'Daddy's back, Daddy's back,' Cindy told him unnecessarily.

'Yes, I know-' Adrian looked awkward. 'Is it really true?'

'Just for a while,' Faye said quickly. 'None of us knows what's going to happen, but we'll try to make his visit nice.'

'Daddy,' Cindy called anxiously over the staircase.

'Coming,' Garth called, and went obediently up the stairs.

Faye had warned Garth that he was Cindy's idol but now, for the first time, he understood that this was the literal truth. Her joy at his arrival had confused him. He'd found himself instinctively clinging to the little girl as his only friend in hostile territory. Her adoration touched his heart and her relief that he'd returned for her birthday, as she thought, gave him a rare twinge of guilt.

It charmed him to discover that everything about her was emphatic. Neither her actions nor her feelings was moderate. Her enthusiasms filled the horizon, and whatever pleased her was the very best in the whole world. He knew how she felt, for he'd been the same as a child, and his adult single-mindedness had played a large part in his success.

Later that evening he sought her out where she was sitting on the steps of the French windows surveying the tiny garden, and sat down beside her. At that moment he had no other motive than to repay her love by being a good father.

'It's about time we planned your birthday present,' he suggested. 'Why don't you give me a list of what you want and I'll arrange everything?'

Cindy regarded her father in a way that Faye could have warned him meant she had a secret agenda. 'Anything?' she asked.

'Anything.'

'Anything at all?'

'Absolutely anything in the whole wide world,' Garth promised incautiously. 'Tell me what it is.'

'A dog.'

He felt almost ludicrously disappointed. A dog was too easy. It gave him no chance to show Faye that she was wrong about him.