She’d have to email it and beg illness.
But, after staggering cautiously around the flat she shared with Melissa, holding onto the walls for support, she realised she must have left her laptop at the office. She’d have to phone Stefano. He could open it himself. She’d give him the password, although she was ninety-nine per cent certain he’d hacked it at least once already.
All she had to do was find her phone. Walking carefully to the kitchen, she found a pretty handbag on the counter. Next to it was an envelope addressed with her name.
She blinked hard to keep her eyes focused and pulled the letter out. She attempted to read it a couple of times but none of it made any sense. It was from Melissa asking for Anna’s forgiveness for her trip to Australia and promising to call when she got there.
Australia? Melissa must be having a joke at her expense, although her sister saying she was going to visit the mother who’d abandoned them a decade ago wasn’t the slightest bit funny to Anna’s mind. The letter’s postscript did explain one thing though—Melissa said she’d gritted the outside step of the front door so Anna wouldn’t slip on it again, and asked her to see a doctor if her head hurt where she’d banged it.
Anna put her hand to the lump on the side of her head. She had no recollection whatsoever of slipping. And no recollection of any ice. The early November weather had been mild but now, as she looked through the kitchen window, she saw a thick layer of frost.
Her head hurting too much for her to make sense of anything, she put the letter to one side and had a look in the handbag. The purse she’d used for a decade, threadbare but clinging to life, was in it. It had been the last gift from her father before he’d died. Had she swapped handbags with Melissa? That wouldn’t be unusual; Anna and Melissa were always lending each other things. What was unusual was that Anna didn’t remember. But they must have swapped because in the bottom of the pretty bag also sat Anna’s phone. That was another mystery solved.
She pulled it out and saw she had five missed calls. Struggling to focus, she tapped in the pin code to unlock it.
Wrong pin. She tried again. Wrong pin.
Sighing, she shoved it back in the bag. It took enough effort to stay on her feet, never mind remembering a code with a head that felt like fog. It was times like this that she cursed their decision to disconnect the landline.
Fine. She’d flag a cab and go to the office, explain that she was dying and then come home again.
Before getting dressed, she took some headache tablets and prayed her tender belly could keep them down.
She always put the next day’s clothes on her bedroom chair and now she hugged them to her chest and gingerly sat back on her bed. Where had this dress come from? Melissa must have muddled their clothes up again. Not having the energy to hunt for something else, Anna decided to wear it. It was a black long-sleeved, knee-length jersey dress with a nice amount of swish at the hem but it took her an age to get it on, her limbs feeling as if they’d had lead injected into them.
Damn, her head.
She didn’t have the energy to put on any make-up either, so she made do with running a brush gently through her hair and then she staggered to the front door.
On the rack in the entrance porch was a pair of funky black boots with thick soles she hadn’t seen before. Surely Melissa wouldn’t mind her borrowing them. That was the best thing about living with her sister; they were the same dress and shoe size.
She locked the front door and treaded carefully down the steps. Finally luck was on her side—a vacant black cab drove up her street within a minute.
She got the driver to drop her off across the road from the futuristic skyscraper near Tower Bridge from where Stefano ran his European operations. As Anna waited at the pedestrian crossing next to the road heaving with traffic, a shiny stretched black Mercedes pulled up outside the front of the building. A doorman opened the back door, and out came Stefano.
The green light flashed and, working on autopilot, she crossed the road, her eyes focused on Stefano rather than where she was walking.
A tall blonde woman got out of the car behind him. Anna didn’t recognise her but there was something familiar about her face that made it feel as if nails clawed into Anna’s already tender stomach.
A briefcase whacked her in the back and, startled, Anna realised she’d come to a stop in the middle of the road, dozens of other pedestrians jostling around her, some swearing.
Clutching a hand to her stomach to stem the surging rise of nausea, she forced her leaden legs to work and managed to make it to the pavement without being knocked over.
She went through the revolving doors of the building itself, put her bag on the scanner, waited for it to be cleared, then went straight to the bathroom, into the first empty cubicle, and vomited.
Cold perspiration breaking out all over, she knew she was an idiot to have come in. Her hangover—was it a hangover? She’d never felt anything like this—was, if that was possible, getting worse.
Out of the cubicle, after she’d washed her hands and swirled cold water in her mouth, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.
She looked awful. Her face was white as a sheet, her dark hair lank around her shoulders...
She did a double take. Had her hair grown?
After popping a mint in her mouth, she inched her way around the walls to the elevator. Two men and a woman she vaguely recognised were getting into it, chatting amiably. She slid in with them before the doors closed.
She punched the button for the thirtieth floor and held onto the railing as it began the smooth ride up.
All talk had stopped. She could feel their eyes on her. Did she really look so bad that she’d become a conversation stopper? It was a relief when they got out on the floor below her.
A gaggle of secretaries and administrators worked in the open space in front of the office Anna shared with Stefano. They all turned their heads to stare at her. A couple were open-mouthed.
Did they have to make it so obvious that she looked this awful? All the same, she managed to get her mouth working enough to smile a greeting. Not one of them responded.
She looked around for Chloe, her newly appointed fresh-faced PA who cowered in terror every time Stefano made an appearance. Poor Chloe would not be happy to know she’d have to take on Anna’s duties for the day.
Anna hadn’t wanted a PA of her own. She was a PA! But Stefano had thrown so many responsibilities her way in the year and a half since he’d poached her from Levon Brothers that when he’d caught her working at nine in the evening, he’d put his foot down and insisted on hiring someone for her.
‘Do I get a new job title?’ she’d cheekily asked, and been rewarded with a promotion to Executive PA and a hefty pay rise.
Maybe Chloe was cowering in the stationery cupboard, waiting for her arrival so she could hide behind her. The girl would get used to Stefano soon enough. Anna had seen it with most other employees. It was that mixture of awe and fear he inspired that curdled the stomach, but eventually the curdling settled and one could hold a coherent conversation with him.
Anna had skipped all these stages herself but had seen the effect Stefano had on others too many times not to sympathise with it. He inspired terror and hero-worship in equal measure.
She let the office door shut behind her and came to an abrupt halt. For a moment she forgot all about her pounding head and nauseous stomach.
When Stefano had offered her the job and she’d learned it entailed sharing an office with him, she’d said on a whim that she would only do it if he decorated her side in shades of plum. Her memories of her first day working for him were ones of laughter, when she’d walked into