She felt a warm hand on her leg and looked down to see a gold chronograph watch, its face as complicated as a flight deck, nestled amid her admirer’s jungle of arm hair. Six more minutes to get drunk. As she lifted the hand away, his manicured fingers threaded through hers. His white smile flashed wolfishly and he leaned in to her, Joop! Homme wafting, breath warm on her ear, his champagne-scented voice exotic. ‘Normal rules do not apply on nights like thees, no? Two strangers in strange place. Take off that wedding ring and see how different it makes you feel.’ He kissed her fingertips.

A flutter inside, long forgotten. Not for him. For deception.

She snatched her hand away.

‘Five minutes to go!’ the call went around.

A surge of new arrivals had come into the hotel, wheeling suitcases, some already in the bar, different European languages criss-crossing; a plane must have somehow managed to land or a coach had arrived, mostly uniformed flight staff in transit, along with a few passengers sent to the hotel to await transfers.

The bar staff were racing around with the trays of free fizzy wine.

Hairy Wrists had already lined up flutes in front of them, enough for several friends, his smile even wider.

She held up her hand. ‘I gave up wine this year.’

‘You tell a Frenchman that!’ The uh-hu uh-hu laugh again. ‘Why?’

‘I have a drink problem.’ There, she’d said it.

On cue, her martini arrived. Pax threw it back in two gulps. She was nowhere near her threshold. There would be no drunken farewell to her spirit friends with just minutes left to drink before sobriety forever.

The warm hand was on her arm now.

‘Me also,’ he said, and something in his tone made her turn. The soulful brown eyes held hers. ‘I was five years sober. I relapsed when my wife walked out on me. Salut!’ He downed another, then traded it for a full glass which he handed to her. ‘I go back to rehab next week. This is, how you say in English, my last drunken dance. Dance with me, no?’ His dark, unblinking gaze wouldn’t let her go.

She had a running mate. Four minutes to try to hit the wall.

Pax took the flute, fingertips trapped in his for a moment.

‘Different rules apply,’ he reminded her, dark eyes like GO signs, picking up another for himself.

She thought about Mack on the garage roof accusing her of adultery and, guilty tears rising from nowhere, almost bolted. But she needed this drink, and if Mack thought so little of her, she was doing nothing to worsen his opinion of her by playing the drunken tart.

‘Salut!’ The cheap fizz tasted as blissful as Krug to her impatient tongue.

‘Another!’ The glasses were replaced with full ones.

Gasping and hiccupping, Pax matched her companion glass for glass, any tears soon sweetened from sad to mirthful. One glass. Two. Three. Four. Five. More were lined up as fast as they emptied them.