There had been a time – years in fact – when Georgie’s star had seemed fated to shine brighter than her sister’s. She’d sailed straight into a major TV serial, fresh out of drama school. It was an ingénue part, inevitably, but with a twist: her character had risen up out of the fake Victorian mist to plunge a dagger into the heart of her faithless lover. The words she’d uttered as the knife found its mark had become something of a catch-phrase, with the viewing public: ‘If I can’t have you, Francis Fitzgibbon, then I’ll make damn sure no one else ever will!’ Georgina Clarke had been on the cover of the Radio Times, widely tipped as an actress to watch out for. For a time, afterwards, people smirked at her in the street, in shops, sure they’d seen that face. Another television part followed, as the gaslighted younger sister of a secretly psychopathic doctor. And then she’d met Duncan.

Duncan Newhouse was already well known in the advertising world by the time she met him. He had a table of his own in Langan’s Brasserie, where he lunched most days; a Patrick Procktor drawing of him, cigarette in hand, was on the wall, alongside portraits of leading film stars and directors. He wore a pale, expensive trenchcoat, like a European film director’s. He took slightly longer to respond to a question than was comfortable, which made him seem important, as if people were hanging on his every word. Georgie was introduced to him at her agent’s summer party.

‘Georgina Clarke. No relation of Nick Clarke, the sculptor?’

And she’d laughed, surprised, and said that yes, that was her father.

‘I’ve got a head he did of me, must be getting on for fifteen years ago. Nick Clarke! Haven’t thought of him for yonks.’

It turned out that the head had been commissioned by the mother of Duncan’s former wife, as a wedding gift to her daughter.

‘Of course she couldn’t stand the sight of me, by the time she left, so I hung on to it. You should come and have a look.’

Georgie wasn’t really interested in seeing her father’s work, but it was as good a way as any of getting to know Duncan. She didn’t fancy him, not at first: he was already in his late thirties and she’d only ever gone out with guys her own age. But she was intrigued.

In fact her working life came to an end within months of meeting Duncan. He didn’t want her to be out six nights a week, treading the boards, or off on a film set. He was used to getting his own way. It was his special area of expertise, he told her.