The Cinderella Factor

Jo shook her head a little, trying to break that mesmeric eye contact.

Her ragged hair was plastered to her head, darkened to coal-black, all its red lights doused in the soaking it had received. The movement sent trickles of water from the rats’ tails down her shoulders.

“I didn’t realize anyone was there,” she said blankly.

At once she was furious with herself. Stupid, stupid, she thought. Of course you knew he was there, the moment he spoke. And of course you didn’t know before that, or you would not have been jumping about in the water with no clothes on.

Realization hit her then. She gave a little gasp and plunged her shoulders rapidly under the water. But she couldn’t quite break the locking of their gaze.

The Cinderella Factor

Sophie Weston

www.millsandboon.co.uk

SOPHIE WESTON

Born in London, Sophie Weston is a traveler by nature who started writing when she was five. She wrote her first romance while recovering from illness, thinking her traveling was over. She was wrong, but she enjoyed it so much that she has carried on. These days she lives in the heart of the city—with two demanding cats and a cherry tree—and travels the world looking for settings for her stories.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

THREE continents watched foreign correspondent Patrick Burns torpedo his brilliant career on live television.

The first person to notice was the assistant editor in the London office.

‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘He’s going to take sides.’

Nonsense, they said. Patrick Burns had just been voted International Reporter of the Year. When he was on a roll like that, why on earth would he risk his job?

‘For the second time,’ muttered Ed Lassells, the head honcho, though nobody noticed.

Besides, Patrick always said it himself, when he lectured at conferences or made one of his modest, witty speeches accepting yet another award. ‘We can’t get involved,’ he would say. ‘We’re journalists. We’re impartial or we’re nothing.’

But that had been before Patrick had lain on his face in the dust for twenty minutes while snipers held their fire for the sake of the eleven-year-old village boy squatting beside him. Patrick was involved now, come hell or high water.

His cameraman had suspected something was up the night he finally broke loose. A great moon gave them a wavering train of dark shadow across the stony mountainside. It picked out anything shiny: the face of Patrick’s watch, the screen of a cellular phone, a metal button. They didn’t need a torch to guide their scramble up the bleak slope.

‘Blasted moon. We might as well be in a spotlight,’ muttered Tim, stopping for a moment, a hand to his side. The air was thin at that height, and he was not as used to it as Patrick. Or as fit.

‘Then let’s hope the enemy is looking the other way,’ said Patrick, still climbing.

‘The girls in the office should see you now,’ Tim said dryly.

Patrick did not falter, but he gave a bark of laughter. ‘You mean the pin-up portrait in the velvet jacket?’

Tim was surprised. ‘You know about it?’

Patrick looked over his shoulder. ‘The poster of me in the girls’ restroom looking like a Las Vegas gambler? Sure, I know about it. Last Christmas party they asked me in there to sign it.’

Tim was even more surprised. The girls shivered in mock trepidation whenever Patrick’s name was mentioned. But, then again, they laid elaborate plans to get him on a date.

It was an office game. Only one girl had ever gone out with him seriously. It had taken her three weeks to come to her senses. Then, when Patrick had gone off abroad on his next assignment, she’d confided to her best friend, the Balkan specialist—and thence to the whole company—that Patrick was tricky.

‘Very tricky,’ nice Corinna had said, shaken out of her light-hearted sophistication. ‘If you let him take you to bed, it’s like he doesn’t forgive you.’

‘Doesn’t like loose women?’ the Balkan specialist had asked, fascinated by this anachronism.

But Corinna had shaken her head, sobered by her brush with blazing Patrick Burns. ‘It’s like it makes him hate himself.’

Which, of course, had been much too intriguing to keep to themselves.

There was much speculation on Patrick Burns’s inner demons in the ladies’ cloakroom. A more sober picture of him from an awards ceremony, frowning and intense in an impeccable dinner jacket, appeared on the wall of the newsroom beneath the international time clocks. Lisa, the receptionist, dubbed him Count Dracula, and most of the women in the place agreed—and sighed. Much to the annoyance of their male colleagues.

‘The man’s a sex god,’ the Balkan specialist had said in a matter-of-fact voice when her boss had wondered aloud, irritably, what Patrick Burns had got that other men didn’t have. ‘Get over it.’

