Reunited: Marriage in a Million

CHAPTER ONE

‘…SO THAT’S it for Day Nine of the Great Cycling Adventure. Tomorrow I’m told it’s going to be “a gentle, undulating rise”…’ Belle Davenport wiped away a trickle of sweat on her sleeve and smiled into the camera. ‘These guys really have a sense of humour. If seeing me sweating and in pain in a good cause is making you feel good, feel bad, feel anything, please remember any donation you make, no matter how small, will make a real difference…’

Belle Davenport wrapped up for the camera, hit send and, as soon as she’d got a reply confirming it had been safely received, unplugged her satellite phone. It was only then that she realised that what she had thought was sweat was, in fact, blood.

‘You do know that he brought you down quite deliberately.’ Claire Mayfield, an American sharing her tent, as well as her pain, was outraged.

‘He helped me up again,’ Belle pointed out.

‘Only after he’d taken pictures. You should make a complaint to the organisers. You could have been seriously hurt.’

‘No whining allowed,’ she said, then winced as Simone Gray-the third member of their group-having cleaned up the graze on her forehead, started to work on her grazed thigh.

‘Sorry…nearly done.’ Then, tossing the wipe away and applying a dressing, said, ‘In this world, Claire, it isn’t enough for the media that you’re putting yourself through seven kinds of torture to raise money for street kids. They want you down in the dirt too.’ Simone was executive editor of an Australian women’s magazine. She knew what she was talking about.

‘Glamour, excitement, sleazebags with cameras waiting to catch you with your face in the mud,’ Belle confirmed, with a wry smile.

‘In London, okay,’ Claire persisted. Then, ‘Actually, it’s not okay, but I suppose in your business you learn to live with the intrusion. But halfway up the Himalayas?’

‘Are we only halfway up? It feels higher.’ Then, shaking her head, Belle said, ‘Simone’s right, Claire. It’s all part of the game. No complaints. I’ve been at the top of my particular tree for a long time. I guess it’s my turn to be set up as an Aunt Sally and knocked off.’

‘Set up?’

‘Put in a position where not to do it would have made me look mean-spirited, all mouth and no trousers, so to speak. The kind of television personality who encourages others to do the hard work while she sits back on the breakfast telly sofa, flashing her teeth and as much cleavage as the network can get away with at that time in the morning.’

‘You’re not like that.’

‘No?’

‘No!’

Belle had gone for ‘arch’, but found herself profoundly touched by Claire’s belief in her.

‘Well, maybe not this time,’ she admitted, smiling to herself as she remembered just how easy it had been to manipulate the people who thought they were pulling the strings. ‘It’s amazing how far acting dumb will get you.’

‘So…what? You really wanted to come?’

‘Shh!’ She lifted a finger to her lips. ‘The walls of tents have ears.’ She grinned. ‘All it took was, “If we sent someone for this charity cycle ride it would make a great feature. Lots of opportunities to address a real problem. Get the public to join in with sponsorship.” An idle, “Who could we send?”, accompanied by just the tiniest shiver of horror at the thought, for the director to get ideas about how much the media would enjoy seeing me getting sweaty and dirty on a bike. The publicity it would generate. Got to think of those ratings…’

For Belle the pain was well worth the extra publicity it would generate for a cause dear to her heart, enabling her to support it publicly without raising any questions about why she cared so much.

Knowing that she was the one pulling the strings didn’t take the sting out of her thigh, though. And out here, in the rarefied air of the mountains, spending her time with people who’d financed themselves, who were doing it without any of the publicity circus that inevitably surrounded a breakfast show queen putting herself at the sharp end of fund raising, she was beginning to feel like a fraud. The kind of celebrity who’d do anything to stay in the spotlight, the kind of woman who’d put up with anything to stay in a hollow marriage, because without them she’d be nothing.

She pushed away the thought and said, ‘If you think this is about the children, rather than ratings, Claire, you are seriously overestimating the moral probity of breakfast television.’

