“You knocked it onto the floor,” Tonia replied.

She hadn’t. It was extra. She already had two on the bed. Her heart was beating wildly, pounding in her chest, her pulse racing. Should she challenge Tonia now, tear it out into the open and face it? Dare she? That would make it irrevocable. Then what? What was left of their relationship after that?

“No, I didn’t,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve still got two!”

Tonia smiled, as if that were exactly what she had wanted her to say. “You had three, dear. One to prop you up if you wished to read.” She gave a very slight laugh, dry and brittle. “Did you think I brought it in here to suffocate you with? Why on earth would I do that? Have you done something dreadful that I don’t know about? Is that why you don’t eat well, and wake up screaming in the night?” She stood up, still holding the extra pillow in her arms.

“No, of course it isn’t!” Susannah snapped. Then she looked straight at Tonia. “You already know all there is to be known!”

“Yes,” Tonia agreed softly. “Yes… I do!” And still carrying the pillow, she went out and closed the door silently, as totally silently as she had come.

Breakfast was miserable. Susannah had a nagging headache, Kate looked tense and also seemed unable to eat. Only Tonia was relentlessly cheerful and apparently full of energy. She cooked and served, asking both the others solicitously if they had slept, if they were well, if she could do anything more for them.

“You look hungover,” she said briskly to Susannah. “A good walk around the point would make you feel far better. And you too, Kate. We should go now. The weather’s cleared and the tide’s just right. And I’d enjoy it as well. Get your coats and come.” She did not wait for them but grasped her own coat off the peg by the door and, putting one arm through the sleeve, went outside into the windy sunshine.

Kate was undecided.

“Come on!” Tonia called. “It’s a wonderful morning! Crisp and sweet, and I can hear a blackbird singing. The wind’s coming in off the sea, and it smells like heaven.”

Susannah suddenly made up her mind. She would face it, even provoke it if necessary, but she was not going to spend the rest of the week, let alone the rest of her life, being afraid of Tonia and letting her manipulate her into guilt and wild idiotic imaginings every time she felt like it. It was not her fault Ralph had had an affair with Kate, or that he’d tried to use her. It was not her fault he was corrupt, or that the court had found him guilty and sent him to jail. He was guilty! And it was not her fault one of the other prisoners had killed him. That last might not have been deserved, it might have been as tragic and unjust as Tonia believed, but Susannah was not going to take the blame for it.

But she would rather not face it alone. “Come on, Kate!” she added with decision. “A big clean wind blowing through everything will do us a lot of good!”

Kate obeyed, reluctantly, and the three of them walked abreast up to the rise at the edge of the grass, over the heavy stones and at last onto the thin rim of hard sand at the edge of the tide. All of them were watching for the odd big waves, and ran very smartly up the stones when they came, always just avoiding getting wet.

They went toward the rocky point where the tidal pools were full of treasures. They reached the beginning of the outcrop and started to climb carefully, watching every foothold, Tonia first, then Kate, Susannah last. They went as far out as there was a decent place to stand, Susannah the lowest and closest to where the deep water rushed past, white spume hurling in over the teeth of the rocks, and sucking back, dragging the sand and stones and shells. Farther out, beyond the very edge of the point, five ranks of waves, one beyond the other, roared in, heads bent, foam and spray flying, boiling over to cover the whole face of the sea with white.

It was a time when no words were necessary, but Tonia spoke.

“Magnificent, isn’t it? Elemental, like the great passions of life.”

Kate looked away. “I suppose so.” She was staring along the shore at the curve of the beach and the miles of coast with rocks and spurs and jagged standing outcrops as far as the eye could see.

“Oh, yes,” Tonia went on. “I can understand passion, even the lust that’s so strong it overtakes all morality, and you want something so badly you just take it, even if it belongs to someone else. Can’t you, Kate?”

Kate swung around, the wind blowing her hair across her face. She pushed it back impatiently. She was close to Tonia, but about three feet lower. “For God’s sake shut up about it!” she shouted. “You knew Ralph and I were in love! I’m sorry! He was your husband, and he loved me. I loved him too! We couldn’t both have him. You lost.”

“Both?” Tonia laughed, and control of it escaped her, her voice rising high and wild. “He’s dead, Kate! He died in a toilet in the state prison! He was stabbed in the belly, and bled to death there on the floor! Nobody near him! Not you, not me, not even dear Susannah!”

Kate swayed as if she would lose her balance. “What do you mean, Susannah? He wasn’t in love with her! He didn’t even like her!”

“Of course he didn’t like her!” Tonia shouted back, her eyes narrowed, her lips drawn tight over her teeth. “But he knew she was clever! He tried to use her, at the bank. But our dear little Susannah didn’t want to be used. She wanted to have him, and if she couldn’t, she’d rather destroy him. She doesn’t take rejection well, our little sister! When he asked for her help, and she wished him to become her lover as the price, and he brushed her off, she took her revenge. And perfect it was! She betrayed him to the police-got together all the evidence, created any that was lacking, and set him up! There was no way he could escape it. Poor Ralph! He had no idea what jealousy and rejection would do to her. She might just as well have stuck the knife into him herself!”

Kate wheeled around, almost overbalancing, her face white, eyes blazing with a passion of rage. She started down toward Susannah, covering the few yards between them, jumping, scrambling, incredibly not slipping.

“I didn’t!” Susannah yelled, stepping backward, toward the edge of the rocks and the racing sea. “I didn’t make up anything! Everything I gave the police was exactly what he was doing!”

“You gave him up!” Kate said with incredulous fury. “It was you who betrayed Ralph!” But it was not a question. She had heard the knowledge in Tonia’s voice, and the guilt in Susannah’s. She launched herself at Susannah and flung both of them backward onto the rocks. The next wave roared past them, knocking the breath out of their bodies, ice cold, and leaving them struggling on the shelf of the rock to the edge where it fell straight down.

“I didn’t betray him!” Susannah gasped, trying to throw Kate off her and scramble back up again. “He was going to steal money to finance his run for the Senate! I stopped him. Damn it, get off me! Ralph was playing you both for fools! He was corrupt as hell!”

Kate hit her, hard, across the side of the face, hurling her off balance backward to the rock shelf again.

“You killed him!” she cried in a howl of anguish. “He loved me! I could have prevented him from doing that! If you’d come to me, I’d have saved him!” She was sobbing as memory, broken dreams and unbearable loneliness swept over her. “I loved him! I could have…”

“I know you loved him!” Susannah put her hand up to her burning face and crawled sideways to where the shelf was wider. “But he didn’t love anyone, not you, not Tonia, not anyone at all! Kate! The man you loved never existed!”

“Yes he did! He could have…”

“He could have… but he didn’t! He chose not to!”