‘But you say yourselves that he isn’t kind to his women,’ roly-poly Donald had said, bewildered. ‘I mean, that’s not the modern woman’s dream man, is it?’

The Balkan specialist had grinned. ‘Who needs dreams? Patrick can give you one hell of a sexy nightmare.’

Now Tim bit back a smile. He was very keen on the Balkan specialist. If she saw Patrick Burns now, she wouldn’t think he was sexy, Tim thought with faintly guilty satisfaction.

Like Tim himself, Patrick was swathed in a triple-lined all-weather jacket. The hood had a fur inset and his gloves would have got him up Everest without frostbite. It was the right gear for this bitter mountainside. But suave Count Dracula was definitely out.

Patrick put down the equipment he was carrying and shaded his eyes, looking across the valley. The distant peaks were like a silhouette out of a Victorian Arabian Nights. But he was not looking at the mountains. He was looking at the town in the plain. From their vantage point, it looked incredibly small. Clouds of smoke, colourless in the night air, were billowing up from the road they had travelled with the tiny group of stunned, silent refugees only this morning. The village where the refugees had stopped, hoping for a brief rest, was now invisible behind the smokescreen. The thud of bombs reached them a few seconds later.

‘Poor bastards,’ said Tim, following Patrick’s gaze.

A muscle worked in Patrick’s jaw. He had not shaved for two days now, and the throbbing muscle was very clear under the residual beard.

But all he said was, ‘Yes.’

Tim made the satellite link and went through the routine methodically. He had done it three times a day for the last ten days, and he and his opposite number in London had it down to a fine art now. They finished with plenty of time to spare, and Tim stood down, idling, waiting for the countdown to air time.

Patrick stood where Tim told him to. He had to push the fur-lined hood of his parka back to insert his own earpiece.

‘You look like a brigand,’ said Tim.

The brown fur at Patrick’s shoulders was ruffled in the icy breeze, brindling his uncropped dark hair. Between the gypsy hair and two days’ growth of beard, Patrick did not look so different from some of the hard-eyed men they had met on commandeered tanks in the field.

Patrick gave a grim smile. ‘Thank you.’

Suddenly, Tim’s vague unease crystallised. Everything began to make sense—the long hair, the beard, the urgent conversations with the interpreter. Even giving away his rations like that to the bedraggled locals. It was as if Patrick was wound so tightly he no longer needed food. As if he was preparing for a great adventure…

‘You’re going underground, aren’t you?’ Tim said slowly.

Patrick nodded. ‘I’ll give it a try, anyway.’

‘Man, you’re crazy,’ said Tim, awed.

The countdown to live broadcast started.

Against the black sky, lights flared intermittently. The distant wump, wump of bombs landing drifted across to them. It was out of synch with the flares.

In their earpieces, they could hear the newscaster setting the scene. The man’s voice said in their ears, ‘…and, in the mountains, our correspondent Patrick Burns. Any sign of the struggle abating, Patrick?’

Over him, the editor said, ‘Three, two, one—cue Patrick.’

Patrick launched fluently into broadcaster mode. Only it wasn’t the agreed script at all.

He said, ‘This is a terrible place.’

‘What?’ screamed the editor. ‘Patrick, get back to the agreed line, you bastard.’

Patrick ignored the voice in his ear.

‘The night air is bitterly cold, even worse than the day.’ He was serene, intense. ‘There has been a drought here for two years. The dust is everywhere. It’s in our shoes, our clothes, the food in our packs. My cameraman and I have to keep scarves across our mouths or the dust gets in our throats.’

‘The battle,’ yelled the London editor. ‘Talk about the battle, you insubordinate son of a camel.’

And for a moment Patrick did, listing the advances, the losses, the claims by both sides. He nodded to Tim and the camera swung slowly round to focus on him.

Oh, yes, he looked good on camera, Tim thought. Alert and reliable, like the captain of a ship. The sort of man you could trust. The public of the English-speaking world certainly trusted him. According to the company’s latest annual report, he was Mercury News International’s greatest asset.

