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    The fact that he could still be there firmed her resolve to get away. Whoever Charles was, she must leave him behind as fast as she could because she couldn’t afford complications while she had yet to make up her mind where to go, but one thing she was certain about was the fact that she must keep her promise to Coralie, for Sandy’s sake.
    The Carlisle bypass was the most obvious way north, but she decided to take a more roundabout route when she came to the next junction. Both signposts said Penrith, and she drove on to the narrower road through Matterdale and Caldbeck.
    All the way along the lovely, hidden dale she was conscious of a mounting tension, looking for a following car, but the innocent switchback road stretched empty behind her, the mountains closing in companionably as she drove north, and her spirits lifted.
    ‘We’ll play a game,’ she suggested. ‘Blue cars again, like your anorak. Let’s count blue cars going the other way.’
    Not grey cars. Definitely blue ones!
    It was several miles before they met the first car, parked outside an inn on the valley floor where a narrow blue lake reflected the stretch of cloud-free sky above their heads.
    ‘We’ll have something to eat here,’ Katherine suggested.
    The innkeeper was a jolly, talkative man.
    ‘I don’t suppose you get many people here at this time of year,’ Katherine remarked when he had set coffee and orange juice on the table before them.
    ‘Not many. You’re only the second today, in fact.’
    Katherine’s heart lurched, because she had been thinking of Charles Moreton.
    ‘Was it long ago?’ she asked.
    ‘About an hour. He didn’t wait. That’s odd,’ he added, glancing through the window to where she had parked her car by the lakeside. ‘He asked if a girl in a blue car had passed this way with a child.’ He looked from Katherine’s flushed face to Sandy, who was half-way through his glass of orange juice, vastly intrigued by the red straw which had been provided with it. ‘He must have been searching for you.’
    ‘Was he driving a grey car—a Rover?’
    ‘He was that, and he seemed in a great hurry, but perhaps you’ll meet up with him on the motorway.’
    It was the last thing she wanted to do, because she was convinced that it was indeed Charles Moreton who had enquired about her. Katherine rose to her feet. No more stops at obvious hotels, she thought, since he had been astute enough to choose the less frequently used dale road in his pursuit of her. The fact that he had left ahead of her was a bonus which she felt immeasurably thankful for, but they could so easily meet up with him again at a hotel farther along the road.
    ‘Could you let me have a few sandwiches?’ she asked. ‘Just something light to eat in the car. We’ll be having a meal somewhere when we stop for the night. I’d also be obliged if you could let me have some milk.’
    ‘For the little ’un? Why, of course you can.’ The innkeeper was greatly impressed by Sandy. ‘You look as if you’ve come away in a hurry,’ he observed, ‘but we do packed lunches for the climbers, so I can let you have a couple. Alice will get you the milk if you come round to the kitchen,’ he added. ‘And I’ll find you a couple of plastic beakers.’
    Katherine was grateful and soon they were on their way again. Full of orange juice and biscuits, Sandy fell asleep and she put him in the back seat for safety—or was it because, lying down with the travelling rug wrapped securely round him, he would be less obvious from a passing car?
    They reached the Border without incident, keeping off the motorway and threading their way along the side roads through little towns and villages, going by the less obvious route through Annan and Dumfries towards the coast.
    Katherine had consulted her road map before Dumfries, making her decision to keep to the west in her attempt to shake off a grey Rover which would surely have kept to the main way north.
    Suddenly