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