‘You’ve got a whole flat,’ she said to Pansy enviously. ‘Mine’s next door, but it’s only a room and a bit.’

‘What’s yours like?’ Pansy was asking Helen, and Helen knew that it was a peace-offering. She was being drawn into the conversation as a means of calling a truce in a skirmish that had never really started. It was generous of Pansy, she thought. More generous than she was herself – but then Pansy could afford to be.

‘My room’s a small, square cell on the floor above,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘Servants’ quarters.’

Chloe and Pansy both laughed, relieved. The tension was ebbing away.

‘How rotten. My father found this, I’ve no idea how. I suppose it is rather stylish. He’s good at things like that.’

‘Is your father Masefield Warren?’ Chloe asked.

‘That’s right.’

Of course. Pansy’s father’s name was almost synonymous with ruthless success. He was a self-made man with an iron reputation who now controlled an empire that embraced oil, newspapers, property and films. And Pansy was his only child. One day she would be very, very rich, as well as startlingly beautiful.

Poor Helen, Chloe was thinking. I can’t see her gilded Apollo resisting all that. And Helen was staring down at her clasped hands, not wanting to think at all. To shut off the dull ache of anxiety, she turned to Chloe.

‘Nice lunch?’ she asked politely.

Chloe laughed, pleased with the chance to talk about it.

‘Extremely nice. I’d almost forgotten how delicious it is, meeting someone and realising that you’re attracted to him. Then guessing that he feels the same and waiting to see how you’re both going to play it.’

She had released the knot on top of her head and her hair came tumbling around her face. It made her look much younger, and her features were alight with an excitement that was almost childish.

It had been a very satisfactory lunch. Stephen Spurring had achieved just the right inviting blend of intimacy and remoteness. Chloe hated pushy men. She wanted to know him better now, and her head was full of the way he had looked and the way his mouth had lifted, crookedly, into a smile of invitation.

When it had been time to leave, Stephen had put his hand over hers.

‘Will you dine with me one night at High Table? It might amuse you.’

‘I’d like that.’

She was responding to this quiet, subtle man in a way that she hadn’t done for years. The recollection of it made her smile again.

‘Be careful,’ Helen warned her. ‘Stephen eats girls. And … did you know that he’s married?’