Unsettled for a moment – she hadn’t expected to have to socialise – Jules apologised for not bringing anything with her. ‘Oh Shah, if you’d said something, I would’ve picked up some wine.’

The host dismissed her concerns. ‘Pah! I shall not have you placing me further in your debt, Miss Julianne, when I already owe you so much,’ he said. ‘Come through, please. As I recall from our time on the golfer’s boat, you were always fond of bubble drink, and I have some very good French champagnes in my cellar downstairs. I always wanted a cellar, and now I have one. Let me send one of the girls down to fetch you something. Do I remember correctly, Pol Roger was your favourite? . . . Ah, here is my wife, Pasang. Please, say hello.’

She had been about to say that only French bubbles could be called champagne, and that yes, she shared a love of Pol Roger with Winston Churchill. But before she could throw the switch to small talk, a diminutive Nepalese woman, exquisitely dressed in European clothes – French, too, if Jules’s eye for fashion did not mislead her – appeared at Shah’s elbow bearing champagne flutes.

‘Miss Julianne Balwyn,’ she said with the tone of someone reading from a script. ‘Please excuse my English. Unlike husband, I am not longed with speaking it. But I practise and learn every day so that once I may thank you for taking him home to me and our daughters. And for the . . . the honouring of arrangements you make. You always in a special place for our family’s heart.’

Pasang passed her a drink and performed a small bow. Jules found herself strangely touched, which wasn’t like her at all. Shah had already thanked her for sticking to their original deal, as difficult as that had been after the Aussie Rules was impounded. She’d known that he and the other Gurkhas still had a long and dangerous, perhaps even impossible, trek in front of them to make it home to Nepal. After everything that had happened, making sure they got paid as agreed just seemed the decent thing to do.

So no, not at all like her.

‘Thank you,’ she replied, faltering briefly over the woman’s name, ‘. . . Pasang.’

‘Thank you, thank you. You are the Deliverer, Miss Julianne.’ The Nepali’s pretty, jewel-like eyes sparkled with delight.

Shah gave his wife a peck on the cheek before taking Jules gently by the elbow and steering her into a large reception room, with Pasang following closely behind. Dark slate tiles had soaked up the chill from a silent, invisible air-conditioning system. After the uncomfortable humidity of the street, it was blissful to walk into a space that seemed to breathe a gentle, almost wintry gift of frost onto her exposed, sunburnt skin. She sipped from her champagne, struggling with the urge to throw down the whole glass in one go.