It was the ratings grabbing report-to-camera straight from the day’s ride-the never-less-than-immaculate Belle Davenport reduced to a dishevelled, sweaty puddle-that the company wanted and the media were undoubtedly relishing. Why else would they have sponsored one of their own to come along and take pictures? But after a week it seemed that honest sweat had got old; now they wanted blood and tears too.

Today they’d got the blood and no doubt that was the image that would be plastered over tomorrow’s front pages and, when she got home, she’d shame them into a very large donation to her cause for that.

No way in hell were they going to get her tears.

She did not cry.

‘That’s…’ Claire grinned. ‘That’s actually pretty smart.’

‘It takes more than blonde hair and a well-developed chest to stay at the top in television,’ Simone pointed out. Then, regarding her thoughtfully, she went on, ‘So the street kids get the money, the spotlight on their plight, the television company get the ratings. What are you getting out of it, Belle?’

‘Me?’

‘You could have stayed at home, squeezing your viewers heartstrings, but you wanted to come yourself. You must have had a reason.’

‘Apart from getting myself all over the newspapers looking like this?’

‘You don’t need publicity.’

‘Everyone needs publicity,’ she said, but her laughter had a hollow ring and neither of her two companions joined in. ‘No, well, maybe I just wanted to feel good about myself. Isn’t that why everyone does this kind of stunt?’

‘If that’s the plan,’ Claire said, lying back on her bedroll with a groan, ‘it isn’t working. All I feel is sore.’

‘Maybe the feeling good part kicks in later,’ Belle replied sympathetically.

She knew she hadn’t been the only one who’d gone through a three-ring circus to get here. No matter how much she hated it, she understood that even when the redtops had people digging in your dustbin for dirt they could use, it wasn’t personal.

For Claire, though, a pampered princess with a token job working in her father’s empire, the sniggering criticism had been just that. Deeply personal.

What the hell; they’d shown them. With a determined attempt at brightness, Belle continued, ‘In the meantime I’ve lost weight, improved my muscle tone, gained some blisters…’

‘No.’

She gave up on the distraction of her newly-defined calf muscles and caught something-a bleakness to Simone’s expression that was new.

‘What have you got out of this?’ she demanded. ‘Seriously.’

‘Seriously?’ She looked from Simone to Claire and realised they were both regarding her with a sudden intensity, that the atmosphere in the tent had shifted. Darkened.

‘Seriously.’ Belle took a deep breath. ‘Seriously’ meant confronting the truth. ‘Seriously’ meant having to do something about it. But, forget the publicity, forget the cameras-that was what this trip had been all about. Stepping out of her comfort zone. Putting herself out there. Doing something real. Except she wasn’t, not really. She was still hiding. From the world. From her husband. Most of all from herself.

‘You can see so far up here,’ Belle began uncertainly. Not quite sure what she was going to say. Where this was going. ‘When we stopped for that drinks break this afternoon, I looked back and you could see the road we’d travelled winding all the way back down to the valley.’

She faced the rangy Australian, the petite American, who shared her tent. They’d tended each other’s grazes, rubbed liniment into each other’s aching muscles, they’d eaten together, battling with chopsticks while vowing never to travel again without a fork in their rucksack. They’d laughed, ridden alongside each other since they’d found themselves sharing a cab from the airport to the hotel when they’d first arrived, each of them scared in a what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here? way, yet excited by the challenge they were facing. Outwardly, they were women who had everything and yet they’d seemed to recognise something in each other, some hidden need.

Instant soul mates, they had become true friends.

It was a new experience for Belle. She’d never had girl-friends. Not as a kid, struggling to survive, not in the care home, certainly not in the stab-in-the-back atmosphere of daytime television.

The media bosses, the tabloid hacks, the gossip mags, all used her to lift circulation in a way that made her sister-in-law curl her lips in disdain. And her husband, money-machine tycoon Ivo Grenville, whose eyes burned with lust-the only thing he was unable to control-despised himself for wanting her so much that he’d committed the ultimate sacrifice and married her.

None of them bothered to look deeper than the ‘blonde bombshell’ image that she’d fallen into by accident, to find out who she really was. Not that she blamed them. She wore her image like a sugar-coated veneer; only she knew how thin it was.

