“Why are people making this story about me?” Lizzie locked her fingers together so tightly she heard her bones crack, heard too the thread of hysteria in her voice. “Amelia Lester falls down the stairs and I’m somehow to blame? It’s horrible...” Her words caught on a sob.

“I did tell you,” Bill said heavily. “I did tell you to keep the hell away from Dudley Lester but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Now isn’t the time, Bill,” Kat said sharply. Her voice became soothing as she turned back to Lizzie. “We all know it’s not your fault, honey,” she said. “But you know how it works; the media want to use your name for the publicity, that’s all.” She rummaged in her bag. “Here, have some of these.” Lizzie heard the rattle of pills. “Just a little one. You’ll feel much better.”

“I don’t want your fucking pills.” Tears filled Lizzie’s eyes. She despised herself. Why am I such a child? Why can’t I deal with this? Why did bloody Amelia Lester have to die?

“I want to talk to Dudley,” she said forlornly. “He needs me. There’s no one else he can talk to.”

“The less you have to do with this the better,” Bill said. “Normally I’d be arguing for you to get all the publicity you can but this is toxic, Lizzie. You need to keep out of it for the sake of your career. Anyway, Dudley’s got his family. Let him talk to them.”

“Dudley and I always support each other,” Lizzie said. “It’s what we do.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Bill said grimly. “That’s the problem.”

“We’re only trying to look after you, honey,” Kat said. “Really we are. Bill’s right; this could ruin everything for you. It’s got to be handled properly.”

“I know,” Lizzie said. Bill and Kat were right; this whole scandal could ruin her image and her career. She had to be careful. Suddenly she felt exhausted. The need to go to Dudley, to comfort him when so much horrible stuff was swirling around, was deep and instinctive. But it wasn’t stronger than the survival instinct. That was the deepest and most visceral of all. She had worked so hard for everything she had, faced down the scandal of her parents’ disastrous marriage and her sleazy father’s endless affairs. A shiver racked her.

“Lizzie’s kind of sexless, isn’t she?”

She could still hear the bite in Lulu’s tone. So what if it was true? If she controlled every detail of her life and her image it couldn’t go wrong—or so she had thought until now.

She needed more than the necklace to ground her now that the world was swinging violently awry. She burrowed into the pocket of her coat again. Deep in the corner, next to the empty sweet wrappers, she found the little perfume bottle. The scent had been her mother’s favourite, or so she’d been told, a classic of the nineties, smelling of summer flowers and vanilla. The bottle was long empty but the perfume lingered like the memory of a sweet dream and it was one of the few small mementoes she had.