She could not telephone Sarah because she was afraid. The telephone stood on the polished table, black and accusing. After Easter she had received a stiff note of thanks from Dublin. Since then there had been no communication between them. Neither Sarah nor Tim had understood her reaction to Marina on that dreadful night. Camilla knew that her treatment of Piet had been unforgivable, and she bitterly regretted the thoughtless words she had hurled into the constant battleground between herself and her mother. But she felt that Sarah might have tried to understand. Each time she thought of that evening, Camilla remembered her mother’s pale, jewelled fingers clasped around the black man’s neck, saw his strength and ownership in the way his arms held her close to him as they danced their slow, sensuous dance, flaunting their desire and their intimacy. She could not accept their reckless display, and she knew that the consequences of such a public affair could be dire for a Foreign Office diplomat. Camilla feared for her father, and despised Marina for her total want of discretion. Still, she should never have used Piet to extract revenge, by making a shocking declaration of her own. Now she was paying the price for her betrayal and conceit. Camilla gagged a little as the vodka burned its way down her throat. The letter of rejection lay face up in front of her. She crumpled it up, opened it again, and finally tore it into tiny shreds. Then she threw her glittering stage career into the wastepaper basket and poured another drink.

For two days she saw no one, cancelling her photo sessions and infuriating her agent, Tom Bartlett, by taking her telephone off the hook. The doorbell rang on the first afternoon, but she made no attempt to leave her bed where she lay face down, pulling a pillow over her head to block out all contact with an intruding world. After an eternity of persistent ringing and knocking, she heard the footsteps going down the stairs, and the sound of a car door being slammed in the street below. On the third morning she crawled out of bed and made her way to the kitchen, rummaging in the cupboard for coffee and rinsing a stained mug that was lying in the sink. The porter had pushed the morning’s scattering of letters under the door. Camilla bent to pick them up without enthusiasm, and was surprised to recognise her father’s neat handwriting on one of the envelopes. He had been trying to telephone her, he said, but there seemed to be a problem with her phone. He assumed she was away on a fashion shoot. There was something he wanted to discuss with her. She shuddered at the thought of the explanation she would have to make about her drama school rejection, put his letter aside, and pulled on jeans and a sweater.