She flew back to London and disappeared. Her parents in Hertfordshire were not particularly loving, but at least they would shelter and feed her and keep the outside world at bay. After all, like it or not, they were going to be grandparents too.

Holed up in the bedroom she had barely spent a dozen nights in since leaving home at the age of eighteen, dozing in a single bed, cuddling the same toys she’d cuddled as a child, Victoria weighed up her options.

She knew, of course, that Rivelli had tried to kill her, and, when that failed, had sought to dispose of her in other ways. She had no doubt whatsoever that Christine and the French police had rescued her and her unborn child from certain death. She felt strangely calm about the whole thing. After all, she was not alone. He had tried to kill Will, and burnt down his ex-wife’s house; it was only reasonable to assume that she was not going to get off lightly either.

And yet she could not bring herself to turn him in. That would have meant that the last ten years had all been for nothing – that the dream for which she’d sacrificed everything, career, home life, her entire future, had turned out to be a nightmare. She could never have Rivelli now – they would get him for something, with or without her help, and even Victoria would not stoop so low as to run after a man who had tried to murder her. She’d hardened herself to rejection on a small, mundane scale; that was something all mistresses had to do. But attempted homicide was not the sort of thing you could forget for a pair of diamond earrings and a Cavalli evening dress. Murder was hard to forgive.

But if not Rivelli, then who? She could hardly throw herself on her parents’ mercy; they were already nervously watching the net curtains, dreading the arrival of unexpected callers to whom they would have to explain Victoria’s sudden presence and the increasingly obvious reason for it. Adele? Even if she would take her in for the short term, just to get the lowdown and enjoy another opportunity to gloat, Adele was too closely associated with Rivelli and his world. It was too late for the abortion Adele advised – and, after all, the baby had survived car crashes and morphine injections. She owed it a fighting chance.

Leanne was dead.

And who did that leave? Ben? What if, after all, he was the baby’s father? It was just a one-night stand. He was a kid – what, nineteen? twenty? He could hardly provide for her. Of course, his parents were wealthy, and his sister, if she managed to pull herself out of her current difficulties, would be the richest of the lot.

But could Victoria really expect help from a family that she had tried so hard to destroy?