PROLOGUE
Grimsby, Monday 20th September 2004
It is now mid-morning. The rains have abated and the sun shines brightly in an almost clear blue sky. A light wind drifts from the sea. Sadie Sumner, twenty years old, slim and cherubic, with cropped blonde hair, sits on a bench, facing south across the Lake. The ‘People’s Park’ in Grimsby is only a short walk from her Hotel, and she desperately needed some fresh air. She wasn’t the only one. The park was likely the busiest it had been in a week of almost incessant showers, and now thronged with young mothers and toddlers, enjoying the brief respite. The leaves on the trees were still green, for the early autumn had been unseasonably warm, yet soon they would turn and fall. The ‘conker season’, the last childish joy before the darkness and the cold, would soon be here.
Sadie plucks her copy of Emma Forrest’s latest novel, Thin Skin, and continues to read. It was hard not to like Ruby, despite her flaws, for there was good in her. Sadie bowed her head and blinked her tears, letting them roll silently down her cheeks. “I never thought my life would come to this. I was a ‘Daddy’s Girl’…” she mused bitterly.
The attractive blonde woman, dressed in faded dungaree shorts and a plain pink t-shirt, a navy blue wool beret on her head, plucked a cigarette from her pack and lit it, puffing contentedly. She ignored the hostile glare from a passing mother, aged perhaps a mere few years older than she. “I’m twenty years old, with a death sentence hanging over me” Sadie mused despondently. “If they ever find me, they will kill me…”
Sadie stands and plucks her book. She glances quickly at a young mother with double buggy, strolling east along the path towards her. Her identical twin daughters, a few months shy of their second birthday, totter unsteadily on either side. Sadie lowers her hand and flicks the cigarette idly under the bench. She turns away and strolls east. “I have everything I need for a new life, far away from here” she smiled tightly. “I need to be careful. I know too much…”
***
Chipping Sodbury, Friday 28th June 2002
Sadie buries her face in the pillow and sobs forlornly. This was supposed to be her special day; a landmark in her young life. Her shoulders heave disconsolately. On the far side of the room, her neat and tidy desk is garlanded with birthday cards. She is now Eighteen; an adult in the eyes of the law and the world. Until an hour ago, she had been ‘the apple of her father’s eye’, yet not anymore. She had been ordered to leave on the morning bus to Bristol, never to return.
The melody of a heated argument, the sorry post-mortem of blame, was playing itself out downstairs. That was what made this so unbearable. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault; this had been her decision. She had made a bad choice, no matter the short-term reward. For the first time in her brief life, Sadie Sumner felt scared. Her choice had cost her everything; her life was now in ruins. She could never show her face round here again.
The bedroom door opens and closes softly. Jasmine Sumner, not yet twenty-one, now a graduate of Merton College, Oxford, gazes at her distraught sister in silent disbelief. She glances at the floor, where the object of Sadie’s ruin now lay; the July 2002 issue of Mayfair, the soft-core pornography magazine. Sadie was featured on the cover, smiling sultrily, her hands covering her naked breasts. At least she was wearing her underwear in this photograph, for she had shamelessly disregarded them soon enough. The centrefold image captured her in all her glory; naked on a sheepskin rug, long, toned legs splayed wide apart, smiling shamelessly for the photographer …
Jasmine stoops to retrieve the magazine and pads across to the bed. She sits and reaches out to caress her sobbing sister’s head soothingly. She glanced quickly at image of the smiling temptress on the cover, then back at the weeping mess on the bed. “Jesus, Sadie. How could you be so reckless?” Jasmine sighed sadly. “You posed centrefold…”
