Dorothy gave a grateful sigh. ‘Then I’m going to go and have a shower.’ She snatched up a towel from the bench where Will was sitting. ‘You’d better have a spacesuit in my size for me to pick out when I get back.’

CHAPTER SIX

Chantelle sat in front of the mirror in her bedroom, putting on her make-up and trying to summon up some enthusiasm for the evening out with the girls that she’d agreed to last weekend.

If she was honest, she could do without it. She’d been out three nights this week already and, despite the irritation that she’d felt towards Dorothy when she’d pointed out that 37 might be too old for this kind of lifestyle, there was some truth in it.

She put down her lipstick and stared at her reflection. She didn’t look her age, did she? Was she still kidding herself that she was the same happy-go-lucky kid that she’d been in her 20s? Perhaps it was time to stop all this fashion nonsense. She’d been irritable at work all day, so much so that the creative director had actually pulled the plug on the photo shoot early, telling everyone that they’d start again from scratch on Monday.

She sighed. Perhaps it was time to get a proper job like her gran wanted her to. Maybe she should take Dorothy up on that offer of a job at A Charitable Earth after all …

No sooner had the idea popped into her head than she was angry about it. Dorothy McShane wasn’t the solution to her problems, she was the cause of them. Chantelle had known Dorothy – Ace – for as long as she could remember and, when she’d been little, had always considered her something of an older sister. Then, suddenly and without warning, Ace had vanished from her life, and no one had been able to explain to Chantelle where she had gone or why.

That was probably something that she could have come to terms with, except that, a few years later, Ace had suddenly appeared again, and bad things had come with her – things that looked like cats, but were in fact something far more alien. Chantelle had been too young to understand everything that had gone on that summer, but old enough to know that Ace had bailed on her again.

Then she’d heard talk that Dorothy McShane had come into money – an inheritance, or a big investment come good, or a lottery somewhere – whatever, she’d not spent a penny of it on her old mates, just invested it in that ‘ACE’ charity of hers.