Fennia's duty in going to try to put things right with her mother reminded Yancie the next day-not that she needed any reminding-that she had certain duties too. And, though she didn't think of her stepfather as a duty, she went, by public transport, to see him.

Her journey was extremely bothersome in that it involved a tube, a train and a bus. Though when her very pleased-to-see-her stepfather said he wanted her to come home and to forget about the car 'trouble', that he'd buy her another one, Yancie found she could not accept.

'You're a darling,' she smiled, giving him a hug, `but I couldn't.'

'Not even to make me happy?"

'Oh, don't!' she begged.

'I'm sorry,' he apologised at once. `I never thought I'd resort to emotional blackmail. Come and tell me how your job's going. Your mother rang wanting to speak to you, by the way.'

'You didn't tell her I was working!'

'What-and get my ears chewed off for my trouble?' He chuckled. `Coward though I am, I let her think you were still living here.' He thought for a moment, and then added, `Have you seen her lately?"

'Not for a week or so,' Yancie replied.

But Ralph was patently anxious. `What shall I say if she comes here looking for you?'

Yancie full well knew, her mother being a law unto herself, that she would turn up at her ex-husband's home if the idea occurred to her. 'I'll go and see her,' Yancie decided.

'Since you've obviously got the day off, you could go today,' Ralph Proctor hinted. `You could take my car.'

Yancie looked at him and grinned. `You're scared,' she teased. `Scared she'll call.'

'Heaven alone knows where I got the nerve to ask her to marry me. Nor, when our marriage ended, found the nerve to insist you live with me.'

'You've got it when it counts,' Yancie told him softly.

She stayed and had lunch with him, his housekeeper seeming a very pleasant woman.