‘God help me,’ she said again, ‘I’ll be there.’

Then she straightened, refusing to waste another minute dwelling on it. Having come so close to losing this little bit of freedom, she was absolutely determined to make the most of every moment. Even something as simple, as unusual for her, as cooking dinner. But as she clicked to the Net to surf for cooking times, the sound of something hitting the floor made her jump practically out of her skin.

She spun round and saw George Saxon in the doorway, her bag at his feet.

How long had he been there? How much had he heard?

George hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, but when he’d opened the door Annie had been half turned from him, so tense, the cellphone so tight to her ear that she hadn’t noticed him and he’d frozen, unable to advance or retreat.

He’d heard her promise to ‘be there’, but the ‘God help me…’ that had followed as she’d clutched the phone to her chest had been so deeply felt that any doubts about the kind of trouble she was in vanished as, for a moment, all control had slipped away and she’d looked simply desolate.

At that moment he’d wanted only to reach out to her, hold her. Which was when he’d dropped her bag at his feet.

And she’d visibly jumped.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ Just shatter the spell that she seemed to be weaving around him.

‘You didn’t,’ she said, a little too fiercely. Then blushed at the lie. ‘Well, maybe just a bit.’

She looked down at the cellphone, then crammed it quickly into the back pocket of her jeans. Unlike her clothes or the holdall he’d just brought in from the car, which was definitely from the cheap-and-cheerful, market-stall end of the spectrum, it was the latest in expensive, top-end technology. He had one exactly like it himself and knew how much it had cost. And he wondered what kind of wardrobe she’d left behind in London, along with her driving licence, when she’d made her bid for freedom.