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They talked for a few minutes longer. Mary didn't know yet what the future held for her aunt. 'I'd like to persuade her to come and live with Simon and me, but we can't make plans until she's fully stable. At least I've told Dr Nairn what drug and dosage worked best for her in the past, and he's confident she'll be in a better state soon.'

When she left, Malcolm commented to Lucy, 'Quite a contrast to how things looked for "La Comtesse'' last Friday.'

'It is,' she agreed, 'and it makes me feel a lot better. I hate it when we have to deal with mental patients who are falling through a hole in the system.'

Malcolm paused by the open door of his office and said softly, 'Good, because I was hoping you'd be looking forward to tomorrow, not dwelling on last week.'

'I am looking forward to it,' she answered. 'Very much.'

They smiled at each other, and Lucy suddenly felt like bursting forth in a variation of Charlotte's song over breakfast this morning. 'Malcolm day tomorrow, Malcolm day tomorrow.'

At that moment, like a child, she couldn't imagine that their evening could possibly go wrong.

As
agreed
, Lucy took Charlotte around to Malcolm
's
at two o'clock on Saturday afternoon.

It was a hot day, with a hazy sky and a hot north wind blowing. There was the acrid smell of smoke in the air, creating a sense of disquiet.

Despite the heat, Malcolm and Ellie were both in the garden at the side of the house, where the steep block of land had been levelled to provide an area for playing and sitting. Ellie was wearing her bathing suit and a sun hat, and was being permitted the messy luxury of having the hose running in her sandpit, while Malcolm tackled some gardening jobs. The rectangle of lawn was freshly mown, and over to one side he'd made a mound of prunings ready to be taken to the municipal composting depot.

He obviously hadn't deemed it necessary to dress up to receive her, Lucy thought, taking in the misshapen Akubra hat, the stained khaki shorts, a short-sleeved aertex shirt, which might once have been white, and a pair of hefty leather boots.

Should I mind? she asked herself, smoothing her own flowing and very summery pastel skirt.

Maybe she should but she couldn't!

Malcolm greeted her with a big, unselfconscious grin as he dumped another bundle of clippings on the pile with his gloved hands, and she wondered whether it was being a farmer's daughter, or whether it went further back. Surely it must be some primal, prehistoric impulse in a female to find a man so utterly attractive when he had dirt smeared on his bare, tanned, muscular legs and sweat sheening his lean, strong neck, and a primitive tool in his hand—in this instance, a pair of sharp, shiny secateurs.

'Hi, Charlotte. Hello, Lucy.' He came up to them, put the secateurs down on a convenient rock and threw his thick suede gardening gloves down beside them. 'Shall I take your backpack for you?' he said to Charlotte, and she nodded.

He bent and helped to ease the straps off her shoulders, then gave her a pat on the back and sent her off to Ellie.

'I've got my swimmers on underneath,' Charlotte told her friend, and promptly peeled off her dress and jumped into the waterlogged sandpit. In the space of a minute, she was as messy as Ellie.

'You're a brave man,' Lucy commented to Malcolm.

He knew at once what she meant. 'I'll hose them off when they're done,' he answered cheerfully. 'I'm assuming there's a change of clothes in her backpack in case of further disaster?'

'As per your instructions, yes.'

'I won't keep you, then,' Malcolm said. 'You've probably got things to do.'

'Er, yes,' Lucy replied quickly.

She was actually going to the shopping mall to try and buy a dress suitable for this evening, but didn't want to confess that fact. It suggested a degree of panic that she was reluctant to admit to, and hadn't fully explored in herself.

'Charlotte, watch that you don't get sand or water in your eyes, little mate,' Malcolm called. 'Ellie, don't wave the hose around like that, love. We might turn it off now that there are two of you. It's asking for trouble, isn't it?'

'I'll see you later on, Malcolm,' Lucy said.

But she didn't make a move just yet. Instead, she watched him as he went to turn off the hose. He was as easy and natural with Charlotte as he was with Ellie, and all at once, in the harsh, hot light, she could see the resemblance between them. It wasn't a question of colouring. He had grey eyes, while Charlotte's were blue. His hair was dark and rich in tone, while Charlotte's wasn't as fair as Ellie's but still qualified as blonde.

