© 2006

NOT much longer-if I can just hold out-please, please, don’t let them catch me…

The soft vibration of the speeding train seemed to be part of her thoughts. It was five minutes late but she should still reach Rome in time to get to the airport and catch her plane home.

Just a hundred miles to Rome-that’s not much really-unless the police saw me get on this train…

Had anyone seen her? She’d hurried, keeping her head down, trying to get lost in the crowd. Nobody had troubled her so far, but it was too soon to feel safe.

Perhaps she would never feel truly safe again. The man she had loved and trusted had betrayed her, throwing her to the wolves to save his own skin. Even if she managed to keep her freedom, the world had changed, becoming ugly and bitter, like the inside of her own mind.

Somebody eased past her in the corridor and she turned hastily away, staring out of the window to conceal her face. Outside, the Italian countryside, bathed in the glowing colours of summer, rushed by, but she was barely aware of its beauty. Only her fear existed.

When she next looked, she could see two uniformed men at the end of the corridor.

Police!

She must escape before they reached her.

Edge away slowly. Don’t attract attention. Try to look casual.

She wondered exactly what kind of description of her they had: Name, Sarah Conroy, but answers only to Holly; a young woman in her late twenties, tall, perhaps a little too slim, with light brown hair, cut short, blue eyes and a face with nothing special about it: a face that hadn’t lived very much.

Nondescript. Yes, that was the word for her, and for the first time she was glad. It might save her now.