Chapter 48- END OF BOOK SEVEN

IT WAS a source of enormous frustration to Theodore that Pamela refused to marry him—no matter how many times he asked her.

‘Why not?’ he demanded one morning, exasperated by what he perceived as her stubbornness. ‘Is it because of all those stupid accusations I made when you told me—when I said you’d deliberately got yourself pregnant in order to trap me?’

‘No, darling,’ she replied with serene honesty—because those days of fury and confusion were long behind them. ‘That has absolutely nothing to do with it.’

‘Why, then, Pamela?’

Pamela wasn’t quite sure. Was it because things seemed so perfect now? So much the way she’d always longed for them to be that she was terrified of jeopardising them with unnecessary change? As if marriage would be like a superstitious person walking on a crack in the pavement—and bad luck would come raining down on them?

It had become a bit of a game—which Theodore was determined to win, because he always won in the end. But winning was not uppermost in his