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CHAPTER ONE

THE man was standing in the hospital corridor when Fler came out of the room where they’d put her daughter. They’d told her he was there, that he’d brought Tansy in. She couldn’t recall whether he’d been there when she arrived. She’d been too intent then on getting to Tansy’s side, finding out her chances, being there for her, to notice anyone—anything—that wasn’t directly related to her daughter’s survival.

Now she smelled the antiseptic and polish, saw the cheap prints on the walls and the shine of the green vinyl on the wide floor of the corridor, heard the murmur of voices from the ward office. And saw the tall, grey-suited man straighten from where he’d been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and come towards her.

With a curious detachment she noted the thick brown hair, brushed neatly back, the slight furrow between his dark brows, the hazel eyes and pronounced cheekbones, the cheeks appearing rather hollowed by contrast. His nose was classically straight but a shade long, and his mouth wasn’t thin but looked firm and decisive. There was something surprising about that mouth.

He looked older than she’d expected, and briefly she wondered if she was mistaken, but he said, ‘Mrs Hewson? My name’s Kyle Ranburn...’ And she knew there was no mistake.

He seemed surprised too, she noticed. From being oblivious to her surroundings, she’d suddenly become hypersensitive to every irrelevant detail. A nurse walked by them, and she heard the hushed squeak of rubber on the well-shined floor. She noticed that Kyle Ranburn wore no tie, that his rumpled shirt had three buttons undone, and a pulse was beating under the lightly tanned skin of his throat, revealed by the open collar. His eyes were flecked with brown around the irises, more green towards the edge. And he hadn’t shaved. A musky male scent underlaid the faint sharpness of sweat. He probably hadn’t had a chance to wash, either. She supposed she ought to be grateful that he had obviously lost no time answering Tansy’s call in the night.

He held out a hand to her and she looked down at it, saw his fingers were long but blunt-ended, the nails cut short.

When she didn’t take his hand, he withdrew it, saying evenly, ‘How is she now?’

‘They think they’ve got rid of the pills. She’ll probably be all right, if there’s no liver damage. They’re going to keep her in for a couple of days to be sure. But they seem fairly sure they got the drugs out of her system in time. She isn’t going to die.’

‘That’s good.’

‘You must be relieved?’ Fler asked in brittle tones.

‘Yes, of course. Very.’ Unforgivably, he glanced at the leather-strapped stainless steel watch on his wrist. ‘Look, I really have to go, I’m afraid—’

The gesture broke her determined calm. All the varied emotions she’d been tightly reining in for hours, while she hastily dressed in anything that came to hand, made hurried phone calls of her own, ran to her car in the cold dawn and then drove for almost three long, terrified hours, shattered in a flare of shaking, white-hot rage. ‘You callous bastard!’ She wanted to hit him, preferably with a blunt instrument.

He blinked. ‘I’m sorry—’

‘I’m sure you are!’

He looked away for a moment, as if thinking, and then said, ‘I don’t know what Tansy told you, Mrs Hewson, but—’

‘She’s told me about you!’

‘—I didn’t do anything to her. She did it to herself.’

‘You know damned well you were responsible!’ Tansy’s broken, tearful, half-conscious mutterings had made that unmistakably clear. ‘How old are you?’

He looked taken aback. ‘What?’

‘I said, how old are you? You must have known that Tansy is only eighteen.’

‘If that has anything to do with—’

‘You must be at least ten years older.’

‘I’m thirty,’ he said. ‘Look, Mrs Hewson, Tansy has a problem—’

‘Yes, she does. You!’

He ran a hand over his hair, and looked about them. An orderly was wheeling a frail, grey-haired man down the corridor towards them, and two nurses came through the swing doors and walked past, chattering. ‘This isn’t really the place to discuss it. And I do have to go.’

‘I don’t think I have anything to discuss with you,’ Fler said. ‘Thank you for bringing Tansy in,’ she added stiffly. He’d probably saved her life. But it wouldn’t have needed saving if this man had any sense of decency, if Tansy had never had the misfortune to meet him.

He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but then he made an exasperated gesture with his hands, nodded to her curtly, and left.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ the nurse coming out of Tansy’s room offered.

She shook her head. ‘May I go back and sit with my daughter?’

‘Yes, of course. She’s sleeping it off now. Not likely to wake again for some time. Maybe you should get yourself something to eat at the cafeteria.’

‘I will later,’ she promised. Just now she had to be with Tansy, hold her hand and feel its inert warmth in hers, assure herself that her daughter was really breathing, really alive after that brush with deliberately induced death.

She could scarcely believe that lovely, bright, talented Tansy, with all her future before her, had really tried to kill herself.

They said she’d emptied the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of the flat she shared with three other students, all of them away for the weekend. She’d taken everything she found. The medical team had managed to get that much information from her, and from the man she’d finally called before the cocktail of drugs she’d swallowed took deadly effect. He’d had the sense to collect up the bottles and bring them into the hospital with her.

‘She’s lucky,’ they said. ‘He did all the right things.’

It didn’t make her feel any more kindly towards Kyle Ranburn. What must the man have done to poor Tansy, to make her so desperate?

And why, darling, Fler thought, staring at the pathetically tangled fair hair on the pillow and the waxy pallor of her daughter’s face, why didn’t you call me, tell me what was troubling you? Whatever it was, we’d have worked it out. We will, when you’re better, she promised silently. And found tears running hotly down her cheeks.