These two women, total strangers when they’d met a couple of weeks earlier, knew her better than most, had seen her at her most vulnerable, had shared their lives with her. All of them, on the surface, had everything; Claire was the daughter of one of the world’s wealthiest men and Simone had risen to the top in a very tough business. But outward appearances could be deceptive. She’d been trusted with glimpses into their lives that few people had seen, which was why she knew that Claire and Simone would understand what she’d felt when she’d looked back down the road.

It was steep, hard going, and all the twists and turns were laid out before her-a metaphor for her life. Then, before the threatening crack became unstoppable, she let it go and said, ‘How many more days is this torture going to last?’

‘Three,’ Simone said quickly, apparently as anxious as she was to step back from a yawning chasm that had opened up in front of them.

‘Three? Can I survive three more days without a decent bed, clean sheets?’ Claire asked.

‘Without a hot bath.’

‘Without a manicure,’ Belle added, apparently intent on examining her nails, but she was more interested in Simone’s obvious relief that the moment of introspection that she herself had provoked had been safely navigated. Then, because actually her nails did look terrible, ‘I’m going to have to have extensions,’ she sighed.

Normally long, painted, perfect, she’d trimmed them short for the ride, but now they were cracked, dry, ingrained with dirt that no amount of cold water would shift. As she looked at them, dark memories stirred and she curled her fingers into her palm, out of sight.

‘What’s the first thing you’ll do when we hit that hotel in Hong Kong?’ she asked.

‘After I’ve run a hot bath?’ Claire grinned. ‘Call room service and order smoked salmon, half a ton of watercress served with dark rye bread cut wafer-thin and spread with fresh butter.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘And chocolate fudge cake.’

‘I’ll go along with that and raise you ice-cold champagne,’ Belle added, grinning.

‘The champagne sounds good,’ Simone said, ‘but I vote we pass on the healthy stuff and go straight for the chocolate fudge cake.’

‘White chocolate fudge cake,’ Belle said. ‘And a hot tub to sit in while we eat it.’

‘Er…that’s a great idea,’ Claire said, ‘but won’t your husband have ideas of his own in the hot tub department?’

‘Ivo?’ Belle found herself struggling to keep the smile going.

‘He is coming to meet you?’

For a moment she allowed herself that fantasy; that she’d reach the end of the journey and he’d be there, scooping her up into his arms. Carrying her off to a luxury suite to make hot sweet love to her.

With the slightest shake of her head, she said, ‘No.’ About to make some excuse for him-pressure of business was always a safe one-she found she couldn’t do it. ‘To tell you the truth,’ she said, ‘I’m in the marital doghouse.’ With the smallest gesture she took in their cramped surroundings. ‘He didn’t want me to do this.’

‘You’re kidding?’ Claire frowned. ‘I thought he was so supportive. I’ve seen pictures of you guys in those lifestyle magazines. The way he looks at you. The way it reads, you have the perfect marriage.’

‘You mean captions like…“Breakfast television’s bombshell, Belle Davenport, ravishing in Valentino, arriving at a royal gala last night with her millionaire businessman husband, Ivo Grenville.”?’

They always printed one of her arriving-that moment when she leaned forward as Ivo helped her from the car. The one that never failed to catch the look of a man who couldn’t wait to get her home again, feeding the fantasy that had grown around them after their ‘couldn’t wait’ runaway marriage on a tropical island.

At least the looks were real enough. His desire was the one thing she’d never doubted. As for the rest…

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m the original one hundred per cent genuine trophy wife.’ The bitter words spilled out of her before she could stop them. The only difference was that he hadn’t dumped a long-serving first wife for her; on the contrary, she was the one who’d be dumped when he wanted a proper wife. The kind you had kids and grew old with. ‘He was throwing a shooting party last weekend on his estate in Norfolk. A business thing. He wanted me on show. The hostess with the mostest.’ She pulled a face. ‘I don’t have to explain what I’ve got the most of, do I?’ she said as, hand behind her head, she leaned forward, giving the girls a mock cupcake cleavage pose.

