He drained his glass and poured more brandy. It was part of Carson’s controlled nature that he never touched alcohol during the day, even at lunch. Especially at lunch. Let the others make mistakes because their wits were fuddled. Carson Page was always coldly alert to take advantage of them. But late at night, in his own home, he drank occasionally.

Gina sipped hers with pleasure. Normally she didn’t care for alcohol, but this was a very fine vintage. ‘One of those days?’ she asked sympathetically.

‘Don’t get me started,’ he groaned.

He gave her the grin of one comrade enjoying a grumble with another, and she was reminded of how he’d seemed to her on the first day, in the car park, exasperated but generous.

She couldn’t help smiling at the picture he presented. Dealing with the stupidest man in creation had caused him to discard his tie, pull open his shirt and tear his hair until it was totally dishevelled.

He looked ten years younger at least, as far as Gina could see, for the only light came from one low reading lamp, and most of the room was in shadows.

‘How was your day?’ he asked, yawning. ‘Joey seemed cheerful at supper.’

‘Yes, we had a good time. We went to the park and took a boat on the lake. And we bumped into a teacher from his school. Alan Hanley. He seemed a nice man, and he filled in some gaps for me.’

‘I’ve met him. How did Joey react?’

‘Oddly, I thought. He was polite but they don’t seem to get through to each other.’

‘So what’s your secret?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Joey has learned from experts. Some of them are deaf, so they understand his problems too. But he’s chosen you as the one person he can relate to. What do you have that the others don’t?’

‘I wish I knew,’ she said. ‘How can you explain empathy?’

‘You can’t, I guess. It’s like love. It comes out of nowhere and it can’t be explained.’

‘And it seems to survive, no matter what people do to destroy it,’ Gina mused.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Joey was talking about his mother today. Did you tell her about his operation, by the way?’

He shrugged. ‘What would be the point?’

‘I suppose you’re right, but it’s frightening how much he still loves her. I don’t know what to say to him when he talks like that-whether to encourage him or discourage him.’

‘She’ll hurt him just as much either way,’ Carson said. His head was thrown back against the side of the sofa, and he seemed to talk into the distance. Gina had noticed that he did this whenever the conversation veered towards the personal. It had the effect of a visor being pulled down to shield his eyes.

‘Her great gift was always her charm,’ he went on, looking up at the shadowed ceiling. ‘Her beauty is almost secondary. She can charm the birds off the trees, and it works even when you know she can turn it on and off like a tap. You tell yourself that this time you’ll be proof against it and then…’ His voice trailed away into silence.

‘Was it like that with you?’ Gina ventured to ask.

He didn’t reply at first, and she wondered if he was offended. When he finally began to speak, it was as though he was talking to himself.

‘At first, you think it’s all for you, that you’ve been specially privileged with that enchanting look, the incredible smile, as though she’s been waiting all her life to meet just you. After all, she’s only nineteen, and how many wiles can she have learned at that age?

‘You tell yourself all this because you’re a young fool, madly in love, and you want to believe it. It’s actually a kind of arrogance to think such a prize has fallen into your hands because you deserve it, but at that age you are arrogant. And you’ll believe anything if she says it with that special smile. “Darling, I love you-only you-there’ll never be anyone else-”’

‘But she must have loved you, or why would she have married you?’ Gina asked.

‘She’s a lady of large appetites, which I was able to satisfy,’ Carson said bluntly. ‘And when that kind of passion overwhelms you, and you’re too callow and ignorant to know that passion isn’t everything, you think it’s enough. And when you discover it isn’t-it’s too late.’

He fell silent. Gina’s heart was beating hard at this glimpse into Carson’s secret pain, but she knew she was hearing things that weren’t for her, things he would regret telling her later.

Soon she would yawn and say it was time for her to go to bed. This would cut off his confidences about the woman he’d once loved, and who still seemed to obsess him. And it was better for them both that it should be so.

The moments stretched on. She didn’t move, and she knew she wasn’t going to. She was doing this for Joey, she told herself. The more she knew about his background, the more she could help him.

But it wasn’t for Joey’s sake that she strained to catch every inflection of Carson’s voice when he spoke of his ex-wife.

