Yancie proceeded on her way with the utmost care after that. The incident had shaken her more than she would have liked to admit. She was, however, correctly uniformed, with her identifying appendage neatly in place, when, with five minutes to spare, she arrived to wait for Mr Clements.

Very occasionally, when she was working quite late, Yancie had permission-after first dropping off her passenger at his address-to take whichever motor she was driving on to her own home. She'd had to assure her immediate boss, Kevin Veasey, that she was able to garage the car, but even then this concession was only allowed on the understanding she would not avail herself of it for her personal use.

She was late that night, so took the Mercedes home. As late as it was, her cousin Astra was still out working. 'Astra works too hard,' she remarked to her other lovely cousin, Fennia.

'She loves it,' Fennia answered. `Had a good day?"

'Given I nearly wrote off an Aston Martin with a Mercedes, can't complain,' she smiled, and shared the experience with her cousin over a sumptuous casserole Fennia had made while waiting for her two cousins to come home.

'Men!' Fennia opined.

'I was in the wrong,' Yancie pointed out.

'I know! But-men!'

They laughed. They'd roomed together, the three cousins, at boarding-school They'd shared each other's secrets, mopped up in the early days-each other's tears when their mothers had hopped from relationship to relationship. Stable backgrounds-forget it! They'd had so many 'uncles', it had needed a young mind to keep up with it.

They'd tried hard not to be judgmental, but it had been just a touch embarrassing not knowing which `uncle' had been coming with their mothers to pick them up at each termend.

Aunt Delia was the rock they'd each leaned towards. Aunt Delia had been ten years old when her widowed mother had remarried, and in three years had produced three daughters. It was the younger girls' dreadfully strict upbringing, Aunt Delia had explained, by a father who seemed to have few sensitivities, that was responsible for the way each of her half-sisters, in turn, had rebelled.