‘You’ve got a lot more than that,’ Simone chipped in. ‘Holding down a job in television takes a lot more than a perfect pair of D cups. And the kind of party you’re talking about takes a serious amount of organising.’

‘Not by me.’

Her sister-in-law, Ivo’s live-in social secretary and a woman with more breeding than a pedigree chum, handled all that. But then she had been born to it. Benendon, finishing school in Switzerland, the statutory Cordon Bleu, Constance Spry courses for the girls-in-pearls debutantes. Another world…

‘I’m just there for display purposes to show his business competitors that there isn’t a thing they can do that he can’t do better.’

‘Oh, Belle…’ Claire seemed lost for words.

Simone was more direct. ‘If that’s all there is to your marriage, Belle, why do you stay with him?’

‘Honestly?’ They were high in the Himalayas, the air was stingingly cold, clear, cleaner than anything she’d ever known. Anything but the truth would pollute it. ‘For the security. The safety. The knowledge that, married to him, I’ll never be hungry or cold or frightened ever again…’

The truth, but not the whole truth. Passion, security, she would admit to. Falling in love with him had been the mistake…

‘But you’re bright, successful in your own right-’

‘Am I?’ She shrugged. ‘From the outside I suppose it looks like that, but every day of my life I expect someone to find me out, expose me as a fraud…’ Simone made a tiny sound, almost of distress, but shook her head quickly as Belle frowned. ‘Let’s face it, there’s no one as unemployable as a past-her-sell-by-date breakfast television host.’ Even as she said it, she knew that she was just making excuses. She was not extravagant and with Ivo’s skilful investment of her money, the only thing she truly needed from him was the one commodity he was unable to give. Himself.

There was an emotional vacuum at the heart of her life that had started long before she’d met him. He was not the only one incapable of making a wholehearted commitment to their partnership. She was equally to blame and now it was time to call it a day. Make the break. Let him go.

She’d known it for a long time, just hadn’t had the courage to admit it, face up to what that would mean.

‘If you want the unadorned truth,’ she said, ‘I hate my career, I hate my marriage-’

Not that she blamed Ivo for that. He was trapped by his hormones in exactly the same way that she was trapped by her own pitiful fears. They were, it occurred to her, very bad for each other.

‘In fact, when it comes right down to it, I hate my life.’ She thought about it. ‘No, scrub that. I guess I just hate myself-’

‘Belle, honey…’

As they reached out to offer some kind of comfort, she shook her head, not wanting it. Not deserving it from these special women. ‘I’ve got a sister somewhere, back there. Lost on the road.’ She didn’t have to explain. She knew they’d understand that she wasn’t talking about the road they were travelling together, but the one leading back to the past. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was four years old.’

‘Four?’ Claire frowned. ‘What happened to her? Did your family split up?’

‘Family?’ She gave a short laugh. ‘I’m not like you…’ She sucked in her breath, trying to hold back the words. Then, slowly she finished the sentence. ‘I’m not like you, Claire.’ She glanced at Simone, who was unusually quiet, and on an impulse she reached out, laid a hand over hers. ‘Or Simone.’ Then, lifting her chin a little. ‘We’re here to raise money for street kids, right? Well, that was me. It’s why I made such a big thing of this fund raiser. Why I’m here.’ Feeling exposed in the way an alcoholic must feel the first time he admitted he had a problem, she said, ‘My real name is Belinda Porter and I was once a street kid.’

She’d never told anyone where she’d come from. Anything about herself. On the contrary, she’d done everything she could to scrub it out of her mind. Not even Ivo knew. He’d had the tidied-up fairy story version of her life: the one with kindly foster parents-who she’d conveniently killed off in a tragic car accident-a business course at the local college-not the straight from school dead-end job in a call centre. Only the lucky break of being drafted in to work the phones on the biggest national fund raising telethon had been true, but then she’d been ‘discovered’ live on air; everyone knew that story.

How could she blame him for a lack of emotional commitment to her when she had kept most of her life hidden from him? A husband deserved more than that.

She swallowed. ‘My mother, my sister, the three of us begged just to live,’ she said. ‘Exactly like the children we’re here to help.’

For a moment no one spoke.