‘I knew she wanted to be famous, when we married,’ he went on, ‘but I had no idea how her ambition possessed her. She seemed so happy as a wife and mother that I thought it would last. Later I realised that it was just a stage, something she wanted to try out, like a new role.’

He drained and refilled his glass again, as though it was only with the aid of alcohol that he could endure his memories.

‘And when we discovered that Joey had problems she got tired of the role, and wanted something else. I tried to be understanding. We had a good nanny so that Brenda was free to spend time away from home. I didn’t like her going, but I thought our marriage was strong enough to survive anything.’ He gave a scornful laugh. ‘I had some very naive notions in those days-true love conquers all-no mountain too high. All that stuff the songs tell you.’

‘And you don’t believe that now?’ Gina asked, keeping her voice blank of expression.

‘If ever a man and woman loved each other, we did. And it all fell apart like a shoddy toy. Infatuation is a bad basis for marriage. The best one is if people have something in common and are fond of each other-but, even then, not too fond.’ He gave a grunt of bitter laughter. ‘If I’d known that then, I’d never have married a woman I was crazy about and we’d have spared ourselves a lot of grief.

‘She began spending longer and longer away. There were film parts that took her abroad. The parts became better fairly quickly. She was sleeping her way to the top.

‘At first she denied it. She can be so convincing. She can make you doubt what you know to be true. Then I caught her with someone-she begged me to forgive her-swore it would never happen again-’

‘And you believed her?’

‘It sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But I needed to believe her for my own sanity. In the end she didn’t bother to pretend any more, and I knew I had to cut her right out of my life, or go mad. So that’s what I did.’

The last words had an air of finality, as though he’d drawn a line across a page. After that he said no more.

Gina sat, aghast at the demon that had been released. Beneath Carson’s quiet words she sensed a wilderness of anguish and rage. He’d known a passion such as came to few people, and its destruction had left him a shell. He had ‘cut her out’. And what was left behind was emptiness, because the only way to cut her out of his heart was to cut his heart out too.

A slight thud made her look up. His glass had slipped out of his hand and fallen to the carpet. He was asleep.

She bent to retrieve the glass, moving quietly so as not to awaken him. His head had fallen sideways and in the soft glow from the lamp Gina could see the relaxed lines of his face. With the trouble smoothed away by sleep he looked boyish, vulnerable.

She hadn’t consciously noticed his mouth before, but now she saw how wide and firm it was, how sensual it must have been before cruel experience taught him to beware sensuality.

‘She’s a lady of large appetites, which I was able to satisfy… When that kind of passion overwhelms you…you think it’s enough.’

Bitter words from a bitter heart, about something he no longer believed in. Why should she care?

He presented a controlled face to the world because he dreaded to be overwhelmed again, but once he’d been happy to give himself up to his love. The thought was mysteriously painful.

As she knelt her face was so close to his that she could feel his breath brush her mouth softly. The effect on her was electric. He hadn’t even touched her, and yet she felt the charge go through her body, melting it, making it weak with desire. She discovered that she was trembling.

She ought to go, but she stayed, thinking that somewhere in the world was a woman who’d had this man’s passion and thrown it away. And wondering if that woman was mad.

If he had loved her she would never have left him-because it would have been like tearing out her own heart. His love would have been the pinnacle of her life, fulfilling every dream, satisfying every desire. Instinct too deep to be examined told her that.

She seemed to have been taken over by another will, one that held here there watching him yearningly, made her lean towards him when she knew she ought to leave. It kept her still, fighting the temptation to lay her lips gently against his, but not fighting it very hard. In another moment she would yield and kiss him. And never mind the consequences!

He stirred, muttered, reached out his hand blindly. It touched her face and she froze, terrified in case he awoke and found her there. It seemed like an age that she knelt motionless while his fingers lay against her lips and her heart thundered.

Gradually she took his hand between hers and moved it away from her face to lay it on the sofa. Then she rose to her feet and fled the room.

Carson opened his eyes with a start, wondering if he’d been sleeping or waking. In his twilight state he’d almost thought that…