‘On the continent they’re more relaxed about sex and anything to do with it. The sodding can-can was performed originally by women with no drawers on! This is 1925. People want more. They aren’t as shocked as they once were. We have a whole band of punters out there with money to spend and not enough to spend it on. They can either go to Paris for a bit of a thrill, or we can provide it for them here. Once this filming is off the ground, I’m going to open more houses. Places where people, men and women, can get exactly what they want. Fuck Paris, mate, we’ll have it all here in London! We’ve the contacts and the clientele. We can have private screenings of the films and then live entertainment. Live shows ...’

‘You’re deadly serious.’

Briony grinned.

‘Too right I am. Now, I’m doing this whether you come in or not. I mean it, Tommy. The filming first and the houses after. I want to own every decent house in London, and I will.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll get us some more coffee.’

She left the room, giving him time to think.

Tommy watched her leave. She was, as always, beautifully dressed. At twenty-two she was glorious. Thank God she hadn’t succumbed to the Eton crop which most women now sported. Her hair was still elaborately dressed with pins, but her clothes were up to the minute - up to the second, in fact. She wore the drop-waisted dresses with a jaunty air, showing wide expanses of milky white arms and legs. She plucked her eyebrows and drew them back on in wide, painted arches, and she wore deep red lipstick, painted on to her lips in a perfect Cupid’s bow. She was the epitome of the new modern woman and sometimes, like now, it broke his heart.

She was right in all she said, he conceded that. She was always right. Maybe that was why she annoyed him so much. Like the jazz club she had insisted on opening, this very night in fact. Now it was up and off the ground she wanted another project as quickly as possible. And the pictures and the new houses were to be those projects. Oh, he had no doubt she would make a success of them, she always did. But he wished sometimes they could lead a calmer, more normal life.

He smiled to himself at the thought. Nothing about Briony Cavanagh would ever be normal. She was a law unto herself, had been from a child and, if he knew her, would be ’til the day she died. In fact, at times she wore him out with her endless enthusiasm. It wasn’t natural to be driven like she was.