Daughters of Fire by Barbara Erskine

exclusion of all else, so why was the man’s story suddenly obsessing him like this?
    He glared at the piles of books around him. It was the third time he had sat down. He had been walking restlessly up and down the floor, unable to settle at anything since his interview with Viv. He frowned in irritation. He should be in the department this morning; had had two important appointments this afternoon which now hehad been forced to ask the departmental secretary to reschedule. Why?
    Why had he left in such a hurry after Viv had stormed out yesterday? Too much of a hurry to check where the brooch was in the litter of his desk and lock it up for safe-keeping. That worried him. He was treating it with almost deliberate carelessness and he wasn’t sure why. He shivered. He hadn’t wanted Viv to touch it for a very good reason. It felt poisonous. When, cautiously, with his fingertips because he had no special gloves on, he had touched it himself, he had almost dropped it, appalled by the cold sense of evil the thing exuded.
    So, why had he left it on his desk at all? Because for some insane reason he had wanted it to sit, if only for a few moments, in a ray of clean, hot sunshine. For a few seconds he contemplated the irrationality of the thought.
    The atmosphere in the room had been Viv’s fault of course, not the brooch’s. The anger she had left behind her had been tangible. No one could settle down to work after that. He sighed, even more irritated with himself to find he was thinking about her again, especially considering the annual review upon which he was supposed to be working. He dragged his attention to the backlog of papers on his desk.
    The exams had gone well this year. There would be fewer resits over all, and none in the second year and that was largely down to Viv. She was a good teacher, he had to admit it. He frowned. She was also an infuriating woman, wasting her life with this popular - and there was no doubt it would be popular - claptrap !
    He pushed his chair back again and went to stare out of the window at his garden. It was a mess. Alison used to adore the garden. Perhaps it had taken the place of the children they had never had. She had had green fingers. Everything she touched flourished. It was as if all her life force had seeped away into the flowers, leaving her with nothing of her own to fight the vicious cancer that had taken her in only seven short months.
    ‘Look after my plants, Hughie.’ She had reached out to take his hand only a day or two before she died. ‘I know you. You’ll stick your head in your books and forget them.’
    She had indeed known him so well.
    He cleared his throat loudly and walked back to his desk, staring down at the letter lying there on top of all the other papers. It wasabout the funding of research projects in his department. With an angry exclamation he noticed Viv’s name was still there. Snatching up his pen he scratched through it three times. The odd thing was he could picture Viv’s hurt and anger so clearly he could almost see her standing there in the room with him, with her unruly red hair and vivid eyes, a vision which recurred strangely often. In the silence of the house he could imagine Viv’s voice. Her peels of laughter; her irreverence. Even the thought of her anger made the place seem less lonely. He scowled and drew the pen through her name a fourth time before throwing the letter down on the blotter.
    Alison had liked Viv. ‘She’s a natural historian, Hugh.’ She had giggled at the unintended ambiguity of the phrase. ‘Instinctive. Women can make leaps of deduction which turn out to be right, you know.’ She would have loved Viv’s article in the Sunday Times and the profile of Viv herself, devoured every word and rung Viv to enthuse about it for hours on the phone.
    One of Alison’s favourite excursions had been to drive out to Traprain Law with its Iron Age fort; to stand, staring out at the view from the top, or to go on perhaps