'Yes, but the car I've got my eye on-'

'I know the one you've got your eye on and it's far too expensive.'

'It's my money, isn't it?'

'Yes, and I'm going to make sure there's plenty left when you're twenty-one.'

Mark groaned, but dropped the subject and went upstairs to unpack. Sonya was making tea. She was a thin, sharp-faced girl of thirteen, with a candid tongue and a disconcerting ability to make her mother laugh. Despite some routine mother-daughter battles they were good friends.

'The way he goes on about that money,' she said now, 'you'd think he was the cheated heir in some Victorian melodrama. Honestly, he's a pain in the-'

'Sonya!'

'I was going to say in the neck,' Sonya insisted with an air of innocence that didn't fool her mother. 'And he is. It was much nicer when he wasn't here.'

'Darling, what could I do but take him in? He's a babe in arms in the common sense department.'

'Oh, come on, Mum. Mark's got it sussed. That little-boy-lost stuff is supposed to make us all run around after him.'

Lee chuckled. 'Well, he failed with you, didn't he?He's improved since he's been living here. One day his wife will thank you.'

'I wish he'd get married and move out, like he keeps threatening to.'

'Does he? I hadn't heard.'

'He says if he was a married man you'd have to hand over his money.'

'Oh, I see. Leaving him free to blue the lot on expensive cars.'

'Why don't you let him have a car, Mum? Then he might save us all a lot of trouble by eloping, like you did.'

Lee sipped her tea, glad of an excuse not to respond to this.

She'd been fifteen when she'd become madly infatuated with Jimmy Meredith, and just sixteen when she'd run away with him to Gretna Green. Almost at once she'd discovered her tragic mistake. Jimmy was addicted to the drug of excitement. It had been exciting to court the daughter of a prosperous businessman thwarting his attempts to break the couple up. It had been even more exciting to plan a runaway match, dodge her frantically pursuing parents, and confront them in the smithy at Gretna Green, defying them to do their worst. But when he found himself married, with a child on the way, he grew bored.