Then Claire said, ‘What happened to her, Belle? Your sister.’

That was it? No shrinking away in horror? Just compassion? Concern…?

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing bad. Our mother died.’ She shook her head. That was a nightmare she’d spent years trying to erase. ‘Social Services did their best, but looking back it’s obvious that I was the kind of teenage girl who gives decent women nightmares. Our mother was protective, would have fought off a tiger to keep us from harm, from the danger out there, but I’d seen too much, knew too much. I was trouble just waiting to happen. Daisy was still young enough to adapt. And she was so pretty. White-blonde curls, blue eyes. Doll-like, you know? A social worker laid it out for me. It was too late for me but, given a chance, she could have a real family life.’

‘That must have hurt so much.’

She looked up, grateful for Claire’s intuitive understanding of just how painful it had been to be unwanted.

‘It’s odd,’ she said, ‘because I was the one named after a doll. Belinda. Maybe it was some need in her to reach back to a time of innocence, hope.’ She shook her head. ‘It never suited me. I was never that kind of little girl.’

‘You have the blonde hair.’

‘Bless you, Claire,’ she said with a grin, ‘but this particular shade of blonde is courtesy of a Knightsbridge crimper who charges telephone numbers. She pulled on a strand, made a face. He’s going to have a fit when he sees the state of it.’

She reached for the sewing kit. There was no hairdresser here and no wardrobe department to produce a clean, fresh pair of trousers for the morning. If she didn’t stitch up the tear, her thigh would be flapping in the wind.

‘Daisy was different,’ she said, concentrating on threading a needle. ‘I hated her so much for being able to smile at the drop of a hat. Smile so that people would want to mother her, love her.’ Her hands were shaking too much and she gave up on the needle. ‘I hated her so much that I let someone walk away with her, adopt her, turned my back on her. Lost her.’

‘I lost someone, too.’

Claire, suddenly the focus of their attention, gave an awkward little shrug. ‘It must be this place, or maybe it’s just that here life is pared down to the basics. The next marker, the next drink of water, the next meal. Meeting with the people who exist here on the bare essentials.’ She took Belle’s needle, threaded it, began to work on the torn trousers. ‘There are no distractions, none of the day-to-day white noise of life to block out stuff you’d rather not think about and with nothing else to keep it occupied, the mind throws up stuff you’ve put in your memory’s deep storage facility. Not wanted in this life.’

‘Who did you lose, Claire?’ Simone, pale beneath the tan that no amount of sun screen could entirely block in the thin air, almost whispered the words.

‘My husband. Ethan. A decent, hard-working man…’

‘I had no idea you’d been married,’ Belle said.

Claire looked at her ringless hand, flexed her fingers, then with a little shiver said, ‘As far as the world is concerned, it never happened. One messy little marriage discreetly dissolved with a stroke of a lawyer’s pen.’

‘It can’t have been that simple.’

‘Oh, you’d be surprised just how simple money can make things.’ Then, ‘In my defence, I was twenty-one years old and desperate to get away from my father. He isn’t that easy to escape. He paid my husband to disappear and I was weak, I let him.’

‘Twenty-one? You were practically a kid.’

Claire lifted her head, straightened her back. ‘Old enough to have known better. To have been stronger.’ Then, ‘He’s been on my mind a lot lately. Ethan. I guess it’s all part of this.’ Her gesture took in the tent, their surroundings. ‘I work for my father, but as far as the rest of his staff are concerned I’m a joke, a pampered princess with a make-work job whose only concern is the next manicure, the latest pair of designer shoes. I came on this charity ride to shake up that image, to prove, to myself at least, that I’m better than that.’

‘And finding Ethan would help?’ Belle asked. ‘He did take the money and run,’ she pointed out.

‘Why wouldn’t he? I didn’t do anything, say anything to stop him.’ She shook her head. ‘It would undermine a man’s confidence, something like that, don’t you think? I need to find him, make sure that he’s all right.’ She swallowed. ‘More than that. I need him to forgive me. If he can find it in his heart to do that, then maybe I’ll be able to forgive myself.’

