Days in Babylon

A chance meeting with a truck driver in a layby leads Sylvia to the adventure that challenges what she wants from her life.
Sylvia Porteous is disappointed with her life. She has two grown children and a successful husband, Sir Peter, chief executive of a transport business - all that she had aimed for. Now there seems to be nothing new for her.
Pulling into a layby one day, she meets an intriguing truck driver, Patrick. They have a short conversation and move on: Sylvia finds him interesting but thinks nothing of it. In an attempt to add some depth to her life, she goes on a retreat with a group of radical Sisters, and they invite her to join a project. She is reluctant to be involved, but agrees to meet Madeleine, a young woman who challenges Sylvia’s assumptions and way of life.
To Patrick, Sylvia with her links into the business world at a senior level, is the kind of person he’s been looking for in his project against sex trafficking in Europe. Meeting him again just before his next trip, she hears that he has lost his co-driver. Drawing on her experience from transporting racehorses in her twenties, and motivated by her interest in him, she drives with him to Zagreb.
While they are in Zagreb, Patrick is kidnapped by the traffickers he is investigating and hidden in a mental institution. Sylvia manages to rescue him, surprising herself with her determination, and they drive back to London. Although Patrick is drawn to Sylvia, as she is to him, he is definite that this work is his priority.
The Sisters introduce her to Clara, a young woman who has escaped from her pimp Stavros, and Sylvia finds work for her in a friend’s café. After some weeks Clara is found beaten up outside the café and taken to hospital.

(And the story continues…)