Trust Too Much. Jayne Bauling

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘REMEMBER the lovely parties you used to organise for me when I was little?’ Fee Garland smiled affectionately at her stepsister. ‘But it’s not my birthday now, and I don’t know what else you think there is to celebrate. I haven’t exactly come home in a blaze of glory. Deepest disgrace is more like it.’

      ‘Don’t be so silly,’ Babs dismissed the rueful suggestion bracingly, but her sherry-coloured eyes were kind as she glanced up at Fee’s pale, sensitive face. ‘But if you’re worried about what people might say, let them think you’ve been retrenched. That always gets sympathy.’

      But Fee shook her head, unwilling to let herself be misled on that score.

      ‘Don’t try to pretend the news hasn’t reached Hong Kong, Babs,’ she protested shakily, the array of flowers Babs had called her into the lounge to see blurring momentarily before she managed to blink back a rush of tears.

      ‘All right, I have to say that it has, but no one cares, Fee. Everyone here is on your side,’ Babs insisted loyally.

      ‘You are, anyway. You always have been,’ Fee acknowledged gratefully.

      ‘And you’re home, back where you belong. That’s reason enough to celebrate,’ Babs added determinedly, and Fee had to laugh at the resolution firming the piquant little face beneath a fringe of shiny, streaky hair.

      ‘Who have you invited?’ She gave in.

      ‘Oh, the usual crowd. I couldn’t remember who all your special friends had been—it’s nearly four years, after all—but I did seem to remember that you were once quite friendly with Warren Bates, so I’ve asked him and he has accepted. As for the rest—oh, masses of people from the old days as well as some new friends you won’t know yet.’

      Sociable people, Babs and the man she had married had always had scores of friends, Fee recalled as she tried to visualise Warren Bates, the difficulty she experienced in doing so somewhat disconcerting since he had been her very first love.

      But the attraction had foundered before anything remotely resembling a relationship could develop, so perhaps her inability to recall his features clearly wasn’t so surprising after all, her recollection of the man who had sunk that fragile first romance far more vivid.

      ‘Are your parties still so wild?’ she questioned Babs teasingly, her mind returning to present concerns. ‘Or has marriage turned you all sedate and sober? The people I knew in Australia were much more conventional than you and your crowd used to be. That’s why…’

      As she hesitated self-consciously, Babs spoke emphatically. ‘Well, we’re all still as broad-minded as ever, so you can stop worrying about how people will react to your little adventure if that’s what’s troubling you.’

      ‘I’m not really worrying, I’m just not exactly looking forward to having a lot of people all looking at me and wondering what really happened. But they’ll just have to go on wondering because I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have to, except that I’d like to tell you that nothing happened and I never did or said anything to make Mr Sheldon think the way he did, or nothing that I’m aware of, anyway.’

      ‘Of course you didn’t, darling Fee.’ The unquestioning acceptance was warming.

      ‘And if anyone as much as hints otherwise, just you refer him to me.’ Charles Sandilands had joined them in time to overhear and he stood in the doorway looking down at his hands and flexing his fingers thoughtfully.

      ‘And if it’s a woman, refer her to me,’ Babs adjured cheerfully. ‘But go and get changed, precious. People will start arriving any minute now, and there’s really nothing for you to do down here.’

      ‘Poor little thing,’ Fee heard Charles saying as she left the lounge. ‘The person I’d really like to get my hands on is Sheldon.’

      ‘The monster,’ Babs was agreeing. ‘An innocent like Fee!’

      ‘She has changed, though,’ Charles sounded a cautionary note. ‘I hardly recognised her when we met her at Kai Tak yesterday.’

      ‘Outwardly, but she’s still our little Fee,’ Babs insisted obstinately.

      Combined irritation and amusement banished the threat of tears which had prompted Fee’s speedy departure. Everyone, including