When Edie finished her toilette, she rose from the water glistening and poised. Several hands helped her out of the bath and into a towelling robe. Some of them seemed to linger longer than necessary.

‘Freddie,’ she called. ‘Where are you?’

Freddie materialised at my elbow. I looked behind me, and saw a blushing young woman melt back into the shadows.

‘What is it, my sweet?’ he asked.

‘Something dreadful’s happened,’ Edie said. ‘My drink’s finished.’

‘Let me get you another,’ Freddie said. He made his way through the crowd and kissed his wife before taking her glass. Sylvie, who was standing with her arm linked through Edie’s, got a kiss too.

Edie kept us in the bathroom while she dried herself, applied talcum powder and dressed in silk pyjamas.

‘I always dine in pyjamas,’ I heard her say.

‘You’re not going native on us, are you?’ one of the guests said.

‘Now now,’ she said. ‘No native-bashing here. Let’s rejoin the rest of the party.’

Back in the drawing room, Freddie was attending to drinks. There must have been at least fifty guests, and he was constantly pouring, stirring, shaking and wiping. All the servants were lined up along the dining room wall in starched kanzus, white for serving food, instead of the usual brown. Two dogs wandered from guest to guest, sniffing pockets and purses. A rangy Englishman with a high forehead and prominent ears, who’d been introduced to me as Jack Soames, was fiddling with the record player, turning the volume higher and higher. Later I learned it was Sylvie’s record, sent over especially by friends from America because she loved the new swing craze.

Edie and Sylvie began dancing while young, admiring men held their glasses for them.

‘Another champagne?’ Nicolas asked me.

‘I’ll get them,’ I said.

I fought my way through the knots of people, and reached Freddie. The young woman from the bathroom reached him at the same time, and slipped her hand into his pocket.

Freddie whirled around, one eyebrow raised invitingly. ‘So that’s what you’re after.’

‘Freddie, darling,’ she said, and giggled. She was extraordinarily pretty, with very round, blue eyes. She was wearing a black dress that clung to her hips and showed off her ample breasts, an armful of gold bracelets, and she’d painted her lips deep red, so when they were parted slightly, as now, the red made the white of her teeth even whiter.

‘You said you’d come and find me again,’ she said, cocking her head at him.

‘Later, darling,’ Freddie murmured. ‘I have my hosting duties for now.’

‘You have staff.’

‘I like doing it myself.’ He saw me. ‘Theo – what can I get you?’

‘Two champagnes, please.’

‘Right away.’

The woman gave me the briefest of smiles.

‘You.’