Purely Decorative
What if your Prince Charming turns out to be the Prince of Darkness?
It's the Eighties. Everyone in London's guzzling champagne by thebucketload, snorting mountains of coke and shagging like there's no tomorrow.But for twenty-something Zoe Burns, the party's over... even though she daren'tadmit it. The bills are piling up, the hangovers are getting worse and the onenight stands no longer do it for her.
So when she's offered a gig as an escort to a South American millionairewhile he's on "business" in Barcelona, she thinks, "what thehell?"...
But life with Raoul is not all champagne and roses. Raoul's anunreconstructed chauvinist, a macho bully, and a voyeur. But none of thesethings are the problem.
The problem is, Zoe should run a mile. But she can't. Mesmerised by theseductive Raoul and the high life he's introduced her to, she finds herselffalling for him.
By the time Zoe discovers the truenature of Raoul's "business", it's all too late. Little by little,Zoe is drawn into an underworld of crime, drugs and sexual obsession, a worldwhere the most dangerous addiction of all may be to love itself.
The Story Behind This Book
Based on a True Story - It Happened to My Mother Sometimes a little of what you fancy doesn’t do you any good at all... and meeting the love of your life may just be the worst thing that ever happens to you... But that’s what happened to my mother when she was about my age, twenty-something. In the Eighties she was a bit of a wild child, so when she was offered an all-expenses paid luxury trip to Barcelona, she didn’t hesitate. Even when she found out that her “job” was to act as arm candy for a macho millionaire playboy from Venezuela. My mother thought she was more than a match for any male chauvinist pig, even one who was paying her to be “purely decorative” and who demanded total discretion and total obedience. She thought wrong. And by the time she found out what he was really up to in Barcelona - and what he wanted her to do - it was too late. She’d fallen under his spell. My mother didn’t tell me the story of her relationship with Raoul until I turned twenty-one. I guess by then she thought I was old enough to handle the truth...
