‘I thought they were living on a stupid boat down in the marina here! But it seems he sensed out my daughter, persuaded his father to come ashore and now they’re together again.’

Theresa wasn’t quite sure what they were supposed to do about that. You couldn’t forbid a man from coming to stay in the same hotel as you.

‘Right.’ Imogen swung Chloe around. ‘From now, until we finally get on that plane home, you will keep Chloe in your flat and under your care.’

‘Where are the other two?’ Frances laid down the menu and stood up. ‘Not on their own?’

‘As you had disappeared, Frances, I’ve had to leave them in the breakfast room. I needed to get this young lady immediately out of the radar of Neil Muffett.’

‘I don’t think Neil will be here long. His mother is due any moment to pick him up and take him home.’

‘If she can stand up.’ Imogen flopped down in the seat next to her mother’s. ‘Well, as we’re here, and we’ve now missed breakfast up at the hotel, I suggest that Chloe and I join Theresa, while you, Frances, go back there and see to the others. After we’ve eaten, Chloe will be going to the restaurant to help her grandmother.’

‘It’s our weekly closed day.’

‘Of course it is.’ Imogen sighed. ‘Then you must take her home to your flat. Until Neil Muffett is extracted therefrom, Chloe is suspended from the Hotel Astra.’

Theresa gave her daughter a sideways glance. Why was she now talking like a comedy headmistress from St Trinian’s? ‘Suspended from the Hotel Astra’ indeed!

Theresa worried that at any moment Imogen might set her a hundred lines: I shall not lose my granddaughter; I shall not lose my granddaughter …

Sally mooched about in her dressing gown. She was slightly disappointed that Theresa had crept off so stealthily, as she had been looking forward to a debriefing session about the embarrassing and startling events of the previous evening.

She wondered how Eggy was doing now. And had Odile continued the lecture she had started with the Markhams while she shoved them into the back of her chauffeur-driven car?

And that awful Roger man. The Bitch Got The House? Really? Ugh. She was looking forward to Marianne waking up and trying to explain what she was up to knocking about with a man like him. And he also appeared to be at the centre of the plot with Theresa’s disappearing granddaughter. So much trouble everywhere.

She gazed out over the rooftops at the sea.