‘Yep. Count yourself lucky. Yacht’s been impounded by Portuguese police. If you had been on there they’d have taken you in ’n’all. It were a floating opium den. It’ll be the end of my salon. No smoke and all that.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘I am sorry, love, for what it’s worth. How much did he fleece you?’

‘A hundred. And fifty. Thousand.’

‘Oh fucking hell. I’m sorry. And about the baby too. You’ve had a tough time of it, by the sounds. And a wasted journey.’

‘Well, what the hell am I going to do?!’ I shouted.

This was my one basket full of eggs, and every fucking one was smashed.

I knew this would all come back to bite me on the arse. I should have trusted Keston. I should have gone with his plan.

I’m not a panicker, not normally, but since Ivy, all bets seemed to be off. At that moment, with Dannielle Fairly creaking that chair back and forth and telling me she was sorry and that I’d had a wasted journey, panic was properly setting in and I started hyperventilating. The faded grey of the windowless office walls pressed in on me. No air con. Stifling. Suffocating. No way out.

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ffffffff-FUCK!’

‘Hey, come on now, it’s all right,’ said Dannielle, bouncing out of the chair and tottering round to my side of the desk.

I was in full can’t-catch-my-breath mode. ‘Isn’t there… anything you can do? He was going to sort it. I’ve… paid him. Where’s it all gone?’

‘A lot of people paid him, love. It’s probably gone up his nose.’

‘Where do I go? What am I going to do?’

‘Lemme get you a glass of water.’ She scampered out, returning moments later with a large tumbler of clear brown liquid that definitely wasn’t water. ‘Here, get this down yer. It’ll help wi’t shock.’

I took the glass with a shaking hand and gulped it back, wincing at the taste. Whisky – ugh. But it did calm me somewhat. She tottered round to her side of the desk and opened a drawer, pulling out a bag of mobile phones with chargers tied to them with coloured elastic bands.

‘We haven’t sorted through all of Dad’s offices yet. There might be something left for you somewhere. Gimme a few days. Can you do that?’

‘Yeah. I guess.’

‘Where did he call you from, here or the Funchal Palm? Or the Eden Suites? Or the Casa de Oro?’

‘I didn’t know he had other hotels, I thought this was the only one.’

She jotted down a number and taped it to the back of one of the phones, before handing it to me. ‘If I find anything I’ll call you. It’s fully charged.’

‘What do I do in the meantime?’ I said, still shuddering from the scotch.