It was Rowland McGuire’s sharp and angry condemnation at Max’s house, that moment when he accused Gini of behaving selfishly, that had snapped Gini out of months of illness, misery, and self-reproach. With a few sentences Rowland McGuire had been able to effect a change that in months of sympathy and argument, Lindsay had failed to achieve. Lindsay thought she could see a pattern now. She could see how, if her relationship with Pascal had been impaired, or if Pascal had, in Bosnia, failed Gini in some way, Gini might possibly end up in Rowland McGuire’s arms.

And as for Rowland’s motivation—well, that was obvious enough, Lindsay thought, turning angrily away. Gini was beautiful; for men, as Lindsay had watched over the years, she carried a powerful sexual allure. She could see Rowland McGuire’s responding to that, McGuire, who went through women “like a machine.” To him it was a matter of two months, three months, a scrupulous exercise in which his heart was not involved.

Lindsay felt indignant, then angry. In such a situation, her sympathies were always with the woman, and Gini was her closest woman friend. This anger at McGuire took root and grew as she made her way to the Cazarès headquarters for Lazare’s press conference.

By the time she reached there, Lindsay had argued herself into a position where, she told herself, she felt no attraction for McGuire anymore, not even liking. Pixie’s words ringing in her ears, she told herself that Rowland McGuire was an irresponsible, cold manipulator of women, a Casanova, a Valmont, the kind of man she most despised. Then, through the press of people, she saw him. One look at his face and she at once changed her mind.

It was a while before she saw him. When she reached the Cazarès building it was still half an hour before the start of the press conference, but the rabble had already arrived. The street outside and the courtyard within were crammed with vans, with the white sprouting mushrooms of satellite dishes, with the cables and impedimenta of TV crews. CNN was there, and the other major American network crews; she could see familiar faces from the BBC and ITN. The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish, the Japanese—they were all out in force. Lindsay pushed through a wall of people, a babel of tongues. Inside the front lobby the crush was even worse: like the melees that attended the collections, but worse. Lindsay could feel that peculiar intensity of hysteria generated by a crowd, but here, in addition to the mad desire simply to get in, there were other, stronger emotions. There was a vicarious thrill to the drama of sudden death.

Lindsay was pushed, shoved, trodden on, nearly thrown to the floor as she approached the doors to the hall where the conference would be held. Black-suited Cazarès courtiers were trying to control the crowd, but there were too few of them; they could not hold back this surge. Jostled, Lindsay let the crowd pick her up and propel her forward. She could now see into the hall beyond, which was blindingly bright from TV lights; she could glimpse, at its far end, a black dais, a table, a lectern, microphones, cameras, and—surmounting it all—a huge blow-up of that Beaton photograph of Maria Cazarès. Lindsay was caught up, thrust into the room, carried forward by a wave of people—and then she saw Rowland McGuire.