It had to be that trick he had of looking straight into the camera, earnestly, as if he really wanted you to understand. He was doing it now. And he had finished with the battle.

‘The bombs our government sold one side,’ Patrick told the world, in his measured, unemotional way, ‘hit the arms dumps our government sold the other. You can see the explosions in the night sky behind me.’

He gestured. Obediently, Tim ran a long, slow tracking shot along the smoky line of bomb fog. It went on, and on, and on.

‘And while the bombardment goes on,’ said Patrick levelly, as the camera tracked relentlessly, ‘we come across little groups of people on the road. They have lost their homes. There is no food. There will not be any food next year, either.’

The editor was now keeping up a steady stream of profanity in their earpieces. Patrick talked through it as if he could not hear the woman.

‘This land had already been turned to concrete by drought. Now it is a junkyard of weapons.’ He paused. ‘Weapons made in the developed world. Sold by Western governments. Like ours.’

Tim brought the camera back to him. Patrick was shaking now. That had to be the fierce cold on his unprotected head. He did not seem to notice.

‘There are mines here. And the rest. Nobody knows what is live and what is safe. Nobody will know until a farmer sets one off when he comes out to plant next year’s crops. Or a child throws a ball and the earth explodes in his face.’

He was mesmerising, thought Tim, shaken in spite of his professional cynicism.

‘And the truly terrible thing,’ Patrick told the camera quietly, ‘is that nobody knows how to stop it. Too many people are making money out of it.’

The furore in their earpieces quietened. A new voice spoke. An authoritative voice.

‘Patrick, stop this,’ it said coldly. ‘Give me the balance of power analysis.’

Veteran newsman Ed Lassells ran a tight ship. You obeyed him or you walked.

Patrick went on as if he had not heard Ed Lassells, either. He was shaking with cold. ‘For the last day my cameraman and I have been travelling with eight people from a village that doesn’t exist any more.’

‘Give me the analysis, Patrick,’ said Ed, in a voice like lead.

Patrick ignored him so completely that Tim wondered if he had actually removed his earpiece. He realised suddenly that Patrick was not shaking with cold. It was passion.

It was unprofessional. By God, it was awesome.

‘The adults are stunned,’ Patrick told the camera levelly. ‘They are being led by a boy of eleven. “Why?” I asked one of the women. “Because he is so young he does not yet know it is hopeless,” she said.’

Even Tim, who had been there when the tired woman had said it, was moved.

‘That boy saved my life,’ said Patrick Burns starkly.

‘Right, that’s it. I’m pulling the plug,’ said Ed.

They heard the studio presenter say, ‘We seem to have lost contact with Patrick Burns. We’ll try to link up again and bring you the rest of his dispatch later in the programme.’

Patrick said nothing. He drew a long breath, as if he had come to the end of a race that had pushed him to the limit. Then he pulled up the hood of his parka again and began to dismantle his microphone, quite as if nothing had happened. He looked very peaceful.

Through the earpiece Ed Lassells spoke again. Old, weary, infinitely cold. ‘Well done, Patrick. That was professional suicide.’

Patrick said lightly, ‘Hey, sometimes the truth is bigger than the sponsors.’

Ed didn’t even bother to answer. The line went dead.

‘Oh, boy, you are so out of a job,’ said Tim, torn between sympathy and straightforward hero-worship. ‘What are you going to do now?’

And Patrick Burns, prizewinner and danger addict, said, as if it were a joke, ‘Justify my existence.’

CHAPTER ONE

JO ALMOND had finally worked out that she was not lovable when she was just fourteen.

It had hurt. But, after the first searing shock, Jo was philosophical about it. She’d known she had other things going for her. She was practical. She had found she could be brave. She didn’t give up easily. She was energetic, clear-headed and calm. But lovable? Nah.

The man who finally taught her this painful lesson was her language teacher—a French student on teaching practice. He’d been twenty-three, with kind eyes and a passion for learning. For a while he’d believed in her. He’d been the only person in the whole world who had.

He’d also listened to her. Not for long, of course. But for a precious few hours she’d seen what it could be like if someone was on your side.

She ran away again. That time she’d got as far as Dover. She’d been just about to step on a ferry when a kindly policeman had caught up with her and organised her return home. Well, to her aunt’s house. Jo would not call it home.

