She felt a flash of anxiety. Would it be okay? Would everything be okay?

“I hurt everywhere.”

“We can increase your pain relief. As well as your more serious injuries, you have a cracked rib and severe bruising. We’ll be watching you carefully over the next few days. You’re lucky to be alive.” The doctor hesitated. “Is there someone we can contact? Family? Friends? We didn’t find any emergency contact details when you were brought in.”

No emergency contact. That said everything about her life, didn’t it? There was no one she could call.

She was alone in the world, apart from the medical team who were paid to care for her.

She felt an emptiness and then a flash of panic. Keep peddling, Ashley! Keep kicking. She had to figure out what to do next, but her brain was blurred by pain and the remnants of anesthetic. She didn’t want to be here, but what choice did she have? She couldn’t even sit up without help. And even if she could, where would she go? She hadn’t anticipated this outcome. She didn’t have any sort of backup plan, not even a bad one.

The doctor exchanged glances with the nurse.

“The man you were with—”

“Cliff.” There was no reason to pretend she hadn’t known his name. “He’s dead. I know.” She knew he was dead, and yet the memory uppermost in her mind wasn’t the crash, but the look in his eyes in that split second before he’d lost control.

Shock. Disbelief. Anger.

She shivered. It hadn’t gone the way she’d expected it to. None of it had. Even if he’d lived, the outcome would have been bad.

The doctor frowned. “You know he’s dead? I thought you didn’t remember—?”

Ashley gestured to the TV screen visible in the waiting area beyond the glass windows of the ward. There was no sound, but the rolling news at the bottom confirmed that celebrity chef Cliff Whitman had been killed in an accident on Mulholland Drive. An unknown woman had been removed from the wreckage and taken to the hospital.

That was her. She was an unknown woman.

The irony didn’t escape her. Despite their history she’d been unknown to Cliff, too.

Right now she was relieved to be unknown, and she wanted to stay that way. She wanted to wind the clock back, slide back into her old life and somehow forget this horrible mistake.

Another image flashed up on the screen. A slim woman wearing jeans and a simple white shirt, holding her hand up to ward off photographers. Her sunglasses were so huge they obscured most of her face. She looked haunted. Hunted.

Joanna Whitman.

Ashley’s stomach rebelled. “I’m going to be sick.”

The nurse handed her a bowl and she retched miserably even though there was nothing in her stomach.