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her mind. There was no logic, she knew, in thinking that because Willum had been damaged, Sandra had also been harmed; but for a few moments her faith in her Saviour’s loving care deserted her, and she felt as concerned as any other mother for the safety of her missing daughter.

Chapter Nine
    She would give him one more chance to let her go. She would make one more attempt to persuade him to free her. It will save his pride, she told herself, thinking of the indignity he would suffer by having food thrown in his face; but in fact she was terrified by the prospect of having to put her plan into action. She knew that she was too shaky to aim straight, too weak at the knees to run far.
    She began to plead with him as soon as he brought her midday sandwich. ‘You must let me go,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear to be shut up in this heat. Can’t you see that you’re making me ill?’
    He said that she would feel better if she ate her food.
    â€˜How can I eat, when you’re keeping me prisoner? It’s dreadful in here. You must let me go.’
    He said that he needed her. If he let her go he would lose her.
    â€˜But you can’t keep me here indefinitely!’
    He said that he had too much need of her to let her go.
    â€˜If you don’t, I shall die,’ she sobbed.
    He said that if only she would do as he asked, he would always take care of her.
    He put the sandwich on the table. Then he went, securely fastening the door behind him.

Chapter Ten
    Martin Tait arrived at his aunt’s cottage on Fodderstone Green just in time for afternoon tea.
    â€˜I’m so glad you could come,’ said Con. ‘Gosh, you’re looking awfully well.’
    He didn’t feel well, after the way Alison had treated him. Healthy, certainly; but baffled, frustrated, angry. However, he had no intention of revealing any of that to his aunt. He kissed her with affection, noticing that she was wearing the scent that she had once admitted to having liked when she was young, the Worth Je Reviens that he had, as usual, given her for Christmas.
    â€˜I’m delighted to be here at last,’ he said. ‘And you’re looking well, too.’
    It wasn’t true. He was quite shocked by the change in her since his pre-Christmas visit. Con shared with him the characteristically sharp Tait profile, but her mouth was entirely her own. Dragged down at one corner by a muscular weakness, it had always given her what Martin remembered best about her, an engagingly lop-sided smile. But when her face was in repose her mouth gave her a melancholy appearance, and that was what predominated now. She looked as though she slept badly, and her hands were shaky. Instead of being the active, amusing woman he had always known, she seemed unfamiliar, depressed and elderly.
    The ritual of afternoon tea seemed to revive her a little. They sat on the back lawn in the shade of an apple tree, drinking Darjeeling tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Presently Con enquired after her sister-in-law, Martin’s mother, a strong-minded widow who ran a secondhand bookshop in a village near Lavenham.
    â€˜Indefatigable, as always.’ Martin sighed. ‘She’s into yoga now … I’m all for her keeping fit, but I do wish that at fifty she’d be a bit more dignified. Whenever I go to see her she’s wearing a leotard and contorting herself on the sitting-room carpet.’
    He had in fact been acutely embarrassed at the prospect of taking Alison to meet his mother. The way the leotard clung to her lean body, tracing every fold of her pudenda, was he thought positively indecent. It would be so much easier and pleasanter to introduce Alison to Aunt Con – or, rather, it would have been. He fell silent, yearning angrily for the girl.
    â€˜Scones and honey?’ offered Con. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t make the scones. I bought them from the Horkey baker, so they’re guaranteed