A Sudden Change of Heart by Barbara Taylor Bradford Page A

you let me be part of it though.”
    Laura gazed at Claire, her bright blue eyes quizzical. “What do you mean?”
    “Part of that dysfunctional, crazy, wonderful family of yours. Without the Valiants I might have turned out to be quite different.”
    “Sane, for one thing.”
    “No, ordinary and dull.”
    “You ordinary and dull, never! You were born special, Claire, take my word for it. And I’m glad you were part of it,
are
part of it, part of us. You’ve brought a lot of wonderful stuff to the Valiants. And to me especially.”
    L aura awakened with a start.
    She was bathed in a cold sweat, and her nightgown was clinging to her body. Struggling up into a sitting position, she threw back the bedclothes and swung her feet to the floor, turning on the bedside lamp as she did.
    She could not help wondering, as she made her way to the bathroom, if she was coming down with something. To be perspiring like this was not normal; she hoped she was not in for a bout of the flu, or, at the least, a bad cold.She couldn’t afford to get sick; she had far too much work to do, and Christmas was only a few weeks away.
    After taking off her nightgown and drying herself, Laura put on a terry-cloth robe and padded back to the bedroom. Wide awake, she punched up the pillows and got onto the bed.
    Zapping on the television, she found CNN and sat drinking the glass of carbonated water which she had put on the bedside table earlier but had not touched until then. Leaning back against the pillows, she stared at the set, grateful for the continuing stream of news out of Atlanta. At least it gave her something decent to watch in the early hours of the morning.
    Laura put the glass down with a clatter and sat up a bit straighter, suddenly remembering her weird dream…. She had dreamed about Rosa Lavillard. The dream had been frightening, oppressive. She had been with Rosa in a vast building in some unknown city, and they had been lost within its mazelike corridors, which seemed to lead nowhere. The corridors were endless, and there were many, many doors. Every time they opened one, a startled occupant would look up, stare at them, and tell them, in answer to their question, that the way out was at the far end of the corridor. But it never was. Another door led only to another corridor. Nervous and distraught, she had begun to panic, but Rosa Lavillard had not. The older woman had remained calm.
    “There is always a way out,” Rosa kept repeating, and yet they could not find the door that would lead them to the outside … and freedom.
    It had become hotter and hotter in the windowless corridors, and she had grown overheated, tired. But Rosa wasstalwart, stoical, forever promising she would get them put of this maze no matter what. The final door opened onto a slide; Rosa had pushed her onto it, and she slid farther and farther down into terrifying blackness. And as she slipped into this bottomless pit, she could hear Rosa singing in French, but she couldn’t make out the words exactly…. Suddenly Rosa herself was on the slide, hurtling down behind her, singing for all she was worth.
    And then she had woken up. Bathed in sweat, and with good reason. She had been afraid in the dream.
    Laura was baffled by the nightmare. What could it possibly mean? And why had she dreamed about Rosa Lavillard, a woman she hardly knew? The answer to the latter was relatively simple. She had run into the Lavillards earlier in the day, and obviously they had remained in the back of her mind.
    For one moment when they were having coffee after dinner, Laura had been about to tell Claire she had bumped into them in the museum, and then the moment had been lost. Claire had started to talk about the Renoir, and Hercule, and the weekend plans. But I should have told her, Laura admonished herself, and she felt suddenly guilty that she had not done so. It’s lying by omission, she thought.
    Her mind lingered on the Lavillards for a second or two, and then it leapt