All the versions of the story seemed to be saying the same thing. That Nicole had tried to destroy one of the longest and most enduring marriages in Hollywood. There were pictures of her and Justin Fisher looking loved-up on a beach somewhere, and then a short blurry video presumably shot by a fellow diner showing Justin Fisher’s wife storming into a restaurant in Malibu where Nicole and Justin were dining together. After a few minutes of shouting (excruciating to watch!), Justin’s wife had picked up the water jug and poured the contents over Nicole’s head.

Milly winced. She watched the video five times, pausing it in some places, and what she noticed was that in the few seconds before Justin Fisher’s furious wife interrupted them, Nicole had looked happy. Genuinely happy, not acting happy. She was smiling at Justin as if they’d just shared a joke that only the two of them could possibly understand. There was an energy between them, a chemistry that even a wobbly camera had captured.

Was Nicole in love with him? The idea of it threw Milly because it had never occurred to her that Nicole might lower her guard sufficiently to let anyone that close.

Was that why she seemed so fragile? There was a time when she would have known because Nicole would have shared it with her in one of their late-night email sessions or video catch-ups.

But now she didn’t have a clue. She had no idea what was going on in her friend’s life.

She closed the video and flicked through the rest of the coverage. Almost every piece she read included old photos of Nicole with other men, those images presumably provided to prove that she had form, a history of seducing other women’s husbands.

She switched off her phone. She knew that plenty of those rumors weren’t true. How true was this one?

Something about this situation wasn’t making sense to her.

Nicole had been the subject of lurid headlines before and never tried to hide from it. She’d shrugged it off as part of the job.

What was different about this? Why the urgent need to hide away?

There was something Nicole wasn’t telling her, but that might have been Milly’s fault because she hadn’t exactly encouraged conversation.

With a sigh she forced herself out of bed.

She knew what Nicole was like. She went from man to man, searching for something that she couldn’t find inside herself. Some sort of validation. And because no one could give her what she needed, the relationships inevitably ended leaving hearts scattered underfoot like pieces of broken glass.