Harriet Peacock has everything. What more could she possibly want? She has come a long way. From small shopkeeper and betrayed wife, she has made herself the City's darling, her name linked in gossip columns with film star Caspar Jensen. She has come a long way from Simon Archer, the man who invented a brilliantly simple game of chance and skill in a prison camp forty years ago, a game that is the foundation of Harriet's business empire. She has come a long way from her family, friends and former lovers. But when things start going wrong, Harriet finds that in love, as in the game, the quickest way to a goal can be the riskiest...