‘Ban NAB.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘That’s exactly what I mean about Alderney. The people here are stuck in the nineteenth century. Give them anything that will actually make a difference – cheap electricity to the UK and a nice little earner in their pocket – and half of them think the sky’s going to fall in.’

He was going to continue but then Marc Bellamy walked past with a plate of devilled eggs and he spun round. ‘Hey, Tea Leaf!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m going to lift one of those, if you don’t mind.’ He snatched half an egg and slid it into his mouth. ‘Not bad at all,’ he said – with his mouth full. ‘I have to say, you’ve done really well for yourself,’ he went on. ‘Your own show on Channel 5!’

‘ITV2,’ Marc said.

‘Maybe you should be a guest on I’m a Celebrity . . . ! I’m sure you’d be completely at home with those mealworms and kangaroo testicles.’

Marc stared at him with bleak hostility and I thought he was going to snap back, but then he swallowed his words and moved on.

There really was something uniquely offensive about Charles le Mesurier, particularly after he’d had too much to drink. The alcohol accentuated his public-school accent, so that everything he said came out with a sneer. His good looks – the swathe of grey hair, the aristocratic nose – only made him seem all the more superior and self-assured. He wasn’t an easy man to like.

‘You haven’t met the wife,’ he said.

I didn’t know who he meant but then I turned round and saw her. ‘The wife’ was the woman who had been talking to Derek Abbott when I arrived. She had crept up behind me and now stood facing her husband, hands on hips and a scowl on her face.

‘I’m going to bed,’ she announced.

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I’m exhausted, Charles.’

‘How much money did you manage to spend?’

‘I don’t know. You’ll find out at the end of the month.’

He still didn’t want her to go. He pointed at me. ‘Helen, this is Anthony. He’s a famous writer.’

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I heard you were in Paris.’

‘I got back this afternoon.’

‘Are there direct flights?’

She gave me a look. ‘We have a PJ,’ she explained.

Of course, she was rich. She looked it. The dress she was wearing screamed haute couture – a combination of pink toile, beading and feathers that actually covered very little of her body but at enormous cost – and there was a cascade of diamonds around her neck. She was tired and she was irritated but she still exuded sexuality from her strawberry blonde hair to her Marilyn Monroe lips to the generous curves of her body.