She’d brought the memory stick in to return to him, but now she wrote him a little note saying that the pictures were lovely, and including her email address and sent the whole thing off in a package.

The following evening his reply was waiting on her computer, with some attached pictures of the puppies. She thanked him, and they settled into an amiable gossip that lasted for the next few days until she wrote at last:

If I don’t see you before I go, I promise to email you from all over the place. I’m off to my seaside cottage now. I’ll send you some pics of it, taken with my digital camera. If you can work yours I’m sure I can learn to work mine.

She had briefly considered calling at the house to see him, but decided against it. She was leaving soon, and it wasn’t kind to encourage Mark to cling to her.

She wondered if Justin would ask her to visit the child, but there was no word from him. Obviously he reckoned that she had outlived her usefulness.

Grumpy but curious, she looked him up on the Internet and what she found there confirmed what Lily had said. Justin Dane took over-people, firms, the world. Starting with nothing fifteen years earlier, he had created an empire out of hard work, genius and ruthlessness.

Before that fifteen years there were gaps in the information. Reading between the lines, all carefully worded to avoid the libel laws, Evie picked up an impression of a wild man, coldly indifferent to the feelings of others, who might even have done a spell in jail.

‘A nasty piece of work,’ she mused. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well I won’t come into contact with him again.’

CHAPTER FOUR

ON THE last day of term the pupils were due to leave immediately after lunch. Evie skipped lunch and prepared to go quickly. She had a long journey ahead.