Simone, who’d been increasingly quiet, covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a moan. ‘Forgive yourself? Who will forgive me?’ As Claire, all concern, reached out to her, took her hand, a sob escaped her and then it all came pouring out of her, like a breached dam. A story so terrible that it made Belle’s own loss seem almost bearable.

For a heartbeat, after she’d finished her story, there was total silence as Simone waited, her eyes anticipating horrified rejection. As one, Belle and Claire put their arms around her, held her.

‘I can’t believe I told you that,’ she said finally, when she could speak. ‘I can’t believe you still want to know me.’

‘I can’t believe you’ve kept it bottled up for so long,’ Claire said tenderly.

‘Some secrets are so bad that it takes something special for us to be able to find the words,’ Belle said quietly. ‘It seems that each of us needs to walk back a way, make our peace with the past.’

‘This journey we’re on isn’t going to be over when we fall into a hot bath, crawl between clean sheets, is it?’ Claire whispered. ‘This has just been the beginning.’

‘The easy bit.’ Belle swallowed, feeling a little as if she’d just stepped off the edge of a precipice.

‘But at least we won’t be alone. We’ll have each other.’

‘Will we? You’ll be home in America, Simone will be back in Australia and I’ll be in England, looking for Daisy. She could be anywhere.’ Then, ‘I could be anywhere.’

Belle closed her eyes and for a moment the fear was so great that all she wanted to do was turn the clock back to the second before she stopped on the road and looked back. If she just kept facing forward, moving forward, she wouldn’t see the demons snapping at her heels. Then, as if sensing her fear, Claire took one of her hands, Simone the other.

‘It’s not just Daisy I have to find,’ she said, turning her hands to grasp them. ‘I’ve been living behind this image for so long that I’m not sure who I am any more. I need to be on my own. To get away from all the pretence.’

‘Belle…’ Simone regarded her with concern. ‘Don’t do anything rash. Ivo could help you.’

She shook her head.

‘I’ve used him as a prop for long enough. Some journeys you have to take alone.’

‘Not alone,’ Claire quickly assured her. ‘You’ll have us.’

‘If you have to do this, Belle, we’ll be there for you.’ Simone straightened. ‘For each other. Support, encouragement, a cyber-shoulder to cry on and with three time-zones we’ll have 24/7 coverage!’

They both looked to Belle and the three of them clasped hands, too choked to speak.

Belle hadn’t told anyone when to expect her. If she’d phoned ahead, the television company would have sent a car or Ivo’s sister would have despatched the chauffeur to pick her up. But having made the decision to cut her ties with both marriage and job, it seemed hypocritical to use either of them.

Or maybe just stupid, she thought as she abandoned the endless queue for taxis and headed down into the underground to catch a train into London.

She’d have to turn up for work until her contract expired at the end of the month.

She pulled a face at this reminder that her agent-right now pulling out all the stops as he negotiated a new contract for her-was someone else she was going to have to face…who was never going to understand.

She wasn’t sure she understood herself. It had all seemed so clear up in the mountains, so simple when she’d made that life-changing pact with Claire and Simone and they’d sealed it with their last bar of chocolate.

Back in London, faced with reality, she felt very alone and she shivered as, with a rush of air, the train pulled in to the station.

She climbed aboard, settled into a corner and automatically took out a book to avoid direct eye contact with the passengers opposite. Scarcely necessary. Who would recognise her, bundled up against the raw November chill, no make-up, her hair covered in a scarf twisted around like a turban to disguise the damage wrought by six weeks without the attention of her stylist?

How easily one slid from instantly recognisable celebrity to some woman no one would glance at twice on the underground.

Without the constant attention of those people whose job it was to polish her appearance, the lifestyle magazines, the safety net of her marriage, her career, who would she be?

What would it take for her to fall right off the face of civilisation, the way her mother had? One bad decision, one wrong turning and she, too, could be spiralling downward…

Fear crawled over her, prickling her skin, bringing her out in a cold sweat, and an urge to abandon all her grand ideals, crawl back into the comfort zone of the life she had and be grateful for it, overwhelmed her.

Daisy didn’t need her.

