.

      LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between.

      She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days—mostly—leaves her pen to do the traveling.

      When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she potters in the garden, reads her favourite authors and spends a lot of time wondering, What if….

      For news of upcoming books—and to sign up for her occasional newsletter—visit Liz’s website at www.lizfielding.com.

CHAPTER ONE

      VIOLET had been waiting for what seemed like hours, but eventually it was her turn and she limped forward with the object she’d brought along to the Trash or Treasure roadshow.

      She’d already been through the junk/interesting/wow! “triage” at the entrance, and since the object she’d brought along for assessment had received a unanimous “wow!”, and been red-stickered to indicate its status, a television camera zoomed in to film the expert’s reaction.

      She was not carried away on a tide of excitement by all this enthusiasm. It only meant that her piece of “trash” was unusual enough to arouse interest—and not necessarily of the kindly variety. This show was, after all, primarily entertainment, and if you set yourself up as an Aunt Sally, you had to expect the knocks.

      She hadn’t wanted to come. It was Sarah, her next-door neighbour, who’d insisted on dragging her reluctant bones along to the town hall so that she could be publicly humiliated for the amusement of several million viewers. Sarah who, just at the moment when she’d needed her for moral support, had disappeared in search of a loo.

      Pregnancy was no excuse…

      ‘What have we got here?’ The “expert”—permanently tanned, silver-haired, a darling of the blue-rinse brigade—was familiar from the many evenings she’d sat watching this programme with her grand mother.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said truthfully, putting the brown padded envelope she had been clutching to her chest on the baizecovered table in front of him. ‘To be honest I feel a bit of a fool bringing it here—’ She felt better for getting that out, disassociating herself from any pretence to have found “treasure” ‘—but my neighbour lived in the Middle East for a while and she thought it was…interesting.’

      Oh, lame, Violet Hamilton. Pathetic to blame someone not here to defend herself.

      ‘Well, let’s have a look at it, shall we?’ He tipped a rag-wrapped bundle out onto the table in front of him.

      ‘That’s just how I found it,’ Violet said quickly, not wanting him to think she routinely kept her valuables wrapped in rotted black silk. Not that she had any valuables. ‘This morning,’ she added.