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CHAPTER ONE

'HAVE YOU ANY idea just how long it is since we last had sex?' Caspar knew theones, not just for Olivia's own , but it was too late to recall them He could see that from Olivia's expression

'Sex! Sex! Is that all you can think about?' she demanded furiously

'We're married We're supposed to have sex,' Caspar told her recklessly, his own anger and sense of ill-usage picking up froinal folly

'We're supposed to do an awful lot of things,' Olivia couldn't resist pointing out sharply 'Yesterday for instance you were supposed to take the girls out to the park, but instead you went playing golf with your brother'

'Oh, I see, so that's what all this is about is it?'

Caspar challenged her 'No sex, because yesterday I was out having a bit of R and R with my brother'

'Your half-brother actually,' Olivia corrected him coldly

Her heart was thudding frantically fast, trying to push its way through her ribs, her skin She felt sick, breathless, overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of her own e for her to control them

Anyout in a sweat and thenthen But no she wasn't going to allow herself to feel sick never ht her far too close to the shadow of her own mother and the neuroses that drove her The per-petual cycle of binging and then purging which had dominated her life and the lives of those around her

They had been in the States for a nu of one of Caspar's half-brothers, but also so that Caspar could spend soe and extended fahters to them

Olivia had never wanted to attend the wedding in the first place; right now she was so busy at work that taking a few days off never mind a feeeks made her feel sick with anxiety, and she and Caspar had quarreled bitterly over her refusal

The fact that she had at the very last ed her mind, was not out of a desire to please Caspar, but because of her point-blank refusal to join the rest of her fa her father, David, back to his home town Her total boycott of the family celebra-tion, not just of his return, but also of hisrift between Caspar and herself to deepen into a very dangerous hostile resentment

Why had she ever deceived herself into thinking that Caspar was different, she asked herself bitterly now That he would put her first? He was just like all the others, just like everyone else in her life Oh, they ht pretend they loved her; that she mattered to them, but the truth wasthe truth was

She closed her eyes shivering despite the warmth of their hotel rooht not to remember the expression in her uncle Jon's eyes when he had talked about his twin brother her father How could he possibly still love him like that after what her father had done?

So her to return hoh Place to celebrate her father's h's cousin Honor, but Olivia had refused

Olivia couldn't explain to herself or even begin to unravel the co the increasingly hard to control surges of panic she was experiencing The knife-sharp fear The horrifying sense of dislocation, of distance from the rest of the human race

Caspar was getting out of the bed now, his face tight with anger Had she really once believed she loved him? It seemed extraordinary to her that she could have done Blank nus she had once had

'Danny has invited us to join his family at the cabin in Colorado We can ski and—'

'No,' Olivia refused without allowing Caspar to finish

As she watched her husband Olivia was filled with a sense of despair and hopelessness The love which had once tied theone They were strangers to one another now So ers that Caspar couldn't even see to have to face once they returned, as it was

The tension in her head reached a screaainst the opposition of her grandfather to her desire to follow in the family tradition and qualify as a solicitor Hoould enjoy crowing over her now if she failed

'I have to go home My work'

'Your work What about our e?'

Their e Distantly Olivia looked at him

'We don't have a e any more, Caspar,' she told him The sense of relief that filled her as she spoke was so intoxicating that it was alne She could feel her spirits lightening, the tension leaving her body

'Whatwhat the hell are you saying?' she could hear Caspar de away from him, her decision made

'I think we should separate,' she heard herself telling him

'Separate?'

She discovered she was holding her breath as she detected the shock in his voice as though she aitingbut waiting for what?

'Yes,' she continued calally'

'Of course that would be the first thing you would think about—as a Crighton,' Caspar told her bitterly

Olivia looked away from him

'You've always resented that, haven't you?' she demanded quietly

'What I've resented, Livvy, is the fact that this e of ours has never contained just the two of us'

'You wanted children asby the unfairness of his accusation

'It isn't the girls I' about,' Caspar snapped

'It's your da in the past, clinging to it'

'That's not true' Her face had gone paper-white

'Who's the one who's supported uswho's—'

'I'ined sins against you, Livvy I' held responsible for therandfather and Max

I'e you insist on dragging aroundthat "I'm a victim"

attitude of yours'

'How dare you say that?'

'I dare because it's true,' Caspar told her coldly

'But as of now I'randfather, father and cousin to you, Livvyand I'ate punch ball It's ti out of life, wrote that book I've been proot that Harley and rode around this countrychilled out and lived'

Olivia stared at hier

This wasn't the Caspar she thought she had known so well, this selfish insensitive stranger with his adoles-cent fantasies and his total lack of regard for the needs of either his children or her

'I can't iht I loved you, Caspar,' she told him, her throat raw 'Or why I married you,' she added as she wondered if he could hear the sound of her drea around them into a million tiny painful shards

'No? Then you've got one hell of a short memory

You married me because you wanted to escape from your childhood,' Caspar told her

Her childhood As he strode out of the rooht with tension

There was a bitter taste in her mouth She had never really had a childhood Sometimes she felt she

had al that she wasn't the child—

the son—her father, and randfather, had wanted

Because of therown up determined to prove herself, to prove her worthher value Because of them she had pushed herself these last ly htrope stretched across a sickeningly deep chas doould be one wrong stepone missed breathbut she had had to do it Not just for her own sake but even oing to have the her father's grandchildren Ever since David had disappeared and the truth about hiht, Olivia had been haunted by what he had done, haunted by itshamed by ittormented by it

And noas back and instead of being shunned as he rightly deserved he was being feted, lauded, whilst she

The pain inside her head intensified and with it her panic and despair