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window-seat in a guest bedroom, horrible racking sobs tearing at her body, when she'd heard a racket in their bedroom. Laughter—squeals of it, and Leo's chuckle. She'd been stunned for a moment, then had stormed in, to find him and Arabella, naked in the huge four-poster bed, romping like eager children. Their bedroom. Their bed. Even now, after two interminable, depressing years, it made her ball her fists in fury.
    At the time the shock had driven her out, screaming hysterically, fleeing to the nearest room and locking herself in. And she'd cried rivers of tears till exhaustion had brought sleep where she lay, poignantly, cruelly, on the bed in the nursery where there would be no child of hers now. The irony hadn't been lost on her in the morning when she'd woken.
    In a surprising act of generosity, Leo had agreed to keep their divorce a secret from everyone but his family and Chas for a while. It had meant that she wasn't hassled by the Press. The lawyers had been paid well to ensure their secrecy and the divorce had been handled in a small market town where the sleepy court reporter had failed to recognise the woman called Virginia Brandon as Ginny McKenzie.
    But then she'd been wearing a Paisley headscarf, an old trench coat, and enormous spectacles. And Leo had turned up in a checked cap and an anorak. They'd nodded coldly and hadn't even laughed at one another's strange attire. Laughter hadn't been something she'd expected to feature much in her life for a while. Her life had been shattered and the only thing she'd felt was cold—a stillness of her body as if the warm blood in her veins had turned to a trickle of ice. And she'd wondered if she'd ever be warm again.
    The divorce had been alarmingly quick and straightforward. The lawyers had assured the judge that neither of them wanted or needed maintenance and that was that. Her marriage was at an end.
    Despite closing down her emotions after the divorce, despite working every waking hour so that she could forget Leo and maintain her position in the modelling hierarchy and pay back her debt, she'd still felt raw inside. Every day she'd ached for Leo and wished that they could be together because her heart was breaking in the most painful way—slowly dying from disuse.
    But she'd never shown those feelings to anyone. Look where it had got her when she'd flung her heart and soul into loving her husband! Ex-husband, she'd continually corrected herself, gritting her teeth with the pain of a chapter in her life that was now ended.
    And how much had the humiliation of being rejected damaged her self-confidence? It had taken her a long time to smooth over the nerves she'd felt when facing the public. Hours of almost maniacal preparation, so that her face had been a perfect mask and every gesture had been rehearsed.
    Only then had she been able to bear to confront everyone, knowing that they were whispering, gossiping, wondering about the 'perfect lady' who'd turned out to be a tigress in a variety of beds. Head held high, she'd coolly met their eyes with a challenge and they'd always looked away first.
    But she'd become lonely, trusting no one but Chas, who rarely left her side and had become father and brother and friend to her. And now she was truly alone because even Chas didn't quite know what was in her heart: an ache for the man she couldn't have because they couldn't live together, their lives having veered away from each other too dramatically ever to meet and link again.
     
    Emerging from Heathrow with Chas and turning the key in her coupe parked in the long-term car park, Ginny suddenly wanted privacy. Divorced, theoretically free but forever a prisoner of Leo's magnetism, she smiled faintly at Chas.
    'I'd like to drive myself. Just this once. Would you take a taxi?'
    And, driving through the streets of London to her flat in Chelsea, she grimly steeled every bone in her body and held back the tears that had threatened from the moment her solicitor had telephoned