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snarled, ‘You must be joking! Marry you? Even if I could, I wouldn’t marry a greedy little tart like you.’
    The girl’s voice roughened, too. ‘You bastard! I’m good enough for a fuck, but not good enough to marry, is that it?’
    ‘You’re damned right that’s it! How do I even know it’s my baby? You weren’t a virgin when I met you, were you? You’ve spread it around since you were fourteen. I know all about you. How many men have you slept with this month? God knows who the father is.’
    She sneered. ‘These days it’s easy to prove. You’ve heard of DNA, haven’t you, Sean?’
    ‘Yeah, but, even if it is my kid, I’m not marrying you. I’m marrying Nicola. At least I can be pretty sure she’s a virgin.’
    ‘Bloody hypocrite!’
    ‘Look, I never promised you marriage, and I knew you’d been with half my mates. We were just having a bit of fun.’
    ‘That was before I got pregnant. That changes everything.’
    ‘The hell it does. I’ll give you the money to get rid of it, that’s my best offer, so I’d take it, if I was you!’
    ‘Oh, no! I’m not getting rid of my baby.’
    ‘Suit yourself.’
    ‘And you’re not getting rid of me, Sean. You’re going to have to break off your engagement and marry me. Or I’ll talk to the press. I don’t think your fiancée’s father will be very happy to hear about your little bastard, do you? Your engagement isn’t going to last long, once he hears about me and the baby.’
    Miranda hated the ugly sound of their screaming at each other. She got up and ran to the window, then froze in shock.
    The girl was still screaming, but now her voice was muffled. There were other, uglier noises now – flailing arms beating the water, a rhythmic banging as if hands were beating on the side of the bath.
    She knew those gulping, choking sounds. Somebody was drowning.
    The nightmare played again in her head. Those familiar, terrifying noises going on and on.
    She was dragged backwards in time.
    Tom was drowning. Tom was dying. She could not see him, could not reach him, but she heard him and felt sick and faint.
    When everything was still again, when silence fell, Miranda didn’t move. Couldn’t move. Just stood there, trembling, white as snow, icy cold.
    Had she imagined what she just heard? Had it really happened? There had been so many nights when she had dreamt those sounds, woken to hear them in her room, only to be forced to admit she had imagined it.
    She stood listening, waiting, staring at the bathroom opposite.
    Sean reappeared at the open window. He was tying the belt of a black towelling robe as he reached forward to close the window. Behind him the steam had cleared, the room was horribly quiet.
    This time he looked across and saw Miranda.
    They stared at each other. His face filled with visible shock. He turned ashen.
    Miranda’s mind clouded. She had not imagined it. Someone had just drowned. A girl had died in that bathroom.
    From the minute she saw that man at the party yesterday she had known a death would follow.
    She slowly slipped to the floor in a dead faint.

Chapter Two

    Miranda opened her eyes and stared up blankly at the plain white office ceiling. For a few seconds she could not understand where she was, or why she was lying on the floor. It was like a strange dream, except that she knew she was awake and wasn’t in her flat.
    She began to scramble to her feet unsteadily but as she stood up memory returned and she staggered, clutching at the desk.
    Oh, God. Oh, God. Someone had drowned. Over there, across the courtyard, in the bathroom of Terry’s flat, someone had drowned.
    She lurched forward, pulled up the blinds. The window of the bathroom was closed and she could see nothing through the bubbled glass, not even the shadow of anyone in the room beyond. There wasn’t a sound. The summer afternoon was languid and still. In the distance she heard the drone of London traffic, like bees fumbling among flowers.
    Had it really