But Carola was evidently experienced with similar crises before. ‘I’ve got a mini kit in my backpack. Come on, Emily.’ Then, as an afterthought, she turned back to Charlotte. ‘You come to the room too, Charlotte. I want a word with you.’

Charlotte flushed in outrage. ‘I ent done nothing!’

‘I didn’t say you had “done nothing”,’ Carola said. ‘Come along, please.’

Isaac was left with Lily in the foyer. He looked back towards the bar, intending to offer Lily a drink. Then his brows shot up. ‘Don’t look now,’ he whispered, ‘but Franciszka and Neil are sitting on bar stools at the bar behind a big pillar, very still as if hoping not to be spotted.’

Lily’s eyes grew round. ‘Wow. Those two …?’ Then she groaned. ‘Damn. Franciszka was supposed to be washing my hair for me tonight. It’s going to be really hard, one-handed.’

He slid a hand to her waist, suddenly feeling the evening was looking up. ‘Come to my room. I can wash hair. I was a shampoo boy for my Saturday job when I was in sixth form.’

‘You were not!’ she exclaimed, nevertheless allowing herself to be steered up the stairs towards room 204.

‘I was,’ he said truthfully. ‘When Dad had to give up farm work and we moved into Peterborough I saw this card in a salon window looking for a shampoo girl. I went in and told them they were being sexist and they gave me the job. Washing hair, making coffee and sweeping up in a nice warm salon seemed a doddle after being brought up working holidays and weekends outside in all hours on the farm.’ He winked. ‘And it gave me lovely soft hands.’

She’d halted to regard him through narrowed eyes. He began to wonder if she was about to blow him off, but then she smiled slowly, thoughtfully. ‘I’ll fetch my shampoo and conditioner.’

Chapter Thirteen

On Tuesday morning, Lily woke in the French hotel trying to get her bearings, spotting Franciszka’s head on the pillow of the other bed unmoving despite the beeping alarm. Lily had slept like a log herself. It might have been the codeine but it could also have been the long, sensuous scalp massage Isaac had given her last night in the guise of washing her hair.

She stretched and shivered at the memory. It had been a bit of a squeeze in his compact wet room with Doggo trying vigorously to join in whatever puzzling game the humans were playing but Isaac had seated Lily on the dressing table stool, her head over the basin and her injured hand nestled safely in her lap while he made jokes about being used to a salon backwash. He hadn’t let that hold him back though. She closed her eyes, recalling the slow, slippery motion of his fingers on her scalp. Who knew that a head could be such an erogenous zone?