She had hurt her foot by falling from a mossy boulder and Thorn had come to help as she floundered across a shallow pool.

She was draggled and her hair was loose, and Thorn's faint amusement annoyed her.

Somehow it hinted at familiarity.

She would not have resented it once, for they had been friends; but when she came home and he had tried to renew the friendship she had noted a subtle difference.

Alan was forty, but now she had left school the disparity of their ages was, in a sense, much less marked.