"Oh, you poor love. Here." Babs was already bustling across to the kitchen, where, handily placed in the fridge, was a bottle of wine, which she opened. She reached in the cupboard for glasses. "Although don't fall for that water-glass trick of Belinda's. If you tried it, you'd find it was neat gin."

"No!" Celia was entranced. Babs raised arched eyebrows meaningfully and nodded.

“Don't believe a thing Babs says," I told her hastily. “She's full of stories about Belinda."

"And you grew up with her?" Celia asked, ignoring me and encouraging the storyteller. She sat on a stool at the breakfast bar and took the glass that was offered, supping thirstily.

"Well, she grew up in Truro, in a modest home. The rest of us were round here — Iris right here, of course. The worst sort of snobs are very often those who aren't born to it, I'm afraid. That's one of the reasons she was against Flora marrying Hugo, because there was no money in her family."

"Oh Babs, stop it!" I squealed. “Stop feeding Celia all these terrible lies. She'll lap it all up and enjoy it far too much — she's just like you!"

"Except it's not all fiction, as you know," Babs grinned. "And anyway, why tell the boring truth when you can tell a good lie? The other half?" she asked Celia, wine bottle poised above her glass, which, curiously, appeared to be almost empty.

"Why not," Celia agreed.

"Anyway," she went on, pouring away, "I thwarted her by getting you to paint Roger. He's thrilled. He can't imagine why he didn't think of it before."

"Oh, it was you. Hang on — and Belinda's not thrilled?" I said, horrified. A terrible thought struck me. Did she even know? Babs’ face was horribly mischievous.

"Oh, in the end she did," she said airily, stubbing her cigarette out in a rather hideous little cactus plant on the counter. "But by then it was all a bit of a fait accompli. You'd emailed Roger back saying you'd be delighted—"

"I emailed Belinda back," I corrected her.

"Oh well, he may have been using her email — they have kind of a family one — and then your Mum said you'd rented your apartment out with Airbnb, so there was no going back, and it all sort of fell into place."

“Mum told you that?" I was surprised.

"Well, you know. Something along those lines."

"Oh, you're wicked, Babs!" I breathed. "I only found a tenant — finally — on Tuesday!"

Babs suppressed a smile, but not terribly efficiently.

"Is she really dreadful? Belinda? Do you hate her that much?" Celia clearly thought she'd found a new best friend and needed to forget incidentals and cut to the chase.