That left Alex, and the question that had kept her from sleep for two days. If he had stolen the knife, whom did he mean to hurt- himself? Or someone else?

Fern stamped her feet against the cold and her own frustration. Where the hell was Bryony? And if Bryony didn't come home, who else could she talk to? Otto had taken his girls to their grandparents for Christmas Eve dinner, and Wesley had gone to his family as well. Her own dad was useless, poor sod couldn't help himself, much less anyone else. She'd tried the soup kitchen on her way here, thinking to find Bryony there, or at least Marc, but the place had been dark and locked up tight as a drum.

That left the holier-than-thou policewoman who had come to her flat- what was her name? Inspector James? No, she'd make a fool of herself if she did that, and of Alex, and he would never speak to her again. There must be some other way.

The street lamps came on, casting their sickly yellow glow on the pavement. Fern shoved her hands deep into her pockets, suppressing a shiver. Something damp touched her forehead, then the tip of her nose, like a caress from icy, invisible fingers. It was snowing.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

If Swinging London had begun to fade by the summer of 1966, the unexpected, gloriously hot weather brought it back into full flower once more. Hair grew longer, skirts shorter, and the heady haze of cannabis and incense seemed to drift into every nook and alleyway.

But for Angel, the glamour of the London scene had begun to dim. More and more often lately, Karl's "business meetings" took place without her. He'd opened a small shop in a Kensington byway, but her offer to come and help out had been instantly rejected. Instead, he'd hired a girl to work the register, a skinny brunette with hair that tickled her waist, and Angel suspected that his interest in the girl was more than professional.

Furious with him, she'd flirted openly in front of Karl on one of their evenings out. Karl had responded, taking her home early, making love to her with a ferocity that had left her bruised and shaken.

It was a few weeks later when she learned the boy she'd teased in the club had suffered a serious mishap that same evening. Set upon by muggers, he lay in hospital with fractured legs and jaw.

Appalled at her own suspicions, she'd told herself not to be silly. Then two months later, it had happened again. A different club, a different young man who had chatted her up while Karl was huddled in a corner with some of his mates.

This time, the young man had been beaten and left in an alleyway, and Angel heard the news the next day. Shaking with rage and shock, she'd confronted Karl.

"Whatever gave you such an absurd idea?" He sounded amused, but his smile didn't reach his eyes. "Do I look as though I'd been having a punch-up among the dustbins?" His handsome face was unmarked, his hands smooth and neatly manicured.

She remembered the men she'd seen him talking to in the club, big and heavily muscled. "Maybe you got your mates to do it. Or hired someone."

This time Karl laughed aloud. "Oh, really, Angel. You flatter yourself. How could you think such a thing?" He studied her, his gray eyes narrowing. "Still, you might do well to remember that I look after my possessions."

"I'm not one of your antiques, and I don't need looking after," she'd told him defiantly, but it didn't ease the clutch of fear in her heart.

As the months crept by towards Christmas, she spent more and more time on her own, listening to the plaintive lyric of "Eleanor Rigby," imagining herself growing old, alone. She had no family now, no friends that weren't Karl's friends. Sometimes she thought about leaving him, leaving London, finding a job as a shop clerk in some provincial town, but she had lived that life and was not yet desperate enough to go back to it. But there was more to her reluctance than that- bad things had happened to people because of her. What would Karl do if she made him really angry?

The pills brought her some ease, dulling her fears to a faint, nagging discomfort. When she'd used up her mother's supply, Karl had got her more.

It seemed that everyone they knew was taking LSD, but after the first few times, Angel had made excuses to pass it by. The sharp, jangly feeling and disjointed images the drug produced frightened her- in fact, the last time she'd tried it, she'd spent the evening curled up in a fetal ball on the floor, terrified that the moving walls were going to crush her. Karl had laughed at her, but not even his disdain could convince her to go through that experience again. She would stay with the warmth and drifting ease of the morphine, and confine her nightmares to sleep.

Then, just before Christmas, her tablets ran out. When she told Karl, he shrugged and said his source had vanished.

She had no rest in the days that followed. Karl watched her growing misery with an interest that seemed calculated, rather than sympathetic. By Christmas Eve she was tossing in their bed, restless and sweating.

Karl came and sat beside her, smoothing the damp hair from her forehead. "I can help you if you want," he said gently, holding up a small bag of white powder.

She knew what it was. He kept a small supply for friends and clients, although he never touched the stuff himself. "No," she whispered, "I shouldn't." She heard the longing in her voice, and knew he had heard it, too.

"It will be all right," he murmured. "It will help you sleep, that's all."

"But I- It's-"

"Let me take care of you, Angel. Haven't I always taken care of you?"

She felt him sponge her arm with something cold, then a prick. The relief came instantly, coursing through her body in a tingling wave. The room shifted, blurred, Karl's face softening like candle wax. The bed moved as he lay down and wrapped her in his arms.

"It will be all right," he whispered, his lips warm against her ear. "Everything will be all right. I promise."

During the daylight hours, Alex sat in the dimness, the heavy drapes pulled across the garden doors, the only light from the display cabinet that held his Clarice Cliff pottery. He'd unplugged the phone, and when he heard Fern knocking, he held his breath as if his very stillness would will her to go away. Eventually, she did.

He went back to the mental discipline he had set himself, absently running his fingers over the handle of the paper knife he'd stolen from Fern's stall.

It had taken him several days to realize he had no photo of Dawn. She had never wanted him to take one, had even refused to give him a copy of the bland studio shot she'd had made as a gift to her parents. She insisted he didn't need a reminder of her, that it would lessen the impact when he saw her- but he thought now that her reluctance had been merely another manifestation of her growing fear of Karl.

So he sat in the dark and tried obsessively, memory by memory, image by image, to put her together again in his mind. If he could paint the perfect picture of her, then he might, by some enormous act of will and concentration, imprint it forever in his brain.

He tried desperately to remember every time they had been together, what they had said or felt or done. But he found himself thinking instead of other girls, charting the arcs of those relationships as if they might provide him a map of the one that mattered most.