Val couldn’t hear what was being said over the general noise of the bar, but she admired the girl’s confidence. She always had. Betty fascinated her. Where did that slender little thing with the pretty fair hair and the blue, blue eyes get such strength, she wondered. Because Betty was strong, there was no doubt about that. In fact, she might even go so far as to call Betty tough.

She rounded the counter and headed for the stairs. She’d leave the girls handling things here and do some work in her office.

As she passed by Ben, who was lounging nonchalantly against the bar convinced he was making inroads, she heard Betty finally call a halt to the proceedings, and with such admirable aplomb.

‘Sorry, Soldier Ben baby,’ Betty said, flashing the young man a radiant smile and managing at the same time to look regretful, ‘but I can’t meet you after work. I’m afraid I’m taken.’ Which was an outright lie.

Yep, Val thought, she’s tough all right. Guts and charm. She’d have made a damn good hooker.

CHAPTER TWO

Betty wasn’t really tough. But nor was her tough image really an act. Over the years, fiction and reality had merged into one as Betty had presented herself the way she wished to be perceived – a replica of the American movie stars she worshipped. The strong women of the screen had always been her favourites, and as a teenager she’d tried to model herself along the lines of Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, both of whom had an austere authority she deeply admired. But Garbo and Dietrich hadn’t worked for her – young Betty was too given to animation – ‘stillness’ was not her bag. So she’d turned her attention to the crisp wit of Katharine Hepburn or the tough-as-it-gets virago of Bette Davis, but she’d found these also to be a difficult balancing act. Eventually, she’d settled upon the good-natured, wisecracking style of Rosalind Russell and Carole Lombard, their frisky mix of humour and worldliness feeling more comfortable to her. The final result – which was actually a compilation of all the screen idols she adored – had become who Betty really was. And along the road of self-invention, she had toughened up. Beneath Betty’s pretty façade there lurked a genuine rebel. She’d even sacrificed her virginity to the cause two months previously, just after her twentieth birthday.