Jacques Sauveterre asked her to stay behind after French on her first afternoon back in school. By that time, Jo was good at keeping her own counsel. She stood there, not meeting his eyes, fidgeting.

‘But why, Joanne? I would really like to understand this.’

‘I wanted to go to France,’ muttered Jo.

‘But of course.’

She did look up at that. ‘What?’

His kind eyes were twinkling. ‘Everyone in their right mind wants to go to France. France is paradise. It is only natural. But maybe it would be easier if you waited until the school holidays?’

For a moment she stared at him, disbelieving. He wasn’t shouting. He didn’t think she was next stop to a criminal. He was laughing at her, but very gently.

She gave a tiny, cautious smile—just in case this was real.

He sat on the corner of the teacher’s desk and looked at her gravely. ‘You know, people keep telling me that you are a tearaway. You don’t care about school. You hardly ever do your homework. But you don’t seem like that in my class, Joanne.’

No one had looked at her like that before. So interested. So warm.

‘Oh.’

‘Now, why don’t you tell me why you really ran away from home, hmm? The real reason?’

Well, that was impossible, of course. What could she say? My so-called aunt hates me and her husband is a drunk who hits me? No, she couldn’t say that. Carol and Brian Grey were pillars of the community, and Jo had just demonstrated how irresponsible she was. No one would believe her if she said that.

But she told him a tiny bit of the truth. ‘My aunt won’t let me do Latin.’

He was utterly taken aback.

‘Latin?’

‘I asked if I could. She said no.’

Just as she said no to anything that Jo might enjoy or that might make her feel normal. It was not that Jo refused to do homework. Her aunt insisted that she do housework every night. And she had to make little Mark’s tea and wash and mend his clothes. Jo didn’t mind that. She loved Mark, who was the closest she had to a brother, in the same boat as she was and who loved her back. They took good care that the Greys didn’t find out, though, and always growled at each other when Brian or Carol was around. If she knew they were close, Carol would find a way to use it against them. As she used everything else; even Jo’s love of cars.

When Jacques Sauveterre called to protest about the block on Jo taking his extra new class in Latin, Carol was all concerned interest.

‘Jo is a natural linguist, Mrs. Grey,’ he told Carol earnestly in his melting French accent. ‘It’s a crime to keep her out of Latin.’

Carol widened her pansy brown eyes. ‘But of course, Jo must do whatever she wants at school. She told us she wanted to do car maintenance classes.’ She gave that tinkling, treacherous laugh and added, ‘I suppose poor Geoff Rawlings isn’t the pin-up he was, now that you’ve arrived.’

She didn’t have to say it. The message was loud and clear. Clumsy, plain teenage Jo has got a crush on you. And, as so often with Carol, there was just a hint of truth among the lies. Jo was good with cars. She did like them. And everyone knew it.

It was Jacques’s first job. The whole staffroom was warning him about the risk of teenage emotionalism. Carol Grey was pretty and appealing—and she sounded so sensible. He believed her. Of course he believed her.

Standing there listening, Jo was helpless. She burned with shame.

‘Maybe it’s adolescence,’ Carol Grey told him sadly, glancing at Jo with spurious kindness. ‘She’s such a great gangling thing, poor child, and with those shoulders. Like a wardrobe. I suppose a man can’t really understand that, Monsieur Sauveterre.’

Jacques blushed. In the face of this gentle female mockery he forgot all his campaigning zeal and nodded.

‘Oh,’ he said, avoiding Jo’s eyes. ‘Well, I’m sure you know best, Mrs Grey.’

And he fled. Leaving her to deal with the fallout on her own.

Carol’s mask dropped frighteningly the moment the door closed behind him. ‘So you thought you’d run away with the pretty little Frog Prince, did you?’ Carol said softly. ‘Think again. Who would want a giraffe like you?’

Jo put her head down and didn’t answer.

It maddened Carol. ‘If you’ve got time to do bloody Latin, you’ve got time to help me in the business. You can start filing tonight.’

So there was the end of ever doing homework again.

