She stared ahead of her.
And what am I? she thought. The answer tolled in her brain like a funeral bell.
A rich man’s mistress.
One of the many luxuries a rich man acquired to make his life pleasant and enjoyable.
That’s all I am to him. I’ll never, never be anything else…
His mistress.
Her eyes stared unseeingly ahead.
Didn’t he tell me? Didn’t he say it often enough—that horrible afternoon with the emeralds from that disgusting Cosmo Dimistris? Mistress, mistress, mistress.
The word tolled through her, would not be silenced.
I tried to pretend it didn’t matter, that it was only a word, that it was how he treated me that was more important. But all along it was just as a mistress that he was treating me—someone for his bed, to pamper and indulge and amuse himself with.
Nothing more than that.
Nothing more than a mistress.
Her body was immobile, curled up on the huge sofa, and she’d been sitting there for ever, it seemed, while her brain went round and round.
He thinks I want to get him to marry me. That I’m trying to trap him into marriage with pregnancy.
She felt her stomach hollow out, the breath solidifying in her lungs.
Her whole body felt as if it was slowly freezing.
The low buzz of the doorbell did not register at first. But when it was repeated it managed to penetrate her numbed senses.
Slowly, very slowly, she got to her feet. She’d been immobile for so long that the blood was not flowing properly to her feet, and it took her a moment to make herself walk jerkily towards the door. Whatever it was, whatever was being delivered, she did not want it.
But the bell buzzed again, insistently, and with numbed, stumbling legs she went to answer it.
It wasn’t a delivery.
It was a middle-aged woman she’d never seen in her life.
Vanessa opened her mouth to say, ‘May I help you?’ gathering her stricken thoughts to try and be civil, but the woman simply walked inside, her bulk carrying her forwards. Vanessa, utterly taken aback, could only blink.
Gaining the entrance hall, the woman turned.
‘I wish to speak to you.’
Vanessa’s brain was like porridge. All she registered was that the woman was expensively dressed, had Mediterranean colouring, and spoke English with an accent—and in the kind of tones that, Vanessa knew from her time with Markos, rich people reserved for those who were not rich.
The woman’s eyes flickered over her. They were dark, and not friendly.
Hostile.
Vanessa swallowed. Who was this woman? And why had she just barged in here? And why had the concierge not phoned to first to ask if she could come up?
The woman’s eyes flicked over her in that same hostile manner. Then, again without waiting for an invitation, she walked through into the lounge.
‘Turn that off,’ she instructed, gesturing at the TV.