Should she go and knock at her upstairs neighbours’ door?

Where would that place her? What if he was in the middle of killing a woman? Would a murderer let her go so that she could run to the police?

On the other hand, what if it was a couple involved in some sex game? Everyone had read that Fifty Shades book. And Theresa had read that, since it first came out, sales of velvet handcuffs and whips had gone stratospheric …

The lights upstairs went off. Silence reigned. Whatever they had been up to, they were now clearly settling down for the night.

Theresa moved discreetly back into her own apartment.

Once safely inside, she went straight through to the bedroom and flopped down on the bed.

Her phone beeped.

She sat up and pulled it out of her handbag. It was a text from Imogen: ‘Have you arrived yet?’

Sally had tossed and turned for hours, blushing with horror at how small she felt whenever the Markhams mocked her. It was just like being back at school, being picked on by the playground bullies. But she had to get back the old rhino-hide. Just because these two treated her like a walking joke who’d been completely useless at the job, that wasn’t to say she hadn’t been a good actress. She had had nominations, won awards and been showered with wonderful reviews from national newspapers to prove it. So why did it matter so much?

Sally realised that it was because it affected her life now, her life here in Bellevue-sur-Mer. It was as though the Markhams had arrived here, moved among her friends and constructed a totally new past for her. And now her current friends looked at her differently.

She was disappointed in Benjamin.

He had not helped her situation by being quite so obsequious with them.

Sally turned over and curled up into a ball. She hadn’t felt so low since those grim days which followed her husband dying in his secretary’s bed.

If she hadn’t felt such emptiness, she would have cried herself to sleep. Instead she lay awake until she drifted off into a nightmare in which Odile de la Warr, wearing a black witch costume and armed with a pair of flashing silver Japanese kitchen knives, was chasing her through a dark, moonless forest.

The phone rang.

Sally opened her eyes, thankful to have escaped from the dream.

‘Allô?’

‘It’s William.’

Sally flopped back into the pillows, dreading what he had to say that was so important.