‘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.

She wouldn’t marry him, she was adamant about that. He had stopped asking her. But she slept with him, she ate with him, she dressed with him. That was as far as it went. She wanted no more children, she had made that as plain as day. In fact, it was only her sporadic visits to see her son that revealed any kind of human warmth or feeling in her. Then he saw the girl he had known before, the child, the Briony with whom he had fallen hopelessly in love. Her son, her sisters and the girls who worked for them were her whole life now. She looked after them all like a mother hen.

He knew she loved him in her own way, cared about him deeply, but not in the same way he loved her. Even knowing this, he couldn’t leave her. He knew he would take whatever she offered him and be grateful, because he couldn’t live without her. Acknowledging this to himself, he knew his course was set.