"Well, well, well," Chloe looked at me, and said softly, "who'd have guessed? You're a dark horse, Yiseul."

She leaned forward, her eyes bright.

"So? Go on..."

"This guy kissed me...it was just this one time..."

"Behind a closed door?"

"On the cliffs, actually..." I remembered that kiss on the cliff top, the rush of unfamiliar emotions that surged through me at the touch of his lips.

"It didn't mean anything, really," I said, avoiding her eyes.

But in my heart of hearts, I knew that I lied. I had thought about that kiss, dreamt about it...

"All this harping on kisses, and passion and lust - it's just - " I searched for a word.

"Cheap?" Chloe shrugged. "But that's what we live on. Little episides to keep us going."

"I don't think it's right..." My voice trailed off. 

What was I trying to say? What did I want? Words eluded me. I was a novice at this. 

"You are waiting for The Grand Passion?" Chloe said gently. "But it doesn't come to all of us, which is as well. Me, I shall have to settle for some ordinary individual who can give me a comfortable life, my family's not well off." 

"But aren't you Chaebol?"

"So what?" Her voice is bitter. "Being Chaebol doesn't mean anything, if you don't have the money to go with it. I need to marry for money, not love."

"Oh."

I was silent, thinking about my upcoming marriage of convenience. Chloe and I had more in common than she thought.

"But you have your dream man?" I said, impulsively. "How do you imagine your ideal lover?" 

Chloe looked pensive. 

"Tall and fair," she began, "not very young. I would prefer a man of the world, who has had affairs with many women."

I gasped, and she giggled. "So that he would be - you know, experienced," she explained, "but of course he would never have truly loved until he met me." 

Her eyes grew dreamy. 

"He would seem hard and cold outside, perhaps even a little cruel, but underneath would be a hidden fire, which would ignite only for me. He would sweep me off my feet, he would be crazy about me, and I - I would be aloof at first, but in the end..." Her voice trailed off and she sat motionless, absorbed in her dream. 

"Sounds fine," I said, "but are you likely to meet your heartthrob?"

Chloe laughed ruefully. 

"Not a hope. I don't suppose there is such a guy outside the pages of a book, or a drama or a movie." She sighed. "But you, Yiseul, do you have an ideal lover?" 

"Oh yes,"  I was quite ready to play Chloe's game. "Mine would be tall too, but tanned, with lazy brown eyes, almost golden in the sun, and he would have a profile like an eagle, and a funny sort of smile that does things to..." 

I stopped, confused. I was suddenly aware that I was trying to describe the man I had encountered at the foot of the cliff. 

"You're blushing!" Chloe exclaimed. "Don't tell me that you've met him?" 

"Perhaps I have," I said in a low voice.

"And he admired you? He fell at your feet?" 

"He fell at my feet," I said, laughing, "but he didn't admire me, he thought I was a mere child..." 

"How sad! But all that will change when he sees you again. You don't look like a child now." 

I turned to study my image in the long glass. 

I wore a long green dress, simple and clinging, one of the two Carrie had ordered for me from a boutique. My hair had been trimmed by a Geneva hairdresser - Madame encouraged such extravagances - and fell in soft waves around my face. Under Chloe's tutelage I had learnt to apply makeup. The reflection that looked back at her was sophisticated, but all this had been achieved not to impress any fascinating stranger, but my elderly Cousin Mark. 

"No," I said softly, "I don't look like a child anymore..." And I said silently to myself, it doesn't matter anyway, for I shan't meet that guy again...

The Christmas break is a short one. 

Carey wrote to say that it would not be worthwhile to come home, for Ravenscrag was in the throes of being redecorated, information that angered me; surely I should have been consulted about that? Cousin Mark and Mr. Prescott still seem to consider that I am too juvenile to have a say in the future appearance of my home. I would have to spend the holiday at the Academy, where several other girls would also be staying, an American and two French girls whose parents are abroad, but not Chloe, who was going back home. 

"I wish that I could ask you to accompany me," she says apologetically, "but it is impossible at Christmas. My mother invites all the family, uncles, aunts and children, and it gets so crowded." She shudders. "I hope that you will come at Easter, when we shall be on our own."

