Alice Loudon seems to have everything: close friends, a loving boyfriend, a successful career. Then one day she meets a stranger while crossing the street and - impulsively, immediately - abandons her old, safe life for a passionate affair. It leads her into a dark, dangerous realm of eroticism and extreme experience that both entices and alarms her.

Adam Tallis, heroic survivor of a disastrous mountaineering expedition, teaches her things about herself she never knew. As she learns more about her lover, she enters his world of risk and transgression - and begins to uncover a past filled with troubling secrets. But love and sexual obsession overwhelm her until they threaten everything: her safety, her sanity, and, finally, her life.

"Cancel all appointments and unplug the phone. Once started, you will do nothing until you finish this thriller."
Harpers & Queen

"Thrillers claiming to be 'dark, erotic and compulsive' are two a penny. But this is the genuine article... not only a nail-biting read, but also has great insight into male and female desire, obsession, self-destructiveness and the wilder shores of love."
Daily Telegraph

The morning passed. I went to another meeting, this time with the marketing department, managed to spill a jug of water over the table and say nothing at all. I read through the research document Giovanna had e-mailed to me. She was coming to see me at three thirty. I phoned up the hairdresser's and made an appointment for one o'clock. I drank lots of bitter, tepid coffee out of polystyrene cups. I watered the plants in my office. I learned to say 'je voudrais quatre petits pains' and'Ca fait combien?'
Just before one I picked up my coat, left a message for my assistant that I would be out for an hour or so, then clattered down the stairs and into the street. It was just beginning to drizzle, and I hadn't got an umbrella. I looked up at the clouds, shrugged, and started to walk quickly along Cardamom Street where I could pick up a taxi to the hairdressers. I stopped dead in my tracks and the world blurred. My stomach gave a lurch. I felt as if I was about to double up.
He was there, a few feet from me. As if he hadn't moved since this morning. Still in his black jacket and jeans; still not smiling. Just standing and looking at me. I felt then as if no one had ever looked at me properly before and was suddenly and acutely conscious of myself - of the pounding of my heart, the rise and fall of my breath; of the surface of my body, which was prickling with a kind of panic and excitement.
He was my sort of age, early thirties. I suppose he was beautiful, with his pale blue eyes and his tumbled brown hair and his high flat cheekbones. But then all I knew was that he was so focused on me that I felt I couldn't move out of his gaze. I heard my breath come in I a little ragged gasp, but I didn't move and I couldn't turn away.
I don't know who made the first step. Perhaps I stumbled towards him, or perhaps I just waited for him, and when we stood opposite each other, not touching, hands by our sides, he said in a low voice, 'I've been waiting for you.'
I should have laughed out loud. This wasn't me, this couldn't be happening to me. I was Alice Loudon, on her way to have her hair cut on a damp day in January. But I couldn't laugh or smile. I could only go on looking at him, into his wide-set blue eyes, at his mouth, which was slightly parted, the tender lips. He had white, even teeth, except that the front one was chipped. His chin was stubbly. There was a scratch on his neck. His hair was quite long, and unbrushed. Oh, yes, he was beautiful. I wanted to reach up and touch his mouth, every so gently, with one thumb. I wanted to feel the scratch of his stubble in the hollow of my neck. I tried to say something, but all that came out of me was a strangled, prim 'Oh.'
'Please,' he said then, still not taking his eyes off my face. 'Will you come with me?'
He could have been a mugger, a rapist, a psychopath. I nodded dumbly at him and he stepped into the road, flagged down a taxi. He held open the door for me, but still didn't touch me. Inside he gave an address to the driver then turned towards me. I saw that under his leather jacket he wore only a dark green T-shirt. There was a leather thong around his neck with a small silver spiral hung on it. His hands were bare. I looked at his long fingers, with their neat, clean nails. A white scar kinked down one thumb. They looked practical hands, strong, dangerous.
'Tell me your name?'
'Alice,' I said. I didn't recognise my own voice.
'Alice,' he repeated. 'Alice.' The word sounded unfamiliar when he said it like that. He lifted his hands and, very gently, careful not to make any contact with my skin, loosened my scarf. He smelt of soap and sweat.
The taxi stopped and, looking out, I saw that we were in Soho. There was a paper shop, a delicatessen, restaurants. I could smell coffee and garlic. He got out and once more held the door open for me. I could feel the blood pulsing in my body. He pushed at a shabby door by the side of a clothes shop and I followed him up a narrow flight of steps. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked two locks. Inside, it wasn't just a room but a small flat. I saw shelves, books, pictures, a rug. I hovered on the threshold. It was my last chance. The noise from the street outside filtered through the windows, the rise and fall of voices, the rumble of cars. He closed the door and bolted it from the inside.