Fortunately, her cousins were early risers too, and Astra, scheduled to meet a client later, volunteered to give her a lift to Addison Kirk where Yancie would pick up the Jaguar prior to collecting her boss. Then she would head up the motorway with Thomson Wakefield to a conference on the other side of Leeds.

'A pity you'll miss Greville's party tonight,' Astra commented as they drove, knowing Yancie had telephoned him last night to say she wouldn't be able to make it because she was driving Thomson Wakefield north.

'You more than anyone know that work comes before pleasure,' Yancie answered. `Do you never get tired of it?"

'Not so far,' Astra grinned, and soon they were chatting away about work, finance and about Yancie's journey when Astra suddenly remembered, `Doesn't Charlie Merrett live up that way?"

'He does!' Yancie too remembered. `He liked it so much, he stayed up there when he finished university.' The three cousins and Charlie had been at nursery school together. He had been a shy, diffident boy, and between them, as young as they'd been, the three girls had started mothering him.. They still, if spasmodically, kept in touch. `Enjoy the party,' Yancie smiled as she got out of the car at Addison Kirk.

'Show him how brilliant you are,' Astra smiled back, having heard her cousin's theory that if she didn't perform well that day she knew it would be bye-bye time.

The Jaguar was a wonderful car to drive. Black in colour, sleek in its lines, little or no effort was required to have it purring along.

Thomson Wakefield lived about an hour's journey away from the office, and it had just gone seven-thirty when, as smart as new paint in her uniform, Yancie turned up the sweeping drive to his elegant rural Georgian home.