I now thought Polycarpus must have been right in there, helping them to get away. With his position under threat, bonds to his master were loosening, yet he still felt close to the slaves he supervised. His plight, if Aviola decided to have a new steward, was little different from theirs in being sold.

It was too soon for me to confront Graecina with what Polycarpus might have done. Luckily, or for me not so luckily, at this point we were interrupted. Just as we reached the most dishevelled point of our morning, we heard banging. Fauna was the first to gather her wits, so she went to see who it was while the rest of us made feeble motions of tidying our drinks tables and straightening ourselves up.

Fauna returned looking apologetic, followed by two visitors. With coy glances at me, Galla and Graecina immediately rose to their feet, Graecina exercising a lurch that nearly toppled her, until Galla caught her and they tottered in each other’s arms. Winks occurred. I took no part in that, for I was the object of my companions’ sniggers.

‘Albia’s boyfriend!’

‘Client!’ I corrected.

Standing this side of the atrium, with one fatherly hand on the shoulder of his pale slave Dromo, was the aedile Manlius Faustus. Both he and Dromo looked amazed at the scene they had interrupted.

51

In general, I prefer not to let my clients learn of any unusual measures I am forced to adopt in order to pursue facts.

Fortunately Tiberius Manlius Faustus already considered me wild and irresponsible, a barbarian beyond saving. There was no chance of me sinking any lower in his estimation.

Nevertheless, I wished old grey eyes had not walked in.

The aedile announced pointedly that a carrying chair was waiting outside.

Galla jumped to. Graecina suddenly became extremely tearful, so Galla insisted she go home with her so they could have a weep together. Fauna whispered a hurried goodbye and scurried off out there as if she had remembered a pot that might boil over. That left me on my own with the situation.

We could have been a bunch of carousing teenagers who had just heard someone’s mother come back into the house unexpectedly.

Cobnuts. I was a grown woman. I could do what I liked. It wasn’t as if we had set fire to a scroll box of Virgil’s Aeneid in order to fry a Lucanian sausage.

I did not try to tell him that. When the others had gone, Tiberius looked me up and down with his chilling stare and said I ought to sleep it off. He would take Dromo out for some lunch then they would come back when I was ‘more myself’, by which he meant sobered up. He made me hand over my door key, in case I was too comatose to let them back into the apartment.

‘You need to drink plenty of water.’

‘The house has run out.’