‘Money’, she said with slow deliberation as if she had just discovered the fact, ‘is not everything in life. I’d settle for less, really. I mean, look at this lot, all guzzling, red in the face, slapping each other on the back, self-congratulation at every turn, stuffing down that dead bird in aspic as if it was manna from heaven. Couldn’t we clear off, quietly? No one would notice if we did, they are too caught up in themselves and Bob Marshall’s bloody book. Somewhere peaceful, just us?’

The invitation was clear, the challenge met, we got away easily enough.

‘You’re not leaving, darling!’ Mrs Marshall with backcombed hair and sequins, a glass in her hand, distraction in her eyes.

‘I’m off to Malaga at dawn. Must. It’s been lovely, really, and this kind man says he’ll see me to a taxi. Daren’t risk a mugging.’

Mrs Marshall laughed rather loudly so as to be heard above the noise. ‘You don’t get mugged in Eaton Square, darling. But off you go. Sweet of you to come. How lovely! Malaga and all that sun …’ She turned away from us when someone called her name and we got out.

‘Really off to Malaga at dawn?’

‘No. The day after. Just an excuse. All right? You mind fibs?’

‘Not those kinds.’

We had supper together in a small restaurant in Mount Street, and then went back to my flat near by, and made love all night. Or it seemed all night. She was very good and very experienced, un-shy.

‘Practised, I see.’

‘Disappointed?’

‘A lot seems to have worn off on those trips to Welwyn Garden City, Malaga and the Canaries …’

‘You mind? What am I supposed to do stuck among a herd of thirty men. Sit alone in some ghastly unit hotel and watch them swill the local beer and brandy and carry on with my crochet in the lounge? Come on, be fair. I’m twenty-seven, I know my way about, I know how to survive too – the hand on the thigh, the arm round the shoulder that slowly slips down to my breasts. I know the messages. “We could make a deal, you and I? £30,000 a year, for full devotion to … the job, got it?” I got it. They came from hell those bastards, but you have to play along at my age.’

‘I know every nook and cranny of your highly desirable body, but…’

She looked at me with lazy indolence, head on the pillow, the morning light just filtering through the curtains.

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know your name!’

‘Christ, no you don’t, do you? Helen Wiltshire, spinster of Chalfont St Giles, parents’ place, and 169 Upper Cheyne Place. And your name?’

‘William Caldicott. Writer. Bachelor of Faringdon, Oxfordshire, parents’ place, and 687 Mount Street, Wl.’

She pulled herself up to a sitting position, dragged her hair back from her forehead.