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She knew now what they meant by ‘corpsing’ on stage, aching to laugh, so that you had to keep your jaw and your stomach muscles clenched. Most of it had to be nerves, she wasn’t enjoying this, but it
was
ridiculous, and if she had dared let herself laugh a little that might have released some of the pressure. For instance, when Mrs Ames pounced on the two paperbacks and opened them, obviously looking for incriminating inscriptions, then pulled a disappointed face, a light laugh might have been in order. But once she started to laugh Pattie wasn’t sure how soon she could stop, so she sat silent with shaking shoulders as Mrs Ames replaced the paperbacks on the shelf.

When the ring came on her doorbell Pattie’s first thought was, if this is Duncan that will settle everything. But it wasn’t Duncan, although it was a man of roughly the same build, big, broad-shouldered, asking if she was Miss Ross.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Package for you.’ He went clattering down the stairs while she stood in the open doorway, waiting. Behind her, inside the room, she could imagine Mrs Ames craning her neck to see what was going on.

The package was a packing case and it took two men to carry it. Grunting and heaving, they got it up the stairs and Pattie, joined now by Michael, kept staring.

‘What is it?’ he wanted to know.

She shook her head, looking blank. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

The two men set down the packing case just inside her door. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She tipped them and they wished her goodnight, and Mrs Ames asked, ‘Weren’t you expecting it?’

‘Er—no.’

‘This is very mysterious. Why didn’t you ask them where it came from?’

‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Michael.

She brought the potato peeler to lever off the top that was tacked down. It was the nearest thing she had to a chisel, and although it got bent in the process the lid did lift. Inside was straw and Mrs Ames gave a little squeak.

‘It wouldn’t be anything alive, would it?’

‘How could it breathe, Mother?’ Michael pointed out, and Pattie knew that she couldn’t hold back the giggles much longer. ‘It’s a lump of rock,’ said Michael, gingerly scooping out the straw.

‘Oh yes,' said Pattie. ‘Oh dear!’

‘Funny thing for somebody to send you.’ He brought out more straw and handed her a note. She knew the writing, she didn’t have to look for the signature, although she had known anyway the moment she saw the Cotswold stone. ‘This isn’t the cat from the exhibition,’ Duncan had written, ‘you can’t have him until the show closes. This is his brother. Try living with him for a few days and see how you get on! Nicely, I’m sure. You have a talent for it.’

She said, ‘It’s a piece of modern sculpture. If we can get it out you’ll see it’s a cat as well as a rock.’ She couldn’t lift it out, not even with Michael’s help, and he didn’t look inclined to over-exert himself; he was wiping his hands now with a handkerchief. She would have to a borrow a hatchet and hack a way through, but in the meantime she went on scooping out the straw until the carpet was strewn with it and Mrs Ames was coughing from the dust that was rising.

‘Who sent it to you?’ Michael asked.

‘Duncan,’ said Pattie, head down in the packing case. ‘I saw him at an exhibition this afternoon and I said I liked one like it.’

There was a pregnant silence. She knew what kind of expression was settling on Mrs Ames’ face, but she was unprepared for the vigour of her comment. '
Disgusting!’
said Mrs Ames, and Pattie sat back on her heels and blinked. Mrs Ames had the note. She waved it. ‘Such bad taste!’ she spluttered. ‘A talent for living together indeed. You weren’t living together, you were snowed in together due to your own stupid fault and the inclement weather. I suppose this is what you’d call an in-joke.’ She waved the note again and peered into the packing case and shuddered. ‘Revolting object!’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Pattie through quivering lips. ‘I rather like rocks, I think they’re attractive creatures.’

‘A weight like that,’ said Mrs Ames, ‘could go straight through the floorboards,’ and that was the last straw. Pattie started to laugh; and as she had feared, once she started she couldn’t stop. Michael had been ready to overlook her days and nights in the hunting lodge, but he couldn’t stand her laughter. While Pattie was struggling to restrain herself, but still giggling, he was turning puce. It was Michael who marched out, so fast that Mrs Ames had to collect her parcels herself, while Pattie hiccupped, ‘D-don’t you want to phone for a taxi?’

‘I’m not staying here to be made a fool of,’ snapped Michael. ‘You seem to have taken leave of your senses. What the hell did that man do to you up there in the cabin?’