The similarity was much more one of gesture and attitude. It was from Malcolm that Charlotte got her determined jaw and chin, her sturdy build, her decisive way of moving and her sudden smile. He'd given her his high forehead, too. As Charlotte swept some wet and slightly sandy hair off her face with an equally wet and sandy hand, the similar shape of the bone structure was very obvious.

I haven't faced it until now, Lucy realised, as she drove to the mall. I haven't faced it at all. I'm going to have to tell him. It would be different if we'd just run into each other in the street, or something. Or even if we were simply working together, the way I work with Brian Smith or Heather Woodley. He needn't have known. It would probably be better for everyone if he didn't know.

But if he's going to start building a relationship with Charlotte as Ellie's best friend...and then there's this evening out together as well. I'm not sure what he wants from that. Friendship, judging by the way he put it last week, because I'm a link with Bronwyn and with Ellie's infancy. That's all.

The way she felt about him, such a friendship was horribly inadequate, and yet it would have to do.

But to build even a casual friendship when there was such a huge, vital truth that she was keeping from him would be impossible. She hadn't allowed herself to see this until now. She'd still wanted to protect him, to keep him from having to face the knowledge that their mistake of six years ago wasn't nearly as safely buried by time as he thought. It had a living consequence in the present.

And, as time went by, to keep this secret from him was no longer protection but betrayal.

Not yet, she decided. Think about how you're going to say it first at least. Don't muck it up. Maybe later tonight, when we've talked. Or maybe not. I won't plan it to that extent.

She managed to buy a dress, though her mind wasn't really focused on the task. Fortunately, the shops weren't crowded today, and an assistant came to her rescue and guided her to a silky, silvery-grey dress that suited her colouring and was just right in style, softly figure-hugging.

At home, she tidied the house a little, then rejected the idea of gardening. It really wasn't a pleasant day, with that wind and that smoky haze. She wondered where the fires were, and whether the weekend staff at the hospital were dealing with any fire-related casualties.

Happy to be indoors, she sat down for half an hour with iced coffee and a book, and was only just beginning to think about the girls' dinner when she heard a car in the driveway. They'd arrived early, quite a bit earlier than she'd been expecting.

She told Malcolm so quite cheerfully, expecting some explanation involving the children, but he didn't comment, just said to Charlotte, 'Didn't you have something to show Ellie in your room? The birthday cake book?'

'That's not in my room. It's on the cookbook shelf.'

'Well, why don't you get it and take it into your room so you can show it to Ellie in peace and quiet?'

Malcolm seemed impatient and on edge, and eager to get her alone, she could tell. This impression was so strong that she turned to him as soon as the girls had gone and demanded of him, 'What is it, Malcolm? What's wrong?'

She saw the answer in his face even before he spoke. Her speculations about how to tell him the truth about Charlotte were irrelevant now. He already knew.

'I overheard Charlotte telling Ellie the date of her birthday,' he said. 'They were making pretend birthday cakes in the sandpit. Was she premature, Lucy?' The question seemed to hold a deliberate threat.

'No, she wasn't.'

She looked up at him unflinchingly, fully aware of how angry he was, and why.

'I didn't think so.' He took a couple of restless paces across the floor, his mood seeming to fill the room, then he rounded on her. 'Were you
ever
going to tell me?'

He was restraining his emotion, as if waiting until he was quite sure it was justified before he let fly.

'Not if we hadn't met up again the way we did,' she answered, instinctively knowing that he wanted the truth without embellishment or pretence.

'But we did meet up, weeks ago, and we're working together, and our daughters are friends. Friends!' he repeated harshly. 'Hell, they're half-sisters!'

'Yes.'

'And you've known it for six years and made no attempt to track me down. Even for the past four weeks you've said nothing. You've actively let me believe Charlotte's father was that boy in Brewarra. The relationship that "didn't work out". Was there ever a boy at all, I wonder?'

