CHAPTER 1
There was no one at the airport to meet Rachel Gairdner.
It took her about half an hour to convince herself of it.
At first she was sure that her brother was somewhere there
among the crowd gathered outside the exit， waiting for
friends and relatives to emerge， and that he had simply
not seen her as site stood waiting.
Then she thougllt that he would soon arrive， full of apol-
ogies， of course， fo~ being late. Not that it was like him to
be late. He was a p~unctilious young man， far less casual
about such things as time， money or commitments gener-
ally than she was herself. So inevitably she began to think
that something must have happened to him.
Either his car would not start， or he had been in an
accident， or he had been taken suddenly ill.
But he was never taken ill. He had the unobtrusive sort
of good health that gets taken so for granted that even a
common cold seems out of character. And if his car would
not start， surely he would have had the sense to take a taxi
rather than fail to meet her. And it was unthinkable that
he should simply have made a mistake about the day on
which she was to arrive.
So it began to seem most unpleasantly probable that he
had been in an accident.
The sun beat down on Rachel out of a sky of deepest
blue. She felt almost ready to cry from sheer fatigue， and
the winter clothes that she had had to wear for the start of
the journey from London in a peculiarly bitter January felt
heavy and moistly clinging in the Australian morning. She
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