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CHAPTER ONE

THE moment she stepped inside the front door, Sara Barclay saw the change in her brother Gone was the o, and in his place was the older brother she ree years

‘Managed to tame the wild beast, did you?’ he teased as he rolled his wheelchair forwards to relieve her of her suitcase

‘Just about’

The wild beast in question was the very advanced computer-cum-word processor which her brother had just purchased, and which she, as his secretary-cu to operate In addition to its basic functions, the machine was so advanced that it could be locked into the information banks of other co Sam to keep himself completely up to date with the econo accident which had robbed Sas and killed both Sam’s wife, Holly, and Sara’s own fiancé, Rick, Sa, with a brilliant future ahead of him

Now that was gone, along with so much else; Sam was virtually confined to his wheelchair, able to walk only a dozen or so steps unaided, his health far too uncertain to per world of currency dealing, where young men could be burned out by the time they were thirty, unable to keep up with the ferocious pressure of the work Saazines, and working on the book he was trying to write—a blend of fact and fiction based on the world he had once known

Getting the computer had been Sara’s idea—a last-ditch attempt to rouse her brother froulfed him since Holly’s death, but it was obvious to Sara as he ushered her into the sitting-roo her absence to restore her brother to so his old self

‘Where’s Carly?’ she asked him as she sat down

All of the deaths and Sam’s physical disability, but surely the person to suffer theCarly’s small world had been virtually destroyed Her mother had been killed, and her father so badly injured that for days the doctors had despaired of being able to save him

Perhaps it was no wonder that she and Carly should have grown so close in those early weeks after the accident Physically Carly had clung to her, but eirl, Sara acknowledged Without the responsibility of Carly, she doubted if she could have found the will to survive those dreadful early days

Even now, over eighteen months later, they were still etched sharply on her hter when Holly set off with the two men to drive thee—Rick, her fiancé, had been at university with Sam, and it was Sa a new co the weekend with her brother and his fa to be married, six weeks after the course ended

They hadperiod of tie, still giddy and delirious with the pleasure of being in love and loved in return

And then in one short, horror-filled afternoon her whole world was overturned

She hadn’t worried when Holly didn’t coht take advantage of having a resident babysitter to do so, so when the knock came on the door and she opened it to a white-faced police constable the very last thing in her mind was that there had been an accident

At first she had been too shocked to take very hing Holly whom her brother adored, and Rick, dear, wonderful Rick, who had made her whole world come alive, were both dead, was so i else out

Scooping up Carly, she had gone numbly into the police car, and fro Carly in the care of a calrave-faced doctor tried to explain to her why it was impossible for her to see her brother

After that there had been a week of disbelief, broken sharply by unbearable bursts of pain; Holly’s and Rick’s funerals; the shock and despair on the faces of their families She and Sam had only one another; their father had died from a heart attack when Sara was in her mid-teens, and theirwhen Sara was nineteen

Sara had had a good job as a secretary, which she had planned to give up when she and Ricka little earlier had presented no proble those first early weeks there had been a lot for her to cope with Visits fro her that beneath their concerned enquiries was an implacable determination to let her know that there could be no place in the company for a man with Sam’s disabilities—a man ould virtually be confined to a wheelchair—if he was lucky

There had been no is to draw on to keep herself and Carly; it was out of the question for her to approach Salike that

Even when it was clear that he would survive, the doctors were very reluctant to let him come home He had had to spend ti how to deal with his lack of o into a hoh to leave, but Sara had insisted that she was perfectly capable of looking after hiet him home

After the funeral, Holly’s parents had offered to take Carly, but they were an older couple who, hter, lived a life far too quiet and retired for a lively five-year-old, and so, withoutany deliberate decision, Sara had found herself slipping into the role of surrogateelse, it gave her so

Over the last six months Saet out more, make new friends New one for ever Where she had once been warmed by her love for Rick, she now felt cold—dead, really She had no desire to replace hiist would no doubt put her lack of interest inand losing again, but logic, no s She had loved Rick and she had lost hiirl she had once been Everything about her noas htly withdrawn She had become a woman