PROLOGUE
The pain was so great inside and out that even Gracie’s scream was shocked into submission. Instead, she sat motionless on the toilet, whimpering like a frightened puppy. She knew Lewis was outside, just the other side of the door, but she couldn’t find the strength to call his name. She was in this alone. It was happening to her, alone.
She was aware that blood was pouring from her. Feeling suddenly woozy, her head lolled forward as if she were a rag-doll.
Losing consciousness, she had just one last wish – never to wake up from this insurmountable nightmare.
ONE
‘A full fat cappuccino with nutmeg sprinkles and a flapjack, please.’
‘Gracie, did you really say a flapjack? It’s eight o’clock in the morning!’
Gracie grinned and then pretended to look shocked. ‘Oh, no – is it really? I didn’t realise cakes cared what time they were eaten.’
Annalize – spelled ‘with a z’ – shuffled her weight slightly from one designer trainer to another. HerPretty in Pinknail varnish matched her expensive Nike sports top, which clung snugly to her trim figure. ‘It’s just, you know… maybe it’s time you thought of losing your baby weight.’
Gracie shut her eyes to stop the tears and took a deep breath.
‘And maybe it’s time you weren’t so bloody insensitive,’ the petite blonde behind the coffee shop counter butted in. Gracie noticed her very slight Eastern European accent and her tiny diamond nose stud. She wished that she could be brave enough to wear such a thing.
Shocked into silence by the stranger, Annalize downed her two-shot espresso and headed for the door.
Doing some sort of weird arm-stretch, she called back, ‘Gracie, darling. I’m running to the Monument and back, should be at my desk for nine twenty. Cover me if Warhurst is on the warpath.’
Leaving a trail of strong expensive French perfume behind her, she jogged off.
‘God, that’s pungent.’ Gracie turned her nose up. ‘Wonder what it is?’
‘Eau de Bitch, I expect.’ The blonde barista smiled and passed Gracie her coffee. ‘I’m Maya, by the way.’
‘Gracie. Gracie Davies. I work just down the street at Lemon Aid.For charity events that wow and deliver,’ she recited in a comically high-pitched voice. ‘So, this is my local caffeine stop. You’re new here, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, first day.’ A queue had started to form. ‘I’d better get on.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Gracie said, ‘good luck and thanks again for sticking up for me.’
‘Gracie Davies, it’s 9.04,’ Rob Warhurst’s deep voice boomed as Gracie took her seat at her desk. His grey beard made him look older than his forty-one years; his twinkling blue eyes gave away the fact that he wasn’t cross at all.
Gracie glanced at her phone while flicking open her laptop. ‘No, it’s not. It’s 9.01.’
‘So you’re still one minute late. Where’s Lara Croft anyway?’
‘Last seen in running gear in Marcy’s.’ Gracie laughed. ‘It’s a good job she isn’t in earshot.’
‘What do you mean, she’d love that comparison.’ He checked his watch again. ‘You all have it far too easy these days, the lot of you; even with all this flexible working malarkey you still can’t make it on time on a day you’re in the office.’ He huffed.
Gracie’s relationship with her MD, Rob Warhurst, was one based on humour and mutual understanding. It was an ongoing joke between them about her arrival time, because Rob knew that an old boss of hers used to monitor her every movement. In the end she had left that job because of her hatred of being micro-managed.
Rob tolerated Annalize mainly because she was great at business development and, with Lemon Aid being a small company, he needed her. Her bad timekeeping didn’t really bother him at all, but he wasn’t going to let her know that, as the excuses that Gracie conjured up for her colleague usually made his morning.
Twenty minutes later, a red-cheeked Annalize shimmied across the open-plan office, her tight pencil skirt accentuating her perfectly round little bottom, her stilettos making her already long legs look even leaner. Her stylish black bob didn’t have a hair out of place. She removed her coat and elegantly sat down at her desk.
After two years of sitting opposite Annalize – and having accepted her own love of flapjacks and scorn for any kind of exercise that made her too out of breath – Gracie had given up on comparing herself to Madame Perfect.
‘He’s on the proper warpath,’ she managed to whisper as Rob threw a file onto Annalize’s desk with such force its contents flew out all over the place.
‘You’re late.’
