Here she'd once been unhappy and stifled. Garth had been generous, giving her everything that money could buy, but he'd also arranged her life and their children's lives, from on high. The little builder's yard he'd managed to scrape together had nearly gone under in the first year. He'd saved it by the skin of his teeth, but Faye had known nothing about this until she'd learned by accident three years later. The discovery that she'd been excluded from his inner counsels had been like a blow over the heart.

He'd failed to see that she was no longer the blindly adoring girl he'd married. She'd matured into a woman with a mind of her own, who still loved him, but now knew that he wasn't perfect.

They argued about the children. Garth was pleased with his son yet hardly seemed to notice his daughter. But Cindy adored her father and Faye often saw a wistful look in the child's eyes at his neglect.

Adrian, too, suffered a kind of neglect. Garth would buy him anything, but he wouldn't take time off to watch Adrian play in the school football team. He was determined to rear the boy to be 'successful' as he understood the word, but Adrian wanted to be a footballer. Garth dismissed this with a shrug. 'He'll grow out of it,' he told Faye. 'Just don't encourage him.'

She yielded in their disputes, telling herself that to be with him was enough. But her children were another matter. She stood up for them with a strength that surprised Garth. Arguments became quarrels. When she could stand it no longer, she left him, taking the children.

The last thing he said to her was 'Don't fool yourself that it's over, Faye. It never will be.'

She continued upstairs, to what had been Adrian's room, but the door was locked. So was Cindy's, and the one that led into the bedroom she'd shared with Garth. Frowning, she returned downstairs.

Here the doors were open and next to the study Faye found Garth's new bedroom, little more than a monkish cupboard, with a plain bed and a set of mahogany furniture. The walls were white; the carpet biscuit-coloured. Everything was of excellent quality but the total effect was bleak, as though the man who owned it carried bleakness within himself.