Her stuff and her stubbornness in refusing to give up on her dream of making it back to the big time. A dark spectre of fear hovered over her but she batted it away. She could work it out. She’d just have to see if she could find a small room in a house somewhere—maybe with a few light cleaning duties or child-care thrown in, which would guarantee a rock-bottom rent. Surely places like that existed?
But her sore throat became a hacking cough and she felt too weak to look around for somewhere new. She barely had the strength to drag herself off to one of her regular cleaning jobs in one of the big houses on Holland Park. Unfortunately, the Italian footballer’s wife who was normally so sweet took one horrified look at her and said that she couldn’t risk Roxy giving her cold to the children and that she needed to go straight back home.
In truth, Roxy couldn’t blame her because this was beginning to feel like more than a cold—and it was getting worse by the minute. She felt too ill to get out of bed the next morning, and as panic began to mount that people would think her unreliable the week began to slip away.
She got the news that she’d lost her regular singing spot at the Kit-Kat Club on an icy morning when she was at her lowest ebb. They told her that they were sorry, but she wasn’t pulling in the punters in as they’d hoped she would. She’d known that they’d wanted her to dress up as she used to when she was in The Lollipops. To wear those same outrageous clothes and sing all those old, familiar songs. But she couldn’t do it. To try to recreate the past felt like a backward step and a betrayal—because she wasn’t that person. Not any more.
Getting the sack felt like the final blow, yet somehow she managed to keep the tears at bay. It was that old self-preservation thing again, because she suspected that once she started crying she might never stop—and what good would that do her?
Forcing herself to be practical, she managed to make it round to the chemist to buy some paracetamol, but her legs felt so cotton-woolly that it seemed to take forever to get back home again. And all the time she kept wondering how she was going to manage. Whether the disapproving Duke of Torchester had meant what he’d said.
She leaned against the iron railings, so busy trying to catch her breath that for a moment she didn’t notice the huge suitcase sitting outside the front door and when she did, she blinked.
That was...
She blinked again.
That was her suitcase!
Walking slowly up the steps towards it, her gloved fingers trembling as she clicked the bulging case open, she swallowed down the salty taste of tears as she saw what was inside. Her jeans. Her sparkly stage tops. Her toiletries stuffed into that ancient soap-bag she’d had since her days with The Lollipops. And there, peeping out from among the other more functional clothes, were glimpses of her undies—bras and knickers, stuffed haphazardly into wherever there was a space.
Roxy snapped the case closed as dizzy yellow spots began to dance beneath her eyelids. And even though she knew it was completely pointless, she still attempted to wriggle her key into the front-door lock, which was mocking her with its brand-new shininess. It wouldn’t fit, she thought frustratedly. It wouldn’t fit and she knew exactly why.
‘Roxanne?’
Roxy immediately recognised the cultured, feminine voice behind her—her heart sinking as she forced her head to turn to see that it was indeed Annabella Lang, the privileged trust-fund blonde who lived next door.
Unable to muster even a smile, Roxy nodded as she pulled her useless key away from the door. Don’t show your desperation, she urged herself as she sucked in a deep, painful breath. ‘Hello, Bella.’
‘What is going on? Some goon was round here earlier changing all the locks on the door!’
Talk about stating the obvious, thought Roxy wearily. ‘I’m moving,’ she croaked.
But Annabella was clearly much more interested in something other than Roxy’s housing difficulties. ‘And then...’ She paused dramatically, for effect. ‘You’ll never guess who came storming round, looking as if the world was about to end?’
‘Who?’ questioned Roxy, though she could tell from the other woman’s sudden air of adulation just who that might be.
‘Titus Alexander,’ said Annabella, her eyes narrowing. ‘The Duke of Torchester! I didn’t realise you knew him! And I didn’t realise he owned this house,’ she finished accusingly.
Roxy didn’t bother saying ‘and neither did I’. Even if she’d wanted a conversation with Annabella, she didn’t think she’d be coherent enough to make any sense right now, because her head had started pounding and her throat felt as if it were on fire. She needed to get out of here and she needed to lie down before she fell down. ‘I have to go,’ she croaked.
‘But go where?’ asked Annabella, her voice sounding incredulous as she watched Roxy struggle to pick up the heavy case.
Perhaps if she hadn’t been feeling so woozy, then Roxy might have invented a fictitious series of friends who’d be only too glad to let her sofa-surf until she found a place of her own. But she felt so low and defeated that she just blurted out the truth—not caring a jot about her battered pride or Annabella’s horrified face.
‘I’ll find a hostel,’ she mumbled. ‘Just for the night.’
She began to haul her heavy suitcase down the street, not stopping until she reached the bus stop and was certain she was away from Annabella’s pitying stare. And when the bright red double-decker bus stopped, she bought a ticket planning to travel as far away from this privileged area of West London as possible. Because she didn’t belong here. Come to think of it, she didn’t really belong anywhere.
Somehow she found a hostel, not caring that it was right by a busy Tube station or that to get there she had to pass three people sitting on a pavement, asking passers-by for money.
She just needed to sleep, that was all. In the morning she would feel better—and after that she would find somewhere to live. She wondered if the desperation showed on her face or whether it could be heard in her croaky voice—but something in her heartfelt appeal must have worked, because she was given a bed.
It was an iron bedstead with a lumpy mattress, in a dormitory with twenty other women—some of whom seemed to be withdrawing from alcohol. Their delusional screams about yellow ants pierced the night and ordinarily Roxy would have been terrified. But the pounding in her head was pretty much all she could think about right then—until she remembered that she’d left no forwarding address and that she was expecting a much-needed cheque. And that she wouldn’t put it past the hateful Titus Alexander to throw it in the bin, out of spite.
With trembling fingers, she scrabbled around in her bag until she’d found the arrogant aristocrat’s card, then fumbled him a text, before flopping back against the flat pillow.
She’d never felt so ill in her life. The walls were closing in on her. Her skin was growing hot. And just before her eyelids fluttered to a close, she cursed the tawny-headed man whose cruel behaviour had brought her here.
A FADED denim crotch swam into view and Roxy’s heavy eyelids slowly fluttered open. Narrow hips framed the crotch like a prize exhibit at an art show and for a moment she was so disorientated that she simply stared at it. Slowly, she moved her gaze upwards to meet the shuttered gaze of Titus Alexander.
‘You’re awake, I see,’ he remarked acidly.
Roxy blinked. She felt warm and comfortable and the room was strangely quiet. Yet she remembered going to sleep on a lumpy mattress with the sound of demented voices all around her. More memories began to crowd into her befuddled brain. The sleepless night which had turned into a sleepless day. The pounding in her head and the terrible aching in her throat—followed by the soaring bewilderment of a high fever when her skin had felt as icy as if she’d spent the night in the