He’d promised himself to avoid her, but when he’d seen boys getting her drunk for a laugh he’d had to step in and rescue her.

He’d taken the house key from her purse and carried her up the stairs to what he’d guessed had been her room. He’d removed her clothes because if her mother had found her fully dressed and asleep she might have guessed the truth. He was a doctor, and impersonal, so he’d thought.

But he’d found himself holding a girl wearing a bra and panties so wispy as to have been almost nonexistent. Laying her gently on the bed, he’d been shocked to find how his hands had longed to linger over her silky skin and perfect shape. He’d hung up her dress, using the controlled movements to impose discipline on his mind and, through his mind, his sensations. Discipline, control, order. That was how it had always been with him.

But not this time. Fear had seized him, and he’d got out as fast as he’d been able to.

He’d fled to the imagined safety of Lilian, a girlfriend as sedate and studious as himself. But there had been no safety there, or anywhere. After that it was too late. It had always been too late.

CHAPTER THREE

HETTA and Elinor shared their cramped little room both night and day. It meant that Elinor spent half her night listening for Hetta’s breathing, terrified lest her child had slipped away in the darkness. Each dawn she gave thanks that Hetta was still alive, and tried to convince herself that she wasn’t losing ground. Every morning she went to work and telephoned home after the first hour, to hear Daisy say, ‘She’s fine.’ In the late afternoon she hurried home at the first chance, anxious to look at Hetta’s face and lie to herself that the little girl wasn’t really looking paler or more tired.