The Contaxis Baby. LYNNE GRAHAM

to pin an unconcerned expression to her face to lessen the older woman’s unease. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m all grown now and I’ll survive.’

      ‘But putting you out of your home is wrong,’ Mrs Baines stated with a sharp conviction that startled Lizzie, for, although the housekeeper had worked for the Dentons for years, she rarely engaged in conversation that did not relate to her work and had certainly never before criticised her employer.

      ‘This is just a family squabble.’ Lizzie gave an awkward shrug, touched to be in receipt of such unexpected support but embarrassed by it as well. ‘I…I’m going for a shower.’

      Closeted in the bathroom, she frowned momentarily at the thought of that surprising exchange with Mrs Baines before she stabbed buttons on her mobile and called Jen, her closest remaining female friend. ‘Jen?’ she asked with forced brightness when the vivacious blonde answered. ‘Could you stand a lodger for a couple of days? Dad’s throwing me out!’

      ‘Are you jossing me?’

      ‘No, talking straight. Right at this very moment, our housekeeper is packing for me—’

      ‘With your wardrobe…I mean, you are the original shop-till-you-drop girl; she’ll still be packing at dawn!’ Jen giggled. ‘Come on over. We can go out and drown your sorrows together tonight.’

      At that suggestion, Lizzie grimaced. ‘I’m not in a party mood—’

      ‘Take it from me, you need to party. Stick your nose in the air and face down the cameras and the pious types. There, but for the grace of God, go I!’ Jen exclaimed with warming heat only to spoil it by continuing with graphic tactlessness, ‘You ditched the guy…you were only with him a few months, like how does that make you responsible for him getting drunk and smashing himself up in his car?’

      Lizzie flinched and reflected that Jen’s easy hospitality would come with a price tag attached. But then, where else could she go in the short term? People had stopped calling her once the supposed truth of Connor’s ‘accident’ had been leaked by his friends. She just needed a little space to sort out her life and, with the current state of her finances, checking into a hotel would not be a good idea. Maybe Jen, whose shallowness was legendary, would cheer her up. Maybe a night out on the town would lift her out of her growing sense of shellshocked despair.

      ‘Work?’ Jen said it as if it was a dirty word and surveyed Lizzie with rounded eyes of disbelief as she led the way into a bedroom mercifully large enough to hold seven suitcases and still leave space to walk around the bed. ‘You…work? What at? Stay with me until your father calms down. Just like me, you were raised to be useless and decorative and eventually become a wife, so let’s face it, it’s hardly your fault.’

      ‘I’m going to stand on my own feet…just as Dad said,’ Lizzie pronounced with a stubborn lift of her chin. ‘I want to prove that I’m not spoilt and indulged—’

      ‘But you are. You’ve never done a proper day’s work in your life!’ A small, voluptuous blonde, Jen was never seen with less than four layers of mascara enhancing her sherry-brown eyes. ‘If you take a job, when would you find the time to have your hair and nails done? Or meet up with your friends for three-hour lunches or even take off at a moment’s notice for a week on a tropical beach? I mean, it would be gruesome for you.’

      Faced with those realities, it truly did sound a gruesome prospect to Lizzie too, although she was somewhat resentful of her companion’s assertion that she had never worked. She had done a lot of unpaid PR work for charities and had proved brilliant at parting the seriously wealthy from their bundles of cash with stories of suffering that touched the hardest hearts. She had sat on several committees to organise events and, well, sat there, the ultimate authority on how to make a campaign look cool for the benefit of those to whom such matters loomed large. But nine-to-five work hours, following orders given by other people for some pocket-change wage, no, she hadn’t ever done that. However, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t…

      Four hours later, Lizzie was no longer feeling quite so feisty. Whisked off to the latest ‘in’ club, Lizzie found herself seated only two tables from a large party of former friends set on shooting her filthy looks. She was wearing an outfit that had been an impulse buy and a mistake and, in addition, Jen had been quite short with her when she had had only two alcoholic drinks before trying to order her usual orange juice. Reluctant to offend the blonde, who felt just then like her only friend in the world, Lizzie was now drinking more vodka.

      ‘When my girlfriends won’t drink with me, I feel like they’re acting superior,’ Jen confessed with a forgiving grin and then threw back a Tequila Sunrise much faster than it could have been poured.

      When Jen went off to speak to someone, Lizzie went to the cloakroom. Standing at the mirrors, she regretted having allowed Jen to persuade her to wear the white halter top and short skirt. She felt too exposed yet she often bought daring outfits even though she never actually wore them. While she was wondering why that was so, she overheard the chatter of familiar female voices.

      ‘I just can’t believe Lizzie had the nerve to show herself here tonight!’

      ‘But it does prove what a heartless, self-centred little—’

      ‘Tom’s warning Jen that if she stays friendly with Lizzie, she’s likely to find herself out on her own with only Lizzie!’

      ‘How could she have treated Connor that way? He was so much fun, so kind…’

      Lizzie fled with hot, prickling tears standing out in her shaken eyes. Returning to her table, she drained her glass without even tasting the contents. Those female voices had belonged to her friends. One of them had even gone to school with her. Ex-friends. All of a sudden everybody hated her, yet only weeks ago she had had so many invitations out she would have needed a clone of herself to attend every event. Now she wanted to bolt for the exit and go home. But she wasn’t welcome at home any more and Jen would be furious if she tried to end the evening early.

      Yes, Connor had seemed kind. At least, she had thought so too until she went down to the Denton country cottage and found Connor in bed with Felicity. Her skin turned cold and clammy at that tormenting memory.

      She had been thinking about inviting a bunch of friends to the cottage for the weekend. Believing that the property had been little used in recent times, she had decided to check out that there would be sufficient bedding. Connor must have come down from London in her stepmother’s car and it had been parked out of sight behind the garage, so Lizzie had had no warning that the cottage was occupied. She had been in a lovely, bubbly mood, picturing how amazed Connor would be when she told him that he would be spending his twenty-fifth birthday in Bali.

      Lizzie had been on the stairs when she heard the funny noises: a sort of rustling and moaning that had sent a momentary chill down her spine. But even at that stage she had not, in her ignorance, suspected that what she was hearing was a man and a woman making love. Blithely assuming that it was only the wind getting in through a window that had been left open, she had gone right on up. From the landing, she had got a full Technicolor view of her boyfriend and her stepmother rolling about the pine four-poster bed in the main bedroom.

      Felicity had been in the throes of what had looked more like agony than ecstasy. Connor had been gasping for breath in between telling Felicity how much he loved her and how he couldn’t bear to think that it would be another week before he could see her again. Throughout that exchange, Lizzie had been frozen to the spot like a paralysed peeping Tom. When Felicity had seen her, her aghast baby-blue eyes had flooded with tears, making her look more than ever like a victim in the guise of a fairytale princess.

      But then crying was an art form and a way of life for her stepmother, Lizzie reflected, striving valiantly to suppress the wounding images she had allowed to surge up from her subconscious. Felicity wept if dinner was less than perfect… ‘It’s my fault…it’s my fault,’ she would fuss until Maurice Denton was on his knees and promising her a week in Paris to recover from the trauma of it. In much the same way and with just as much sincere feeling she had wept when Lizzie found her