was, she genuinely had no idea that her very indifference, her very lack of interest, only caused men to be more attracted to her, more curious about her, more determined to breach the walls she had so obviously put up around herself.

She had got rid of Nicholas Forbes just as quickly as she could, firmly explaining that she considered this particular time of day sacrosanct to Lucy. Undeterred, Nicholas Forbes had offered to take her out for a drink so that they could talk in private, but she had quickly refused.

She felt that she had made it more than plain to him that, while she welcomed his conscientiousness as her solicitor, there could be no personal relationship between them, especially one that involved the kind of discussions about his marriage which she knew could only lead to problems.

Even if the kind of friendship he had been offering her had included Clarissa, even if Clarissa herself had been willing to welcome her to their circle of friends, which she quite plainly was not, Tania doubted if she would have felt comfortable with them. The Forbeses, while not jet-setters, certainly had a very comfortable and affluent lifestyle. Ann Fielding had mentioned in conversation that Clarissa’s brother was an extremely wealthy man and that through his various companies and contacts he had put a good deal of business Nicholas’s way.

‘I was at school with Nick,’ she had added, pulling a face as she commented, ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I suspect that, as far as his marriage is concerned, he’s beginning to discover that marrying a rich girl isn’t all a bed of roses. Clarissa is very spoilt. James dotes on her and spoils her to death. It’s amazing how stupid even the most intelligent of men can be, isn’t it? There’s only three or four years between them; James’s father was Clarissa’s mother’s second husband and both of them were killed in a skiing accident just before Clarissa’s twentieth birthday. She went completely to pieces and although legally she was an adult, James stepped in and virtually took the place of their parents overnight, and he’s gone on shielding and protecting her ever since. Too much so, if you ask me. He’s made a rod for his own back in indulging her so much. She’s very possessive about him, and I doubt if she’s ever going to allow any woman he becomes involved with to oust her as number one in his life, which is a shame, really.’

‘Perhaps he enjoys their relationship,’ Tania suggested. ‘Some men seem to get a kick out of keeping the women in their lives dependent on them either emotionally or financially.’

Her comment had earned her a shrewd, thoughtful look from Ann Fielding and the comment, ‘Some do, yes, but I wouldn’t put James Warren in that class. He’s far too intelligent, too … too secure in himself emotionally to need that kind of hold on another human being. No, I think he’s simply grown so used to believing that Clarissa needs him that he can’t see the truth about her, and she, of course, takes good care that he doesn’t see it. She isn’t at all popular locally. Most people feel rather sorry for Nicholas, even though they also feel that he’s rather brought his own misery down upon himself. Clarissa will never be satisfied with anything that Nicky can give her, not while she’s so aware of the difference between the lifestyle she had with James and the lifestyle that Nicky can provide for her.’

‘But they seem very comfortably off,’ Tania hadn’t been able to stop herself protesting, remembering the glimpse she had had of the brand new mock-Georgian house she had seen through its encircling protective trees, on the one occasion when Nicholas had driven her past his home.

Personally she would have preferred an older, more established property and certainly she doubted that she would have wanted the frilly festoon blinds and over-decorated rooms she had heard Clarissa describing so enthusiastically to her husband the afternoon she had interrupted their meeting. But Tania accepted fair-mindedly that people had different tastes and ideas.

‘Well, they are,’ Ann agreed, wrinkling her nose. ‘But I suspect that Clarissa stills gets an allowance from James. Certainly she could never afford to run that expensive Mercedes nor to buy all those designer clothes, as well as keeping both boys at such an expensive prep school, if James weren’t helping them. I doubt she even knows the meaning of the word ‘‘economy’’. They have a cleaner, and until the boys were at school they had a nanny. No matter how good Nicky’s practice is I doubt it runs to financing all that lot, and even the nicest of men must feel the burden of having his wife’s stepbrother have such a large financial say in their affairs.

‘Of course he’s tied hand and foot, really. The majority of his business has come to him through James. That’s no secret. I don’t envy him one iota … even if at times I do wonder what it would be like to be able to go out and buy all three of mine new clothes at the same time.’

Ann had laughed unselfconsciously as she made this last statement, causing Tania to warm to her even more. Had she known Ann better she might have been tempted to confide in her and ask her advice, but in the early days after Lucy’s birth being independent and showing that she could cope by herself had become such a fierce necessity in her life that she still found it very hard to lean on others, no matter how sympathetic they appeared.

This feeling she had that Nicholas was perhaps being a little more friendly towards her than was strictly necessary was something she would have to deal with on her own.

With a little tact and diplomacy, it should not be too difficult to do so, and, anyway, perhaps she was over-reacting a little, being a touch too sensitive to what was really no more than genuine friendliness on his part.

He had certainly neither said nor done anything to suggest anything different, and she certainly had far more important things to think about. Such as her shop, for instance.

Another few days and the shop would be opening. She felt her body clench with apprehension and excitement. She had taken extensive advertising in the local Press, and she had timed the opening of her business well, done all she could to ensure its success. The rest was in the lap of the gods and she could only hope that they were disposed to smile kindly on her endeavours.