Why did you crash, Cliff? Had you been drinking?

She was asking the same questions as everyone else.

She didn’t need to look through her windows to know that the photographers were still outside her gate, parked in their vans, watching the house through long lenses.

She’d let two days pass and when they showed no signs of losing interest she’d hired security in order to be able to safely drive to her office. Two burly, unsmiling men with muscular shoulders and no sense of humor. They’d called her Mrs Whitman, which she hated.

She didn’t want to be Mrs. Whitman. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her days as one of Cliff’s accessories.

Their head office had been surrounded, too, so she’d said reassuring words to the team, grabbed what she needed and tried not to see the relief on their faces when she said she’d be working from home. They didn’t want her there, taking focus away from the company, but at the same time work didn’t stop because Cliff was no longer alive.

Cliff had spent as little time as possible in the office. Partly because he was usually busy filming a project, visiting one of the restaurants, promoting one of his books and generally keeping his profile high in the media, but also because Cliff had been severely dyslexic and part of his strategy to conceal that fact was to never be in a position where he was expected to read something or sign something without Joanna by his side. Joanna didn’t understand why he hid it. She’d suggested many times that his success might inspire other people with dyslexia, but Cliff wasn’t interested in inspiring or helping anyone else. His focus was on maintaining the image he’d created for himself. He wanted to believe he was the person he’d created. He wanted the public to believe that, too.

The reality was that Cliff had little involvement with the work that went on behind the scenes. The company was run by an efficient management team, but it was Joanna who had managed Cliff. Even after the divorce, that hadn’t changed. She managed his diary, his transport, his media commitments and his insecurities.

It was Joanna who compiled all the recipes for Cliff’s books, painstakingly weighing and measuring all the ingredients that Cliff threw together by instinct and noting them down. He’d never followed a recipe in his life, but he knew what flavors worked together.

In the early days it had been fun. Exciting even. But that had gradually changed. The more the public expected of him, the more pressure he’d felt and the more his insecurities grew. He became a victim of his own creation.

Why did you crash, Cliff? Were you showing off?

She headed downstairs and found Nessa in the kitchen acquainting herself with the coffee machine.