indsay's prediction had come true. Just after the lunchtime rush, a middle-aged man with cropped hair and the smartest leather jacket she'd seen in a long time eased into the booth opposite her. "Are you Rory McLaren?" he asked.

"I'm her business partner, Lindsay Gordon. Anything you were going to tell Rory, you can tell me."

He looked slightly dubious. "I don't know. The friend who told me I could trust Rory, he didn't say anything about you."

Lindsay gave him her most reassuring smile. "That's probably because we've not been working together very long. Look, I understand your reluctance, and if you want to come back another time when Rory's here, I'm not going to be offended. But you're here now. You might as well do what you came for."

"I need to be sure you'll keep me out of this," he said. "It could cost me my job if it comes back on me."

Sensing a thaw, Lindsay nodded. "You don't have to worry about that. I've been keeping confidential sources under wraps for years." She pulled a self-mocking face. "It's got so my girlfriend complains I won't even tell her where I get my gossip from."

Forty minutes later, Lindsay was in possession of the bare bones of a story that she thought could be dynamite. Her source was a Senior House Officer at a city hospital, and he was concerned because surgical equipment designated for single use only was being employed several times. "It's not hygienic, and with some pieces of equipment, it's just not safe," he'd told her. "We've already had a couple of near-tragedies on the operating table, and it's only a matter of time before somebody dies." He'd given her several leads to follow up, and she was looking forward to bottoming the story.

By the time she'd finished writing up her notes of the interview, it was too late to start work on the investigation. Rory still wasn't back from lunch, and Lindsay guessed she might have taken her hangover home to bed. She might as well take an early cut herself. On the way home, she stopped to buy a huge bouquet of designer flowers for Sophie, secure in the knowledge that the Standards coverage of the kid-snatch story would mean she could pay for it out of her own pocket.

Although she was home before five, Sophie was there before her, feet up in the living room, a pile of papers on her lap. "Good to see you're taking care of yourself," Lindsay said, presenting the flowers with a flourish.

"They're beautiful," Sophie exclaimed, pulling Lindsay down so she could kiss her. "Thank you. I decided to bring some work home with me because I was feeling a bit sick. Of course, it passed as soon as I got back here, so now I feel like a fraud."

"You're pregnant, you've got to look after yourself," Lindsay said gruffly, leaving the room to put the flowers in water. When she came back, Sophie had put her work to one side.

"How was your day?" she asked.

"Did you see the Standard?" Lindsay asked, placing the vase on the floor in front of the fireplace.

Sophie's hand shot up to cover her mouth in an expression of horror. "Oh, Lindsay, I'm sorry. It completely slipped my mind."

Trying not to show her disappointment, Lindsay shrugged. "No big deal. It's not like you've never seen me get a splash and spread before. Besides, it wouldn't do your street cred any good in the university to be seen reading the tabloid press."

"I'm really sorry, love. I know it was important to you, I should have remembered."

Lindsay perched on the arm of the sofa. "Well, at least my business partner noticed. And was impressed."

"I'm glad. She seems like a nice kid, Rory."

"Hardly a kid, Sophie. She's been in the game a good few years, she's running a freelance business that's successful enough for her to be able to give me a job."

"I guess it's a sign of old age, when the journalists start to look like children," Sophie said, trying to make light of it.

"I told you we were too old for this parenthood business," Lindsay said, not entirely joking.

"You underestimate yourself, Lindsay. And besides, a child will keep us young."

Lindsay winced. "I'm not sure I want to be young. Rory came in this morning with the hangover from hell. You should have seen her. I swear to God her face was green, and the whites of her eyes were somewhere between pink and yellow. She'd been out clubbing with her pal Sandra till all hours. It sounds like they drank a distillery between them. I think I do old better."

"Well, that's hardly a mature attitude to business, turning up in a state like that. It's not exactly going to inspire confidence in the sources or the customers."

"Come on, you know how drinking still goes with the territory here in Scotland. Rory's perfectly capable of doing what she needs to do, regardless of how much she's had to drink or how little sleep she's had." Even as she spoke, Lindsay realized how protective she sounded. Careful, she warned herself.

"I didn't realize that working with Rory meant you had to become her staunch defender too," Sophie said, a spike of malice in her voice.

"Feeling a bit hormonal, are we?" Lindsay flashed back at her.

"Don't turn it back on me, Lindsay. This is your reaction we're talking about."

"Well, you don't even know her, and here you are, sitting in judgement on her. You've no idea what she's like."

Sophie cocked her head on one side. "So what is she like?"

"She's very smart, she's good company, she's very funny and she's totally professional. Believe me, we were in a couple of tight spots in Russia, and she was absolutely on the ball. I can't think of anyone I'd rather have had in my corner."

"So I gathered from your conversation over dinner last night. Rory this, Rory that, Rory the next thing. You sounded like a teenager with a crush."

Lindsay stood up abruptly and walked across the room to the window. "Now you're talking rubbish. Come on, Soph, we'd just come back from a really dangerous job, running on adrenaline. Of course I had to decompress, talk it out of my system."

Sophie raised her eyebrows a fraction. "And that's all it was?"

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a reply," Lindsay said, forcing outrage into her voice. She didn't quite know how it had happened, but she was out there on the thinnest of ice, hearing it creak under her words. She'd never believed in lying to Sophie and she didn't want to start now.

"It's not like you to be lost for words."

"Well, maybe that's a sign I'm finally acquiring the maturity I'm going to need if I'm going to be a parent."

"If?"

Lindsay sighed. "OK, when."

"You don't sound very certain."

"I'm certain."

"You sure Rory would approve of her new employee embarking on parenthood?"

