Rupert, already through the door, looked back to see what was keeping her and, apparently confident enough to display a little impatience, said, ‘Rose, we’re running late…’
They both glanced in his direction, then Lydia looked at her and lifted a brow in a ‘dump the jerk’ look that exactly mirrored her own thoughts.
‘I don’t suppose you fancy three hours of Wagner this evening?’ she asked but, even before Lydia could reply, she shook her head. ‘Just kidding. I wouldn’t wish that on you.’
‘I meant what I said.’ And Lydia, taking a card from the small clutch bag she was carrying, offered it to her. ‘Call me. Any time.’
Three weeks later, as speculation in the press that she was about to announce her engagement reached fever-pitch, Annie took out Lydia’s card and dialled the number.
‘Lydia Young…’
‘Did you mean it?’ she asked.
George Saxon, bare feet propped on the deck rail of his California beach house, laptop on his knees, gave up on the problem that had been eluding him for weeks and surfed idly through the headlines of the London newspapers.
His eye was caught by the picture of a couple leaving some gala. She was one of those tall patrician women, pale blonde hair swept up off her neck, her fabulously expensive gown cut low to reveal hollows in her shoulders even deeper than those in her cheeks.
But it wasn’t her dress or the fact that she’d so obviously starved herself to get into it that had caught and held his attention. It was her eyes.
Her mouth was smiling for the camera, but her eyes, large, blue, seemed to be looking straight at him, sending him a silent appeal for help.
He clicked swiftly back to the program he’d been working on. Sometimes switching in and out of a problem cleared the blockage but this one was stubborn, which was why he’d left his Chicago office, lakeside apartment. Escaping the frantic pre-Christmas party atmosphere for the peace—and warmth—of the beach.
Behind him, inside the house, the phone began to ring. It would be his accountant, or his lawyer, or his office but success had insulated him from the need to jump when the phone rang and he left it for the machine to pick up. There was nothing, no one—
‘George? It’s your dad…’
But, then again, there were exceptions to every rule.
Tossing a holdall onto the back seat of the little red car that was Lydia’s proudest possession, Annie settled herself behind the wheel and ran her hands over the steering wheel as if to reassure herself that it was real.
That she’d escaped…
Three hours ago, Lady Rose Napier had walked into a London hotel without her unshakeable escort—the annual Pink Ribbon Lunch was a ladies-only occasion. Two hours later, Lydia had walked out in her place. And ten minutes ago she’d left the same hotel completely unnoticed.
By now Lydia would be on board a private jet, heading for a week of total luxury at Bab el Sama, the holiday home of her friend Lucy al-Khatib.
Once there, all she had to do was put in an occasional appearance on the terrace or the beach for the paparazzi who, after the sudden rash of ‘Wedding Bells?’ headlines, would no doubt be sitting offshore in small boats, long-range cameras at the ready, hoping to catch her in flagrante in this private ‘love-nest’ with Rupert.
She hoped they’d packed seasick pills along with their sunscreen since they were going to have a very long wait.
And she grinned. She’d told her grandfather that she needed time on her own to consider her future. Not true. She wasn’t going to waste one precious second of the time that Lydia—bless her heart—had given her thinking about Rupert Devenish.
She had just a week in which to be anonymous, to step outside the hothouse environment in which she’d lived since her parents had been killed. To touch reality as they had done. Be herself. Nothing planned, nothing organised. Just take life as it came.
She adjusted the rear-view mirror to check her appearance. She’d debated whether to go with a wig or colour her hair but, having tried a wig—it was amazing what you could buy on the Internet—and realising that living in it 24/7 was not for her, she’d decided to go for a temporary change of hair colour, darkening it a little with the temporary rinse Lydia had provided.
But that would have taken time and, instead, in an act of pure rebellion, of liberation, she’d hacked it short with a pair of nail scissors. When she’d stopped, the short, spiky result was so shocking that she’d been grateful for the woolly hat Lydia had provided to cover it.
She pulled it down over her ears, hoping that Lydia, forced to follow her style, would forgive her. Pushed the heavy-framed ‘prop’ spectacles up her nose. And grinned. The sense of freedom was giddying and, if she was honest, a little frightening. She’d never been completely on her own before and, shivering a little, she turned on the heater.
‘Not frightening,’ she said out loud as she eased out of the parking bay and headed for the exit. ‘Challenging.’ And, reaching the barrier, she encountered her first challenge.
Lydia had left the ticket on the dashboard for her and she stuck it in the machine, expecting the barrier to lift. The machine spat it back out.
As she tried it the other way, with the same result, there was a series of impatient toots from the tailback building up behind her.
So much for invisibility.
She’d been on her own for not much more than an hour and already she was the centre of attention…
‘What’s your problem, lady?’
Annie froze but the ‘Rose’ never came and she finally looked up to find a car park attendant, a Santa Claus hat tugged down to his ears against the cold, glaring at her.
Apparently he’d used the word ‘lady’ not as a title, but as something barely short of an insult and, like his sour expression, it didn’t quite match the ‘ho, ho, ho’ of the hat.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
‘Oh. Um…’ Concentrate! ‘I put the ticket in, but nothing happened.’
‘Have you paid?’
‘Paid?’ she asked. ‘Where?’
He sighed. ‘Can’t you read? There’s a notice ten feet high at the entrance.’ Then, since she was still frowning, he said, very slowly, ‘You have to pay before you leave. Over there.’ She looked around, saw a machine, then, as the hooting became more insistent, ‘In your own time,’ he added sarcastically.
And Bah! Humbug…to you, she thought as she grabbed her bag from the car and sprinted to the nearest machine, read the instructions, fed in the ticket and then the amount indicated with shaking fingers.
She returned to the car, calling, ‘Sorry, sorry…’ to the people she’d held up before flinging herself back into the car and finally escaping.
Moments later, she was just one of thousands of drivers battling through traffic swollen by Christmas shoppers and visitors who’d come up to town to see the lights.
Anonymous, invisible, she removed the unnecessary spectacles, dropping them on the passenger seat, then headed west out of London.
She made good time but the pale blue winter sky was tinged with pink, the trees black against the horizon as she reached the junction for Maybridge. A pretty town with excellent shops, a popular riverside area, it was not too big, not too small. As good a place as any to begin her adventure and she headed for the ring road and the anonymous motel she’d found on the Internet.
Somewhere to spend the night and decide what she was going to do with her brief moment of freedom.
George Saxon’s jaw was rigid as he kept his