Then, barely a fortnight before the wedding, the black sheep had appeared in the flesh. Things had gone well for him of late. He was wearing gold rings on his fingers, and his skin was tight and tanned. There was little outward sign of the monster Rory had described. Brother Frank was smooth as a polished stone. She had succumbed to his charm within hours.

A strange time ensued. As the days crept toward the date of the wedding she found herself thinking less and less of her husband-to-be, and more and more of his brother. They were not wholly dissimilar; a certain lilt in their voices, and their easy manner, marked them as siblings. But to Rory's qualities Frank brought something his brother would never have: a beautiful desperation.

Perhaps what had happened next had been inevitable; and no matter how hard she'd fought her instincts, she would only have postponed the consummation of their feelings for each other. At least that was how she tried to excuse herself later. But when all the self-recrimination was done with, she still treasured the memory of their first-and last-encounter.

Kirsty had been at the house, hadn't she?, on some matrimonial business, when Frank had arrived. But by that telepathy that comes with desire (and fades with it) Julia had known that today was the day.

She'd left Kirsty to her listmaking or suchlike, and taken Frank upstairs on the pretext of showing him the wedding dress. That was how she remembered it-that he'd asked to see the dress-and she'd put the veil on, laughing to think of herself in white, and then he'd been at her shoulder, lifting the veil, and she'd laughed on, laughed and laughed, as though to test the strength of his purpose. He had not been cooled by her mirth however; nor had he wasted time with the niceties of a seduction. The smooth exterior gave way to cruder stuff almost immediately. Their coupling had had in every regard but the matter of her acquiescence, all the aggression and the joylessness of rape.