That sobered Pattie a little. Last week had changed her, but she hadn’t wanted to hurt Michael or anybody. She would have to apologise for laughing, and she called after Mrs Ames, ‘I’ll ring the taxi rank for you, shall I?

‘If it would not be too much trouble,’ said Mrs Ames with icy politeness.

After Pattie had rung for the taxi she tried Duncan’s number, but got no reply. She could have been with him wherever he was tonight, and she had hoped he might answer, then she could have said, ‘Owing to unforeseen circumstances, like the delivery of a rock, my guests left early, so I find myself with a few hours to kill, so what did you have in mind?’

But he hadn’t stayed in. She set about sweeping up the straw and packaging it in a dustbin bag. Then she worked on the packing case, levering the tacks with the potato peeler, which took a long time, but at last she got the front panel out and went down on her knees and looked in at her cat. It was very like the one in the exhibition, just that feline hint as thought you had caught it unawares peering out, but the eyes were just as watchful.

She reached in and stroked it. They said Cotswold stone was never cold. She said, ‘Will you keep me warm when I’m old, if there’s just you and me?’ and then bit her lip hard, because that was a bitter thing to say. It came of falling for a man who wasn’t in love with you. There were good times ahead, she was sure, but every instinct told her they wouldn’t last. ‘The crying always ends,’ Duncan had said, and so would the laughter one day or night. She would have to go carefully if she didn’t want her heart broken.

But she kept on phoning, and she got him just after midnight and wondered if he was alone. ‘It’s Pattie,’ she said. ‘It came.’

‘That was quick. I said as soon as possible, but they must have got their skates on.’

‘Thank you. I’m going to enjoy living with it, although the note gave Michael’s mother a fit. She thinks it was very bad form for you to refer to “living together” after last week. Disgusting, in fact.’

‘Funny woman,’ he said. ‘What did you tell them about last week?’

‘Nothing.’

‘And does “living together” sound disgusting to you?’ She could hear him smiling. The words, ‘Come live with me and be my love and we will all the pleasures prove . . .’ sang a siren song in her head, and she said, ‘No.’

‘We must discuss it some time.’ He sounded as if he was still smiling and this was too fast, and when he asked, ‘May I come round?’ Pattie said, ‘It’s late, can I see you Monday evening?’

‘All right.’

Oh, you fool, she thought, as she put the phone down, what are you scared about? But she knew that she was afraid of loving and losing . . .

Sunday passed without incident. Pattie lazed about in her apartment, reading the Sunday papers and Duncan’s paperbacks. They were powerful books, both of them, making her realise again how little she really knew of this man. She was starved for him, as though his touch was food and drink to her, but she hardly knew him at all.

Nothing much happened to Pattie on Sunday, but Monday made up for it. As soon as she got into the office she was greeted with a barrage of knowing smiles. ‘No need to ask you if you enjoyed your holiday,’ said Miss Grey, head of the library department, travelling up in the lift with her. ‘When you came in for his cuttings I never thought this was what it would lead to.’ Miss Grey didn’t sound entirely approving, but although she shook her neatly coiffured grey head at Pattie her eyes were twinkling, and all Pattie could do was blush.

Roz Rickard, the features editor who had sent Pattie after Duncan in the first place, looked like the cat with the cream, grinning from ear to ear. ‘Who’s your fairy godmother, then?’ she said as Pattie
walked across to her desk. ‘Who couldn’t stand them rough and tough and sexy?’

Roz had spoken to Pattie on the phone a couple of times since Pattie got back from Yorkshire, but Pattie hadn’t told her how she felt about Duncan, nor admitted that her stay in the lodge had been anything but platonic. Now she laughed, ‘He does have a way with him. You could get to like him,’ and Roz hooted,

‘And there’s the picture to prove it.’

‘What picture?’

She hadn’t opened her newspaper. She had picked it up on her way out, her mind fall of personal matters. ‘Not Willie’s page again?’ she groaned. But there she was. ‘After last week’s ordeal when they were marooned in an isolated hunting lodge on the Yorkshire moors author/TV personality Duncan Keld and reporter Pattie Ross got together again on Saturday at an exhibition of rock sculpture,’ said the caption. ‘Shortly afterwards they left. Together, of course.’

Nobody had bothered to get a quote from them, and it hadn’t been necessary because the picture spoke for itself. Duncan was a dark figure looking down, but it was the moment when he put his hand on Pattie’s and joy had flooded over her. It seemed to her now that even in the smudged newspaper print her heart was in her eyes for anyone to see, and she said huskily, ‘How could they?’ But of course they could, she had worked in this line of journalism herself.