'Yes, there was,' she answered. 'But when he found out I was pregnant—I told him straight away, not realising until I was almost three months along—he didn't want to know, and I couldn't blame him. He knew the baby wasn't his.'

'He knew a hell of a lot more than I did, then!'

'Malcolm—'

'You're going to explain?'

'I'm going to try to.'

'It had better be good.'

They were standing close together in the kitchen. Incongruously, Lucy had time to realise that they'd had some very emotional scenes together in kitchens in the past. He towered over her, and might have been menacing her if she hadn't trusted him so profoundly. She knew he would never be violent. She only hoped he'd be fair, and would understand.

'I don't know if it'll be
good,'
she told him. 'But it'll be the truth. That's all I can give you, Malcolm.'

'Fair enough,' he growled.

Still dressed in the clothes he'd worn out in the garden, he looked unkempt and fiery and gorgeous. She had to resist a strong impulse not to talk at all, just to reach up and tidy the hair off his forehead, remove a twig that was stuck to the shoulder of his shirt, then pillow her head on his chest so that she could hear his heartbeat and say, Can my explanation wait? Right now, I just want to hold you. It's so good that you know the truth at last. It's been such a burden...

But she knew that wouldn't satisfy him. Or her, when it came down to what really counted. Now that he knew Charlotte was his daughter, she wanted him to hear the full story.

Not that there was really a lot more to tell.

'I didn't even think about the fact that I might be pregnant after that night,' she said. 'All I could think about was how it must feel for you. I knew you wouldn't flinch from facing the knowledge that you'd betrayed Bronwyn, and I just wasn't going to hang around in your life for a second longer than necessary to remind you of it. You had enough to deal with—your grief, Ellie's fragility. I've told you all this—how I went straight to my parents' farm, and started going out with Brett McConnochie within a week. We...never slept together.'

'I guess that saved you from any guesswork!'

She ignored the biting aside. 'I had so much on my mind that I didn't take any notice of what was happening in my body. I just thought it was an irregular cycle, and any symptoms I put down to the stress of my time nursing Bronwyn and Ellie and the move back to Brewarra. When I realised, I knew straight away that I couldn't tell you. I was out of your life for ever, or so I thought, and I knew the only way you'd manage to put the whole thing behind you was if it could be limited to that one night. How would you have lived with yourself if you knew there'd been such a consequence? I wanted to spare you that, Malcolm, and even when our paths crossed again a few weeks ago, that was all I could think of at first—sparing you the pain of reliving it all.

'But when I saw you with Charlotte today in the garden... Something about that harsh light brought out similarities in your faces and bodies that I hadn't noticed ... or hadn't allowed myself to see... until then. And the rapport you seemed to have with her, almost by instinct. It hit me like a blow in the stomach, and I knew I had to tell you. The only thing I hadn't worked out was when. I'm sorry you had to find out the way you did. It must have been a terrible shock.'

'For about ten seconds,' he acknowledged. 'And then it seemed so obvious that I felt like a fool for not having guessed before. You must have thought I was a fool.'

'No! No, Malcolm! Never that!'

He gave a frustrated sigh, and there was a silence as he wrestled with what she'd said. 'I believe you,' he told her finally. 'And you've taken the wind out of my sails.'

'That's good, isn't it?' she suggested tentatively.

'Is it?'

'Do you
want
to be angry with me, Malcolm?'

He spread his hands. 'I don't know what I want. There's been a huge earthquake in my world view. Charlotte is
my daughter.
I'm still reeling.'

She touched his arm, and he looked down at the place where skin met skin with a shocked expression, as if that one touch might set off an explosion. For several seconds they stayed like that, motionless, then he twisted his arm and slid his fingers in a light caress from her elbow to her wrist Every hair on her body stood on end, and when he released her arm she instinctively hid it behind her back, like a naughty child.

'Look,' he said softly, 'I need to think. Things can't go on as before. Would it be all right if I left the girls here with you? I'll go home...and change...and have a couple of hours to myself, then come back here in time to go out as we arranged.'

'You can cancel that if you want to,' she offered. 'We could make up some excuse for Jenny and the girls.'