“Don’t speak his name to me!” Eve screeched at Annabel on the phone. “He’s dead, dead and gone, and I hope he burns in hell!”

Stripping off his pajamas, Max felt peaceful. He was going to see his mother at last. Everything would be all right.

He made rips in the sleeves and pant legs with a loose bedspring and began to tear. He should never have slept with Lexi. That was when the poison got into his system. He’d been unfaithful to his mother. That’s why Kruger-Brent had been taken from him. He was no longer clean.

Calmly, methodically, he tied the strips of fabric together using a true lover’s knot, a camping knot that his father had taught him in South Africa when he was a little boy.

Come here, Max. Let me show you.

He had to remember to teach the knot to Edward and George. They’d go camping next summer. It’d be a blast. Now that he wasn’t working, he’d have more time for the family. My darling boys.

Standing on the bed on tiptoes, naked, Max threw the knotted fabric over the ceiling beam. The noose felt wonderful against his neck, caressing his skin like a lover’s fingers. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift back. His eighth birthday. The gun.

What is it?

Open it and find out.

Eve’s voice was low and sensual.

You’re too old for toys. Keith doesn’t understand that, but I do.

Max smelled her perfume. Chanel.

Do you like it?

His head was pressed against her soft breasts, breathing her in, adoring her.

I love it, Mommy. I love you.

Smiling beatifically, Max leaped into his mother’s arms.

TWENTY-SEVEN

LEXI SAT ALONE IN THE DOCTOR’S WAITING ROOM, GLANCING impatiently at her BlackBerry. How much longer were they going to keep her waiting? Didn’t they realize she had a business to run?

It was late October, ten days after Max Webster’s shocking suicide, and New York had suddenly plunged headlong into winter. In other years, Lexi’s spirits always lifted with the first frost. She loved the cold bite of the air on the city streets, the smell of the chestnut vendors outside her building, the blinding glare of winter sunlight in the crisp ice-blue sky. It roused some childish excitement in her: the promise of Christmas, Santa Claus, brightly wrapped boxes and ribbons, wood smoke, cinnamon. This year, however, the New York cold seemed to have seeped into her bones. She felt drained. Listless. Max’s death had neither elated nor shattered her. She was numbed with a cold that froze from the inside out, from her heart to the tips of her Gucci-gloved fingers.

“Ms. Templeton?”

The receptionist was a plump black woman dressed from head to toe in orange. Even her cheap plastic earrings were Halloween-hued. She tapped Lexi on the shoulder.

“We’ve been calling you, ma’am. Dr. Neale will see you now.”

Dr. Perregrine Neale had known Lexi Templeton since she was a child. A keen tennis player in his midsixties, he prided himself on his still-trim figure. With his distinguished gray hair, deep voice and strong, masculine features, Perry Neale was particularly popular with middle-aged women patients; a category to which Lexi now technically belonged, although looking at her clear skin and blond hair without so much as a hint of gray, it was hard to believe she was forty years old.

“Come in, Lexi. Have a seat.”

“I won’t, if you don’t mind, Perry. I’m in kind of a rush. If you could just let me have my test results and a prescription, I’ll be out of your hair.”

Perregrine Neale gestured to the Ralph Lauren armchair in the corner. “Please. This won’t take long. You look tired.”

Lexi sat down.

“I am tired. That’s why I’m here. I’m sick and tired of being tired.”

Perregrine Neale laughed.

“That’s to be expected. The first trimester is often the most exhausting.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said it’s normal to feel excessively tired in the early stages of a pregnancy. You’re pregnant, Lexi.”

Now it was Lexi’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think so, Perry. You must have mixed my blood sample with someone else’s. Not to put too fine a point on it, I haven’t had sex in months. Not to mention the fact that I’m forty years old and I’ve been on the pill since dinosaurs roamed the earth!”

“Be that as it may, you’re pregnant. I would estimate you’re about three months gone. We’ll have to do a scan to be sure.”

Perregrine Neale’s face was deadly serious. Lexi was suddenly glad she was sitting down. Cold beads of sweat began to roll down her spine. She gripped the sides of the chair, fighting back a rising tide of nausea.

“I can’t be pregnant.”

Painfully, she cast her mind back to the last time she and Gabe had slept together. It was two weeks before she made her move on Kruger-Brent. How long ago was that? She’d come home late, wound up like a clockwork toy after a tense, secret meeting with Carl Kolepp. When Gabe tried to touch her, Lexi pushed him away. But for once, he’d forced the issue, stroking and exciting her as only he could, bringing her to orgasm twice before finally pushing himself inside her, obliterating the tension from her mind and body.

Perregrine Neale was still talking.

“…twelve weeks…nuchal scan…baby’s neck measurements…” His voice washed over Lexi like an echo, distant and unreal. “…older first-time mothers…elevated risk…”

“No.”

Lexi spoke so softly that at first the doctor didn’t hear her.

“What did you say?”

“I said NO!” This time the panic in her voice was unmistakable. “I can’t be pregnant.”

“Lexi. You are pregnant.”

“I mean I can’t…I can’t have a baby. I can’t go through with it.”

Perregrine Neale paused. “You want to terminate?”

Lexi nodded.

“I can arrange that, of course. But don’t make any rushed decisions. Clearly, the pregnancy was unexpected. Perhaps if you gave yourself a chance to get used to the idea-”

“No.” Lexi shook her head fervently. Her mind was filled with images of Gabe, his face, his body. Forcibly, she pushed them out, screwing her eyes closed. “I can’t do it, Perry. There’s work. Kruger-Brent. We’re only just starting to rebuild. The timing couldn’t be worse.”

“Lexi, please don’t take this the wrong way. But you’re forty years old. You may not get another chance at pregnancy, at least not naturally. There’s always IVF, of course, but statistically the odds are not great.”

“I don’t want another chance.” Lexi stood up. She was shaking, but her voice was firm. “I don’t want children, Perry. Please set up a termination as soon as possible.”

She walked out of the office, slamming the door behind her.

Gabe McGregor sat on the veranda of his new Cape Town apartment, lost in thought. Maybe he should have waited? Shopped around a bit before signing the lease? It was the first place the real-estate agent had shown him that met his requirements: private, not too big, excellent security, ocean views. Gabe had signed on the dotted line within a minute of walking through the door.

But now he thought: What am I doing here? This isn’t home.

What had he expected? He’d moved back to South Africa because, after Lexi, he had to leave New York. And because he had nowhere else to go. Scotland wasn’t home anymore. London was cold and gray, not a city to move to when trying to escape depression. South Africa had been his home once. Maybe it could be again?

Or maybe not. Cape Town was so charged with memories of Tara and the children, of Dia and Phoenix, of happiness found and lost, that when Gabe walked the streets, even the air smelled of grief. He’d hoped his new bachelor apartment might jolt him out of his sadness. Something modern and fresh, with no womanly touches, nothing to remind him of Lexi or his marriage. But it was no good. A fresh start wasn’t about geography or chrome kitchen fixtures or black marble bathrooms. It was about moving in his heart. Sipping his Beck’s beer, gazing at the bleeding blood-orange sunset, it came to him with searing clarity.