Yancie's mother apparently had been well `off the rails' before Yancie's father had been killed. Fennia's mother was twice married-and on the lookout for husband number three. And Astra's mother had twice divorced and was at present living with someone.

With that kind of a background, the three cousins had been sixteen when, fearing they might have inherited some wayward gene from their mothers, they had vowed that they were going to guard with everything they had against turning out like their mothers. They wanted nothing of their mothers' explosive and sometimes quite awful relationships which in the main-brought nothing but disaster.

To date, six years on, it hadn't been a problem. In general the cousins had nothing against men. And so far, thank goodness, none of them had felt the smallest inclination to be wayward where men were concerned. Though it was true that if they ever went out on a date and did dip their toes in unchartered, experimental waters it was mainly with someone fairly safe whom they'd known for ages-usually the brother or relation of someone with whom they'd been at boarding-school.

Yancie drove to work the following morning growing more and more comfortable with her lot. She was still in frequent telephone contact with her stepfather-who now employed a housekeeper-but she still had no wish to return to live in the same house as Estelle. Yancie enjoyed living again with her cousins. Fennia, despite her business training, thoroughly enjoyed the job she had found working with toddlers in a day nursery, and Astra, the most academic of the three of them, was working all hours as a financial adviser, and loving it.

Yancie drove into the vast garages of the Addison Kirk Group and exchanged her uniform jacket and neat shoes for a pair of Wellingtons and an over-large over-all.