‘It’s a lovely picture,’ Roz enthused. ‘You look terrific.’ Pattie nodded, forcing a smile, and Roz was suddenly aware of her vulnerability. The picture was happy, but the girl was open to hurt, the dark man gave nothing away. Roz suspected he could be a ruthless bastard, and she said quietly, ‘Play it cool, eh? Don’t go tossing your bonnet over any windmills.’

‘Oh no,’ said Pattie, ‘I won’t be doing that,’ and she only wished she could believe herself.

There was a lot of teasing that day, because everybody had seen the photograph. Pattie had thought Duncan might phone about it, but he didn’t, and anyway she was seeing him tonight. She sketched out her article on him. If this could have appeared promptly the gossip would have been good publicity, but by the time it reached the news-stands nobody would remember that Pattie Ross had been snowed in with Duncan.

She would have to start from scratch, explaining how she had gone seeking a story, 'with him angered at first by her unscheduled arrival but afterwards accepting the inevitable. When her readers were reading this she and Duncan might still be seeing each other, or they might have gone their separate ways, and she felt that it would be tempting fate to even hint how close they had been for those few days, so she wrote in a light vein with the chimney fire as the big scene. She could say that she wasn’t exactly thrilled when the snowplough got through, but she couldn’t say that Duncan was coming for her tonight, and the thought of being alone with him again made her ache with a longing that blotted everything else from her mind.

He was taking her out to dinner, but she would rather have stayed at home with him, so at lunch time she bought steaks. When he came, unless he had booked, she could suggest that she laid on the meal. In any case she had a super new tangerine silk dress with a wide black suede belt to show off her slim waist, and if they did go out she had blown a hole in her bank balance with a black velvet full-length trench coat. She had gone to the exhibition in a suit and her camel coat, but she was putting on the glamour tonight.

Her apartment was five minutes away from the tube if you walked quickly, which she did. It was still very cold and she had things to do in the hour and a half before Duncan came. She didn’t give the car standing outside the house more than a glance, she didn’t know it, but as she walked the short flagged path from the gate to the front door she heard footsteps behind her. A girl, in a grey fox coat and hat, called as she turned, ‘Is it Pattie Ross?’

‘Yes. Do I ’

‘I’m Jennifer Stanley.’ Pattie had only seen Jennifer Stanley in photographs, but now she recognised her, and she was breathtaking. ‘Please, I want to talk to you,’ said Jennifer. ‘It won’t take long, but it is rather important.’

‘What about?’ Pattie still had a conscience about the gossip item that had caused the wedding to be cancelled, but Jennifer smiled,

‘Oh, I know you were the reporter who found out about Duncan and me, but I don’t bear you any grudges for that. I’d like us to be friends.’

‘Friends?'
Pattie echoed. She couldn’t understand this, but she led the way upstairs and opened her door. She skirted the packing case and dumped her shopping bag and said, ‘Do sit down.’

Jennifer seated herself on the settee, carefully arranging her coat around her. The furs were fabulous, the hat framed the heart-shaped face, pretty as a picture. ‘I’ve got a lot to thank you for,’ said Jennifer Stanley earnestly. ‘I might have married a man who didn’t really love me.’

‘I suppose you might,’ Pattie agreed because Jennifer seemed to be waiting for her to say something. When she did Jennifer smiled, ‘Instead of dear Wilfred who loves me very, very much. I’m very happy.’

‘I’m glad,’ said Pattie, which she was, although it seemed strange that Jennifer Stanley should go to the trouble of coming here to tell her this.

‘In a way I owe it to you for the way things have turned out for me,’ Jennifer went on, ‘so I want to help you too. I saw your picture in this morning’s paper and I thought—oh, the poor girl! Because, you see, I know how it’s going to end, I know what Duncan could do to you. What I rather think he might be planning to do.’

‘You’re not making much sense,’ said Pattie.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jennifer made a charming little gesture of helplessness, ‘but I do want you to understand. It was so awful when Nigel jilted me at the last minute like that. I just went to pieces, I’m not a very strong character.’ In the luxurious furs she looked tiny and fragile, and when she closed her eyes her lashes made long dark shadows on her pale cheeks. ‘I—tried to kill myself,’ she said huskily, and Pattie gasped in horror.