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СКАЧАТЬ can imagine it.’

      Bram could. He had known Harriet Beckwith for as long as he could remember. If she had decided that they were going to have a family Christmas, poor Sophie didn’t stand a chance.

      ‘Would it be so bad?’ he asked gently.

      ‘No, no—probably not. I’m obviously making a big fuss about nothing, the way I always do.’ Sophie made a brave attempt at a smile. ‘It’s just…’

      ‘Seeing Nick again,’ Bram finished for her quietly as her voice cracked.

      She nodded, her mouth wobbling too much to speak. Biting her lip fiercely, she scowled at the view. ‘I ought to be over it,’ she burst out after a moment. ‘That’s what everyone says. It’s time to move on. Get over it.’

      ‘It takes time, Sophie,’ said Bram. ‘Your fiancé left you for your sister. That’s not the kind of thing you can get over easily.’

      He would never forget her face when she had first told him about Nick. Incandescent with happiness, she had been too excited to stand still.

      Throwing her arms out, she had spun round, laughing, alight, radiating joy. ‘I am so, so happy!’ she had said, and Bram had looked at his childhood friend, scrubby, sturdy Sophie, with her tangled hair and her stubborn streak, and, startled, had seen her transformed.

      For years he had hardly thought about her at all. She was just Sophie, just there, part of his life. He had missed her a little when she went away to college, but he’d had other things to distract him. They had caught up whenever she came home, and she’d always been exactly the same turbulent, tomboyish Sophie—his friend. She was funny, warm, chaotic—the kind of girl you could talk to, the kind of girl you laughed with, but not the kind of girl you slept with. Not the kind of girl you even thought about sleeping with.

      So, it had been a strange feeling to look at her suddenly in a different light, to see her the same and yet somehow not the same at all.

      Sophie had babbled on, too excited to notice the arrested expression in his eyes, or to realise that Bram—unflappable, unshockable Bram—had at last been taken unawares.

      ‘I never knew what walking on air meant until now,’ she had told him. ‘Oh, Bram, I can’t wait for you to meet Nick. He’s incredible! He’s clever and witty and glamorous and, oh…just gorgeous! I can’t believe he loves me too when he could have anyone he wanted.’

      Closing her eyes, she’d hugged herself in remembered ecstasy. ‘I have to keep pinching myself to see if I’ll wake up and find that it’s all just a wonderful dream…and I know that I couldn’t bear it if it was. I think I’d die!’

      That was his Sophie, Bram remembered thinking affectionately. No half measures for her. He should have guessed that when she fell in love it would be totally, utterly and passionately. Moderation simply wasn’t in her vocabulary.

      ‘Nick’s asked me to marry him already,’ Sophie had said, glowing in that new, unexpectedly disturbing way. ‘I haven’t said anything to Mum and Dad yet. I know they’d think I haven’t known him for very long, and they might think it was a bit soon, but Melissa’s going to come and stay with me in London in a couple of weeks, so I thought I could introduce him to the family gradually. I’m sure she’ll report back and tell them how fantastic he is, and then it won’t be like springing the news on them when I bring him up in a month or so.’

      But that wasn’t quite how it had worked out.

      He had been on his way home at the end of an unusually hot, still day in July when he had spotted a solitary figure trudging across the moor. Stopping the tractor, Bram had waited for her to reach him. He’d known it was Sophie, and he’d known from the brittle way that she held herself that something was very wrong.

      Sophie hadn’t said a word as she’d come up to him. Bess had greeted her with her usual enthusiasm, and when Sophie had looked up from patting the dog the stricken expression in her eyes had made Bram’s heart contract.

      Wordlessly, he’d moved to make way for her on the tractor step beside him, and for a while they’d just sat in silence while the evening sun turned the hillsides to gold. It had been very quiet. Bess had panted in the shade beneath the tractor, but otherwise all had been still.

      ‘I always thought it was too good to be true,’ Sophie had said eventually. And for Bram the worst thing was hearing her voice. She had always been so fiery, so alive, but now all the emotion seemed to have been emptied out of her, leaving her sounding flat and utterly expressionless. Utterly unlike Sophie.

      ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ he asked carefully.

      ‘I shouldn’t. I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone,’ she said, in the same dull tone.

      ‘What? Even your oldest friend?’

      She looked at him then, the river-coloured eyes stark with suffering. ‘I think at least you’d understand,’ she said.

      ‘Then tell me,’ said Bram. ‘Is it Nick?’

      Sophie nodded dully. ‘He doesn’t love me any more.’

      ‘What happened?’

      ‘He saw Melissa. He took one look at her and fell out of love with me and in love with her. I saw it happen,’ she said, in that terrible, brittle voice. ‘I watched his face and I knew that was it.’

      Bram didn’t know what to say. ‘Oh, Sophie…’

      ‘I should have expected it,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘You know what Melissa is like.’

      Bram did know. Sophie’s sister was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. She had an ethereal golden loveliness that was somehow out of place on the Yorkshire moors, unlike Sophie’s vibrant sturdiness.

      It was hard to believe that the two were sisters. Melissa was nothing like Sophie. She was sweet and fragile and helpless, and few men were immune to her appeal. Bram certainly wasn’t. Sometimes it seemed to him that their brief engagement ten years ago was no more than a dream. How could a practical, ordinary man like him ever have hoped to hold on to such a treasure?

      Bram couldn’t in all honesty blame Nick for falling for Melissa, but he hated him for hurting Sophie.

      ‘What did you do?’

      ‘What could I do? There was no point in pretending that nothing had happened. When we got back that night I gave him back his ring. I told him there was no point in all three of us being unhappy.’ Sophie smiled a little bitterly. ‘I let him go. Ella said that I should have fought to keep him, but how could I compete with Melissa?’

      ‘He might have forgotten her when she left,’ Bram suggested. He had noticed that about Melissa himself. When she was there, it was impossible to look at anyone else, but once she had gone it was sometimes hard to remember exactly what she was like, or what she had said, or how he had felt—other than dazzled by her sweetness and her beauty.

      Sophie wasn’t like that, he realised with something like surprise. She wasn’t beautiful as Melissa was beautiful, but he kept a vivid picture of her in his mind, of her expressions and her laughter and the way she waved her hands around as she talked. He could always picture Sophie exactly.

      ‘He СКАЧАТЬ