Can Martha ever find her life again?

IT'S one of those pictures that stays in the mind, of a drawn, frail Martha Lane Fox sitting in a wheelchair, a trademark pashmina covering her legs, trying to smile for the camera.

Taken in June last year, it was the first sighting of Lane Fox after the car crash in Morocco which left her with six fractures to her pelvis, neck and shoulder. It was a photograph that showed she was still alive, that hinted at just how close she had come to death - which was very close indeed when the 4x4 in which she was travelling with her boyfriend, Chris Gorell Barnes, and a friend ploughed into a tree. She suffered massive internal bleeding.

The picture also portrayed a terrible cruelty. Lane Fox was 30, a multi-millionairess, who had left lastminute.com, the business she famously founded, in order to find love and have a 'football team of babies'.

All her life, from Westminster School, through to Oxford, where she was known as "Fast Lane Foxy', and to lastminute, she had been working often hideously long hours (18-hour days were commonplace at lastminute). In March 2004, she cashed in £4.6m of lastminute shares and announced she was quitting. In May, she flew to Morocco, to be with her new partner, a Bedales-educated TV producer.

They were in Essaouira, once a well-known hippy resort, near Marrakesh, with a friend, Duncan Flower, who was working on the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven. Out for a drive in the desert, the road suddenly gave way and their Mitsubishi turned over several times. Gorell Barnes sustained a broken wrist. The driver, Flower, wasn't injured. Lane Fox, who wasn't wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the car.

At the time, despite the seriousness of her condition, the signs were positive. Henry, her brother, predicted a rapid recovery. 'She's not going to be affected for the rest of her life because of an accident that happened in Morocco. She's going to be okay,' he said.

A year on, and she is improving. But progress is extremely slow. When asked about her rehabilitation, Brent Hoberman, her co-lastminute founder, prefers to change the subject. Her accident and its aftermath is a matter of private concern, for family and friends.

Almost 12 months to the day, too, in one of those uncanny coincidences that life seems to throw up, lastminute has been sold. The company that seemed to herald a new chapter for British commerce, that stood for youth and vitality, and symbolised our pre-eminence in the dotcom age, has been bought by Sabre Holdings of the US. When Hoberman phoned Lane Fox, still a major shareholder, to seek her approval two weeks ago, it was quietly given.

She remains poorly, away from public view. The firm she nurtured like a child has been sold. She will make £13.5m from the sale. But it wasn't meant to be like this.

There was something so refreshing about Lane Fox. She was modern and hip, more likely to wear a denim jacket or simple jumper and trousers than, God forbid, a power suit (more likely as well, to go to trendy Morocco for a break with her media pals than starstudded but oh-so-yesterday St Tropez). She was pretty, in a natural, girl-next-door way.

The first time I met her was for lunch at the achingly smart The Square restaurant in St James's. She was already waiting, grinning and giggling at my discomfort for being late. She mocked the menu's pretentiousness and then proceeded to order something done just so. Within minutes, I was won over. Her big eyes were flashing, and when she wanted to make a point, her hand kept grabbing mine.

It was flirty - but she was like that with everyone. She was young, without the baggage, the airs and graces and world-weary cynicism of so many other corporate leaders. She was in a new industry where the old ways were, well, old. And she was a woman.

We'd never come across anyone quite like her before. The few women who make it to the top of our commercial ladder tend to be of a type, frequently coming across as strong as the men they rival. Lane Fox, though, had a vulnerability about her. A favourite topic of conversation of hers was to ask what the City and journalists thought of her. In many ways, she was to the business establishment what Princess Diana was to royalty.

Different

BY RIGHTS, with her background she should have gone on to don the shoulder pads of a City superwoman. She was the product of a top education. Her father was an Oxford academic, her mother the niece of the Marquess of Anglesey. There are plenty of gals with that sort of CV who have entered banking and broking, the law and management. Lane Fox, however, was different.

At public school, she set up a dating agency to earn some money. At university, she read ancient history, and acted. Always public-spirited, she considered becoming a prison governor, before plunging into the world of profits and spread sheets.

She joined Spectrum management consultants, which is where she met the equally telegenic Hoberman. She was working on a plan for pay-TV for Carlton Television when they conceived the notion of an internet travel agency. It was aimed at people like them: youthful, independent-minded, always in a rush, wanting to book at the last minute without having to wade through brochures, on the lookout for weekend bargains.

Broom cupboard

THEY ran it from a 'broom cupboard', side by side, both of them calling airlines, demanding meetings and searching for deals. Later, they moved to rambling offices in Victoria. But there was no iconic penthouse for the duo. They shared an open-plan room with other colleagues.

They drove ordinary cars, not Lotuses, as so many other dotcom boomers did, and when they travelled, they stayed in cheap hotels. They drew normal salaries and didn't indulge in crazy talk about possible riches. They were very much a partnership but it was Lane Fox whom people wanted.

At times, especially during the company's stockmarket flotation, she was everywhere: on the business, fashion, style, features pages, in newspapers and glossy magazines; on chat shows and serious discussion programmes. She was soon on Question Time, such was the desperation of the producers for a fresh female face who could genuinely claim to be successful in a field other than politics and could string two thoughts together.

She was intelligent and outspoken, unafraid to take on City heavyweights, asking them for yet more funding and once challenging an audience of venture capitalists: 'Call yourself entrepreneurs?'

It was, occasionally, too much. The unpalatable truth is that she enjoyed exposure out of all proportion to lastminute's performance (the shares floated at 380p in March 2000, soared to 555p, then crashed to 17p after the dotcom bubble burst; even today, Sabre is paying only 165p). The company has hoovered up smaller operators, but nevertheless has struggled to translate volume into surpluses.

Yesterday, for instance, it unveiled six-month results ahead of analysts' forecasts, but a 57% jump in transactions to £512m only yielded a profit of £100,000. Globally, lastminute lacked presence - hence the takeover by the US rival.

When she left the company, though, Lane Fox had the world before her. As well as babies there was chat about her joining Selfridges as a right-hand woman to Galen Weston, the store's Canadian owner. That opportunity has gone, for now. She's recently emerged as an investor in a new private karaoke club (she loves singing along), called Lucky Voice.

The real, all-consuming project, though, is getting her back on her feet again. Her tight-knit group of friends is caring for her. Her sheer pluck, these friends say, is her best hope of a full recovery. She might have made a fortune - one of the very few UK dotcommers to have done so - but it doesn't mean this single-minded bundle of energy hasn't been desperately unlucky.