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CHAPTER ONE

WITH a thankful sigh Philippa sank back on her heels, surveying the stacked boxes and paper sacks, quickly stifling an unanticipated stab of pain as she looked at as after all the accu How little she had really known about her aunt, and all that was left of her noas the faded photograph album Philippa had decided to keep She hadn’t wanted to come back to Garston, but she had been Jane Cro relative

Getting to her feet and dusting down her jeans she bent to pick up one of Siazines Her ten-year-old son wasquite small he had shown a decidedly mechanical turn of mind At the moment it was fixed with equal concentration on motorbikes and computers

Thinking of Sione five and she had told him to be back at four She planned for theo back to London Where on earth was he? They had only been in Garston for a week but it was long enough for Si extrovert nature, toUnlike herself Si in the village who remembered her, but apart from the vicar no one had come to call

Of course her aunt had always kept herself very race and favour’ house on the Garston estate, her isolation froe had tended to set her apart fro those years when she lived with her aunt It couldn’t have been easy for her, Philippa now recognised, to accept the responsibility of a fourteen-year-old girl, still shocked by the sudden death of her parents, and inclined to be rebellious and withdrawn because of it Her father, Jane Cromwell’s cousin, had been a diplo a terrorist raid whilst Philippa was at school in England

Their death had brought es to Philippa’s life, not the least of which was the discovery that there was no longer enough irls’ school her parents had sent her to Her father’s salary had been generous but it had died with hi only the proceeds of two small insurance policies Her aunt had been a teacher and during the last ten years of her career had had only one pupil—Edward Garston, because of which she had been gifted a lifetie which became home to Philippa, and which stood just within the boundary of the Garston family’s estate Once they had owned vast acres of Yorkshire, including the village naradually over the years their land had been eroded aith their wealth until all that was left was the house itself, the parkland it stood in and the hoedy had struck Edward Garston had been killed in a car accident and his inheritance passed to a cousin, Scott

Philippa could remember the day Scott and his mother arrived at Garston quite vividly Scott’s father had been the second son, the black sheep of the farandfather had sworn he would rather see the house and the estate pass to a stranger than go to his son’s child Scott had been twenty to her fourteen when he first came to live at Garston Away at Oxford li the holidays, when invariably he arrived riding a large and noisy randfather’s already irrascible temper Jeffrey Garston was a proud, and Philippa had soht, very lonely old hteen and of the cousin who had taken his place Edward had been reputed to be brilliant and it was no secret in the area that Jeffrey Gaston had looked to his grandson to somehow recoup the family losses and restore Garston Hall to what it had once been The Garston fa the Victorian era, but now they were reduced to living on a rapidly dwindling income

After what she had heard about the family Philippa had been rather surprised that Jeffrey Garston allowed his daughter-in-law and grandson to come and live with hi Scott to take over as left of the estate, because Philippa often saw hi the shoots which still took place in the autue parties of businessmen would descend on the Hall, and the narrow road that led past the cottage to it would be busy with large, expensive cars

Where was Scott now? Philippa had only had one letter from her aunt after she left and that had simply told her that Jeffrey Garston had died and that Scott had shut up the house and left the area That alone had surprised her Scott had been almost obsessed by his plans to make the estate a viable commercial enterprise once more, and to restore his home to what it had once been She had replied to her aunt’s letter, telling her about Simon’s birth, but there had been no further correspondence between theitiid moral code that there was no question that there would ever be forgiveness or acceptance, and certainly never a welcome in her ho it had all seeo!

Philippa suppressed a faint sigh Who would have dreamed then that noomen would choose to bear their children alone without the support of the child’s father? Simon’s lack of a father didn’t even cause so le-parent status was so commonplace that more than half of Simon’s friends at his London school also lived with only one of their parents Eleven years ago when she discovered she was pregnant she had been terror-struck

She gri on the wall How very young and naive she had been Seventeen and as green as grass Well, she had learned, and now at twenty-eight, she kneithout false ent and even shreoman, who had learned about life the hard way

What she failed to recognise in her own reflection was the vulnerability of her softly curved rey eyes, the hint of pain that still lingered beneath the cool outer shell of reserve in which she cloaked her true feelings

Her hair had been short when she left Garston Her aunt had insisted that it was tidier that way Now she wore it up in a nest chignon in keeping with her iel Barnes, the Chairman of Merrit Plastics, but once released froold waves, si

lky soft and so directly in contrast to Siht coal-black hair that people often did a double take when they were introduced as ht and breadth of shoulder from his father At ten he looked closer to thirteen and wasthe faint feeling of dis with her own Children were not allowed to ree London school Si up too fast