"This has got nothing to do with Rory. You know I love you. I wouldn't be here if I didn't."

"Suddenly we're on to love? Where did that come from, Lindsay? Why are you hiding behind declarations of love? More to the point, what are you hiding?"

Lindsay shook her head in frustration. "I can't talk to you when you're in this kind of mood. I'm going to cook the dinner."

"Never mind dinner." Now Sophie was on her feet, moving to cut off Lindsay's route to the door. They faced each other, a couple of feet apart. Sophie tried to keep the fear that had burned in her for days out of her voice. "We need to talk about this. I know when you're hiding stuff from me, Lindsay. Are you sleeping with her?"

Lindsay's eyes widened in shock. She'd never had any problem with avoiding the truth when bullshit was the route to nailing a story. But she had never looked Sophie in the eye and delivered absolute falsehood. "This is stupid," she said, trying to find a way round the question.

"Answer the question, Lindsay. Yes or no. Are you fucking Rory?" Sophie's face was white, her whole body tense as a gun dog on point. She'd forced this moment of truth and she couldn't back away from it now, whatever the cost.

Lindsay closed her eyes momentarily. "I slept with her."

The words hung in the air, vibrating with a terrible life of their own. Sophie gasped, then slapped Lindsay so hard her ears rang. Lindsay recoiled, her hand automatically going to her scarlet cheek. "You bastard," Sophie said in tones of utter contempt. "You absolute bastard. I'm sitting here, going off my head because I don't know if I'm pregnant or not, and you're escaping from your life, shagging some bimbo in St Petersburg."

"Look, that's not how it was," Lindsay said, groping fruitlessly for a response that wasn't a wretched clich¨¦.

"That's exactly how it was." Tears stung Sophie's eyes and she turned away to prevent Lindsay seeing her pain.

"You make it sound like I had it all planned." Lindsay put out a hand to Sophie, who shrugged it off violently.

"Well, didn't you?"

"Of course I didn't. Jesus, Sophie, what do you take me for?"

Sophie turned back, eyes blazing. "I take you for a coward, Lindsay. Hedging your bets. 'If Sophie's pregnant, hey, that's OK, I can just run off into the sunset with Rory.' "

"You're so wrong," Lindsay said desperately. "What happened between me and Rory was not about you."

"No, it was all about your perennial bloody selfishness. You don't like your life? Trade it in for a different model. That's what you've always done."

"That's bullshit."

"Is it? Think back to when we got together. You didn't like the way Cordelia was making you feel so you cheered yourself up by diving into bed with me."

Lindsay stepped back as if she'd been slapped again. "That's not true. You think we'd still be together if you'd been nothing more than a diversion? Come on, Sophie, you know that's not how it was."

Sophie shook her head. "No, Lindsay, I don't know how it was. I thought I did, but that was when I thought I knew you. Only, the person I thought I knew wouldn't have betrayed me the way you have, so I can't trust anything I believed about our relationship now. The fact that you're shagging Rory turns everything on its head. Nothing means what it did before."

Lindsay shook her head, trying to find the words to ease Sophie's hurt. "Nothing fundamental has changed, Sophie. You're still the most important person in my life. Yes, I slept with Rory. I won't pretend it was just a bit of fun because that would insult all of us. But it was in a different dimension to what goes on between you and me. You're the one that I love. I've never doubted that, not for a minute. I'm not about to trade my life in for something else. I couldn't leave you."

Sophie flushed a deep scarlet, anger flooding her face. "How dare you? You stand there and tell me you're sleeping with somebody else and I shouldn't be worried about it because it's in a different dimension? And you're very kindly not going to leave me? Well, that's really big of you. So, what are you planning on doing? Moving Rory in here? Dividing your nights between the two of us?"

Lindsay held her hands up, palms outward in a placatory gesture. "Look, it happened. It's not going to happen again."

"You seriously expect me to believe that? When you're spending more time with her than you are with me?

Lindsay ran her hands through her hair in a gesture of helplessness. "I made a mistake, OK? I won't be repeating it. We can get over this. It doesn't change the way I feel about you."

"It bloody changes the way I feel about you," Sophie shouted. "You expect me to forgive and forget? I don't think so."

Lindsay hung her head. "I'm sorry."

"Well, you took your time to get the apology in. Too little, too late, Lindsay. We always agreed we would be monogamous. It was basic. It was who we were. You can't break something so fundamental and expect everything to go along like it did before. This is it, Lindsay. It's over."

"You don't mean that."

"I've never meant anything more. Get out. Just get out of my sight, out of this house."

"That isn't the way to deal with this, Sophie. We've got to talk about it. I love you." Lindsay felt the ice break under her feet, felt herself falling, swallowed by the black cold of Sophie's rage.

"No, you don't. You bastard, you only love yourself. Don't you get it? There's nothing to talk about. Not any more. Just get the fuck out. Now!" She reached for a heavy pottery bowl on the nearby table and threw it at Lindsay with all her strength. "Get out!"

Lindsay dodged the missile and backed towards the wall. The dish clattered to the floor and split into smithereens on the polished wooden boards. "Listen to me," she pleaded, on the edge of tears herself now. "I love you."

In reply, Sophie picked up an African soapstone carving. As her arm came back, Lindsay dived for the door. "And don't fucking come back," Sophie screamed. The ornament hit the wall with a sickening thud.

Dazed, Lindsay stumbled for the front door, grabbing the satchel that held her laptop and her wallet. She closed the door behind her then leaned against the solid wood, hot tears spilling down her cheeks. Not for the first time in her life, she thought her heart would break. But this time she had nobody to blame but herself.