She washed up and retouched her bronzer and lippy. Time to make up her mind. Which path to take? The one with Marc? Or the one alone? She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a pair of troubled green eyes reflected back at her. The eyes – mirror of the soul, or so they said. Her soul was spectacularly unhappy, just like she was. She was in a no-win situation. To leave Marc would make her as miserable as to stay with him. Whatever decision she made, her life would now be full of ‘if onlys’.

‘Woman up, Durand. Don’t be a wuss,’ she muttered, spraying 212 on her wrist and neck. The door to the restroom opened and a middle-aged woman with a lobster-red face came in, flapping her hand up and down to cool herself.

‘Oh my gosh, it’s so warm out there, when you’re a woman of a certain age. Damn these flashes!’ she grimaced, turning on a tap and dabbing her napkin in the water flow, before patting her face and neck with it.

‘Not easy being a woman,’ Marie-Claire remarked, tugging at her dress to stop it from clinging to her bare ass.

‘You can say that again,’ came the gloomy rejoinder to Marie-Claire’s retreating back.

‘Are you ready for your surprises?’ Marc asked eagerly when she sat down at the table. His eyes were over-bright in the flickering candlelight. He was a tad inebriated. She was as sober as a judge. He waved a brochure at her and picked up the Tiffany box and handed it to her.

‘Happy Christmas, mon amour, with all my love,’ he said huskily.

It was as though time stood still for a moment. Marie-Claire gazed into his heavy-lidded amber eyes, speckled with flecks of gold, ringed by thick black lashes, now slightly glazed from all the alcohol he’d imbibed. His face was tanned from skiing. His nose slightly crooked from a break. His mouth, with a sensual lower lip, the top lip just the slightest bit too narrow, which could make him look mean sometimes if he was angry. The sharp cheekbones a woman would envy. Lean, tanned and taut. She knew the contours of that face so well. So does Amelia, a little voice taunted.

Marie-Claire cleared her throat.

‘I have something for you first. And I need to say something,’ she said, putting the box down and calmly opening her handbag to find his keys. Unfortunately, her handbag being its usual messy chaos, she had to rummage, and as her rolled-up Spanx fell into her lap she cursed herself for not being organized and having the keys in the small side pocket.

‘You dirty girl, are you going commando!’ Marc’s eyes lit up and he laughed as she stuffed them back into the evening bag. ‘I can’t wait to get you in the taxi home!’