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‘Text it to me,’ she said. ‘Oh, and call Helen to let her know I’m coming.’

‘I’m notyourPA,’ Steven said irritably.

‘Steven,’ Alex laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I swear, I’m usually less brusk than this. But it’s honestly a PR emergency. I’m putting out a fire before Isabelle even knows there was smoke.’

Steven sighed. ‘Fine. I’ll call her now. Can’t swear she’ll let either of you in, though.’

‘We’ll see,’ Alex smiled to herself as she started the car.

Ten

Leigh had been sat in her car outside the gates of Helen Archer’s palatial country estate for about twenty minutes. A grey-bearded man sat in a little security booth at the estate’s edge. He was glaring at her whilst he went back and forth with someone on his walkie.

Eventually, he came out of the booth and took a leisurely stroll over to her car. Leigh wound the window down.

‘Sorry, Madam. It’s appointment only,’ he smiled.

‘That’s what you said twenty minutes ago.’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘But you said you were going to talk to someone?’

‘Yeah, that took about ten seconds. It was a no.’

‘You were in there talking for a lot longer than that,’ Leigh pointed out.

‘Well, then the cook wanted to take my lunch order, and he was having a look round the kitchen to see what he had in,’ he smirked. ‘He found some nice ham, so I’m having a sandwich.’

OK, so the situation was that this guy had a little bit of power, and he would stretch it as far as it would go. And he didn’t give a shit who Leigh said she worked for either. How the hell was she going to get past this guy? She couldn’t give up. She just needed five minutes with Helen Archer, and if it was a no, it was a no. But this guy’s no was not going to cut it.

‘Look…’ she began, starting to get annoyed. That was when she saw the other car driving up behind her on the private road. It was a nice car, a silver BMW, and before Leigh saw the driver, she knew who it would be.

The car pulled up alongside her, and Alex Walker was looking right at her.

‘Hi, Leigh!’ she called, with a cheeky finger waggle wave. ‘Great to see you.’

Leigh found herself frozen for a moment, trying to figure out how to respond to Alex’s physical presence. Especially when she had the temerity to lookincredible. Coiffed to the nines, her glossy dark hair was cut in a sharp bob, her makeup almost professionally perfect. Any puppy fat from her twenties was gone, and her cheekbones were now of the cut-glass variety. And the eyes, oh those eyes. Grey, intense, deep-set, and as hypnotic as ever.

Yep, the years had been just a little too kind to Alex. Leigh was as furious about that as much as anything else.

Eventually, she found herself able to respond to Alex’s brazen greeting. ‘Alex,’ she nodded, trying to sound cool.

Alex continued to smile at her wordlessly for a moment before turning to see the security guy. She got out of her car. She was wearing a black lambswool maxicoat that looked like it cost more than Leigh’s whole wardrobe.

‘Brett, is it?’ Alex said.

An hour ago, Alex hadn’t even known who the photographer was. And in that time, somehow, she’d not only found out but turned up only twenty minutes after Leigh did, with the security guy’s name. Fucking unbelievable.

But this was Alex, wasn’t it? This was how the whole thing had started in the first place. That famous sales ability had worked its magic then and now.

Ten Years Ago

Leigh stared in horror at the state of her bathroom. She’d cleaned it twelve hours ago, and now it was a mess again. Wet towels on the floor, toothpaste spit all over the sink, clumps of hair that Leigh could only hope came from people’s heads were, well, everywhere. Worse, someone had dyed their hair purple over the bath, so the tub looked like someone had murdered a Smurf in it.

She was sick of this. Her housemates were disgusting children. People had warned her not to move into an all-male household. But she had been desperate and convinced herself that living with males couldn’t be that bad. But every last one of them seemed to be under the impression that when she moved in, she would be assuming the role of mother, there to take care of them and clean up after them. And they were pigs, toa man.

Leigh didn’t need this. She was having a hard enough time as it was. She was in her first year of business and marketing, and she didn’t know if it was really for her. Everyone around her seemed so confident and driven, and she didn’t feel that way at all. She didn’t feel close to anyone in her class, and of course, she had no friends in her house share. She was lonely and lost.