She thought of the pitifully small collection of her mother’s belongings that she had salvaged after she had died. She’d been like a child thief, surreptitiously gathering things up when her father’s back was turned, a discarded book here, a T-shirt there, a cheap bracelet, even a battered phone card and a bus ticket. The housekeeper had bundled up all her mother’s gorgeous clothes, bags and shoes and thrown them away in plastic bags; her books had been given to a charity shop. Her jewellery, Lizzie suspected, had been given to her father’s new girlfriend. Harry Kingdom hadn’t been the subtle type. They had only been married for a few years and Lizzie thought it had been easy for him to erase Annie Bowling from his life, burning the photographs, obliterating all evidence that she had existed. The one thing it hadn’t been possible to obliterate was the four-year-old girl with his red hair but Annie’s brown eyes and sharp, curious mind, although Lizzie sometimes thought that if her father could have got rid of her too, he would have done. Consigning her to Kat’s care and then sending her to boarding school had been his way of dealing with her; until he had realised that he could profit from her talent.

Her fingers rubbed back and forth over the familiar shape of the perfume bottle. She knew all the lines and curves of it by touch alone and usually the contact with one of her mother’s possessions brought her comfort and sometimes more—images of her mother, an echo of her emotions. Not tonight, though. Tonight she felt nothing. There was no comfort. She felt utterly alone. The old scar on the palm of her right hand itched viciously, a reminder of Amelia, and Oakhangar, and the nightmare of the wedding.

“I don’t know where you’re taking me,” she said, “but I want to see Jules. She’ll let me stay for a few days.”

It was the place she always ran to when she was in trouble. Her cousin Juliet Carey was the only person who treated her as though she was normal. Not that Lizzie knew what normal was any more if she ever had, but Juliet’s chaotic household was the closest to it that she could find.

She saw Bill and Kat exchange a look and then Kat gave a tiny nod and Bill dove in his pocket and extracted her phone. Lizzie saw him scroll through the numbers and punch in the one for Jules before he handed it to her.

The number rang and rang. Jules didn’t believe in answering services.

“Didn’t Jules say they were all going to France for a couple of weeks camping?” Kat said. Both her tone and her expression conveyed her utter bafflement at the thought of spending any time in a tent. For Kat, even the most luxurious glamping would be too primitive.

“Oh yeah...” With a sigh Lizzie ended the connection. She really was on her own then. Her only close friend was working abroad and there was no one else she would want to turn to at a time like this, no other friends, no family, only a raft of acquaintances who would sell her out to the press as soon as look at her.