I feel homesick, thinking wistfully of the Manor as it has always been during the Christmas season, with its piled log fires - the Academy has central heating - the holly decorations that I always put up, and Tris and Sol lying on the rug. I long for the soft mist and rain driving in from the Atlantic, the sound of breakers and the joy of finding the first snowdrops and aconites in the garden. 

The country round Geneva sparkles under a mantle of snow, the mountains loom dramatic against a background of blue sky, while the town is thronged with tourists, armed with guidebooks and fortified by thick winter clothing.

Carey has sent me a beautiful Cashmere scarf from the shop that she now runs together with Mary Brooke, and snapshots of the dogs and Mary's little boy, David. In a text message to my handphone (purchased by Carey before I left for Switzerland - "how on earth can you survive without a handphone!" had been her exact words) - complete with pictures of the dogs, she mentions that Cousin Mark has come and gone; he had seemed like a nice gentleman, according to Mrs. Kim, she herself had not seen him. 

Mr. Prescott sent a card, a snow scene - as if I don't have more than enough of that here! He enclosed a generous cheque for expenses. Madame Maxine gave me a set of exquisite bath salts and scent, and we gave each other trifles from the souvenir shops. 

On Christmas Day, after going to church, I am surprised to find in my room a large bunch of flowers, carnations and roses, as well as a small parcel. The flowers have been delivered from a local florist and bear a card inscribed, "Compliments, and Merry Christmas". 

Chloe? But she could not afford such an expensive gesture. 

I open the parcel, also sent from a shop in Geneva. 

It contains a silver bracelet hung with charms, and rummaging among the wrappings I come upon a slip of paper, on which is written in English, "Hope this will bring you luck. M." 

M.? Could it be Mark? Has he at last acknowledged my existence? The writing looks like a man's, thick and black, and I know no other male, except Mr. Prescott, whose name is John. I pick up the bracelet and one by one examine the charms - a silver shoe, a churn, a St. Christopher, a windmill, a pram and a penny-farthing cycle, the sort of thing that might appeal to a very young schoolgirl. 

Mark is still waiting for me to grow up. 

Despondently I lay it down on my dressing-table. 

I suppose that I should be grateful that he has remembered me at all, though surely in the circumstances it would have been more appropriate to send me a ring. I would have liked that, I think childishly, feeling a spurt of resentment; a ring could have been displayed to the other girls with the news that I was an engaged girl, and I would have enjoyed the consequent rise in status. 

One of the maids knocks, and comes into my room. Miss Jung has received her gifts? They have been personally delivered by hand from the town. 

So the flowers are from Mark. 

The maid is plainly curious, suspecting an admirer. 

"It's from a family member," I say.

"Oh," she answers, her face losing interest at once.

Chloe returns with a lot of Christmas goodies, and a whole tin of homemade fudge. She pounces at once upon the charm bracelet, which I am wearing. 

"From him?" she demands. 

"A him, yes, but not the one you mean."

"Yiseul, you are a dark horse; how many young men do you have?"

 "None. This is from a family member."

"How dull!"

She loses interest in the trinket. She has brought an invitation from her mother to spend the Easter holidays at the Chateau, which has to be referred to my guardians, though I, now nineteen, think the formality unnecessary.

I have hoped very much that I could return to Cornwall, for surely it is time I met Cousin Mark, who seems unflatteringly incurious about his prospective bride, but Mr. Preston calls, and informs me that he and Cousin Mark have approved my visit to Chloe's chateau. 

And so I set off, one bright spring day, the dreary winter term behind me, in the hired car with Chloe. The lake looks like blue silk in the sunlight, and amid the snow-clad peaks, and soon, the road begins to rise, passing through a small market town by the lakeside, through smiling meadows and higher into overhanging woods, split by grey, formidable crags.

The Chateau from the outside is a building out of a fairytale, its front flanked by round towers. It stands on a slight hill, surrounded by forest land, and below it the village is nestled in a clearing along the banks of the river.