When Love Expires

Ian Judd's grandmother needed treatment he could not pay for, so he signed a ten-year contract with Sue York's mother. The terms were that he would stay with Sue and pull her out of the wreck of her first relationship. He did the ten years. He looked after her and her son, and both of them came to treat what he did as ordinary, the sort of thing that is owed. Sue never stopped seeing him as the space Sean Shaw used to occupy. The contract ran out. Sean came back into the country, and Ian watched the two of them start up again. He filed for divorce and left. Sue could not find him, and her mother told her about the contract, which was the first she had heard of it. By then Ian had gone off to do the things he had wanted to do for himself.