I twitched it away irritably. ‘What ambulance?’ I had a dull, throbbing ache at the back of my skull and it took me some moments to connect this, and the fact I seemed to be lying on the sofa in the downstairs living room, with the approaching conveyance. ‘I don’t need an ambulance,’ I said, struggling up on to my elbows.

‘Oh, be careful!’ she squeaked.

‘I said she didn’t need an ambulance.’ Adam spoke with obvious disgust. ‘She’s only been out for a minute.’

‘She was unconscious!’ Kate protested dramatically.

‘She fainted,’ he sneered.

‘How are you feeling, Juno?’ Richard helped me to sit up, propping sofa cushions behind my back. I moaned, putting a hand to the back of my head. I discovered a very sore place and took it away again. ‘Steady now,’ he advised, ‘I’d keep still if I were you.’

‘What are you doing here?’ I was still struggling to understand what was going on.

‘I had just turned the car around,’ he explained, ‘was barely halfway down the street, when I looked in the mirror and saw this masked figure rush out of your front door.’

I accepted a cold compress from Kate, a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a towel, and held it to the back of my head. ‘Why didn’t you go after him?’ I asked, wincing.

‘I was rather more concerned about you, my girl. I thought you might have had a visit from one of your Russian friends. But by the time I got back here, these two good folks were already to the rescue.’

I thought Adam gave him a rather questioning look, but all he said was, ‘Yeah, hell of a racket you made, Juno.’

There was another hell of a racket then, on the front door. ‘That’ll be the ambulance.’ Kate jumped up to answer it. ‘And the police!’

‘Why didn’t you call the sodding fire brigade as well?’ Adam demanded gruffly.

‘I didn’t call the police,’ Kate responded in a cross whisper, ‘but when I said that Juno had been struck over the head by someone, the lady in the control room said she would be sending them anyway!’

‘Well, why didn’t you say she’d just fallen?’ he whispered back.

‘Because she didn’t!’ Kate whispered fiercely as the knocking on the door continued. ‘The police should be here. Richard is right, it could have been one of those Russians!’ And she flounced off to open the door.