‘If I’d just dumped you into bed fully clothed your mother would have guessed that you were incapable. I was trying to make everything look as normal as possible. But I’m a doctor. I’m used to naked bodies, and yours meant nothing to me.’

She glared. It was maddening not to be able to tell him that this was just what she minded most.

Grace put her head out of the window. ‘Andrew, Lilian’s on the phone.’

She couldn’t help overhearing the first part of the call. ‘Lilian? Hi, honey, yes, I got here OK-it was a wonderful few days, wasn’t it? You know I do-’ He gave a soft laugh that seemed to go through Ellie.

She stood still, filled with sensations that she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Andrew was a man, not a boy. He excited her and mystified her, and he had all the allure of the unknown. But her chief sensation, although she didn’t understand it then, was childish, hurt pride.

There and then she made up her mind that she was going to make him fall in love with her, and that would show everyone. Above all it would show him that he couldn’t look down on her from lofty heights.

Oh, God, she thought now, looking back down the tunnel of years, I was only seventeen. What did I know?

The house stood well back from the road, almost hidden by trees. It was large and costly, the residence of a wealthy, successful man.

It was dusk as Andrew drove up the winding drive, and there were no lights to greet him. But for himself the house was empty, and even he spent very little time here since his wife and son had departed. He had a bachelor flat near the hospital.

This grandiose place wasn’t a home to him. It never had been. He’d bought it three years ago to satisfy Myra, who’d fallen in love with its size and luxury. She’d been the wife of the youngest top-ranking cardiothoracic surgeon in the country, and she’d expected to live appropriately. Andrew had demurred at the house, which was almost a mansion, with a porticoed door and walls covered with ivy. But Myra had insisted, and he’d yielded, as so often, to conceal the fact that his feeling for her had died. If it had ever lived.