Heart sinking, Megan did as he asked and then sat watching as he dressed. He had scarcely looked at her. She could have been ninety years old and dressed in a sack for all he seemed to have noticed, and she was wearing a very flattering dress and had taken great care with her hair. How could he change so quickly?

When they all met, it seemed to her that for a woman whose husband was in hospital, Cynthia was in fine fettle.

The evening passed slowly. The other men were pleasant enough and had brought their wives along, but after the meal, the women gathered around one end of the table and left the men to talk business at the other end.

The other women discussed clothes and followed that by a lively debate on the attractions of various jewels, not so much concerned with their beauty, as with which were more likely to increase in value.

Megan was driven nearly to screaming point by it all and when pressed for her opinion on jewels said curtly that she preferred a good book, which made them all stare at her as if she had two heads. Then, when the topic changed to fur coats and they asked her which fur she preferred she said bluntly that many of those skins came from endangered species, and she was surprised they were still even considering wearing them.

‘Oh, that eco-stuff is old hat now,’ one woman said languidly. ‘And about time, too. There’s nothing as beautiful as fur and people are using it as a fashion statement again.’

‘It’s especially beautiful when it’s on a live creature’s back,’ Megan snapped.

That got her a few more funny looks, but she didn’t care.

From down the table Ben shook his head at her, as if warning her not to pursue this point. She snapped her lips shut, breathing slowly and evenly, ignoring the next fascinating discussion about which designer labels were more ‘in’ at the moment.

Cynthia was included in the men’s discussion, but that sounded equally boring to Megan. One man went on and on about property development and the iniquities of local government regulations. He seemed to be more interested in getting round the rules, than in building safely. Ben didn’t contribute much at all to the conversation, just smiled slightly and nodded from time to time.

The final straw came when the party broke up and Cynthia claimed Ben’s arm on the grounds that she was just a trifle tiddly. She was, thought Megan grimly, watching the other woman wobble towards a taxi, more than a trifle tiddly; she was downright drunk.

At the hotel, Ben took Cynthia to her hotel room while Megan went back to their suite on her own, feeling angry and abandoned.