Dreamwives

Prologue

Sweating under the lights, she knew she was about to disintegrate.

Her left eyelid was twitching. She could feel a cough rising in her throat.

Her boob was itchy and she was sure her mascara had started to run.

But the cold black eyes of the cameras were boring into her and she couldn’t move.

She couldn’t explain. Was she about to pass out?

Was a twitchy eyelid a symptom of a heart attack?

It was different for women, she knew, but was it that different?

Up on the screen, a woman in a lacy black sheath was touching a man whose chest was bare – and the woman was definitely her. No question. Oh, God, this looked so bad. And horror of horrors, you could see her knicker line! Why on earth hadn’t she worn shapewear?

‘It’s not been particularly warm, so why was this man, your client, half naked, and why were you being so intimate with him?’

The question seemed to come from a long way off, even though her interviewer was sitting only a metre away.

She was about to be shamed, ruined, destroyed in front of a nationwide audience – global, if you counted the online viewers – and even worse, in front of the people who actually knew her. Family. Friends. Her hairdresser.

No, stop! She had to think. Who could help her?

No one.