The only other troubling aspect about Damien was that he rarely used his voice. Joy was expressed with a wide, dimpled grin; sorrow with strangely silent tears. Katherine once mentioned this to her physician, but the doctor was most reassuring. He told the story of a child who never uttered a word until he was eight years old, and then only to remark that he didn't like mashed potatoes. When, in amazement, the mother asked him why, if he could speak, he'd never spoken before, the child replied that up until now she'd never served mashed potatoes.

Katherine had laughed at the story and relaxed about Damien. After all, Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four, and Damien was only three and a half. Aside from being quiet and observant, he was in every way the perfect child, the appropriate issue of the perfect marriage of Jeremy and Katherine Thorn.

Chapter Three

The man named Haber Jennings was born an Aquarian; a textbook product of Uranus on the rise in conjunction with a waxing moon. He was ill-kempt and persistent to the point of embarrassment. Jennings was a paparazzi; one of the geeks of the journalism world, tolerated only because he was willing to do what none of the others would. Like a cat stalking a mouse he had been known to hole up for days waiting for a single photo: Marcello Mastroianni sitting on the toilet, taken with a long lens from the top of a eucalyptus tree; the Queen Mother having her corns removed; Jackie Onassis on her yacht, vomiting. These were his stock in trade. He knew where to be and when, his photos unlike any others in the trade. He lived in a one-room flat in Chelsea and seldom wore socks. But he researched his subjects with the thoroughness of Salk seeking the cure for polio.

Lately he had become fixated on the Ambassador to London, a prime target because of his perfect facade. Did the beautiful couple ever have sex? And if so, how? He sought to reveal what he called their humanity, but in truth he wanted to prove that everyone was as disgusting as himself. Did the Ambassador ever buy an obscene magazine and masturbate? Did he have any girls on the side? These were the questions that intrigued him, and though they would never be answered, there was always hope; this was the impetus that motivated him to watch and wait.

Today he would go to the Thorn estate in Pereford, probably not to photograph because there would b many others, but just to get the layout, to find the right windows, the entrances and exits, determine which servants could be bought for a couple of pounds.