‘Do you know how we got caught?’ Kelly asked.

Lou shrugged one of those slabby shoulders, like she only half wanted to know, and only so long as it didn’t heap further humiliation onto her poor godfather. Good old Gordon, Kelly thought, everyone’s favourite victim.

‘I suppose Dog was boasting about it.’

Kelly shook her head. Dog wasn’t a bragger. He must have slept with three hundred girls before Kelly, and another three hundred before he ran out of gas. Sal, the woman he married, was simply the one he happened to stop at. His mates, including Gordon, used to make legend of the Doggy Love Magic. But Dog himself? Never said a word for or against any woman. He maintained a code of silence in his promiscuity. You could never say he respected women, but he did respect the privacy of the bedroom.

‘It was that fuckwit Eastaugh,’ Kelly said.

‘Sam? Gordon’s surf buddy?’

Kelly bit her lip. This would be news. Fettuccine arrabbiata was one thing, but surfing? Gordon’s refusal to surf at Bluebird symbolised half the problem with their marriage. Now he was surfing again? He must be having an affair.

‘Not Sam, his father. The old perv.’

‘Tony? This won’t sound very nice, but there’s something about the colour of his artificial leg that gives me the heebie-jeebies.’

Kelly felt a surge of warmth in her stomach to be the wise older woman. She did have something to offer, even if it was only thirty-year-old gossip.

‘You don’t know anything about the people you’ve landed with,’ she said.

‘I don’t suppose I do.’

‘Old Tony walked in on us. Or we walked in on him. Dog and I were in the main bedroom of the Hilton, and the old bloke had gone into the ensuite before us. We were pretty sure the coast was clear because we were in the room for a while before we did anything. Okay, we were doing lines. Having a giggle. But you can’t account for the old and their toilet habits. Tony had been in there, quietly doing his thing, or trying to do his thing, for a long time. Eventually Dog and I were, you know, when Tony burst out of the ensuite. Dog wanted to run. Tony still scares them; he takes them back to when they were little boys. And Tony pushes his reading glasses up on his nose and goes, ‘Gotchaz!’ I hadn’t spoken to the old coot in years. I thought he’d lost his marbles. But apparently not.’

Lou was shaking her head. ‘Caught in a bedroom at a party? How old are you, sixteen?’

Kelly felt some relief; she had never had to spell out the gory details. ‘Tony told Sam, and Sam shirtfronted Dog. Told him he would take out his front teeth if he didn’t man up and tell Gordon. I never really got that.’

‘Got what?’