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well be a permanent arrangement, you know,' she had ended meaningly, to Melanie's embarrassment.
    That, Melanie thought with a small ironic twist of her lips, was Celia. At times so grown up it was difficult to realise that she was only thirteen : Melanie had wondered if it was because she had been brought up entirely by her father that she had such an adult outlook on life. The fact that she heartily disliked her mother was sad, but then she had had an opportunity during her earlier years of observing her and making her own judgment on the matter. There was also the fact that she adored her father, and fiercely guarded over his interests, as indeed Julian Cridell did over his daughter's.
    Melanie was not too sure that Celia's biased opinion that her mother was still in love with her father, was strictly true, although it did point that way; why else should she bother to make those harrowing visits to Oaklands each time she was in the country? If Celia's descriptive reports on the emotional scenes that occurred were only half true, it was small wonder that the Cridell ´ s went to some lengths to avoid them.
    `She would start off by being the long-suffering spurned wife, who still cared for her family,' Celia had said, during one of her persuasive bouts to get Melanie to accept her father's offer, 'and when that didn't work, out would come the fireworks.' Melanie recalled the bleakness in Celia's eyes when she had told her this. 'I was always terrified that Dad would give in to
     
    her, if only to avoid those ghastly scenes, and frightened of all the misery we'd have to put up with if he did,' she had added.
    At this point Melanie must have fallen asleep, lulled at last by the inducing throb of the plane's engines, and the next she knew, she was being touched on the shoulder by Julian, who told her to fasten her seat belt because they were landing in Miami.
    As Melanie found herself being ushered into a taxi and on the way to the Holiday Inn, where they would be spending the night before taking another plane out to one of the privately owned islands in the Bahamas the following morning, she wondered if she would ever be allowed to come down to earth.
    The sudden change from having to count her pennies, and constant worry over her future, had been a little too fast for her to assimilate. She was still in that dream world, but one had to wake up some time, and it wasn't going to be easy after what had happened to her.
    The light plane that had taken them out to the island made a smooth landing on a small airstrip and, judging by the size of the island seen from the air by a still jet-lagged Melanie, it was a wonder space had been found for such a feat, for the island seemed tiny, with pink and white dots that denoted houses seemingly crowding all available space. 'Looks like an iced cake, doesn't it?' Celia murmured in her ear, and Melanie had to agree that it was a very apt description.
    As soon as they had landed, a car swept into view and drew up beside the plane, and as they got into it, Melanie glanced back at the small runway, then wished that she hadn't, for it was on a high plateau
     
    that looked directly out to sea.
    Seeing her look, Julian, correctly assessing her thoughts, said, 'Of course, there are times when the plane can't land. High winds, etcetera.'
    Melanie would rather not have known that, and she only hoped that the weather was good when it was time to leave the island, for as the car swept away from the airstrip she got a better look at the landing area perched high above ragged cliffs with the ocean below.
    It was only a fifteen-minute run to the hotel, which was more in the nature of a private mansion to Melanie's way of thinking, with ornamental palms lining the long driveway, and balconies from which hung glorious blossoms in bronze urns, the bronze, gleaming in the morning sun, setting off the pale blues and lilacs of some kind of wisteria plant that grew as luxuriantly as daises on an English lawn.