Mistress-of-the-Game - By Tilly Bagshawe Sidney Sheldon Page 0,37

was stepping into the elevator.

"You're in a hurry." She laughed as the doors whooshed closed. Gabe realized he was panting, he'd been running so fast. "Thirsty?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I said you must be thirsty. This lift goes directly to the fifth-floor bar. Is that what you wanted?"

Gabe grinned. Up close she looked older, perhaps midforties, but she had good legs and the sort of naughty, mischievous smile that boded well for what he had in mind.

"Absolutely."

Her name was Claire, and Gabe lived with her - lived off her - for a month, till she finally decided enough was enough.

"You're lovely, darling, you know you are. But I can't spend the rest of my life with a boy young enough to be my son."

"Why not?"

"Because it's exhausting! This morning I fell asleep in the middle of a deposition. I'm a partner in a law firm, Gabe, I'm not Maggie May. Besides, it's time you found yourself something to do."

Gabe found himself something to do the next morning. Her name was Angela.

After Angela came Caitlin, Naomi, Fiona and Therèse. For the first year, life was good. He still had no security. No savings. But he moved from one luxury West End apartment to the next, wore clothes that were not made of polyester and did not scratch, dined at London's finest restaurants, enjoyed regular sex with a string of grateful, well-preserved older women, and had access to more first-class cocaine than he knew what to do with.

At first the coke was under control. Gabe enjoyed the odd line at parties and that was it. But as the boredom and emptiness of his days began to bite (there were only so many times you could go to the gym or go shopping while your girlfriend went to work) the charlie became a lunchtime habit, too. Pretty soon he was getting high at breakfast. That was when the trouble started.

Fiona, a divorced Internet entrepreneur with a stunning Chelsea town house, kicked Gabe out when she came home early from work and caught him snorting drugs off her Conran walnut coffee table with her fourteen-year-old daughter.

Therèse called it a day after money started going missing from her purse.

"That's funny. I'm sure I had a hundred in my wallet. Didn't I stop at the Lloyds cash point last night?"

"Christ, babe, I don't know. What am I, your mother?"

It was Gabe's anger that raised her suspicions. Convinced she was being paranoid, but scared of being burned again, Therèse waited till Gabe was away in St. Tropez for the weekend and had surveillance cameras secretly installed in the bedroom.

Two weeks later, Gabe was out on the street.

He wasn't a bad kid at heart. But the drugs took all the decent sides of his personality - the humor, the warmth, the loyalty - and swallowed them whole. He moved on from coke to heroin. Soon all that was left was a husk, a physical shell. Then even that began to crumble. Gabe lost weight. His teeth began to discolor. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself sleeping in doorways and shoplifting to be able to buy food.

He had always had a vivid, active imagination. Now, as his reality became grimmer and grimmer, he retreated ever more into the fantasy world he created for himself. He was a banker, a lawyer, a success. He was rich and respected. His mother was proud.

The house was a grand Victorian mansion. Walthamstow was a rough area, but good transport links to the City meant that the nicer streets had become gentrified. Quite a few young, professional families were moving there, priced out of West London by the Arabs and the Russians. You got more house for your money, but you also got some unsavory neighbors.

Gabe was staying at a homeless shelter a few blocks away. He had next to no memory of that night. A few images, half-remembered dreams. His hand, bleeding. The sound of the sirens. Everything else he'd heard from the police the morning after.

He broke in at around one A.M., high as Mount Kilimanjaro. The police assumed his intention was burglary, although he may simply have been confused and looking for shelter. In any event, he never got the chance to steal anything. The owner of the house, a father of three in his late thirties, heard a noise downstairs and confronted Gabe, swinging at him with a lamp. Gabe picked up the poker from the fireplace and proceeded to "defend himself," hitting the guy repeatedly in the head and