In all likelihood she’d forgotten she even existed. What would be the point of selfishly blundering in, disturbing her doubtless perfect life with memories they’d all rather bury, just to ease her own conscience?

Wouldn’t the selfless thing be to trace her, find out what she needed and help her anonymously, from a distance, the way she had always supported charities that helped street kids?

Daisy was nineteen, at university in all likelihood. She’d probably die of embarrassment to be confronted by a sister whose success was due solely to the size of her bosom, the huskiness in her voice.

Worse, once the press found out about her sister-and it was inevitable that they would-they’d keep digging until they had it all.

No teenager needed that and there were other ways to redeem herself. Daisy would need somewhere to live. She could fix that for her somehow. Ivo would know…

She caught herself.

Not Ivo. Her. She’d find out.

She exited from the underground station to the relative peace of Saturday morning in the capital before the shops had opened and was immediately confronted by a man selling The Big Issue-the badge of the homeless. She fought, as she always had to, the desperate urge to run away and instead forced herself to stand, take out the money to buy a copy of the magazine, shake her head when he offered her change. Wish him good luck before hailing a passing black cab and making her escape. Pushing away the thought that she could have done more.

The driver nodded as she leaned in to give her address. ‘Welcome back, Miss Davenport.’

The immediate recognition was a balm, warming her, making her feel safe. ‘The disguise isn’t working, then?’ she said, relaxing into a smile.

‘You’d have to wear a paper bag over your head, miss.’ Then, when she’d given him her address, climbed in the back, ‘The missus’ll be chuffed when I tell her I had you in the back. She’s been following your bike ride. Sponsored you herself.’

‘How kind. What’s her name?’

She made a mental note so that she could mention her donation when she went back on air on Monday, chatted for a few minutes, then fished the cellphone out of her pocket and turned it on.

It hunted for a local network, then beeped, warning her that she had seventeen new messages.

‘Please call…’ from her agent.

‘Please call…’ from the director of her show. ‘Please call…Please call…’ The reassuring template messages of her life. And, just like that, the fear, never far below the surface, dissipated.

Smiling, she flicked the button to next and found herself reading, ‘I wish you were my sister, Belle. Good luck. Hugs.’ Not a template message, not business, but a ‘care’ message from Claire, sent before she’d boarded her own plane back to the States.

The next, from Simone, said, ‘Are you as scared as me?’ Scared? Simone? Brilliant, successful, practically perfect Simone who, like her, like Claire, had a dark secret that haunted her.

She’d left them in the departure lounge at the airport in Hong Kong and it had felt as if she was tearing off an arm to leave them. And now they’d reached out and touched her just at the point at which her resolve was on the point of crumbling. For a moment she was too shaken to move.

‘We’re here, Miss Davenport,’ the driver said and she looked up, realised that the cab had stopped.

‘One moment.’ She quickly thumbed in her reply to Claire. ‘I wish you were, too!’. True. If Claire were her sister she wouldn’t be faced with this.

To Simone she began, ‘We don’t have to do this…’ Except that wasn’t what Simone wanted from her. What they’d all signed up to. She wanted, deserved, encouragement, the mutual support they’d promised each other. Not permission to bottle out at the first faint-heart moment from someone who was looking for an excuse to do the same.

A week ago in the clear, clean air of the Himalayas, in the company of two women who, for the first time in her adult life she’d been able to open up to, confide in, be totally honest with, she’d felt as if she’d seen a glimpse of something rare, something special that could be hers if only she had the courage to reach for it.

The minute she’d set foot in London, all the horrors of her childhood seemed to reach out from the pavement to grab at her, haul her back where she belonged and, terrified, she couldn’t wait to scuttle back into the safety of her gilded cage, pulling the door shut behind her.

She looked at the phone and realised that whatever message she sent now, fight or flee, would set the course of the rest of her life.

She closed her eyes, put herself back in the place she’d been a few days ago, then wrote a new message.

‘Scared witless, but we can do this.’ And hit send.

A fine sentiment, she thought as she climbed from the cab and stood, clutching her rucksack, outside the Belgravia town house that had been her husband’s family home for generations.

Now all she had to do was prove it.