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for?"
    "Ros is right," Sophie said quietly. "If Claire wants you to do a job, she should be prepared to pay the going rate."
    "It feels like taking money under false pretences," said Lindsay stubbornly. "I'm hardly Philip Marlowe, am I?"
    "You've got skills and specialist knowledge," Rosalind argued. "It's unprofessional not to charge her for exercising them. I can't imagine Claire dishing out free professional advice, can you?"
    "But I don't know where to start," Lindsay said weakly, knowing she had been outflanked by Rosalind. And, given the tenacity of her friends, she knew she'd actually have to go through with the business of charging Claire for her services.
    "I might just be able to help you there," Rosalind said with a slow smile.
    Lindsay rang off and threw the cordless phone to the other end of the sofa. Burned my boats now, she thought with a scowl. "Why do I let myself get talked into these things?" she muttered as she walked through to the big, airy kitchen of Sophie's flat. Lindsay poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down to think. She had agreed to meet Claire in an hour's time, and she wanted to get everything straight in her head before then.
    Recalling Alison Maxwell wasn't difficult. They had met the first time Lindsay had been hired to do a shift on the Scottish Daily Clarion . Lindsay had been standing at the library counter waiting for a packet of cuttings. She turned to find herself faced with a woman who seemed to have stepped out of her most secret fantasies, the ones she guiltily felt shouldn't inhabit the mind of a politically aware feminist. The vision had sandy blonde hair, and an almost Scandinavian cast to her high-cheekboned features. She was a couple of inches taller than Lindsay, with slim hips, and a cleavage that was impossible to ignore. "Hi," she said in a rich, cultivated Kelvinside accent. "I'm Alison Maxwell. Features department."
    Lindsay had fallen head over heels in lust. "Pleased to meet you," she croaked, feeling gauche and adolescent. "I'm Lindsay Gordon. I'm doing a shift for the newsdesk."
    "Ah," said Alison. "Pity you're not a photographer, then I could call you Flash Gordon.'
    "If I get the front page tonight, then you can call me Splash Gordon instead."
    Lindsay hadn't made the front page splash that night, but she'd still been Splash from then on to Alison. To Lindsay's surprise, the feature writer seemed determined to include Lindsay in her busy social life, inviting her out to dinner, to parties and to her flat for drinks. It wasn't long before they became lovers. But it was Alison who made the first move. If it had been up to Lindsay, they would never have got beyond a peck on the cheek when they parted. Lindsay would have been happy to leave Alison on her pedestal, having no confidence at all in her own power to attract a woman so different from her previous lovers.
    At first, Lindsay was in a daze of lust fulfilled by exotic and imaginative sex. But once the initial infatuation wore off, she began to see Alison more clearly, and she grew to dislike and distrust what she saw. Lindsay gradually came to understand that Alison Maxwell was a woman who was incapable of simple human relationships. She was too in love with power to have love left over for people. That power was usually exercised through the nuggets of information she'd acquired in the bedroom. It took only a matter of days for Lindsay to discover that she was far from being Alison's only lover. In a matter of weeks, she had reached the bitter conclusion that Alison was sexually omnivorous.
    Faced with this, Lindsay had made up her mind to end their relationship. That was when she had discovered the cruellest streak in Alison. For Alison was a woman who only let go when she was ready. She had to have control over every situation, and that included the ending of her sexual relationships. When Lindsay had announced her intention to sever their connection, Alison had wept and raged, and finally threatened. She