There was a basin in the small room, and she got up to rinse away the tears. It wouldn’t help Tansy for her to crack up now.

She splashed cold water over her face and dried it with a paper towel. In the mirror over the basin she looked almost as white as the girl in the bed, her clear green eyes dulled and bloodshot with worry and the aftermath of tears. Her hair, several shades darker than Tansy’s, was a mess. Automatically she took a comb from her bag and smoothed it back over her ears in the sleek style she’d adopted when she got it cut a few years ago.

Tansy had objected. ‘I liked it long.’

‘It’s a nuisance,’ Fler had told her. ‘I have to pin it up every day, and I haven’t got the time.’

‘Leave it loose,’ Tansy had suggested. ‘It’s pretty.’

‘I’m too old for that.’

‘Thirty-four isn’t all that old,’ fifteen-year-old Tansy had assured her endearingly. ‘And anyway, you don’t look it.’

She was thirty-seven now, and this morning she looked every day of it, she was sure. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes and on her forehead were more pronounced than usual, and there were blue shadows beneath her eyes. Even her mouth was pale. She fumbled a lipstick from the bag and used it. If Tansy woke soon, she wouldn’t want to find her mother looking as though she was in need of a hospital bed herself.

She closed the bag and went back to the bed, gazing at the oblivious girl for a few minutes, then going to the window to stare out at the view, what there was of it.

A hum of morning traffic rose from the invisible streets of Auckland. Several floors down she could see people hurrying from a car park to the hospital buildings, some of the women wearing white or green uniforms, most clutching jackets or coats against a wintry breeze, although the sun glinted off the windows of the parked cars. Between a jumble of anonymous tower blocks she glimpsed a few round-headed trees, and in the distance a wedge of blue sea.

She’d take Tansy home, she thought. Home to Northland, away from Auckland and its impersonal big-city atmosphere. Away from men like Kyle Ranburn.

Kyle Ranburn. A name that months before had begun to crop up with disturbing regularity in Tansy’s infrequent letters, her rather more frequent collect calls home. At first Fler had thought he was a fellow student. It was some time before she’d discovered he was on the staff of the university, before she had begun to be uneasy about his influence on her daughter, and Tansy’s obvious dependence on him.

Before she’d realised that her daughter was engaged in a full-blown love-affair with a man who, she became increasingly certain, was probably enjoying having an ardent, inexperienced young girl on a string but who was bound eventually to break her heart.

When Tansy was home for the May holidays, Fler had tried tactfully to voice her concern.

‘I know you think a great deal of this man,’ she said. ‘But he must be a few years older than you. What sort of person is he?’

Apparently he was some kind of demigod, from Tansy’s rapturous description. But it didn’t really tell her much.

When the eulogy appeared to be over she said, keeping her voice light, ‘I expect half of your friends have a crush on him, too, if he’s as wonderful as you say.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Tansy declared impatiently, the age-old pronouncement of youth to a parent. ‘It’s not like that at all. Kyle and I have a...a relationship.’

A relationship? Did she mean—? ‘What kind of relationship?’ she asked.

Mistake. She’d meant it to sound like a matter-of-fact woman-to-woman question. It had come out sharply, almost an accusation, definitely mother-to-possibly-wayward-daughter. ‘Are you going out together?’ she asked more casually.

‘Sometimes. Well, we don’t exactly go out much, you know. I see him in class, of course, and he takes some of the tutorials himself. But Kyle has to be careful. Discreet, you know? He couldn’t let anyone think he’s favouring me. He’s got to think of his position.’

Does he, now? Fler thought grimly. It sounded as though Tansy was quoting him. He didn’t want to be seen with her in public. That was obvious. ‘You know, it’s not exactly ethical for a lecturer to seduce one of his students,’ she said.

‘Kyle hasn’t seduced me!’

Maybe not yet, but Fler would have laid odds it was on his agenda. With the emphasis Tansy had given it, the remark was ambiguous. She asked a blunt question. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’

‘What if I am?’ Tansy flushed, looking boldly at her mother. ‘I’m over the age of consent, so there isn’t a thing you can do about it.’

That gave Fler a nasty little jolt. She said, ‘How serious is this, Tansy?’

‘I love him,’ Tansy said, her eyes wide and defiant.

As gently as she could, Fler said, ‘Darling, are you sure you’re not fooling yourself?’

Tansy had been immediately defensive and angry, and they’d had their first major quarrel in years. It had ended with Tansy in tears, accusing Fler of not wanting to let go of the apron strings, of being jealous of her daughter having a man when she didn’t, of wanting to ruin Tansy’s life as she’d wrecked her own.

Of course Fler had taken it all with a healthy pinch of salt. Tansy was still young and didn’t mean half of what she said in temper. But the accusations were a disturbing echo of her own insecurities. Maybe there was a grain of truth in them. So she’d trodden carefully from then on, wary of alienating Tansy, terribly afraid for her, and holding herself ready to be available for comfort and support when the inevitable break finally came.

Now it had, with stunning force. Never in a million years would she have expected Tansy to attempt suicide. She felt sick with shock. And guilty, too. Because she hadn’t foreseen anything like this, although she’d thought she and Tansy were close.

But mostly, she felt a hot, vengeful rage against the man who had carelessly, cruelly, for some whim or because it fed his masculine ego, brought her lovely, loving daughter to the brink of self-destruction. Quite simply, she wanted to kill him.