Penny Vincenzi

There's nothing like the contentment and security that money can bring. That's how it is for Lucinda, Elizabeth and Flora, living the risk-free dream in the glittering eighties. Houses, holidays, happiness - everything is there for the taking.

The financial slide comes crashing into their lives with a vengeance, and everything they've built up so carefully dissolves into a pool of hopelessness, taking self-respect and relationships with it.

Now, the secrets will out and within a year, someone will be dead.

The night before her wedding to Oliver, Cressida Forrest went to bed serene and happy. By morning she had vanished - without apparent cause, and without trace. A complex web of sexual, marital and financial secrets is ripped apart by Cressida's disappearance. And the question the families are all forced to ask is - who was the woman they thought they knew - perfect daughter, sister, lover and wife never to be?

A story of love, marriage and family secrets in wartime. X rated, explicit sexual content.

The House of Farrell - home of The Cream, an iconic face product that has seen women flocking to its bijoux flagship store in the Berkeley Arcade since 1953. The legendary Athina Farrell remains the company's figurehead while Florence Hamilton plies their cosmetics with the utmost discretion. She is sales advisor - and holder of secrets - extraordinaire.

But of course the world of cosmetics is changing and the once glorious House of Farrell is now in decline, its customers tempted away by more fashionable brands.

Enter Bianca Bailey, formidable business woman, mother of three, and someone who always gets her way...