‘No point in getting ideas above your station,’ Carol said, again and again. ‘The next thing we’d know, you’d be wanting to go to college or something.’ And she laughed heartily. ‘Much better if you stay here and learn to do as you’re told. That’s all you’re good for. All you’ll ever be good for.’

Jacques Sauveterre did not talk to Jo after that. Never singled her out in class again. Never so much as smiled at her when she took Mark to the under-elevens football game that he coached. He was kind to Mark, though. Jo tried to be grateful for that.

And his example also inspired someone else. The car maintenance teacher was more streetwise than Jacques Sauveterre.

‘She just doesn’t fit in,’ he said to Carol. ‘The others are tough kids in combats. Jo isn’t. But she soon will be if you aren’t careful.’

That night, every garment disappeared from Jo’s wardrobe except two pairs of army surplus trousers and some khaki tee- shirts.

‘See if Monsieur le Frog looks at you now,’ said Carol, gleeful.

‘I’m sorry, Jo,’ said Mr Rawlings. ‘Hope I didn’t make things worse. Well, at least I can give you the history of the combustion engine.’

He started lending her books on classic cars. Jo read them at school in the breaks. She also became a first-class mechanic.

Carol never knew. She thought she was keeping Jo fully occupied, caring for Mark and working in her home sales business. It gave her a whipping boy and she enjoyed that. She even laughed when Brian Grey came home drunk and hit out at Jo.

‘Life isn’t all pretty Frenchmen, kid. Get over it.’

On her sixteenth birthday Jo ran away for the fourth and final time.

Oh, the Greys looked for her. They were being paid good money for her keep. Anyway, Carol didn’t like her victims to get away. It spoiled her fun for weeks.

But this time, Jo had planned well. She knew where her papers were because Carol had taken delight in showing her the betraying birth certificate.

‘There you are. “Father unknown”. You’re a little illegit. Nobody wanted you. They paid us to take you off their hands.’

Jo had looked at it stonily. The one thing she would not do, ever, was cry. It drove Carol wild with frustration.

So she’d just taken note of where Carol had put it away. And that night she took it, along with her passport and an oddly shaped envelope she had never seen before. But it was addressed to her, in unfamiliar handwriting.

Inside there was an old book—a hardback with cheap card covers. It had pen and ink drawings on the printed pages and smelled of old-fashioned nursery sweets—liquorice and barley sugar and mint humbugs. It was called The Furry Purry Tiger. It was a present for a child.

Maybe someone had wanted her after all, thought Jo. For a while, anyway.

She didn’t get too excited about it. She had enough to do just surviving in the next three years. And making sure that Mark did not have to pay for her defection.

She went on the road—moving from place to place, doing casual jobs, finding new places to stay every few weeks. One way or another, though, she always managed to call Mark once a week. They got adept at making contact without Carol finding out. They always ended by saying, ‘See you soon.’

When she ended a call Jo always thought: I’ll get Mark away. I will. And then we’ll go to France, which is earthly paradise, and be happy.

Another thing she’d managed to do was keep in touch with Monsieur Sauveterre. Whether he’d seen the marks Brian’s fists left or whether he was just kind-hearted, she never knew. Maybe it was because he coached Mark’s football club and it was nothing to do with Jo at all. But before he’d gone home, he’d pressed his address in France into her hand.

‘You and Mark. When you come to France, you must look me up. You will always be welcome. I promise you.’

For Jo, it was like insurance. Every so often, when she was settled somewhere for a few months, she sent him a postcard with her address. It was a way of saying, Remember your promise.

Jacques always replied. He’d even invited them to his wedding.

And then one day, when she spoke to Mark, she knew they could not put it off any longer. He was still only fifteen, but that couldn’t be helped. One Saturday morning, on a borrowed cell-phone, Mark’s voice sounded odd. More than odd. Old. Very, very tired. Or ill.

At once Jo knew what had happened. Drunken Brian Grey had beaten him. Badly this time. Just as he had once beaten Jo.

Only once. The second time he’d tried, the night before her birthday, Jo had got him in an arm lock, ground his telephone under her heel and locked him in the cupboard under the stairs. That had been the evening she’d taken her papers and the money she had saved, from the babysitting that Brian and Carol did not know about, and melted into the night.