‘True.’ Steph opened the door to Meredith’s room.

‘It’s beautiful!’ Meredith pronounced. ‘Did you come up with the idea?’ She walked round, admiring the curtains and the canopy. She even noticed the stool. ‘And the bathroom’s wonderful!’

Stephanie visibly relaxed. She’d been so worried Meredith would be demanding and hard to please, but she seemed ready to be happy with everything.

‘I’ll bring you up a glass of champagne before dinner and you can have it in the bath. I’ve been fantasizing about doing that myself!’

‘We should do it together!’ grinned Meredith. ‘Imagine if we’d done that at school!’

‘Scandal! That was just the sort of thing they were terrified of, yet they didn’t seem to mind you having pashes on older girls.’

‘You had one on Karen Ricci,’ Meredith reminded her. ‘Mind you, she was Italian and gorgeous.’

‘Actually, it was because she was captain of the netball team and I was so crap at it. She seemed like a goddess.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Meredith laughed. ‘And there were those lovely long netball-playing limbs.’

Steph surveyed her friend. ‘You don’t look too bad yourself,’ she observed.

‘Regular spa treatments, facials, manicures and pedicures. Pampering. That’s the answer.’

Steph repressed a sigh. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been pampered. ‘I’d better leave you now and get back to dinner, but we can bunk off later and take up where we left off.’ She looked at her watch. Six already – she’d better get a move on. ‘I’ll send David with the champagne.’ They hugged again. ‘It really is great to see you. I always wanted women friends here but never found the time!’

Meredith nodded. To be honest, she didn’t have any real girlfriends at all in Hong Kong, Singapore or Shanghai. ‘I’ll start unpacking. I was never any good at travelling light. Why have two pairs of shoes when you could have six?’

‘Especially when you have a limo driver to carry them!’ teased Steph. She waved and went back downstairs to her schedule.

Five minutes later there was a knock on the door and David appeared with Meredith’s champagne. He smiled with genuine good humour. Steph had done well with her choice of husband. He seemed an unusual blend of niceness without dullness. And he still had his hair. Meredith pushed aside all thoughts of her own different life choices: marriage hadn’t been for her, and that was that.

She took the proffered glass of champagne, returning his smile. She was always being offered glasses of the stuff back in the East – where, along with whisky, it was currently seen as an important status symbol – but this one was going to be extra special, in that beautiful bathtub, with two weeks of real friendship ahead.