LOWER CROFT, COOMB FARM,

HEREFORDSHIRE-28 AUGUST 2001

Unusually for twenty-eight years ago, Nancy Smith had been delivered in her mother's bedroom, but not because her mother had avant-garde views on a woman's right to home birthing. A wild and disturbed teenager, Elizabeth Lockyer-Fox had starved herself for the first six months of her pregnancy and, when that failed to kill the incubus inside her, ran away from boarding school and demanded her mother rescue her from it. Who would marry her if she was saddled with a child?

The question seemed relevant at the time-Elizabeth was just seventeen-and her family closed ranks to protect her reputation. The Lockyer-Foxes were an old military family with distinguished war service from the Crimea to the standoff in Korea on the 38th parallel. With abortion out of the question because Elizabeth had left it too late, adoption was the only option if the stigmas of single motherhood and illegitimacy were to be avoided. Naively perhaps, and even in 1973 with the women's movement well under way, a "good" marriage was the Lockyer-Foxes' only solution to their daughter's uncontrollable behavior. Once settled down, they hoped, she would learn responsibility.

The agreed story was that Elizabeth was suffering from glandular fever, and there was muted sympathy among her parents' friends and acquaintances-none of whom had much affection for the Lockyer-Fox children-when it became clear that the fever was debilitating and contagious enough to keep her quarantined for three months. For the rest, the tenant farmers and workers on the Lockyer-Fox estate, Elizabeth remained her usual wild self, slipping her mother's leash at night to drink and shag herself stupid, unrepentant about the damage it might do to her fetus. If it wasn't going to be hers, why should she care? All she wanted was rid of it, and the rougher the sex the more likely that was.

The doctor and midwife kept their mouths shut, and a surprisingly healthy child emerged on the due date. At the end of the experience, interestingly pale and frail, Elizabeth was sent to a finishing school in London from where she met and married a baronet's son who found her fragility and ready tears endearing.

As for Nancy, her stay in Shenstead Manor had been of short duration. Within hours of her birth she had been processed through an adoption agency to a childless couple on a Herefordshire farm where her origins were neither known nor relevant. The Smiths were kindly people who adored the child that had been given to them and made no secret of her adoption, always attributing her finer qualities-principally the cleverness that took her to Oxford-to her natural parents.

Nancy, by contrast, attributed everything to her only-child status, her parents' generous nurturing, their insistence on a good education, and their untiring support of all her ambitions. She rarely thought about her biological inheritance. Confident in the love of two good people, Nancy could see no point in fantasizing about the woman who had abandoned her. Whoever she was, her story had been told a thousand times before and would be told a thousand times again. Single woman. Accidental pregnancy. Unwanted baby. The mother had no place in her daughter's story…

…or wouldn't have done but for a persistent solicitor who traced Nancy through the agency's records to the Smith home in Hereford. After several unanswered letters, he came knocking on the farmhouse door, and by a rare stroke of fate found Nancy home on leave.

It was her mother who persuaded her to speak to him. She found her daughter in the stables where Nancy was brushing the mud of a hard ride from Red Dragon's flanks. The horse's reaction to a solicitor on the premises-a scornful snort-so closely mimicked Nancy's that she gave his muzzle an approving kiss. There's sense for you, she told Mary. Red could smell the devil from a thousand paces. So? Had Mr. Ankerton said what he wanted or was he still hiding behind innuendo?

His letters had been masterpieces of legal sleight of hand. A surface read seemed to suggest a legacy-"Nancy Smith, born 23.05.73… something to your advantage…" A between-the-lines read-"instructed by the Lockyer-Fox family… relative issues… please confirm date of birth…"-suggested a cautious approach by her natural mother, which was outside the rules governing adoption. Nancy had wanted none of it-"I'm a Smith"-but her adoptive mother had urged her to be kind.

Mary Smith couldn't bear to think of anyone being rebuffed, particularly not a woman who had never known her child. She gave you life, she said, as if that were reason enough to embark on a relationship with a total stranger. Nancy, who had a strong streak of realism in her nature, wanted to warn Mary against opening a can of worms, but as usual she couldn't bring herself to go against her softhearted mother's wishes. Mary's greatest talent was to bring out the best in people, because her refusal to see flaws meant they didn't exist-in her eyes at least-but it laid her open to a legion of disappointments.

Nancy feared this would be another. Cynically, she could imagine only two ways this "reconciliation" could go, which was why she had spurned the solicitor's letters. Either she would get on with her biological mother or she wouldn't, and the only thing on offer in both scenarios was a guilt trip. It was her view that there was room for only one mother in a person's life, and it was an unnecessary complication to add the emotional baggage of a second. Mary, who insisted on putting herself in the other woman's shoes, couldn't see the dilemma. No one's asking you to make a choice, she argued, any more than they ask you to choose between me and your father. We all love many people in our lives. Why should this be different?

It was a question that could only be answered afterward, thought Nancy, and by then it would be too late. Once contact was made, it couldn't be unmade. Part of her wondered if Mary was motivated by pride. Did she want to show off to this unknown woman? And if she did, was that so wrong? Nancy wasn't immune to the sense of satisfaction it would give. Look at me. I'm the child you didn't want. This is what I've made of myself with no help from you. She might have resisted more firmly had her father been there to support her. He understood the dynamics of jealousy better than his wife, having grown up between a warring mother and stepmother, but it was August, he was harvesting, and in his absence she gave in. She told herself it was no big deal. Nothing in life was ever as bad as imagination painted it.

Mark Ankerton, who had been shut into a sitting room off the hall, was beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable. The Smith surname, coupled with the address-Lower Croft, Coomb Farm-had led him to assume that the family were farm laborers who lived in a tied cottage. Now, in this room of books and worn leather furniture, he was far from confident that the weight he'd given in his letters to the Lockyer-Fox connection would cut much ice with the adopted daughter.

A nineteenth-century map on the wall above the fireplace showed Lower Croft and Coomb Croft as two distinct entities, while a more recent map next to it showed the two within a single boundary, renamed Coomb Farm. As Coomb Croft farmhouse fronted a main road, it was obvious that the family would have chosen the more secluded Lower Croft as their residence, and Mark cursed himself for jumping to easy conclusions. The world had moved on. He should have known better than to dismiss a couple called John and Mary Smith as laborers.

His eye was constantly drawn to the mantelpiece, where a photograph of a laughing young woman in gown and mortarboard with "St. Hilda's, Oxford, 1995" inscribed at the bottom held pride of place. It had to be the daughter, he thought. The age was right, even if she bore no resemblance to her foolish, doll-like mother. The whole thing was a nightmare. He had pictured the girl as easy meat-a coarser, ill-educated version of Elizabeth-instead he was faced with an Oxford graduate from a family probably as well-to-do as the one he was representing.