Isobel had had two telephone calls from London the night before. The first was from Lorna’s secretary to say that Mrs Congleton had asked her to inform Mrs Grant that Rory had arrived safely, was naturally a little ‘overdone’ by all the excitement of returning home but was perfectly all right; she would be in touch again before the family flew back to the States in a fortnight’s time, and Mrs Congleton particularly wished to renew the senator’s and her thanks to her sister for having Rory to stay. Though Isobel’s heart always sank at the sound of Lorna’s voice, she couldn’t help feeling outraged that her sister had once again managed to avoid speaking to her personally.

The second call was from a very indignant Sheena, ringing from her aunt’s house in Twickenham. There had been a chauffeur-driven car to meet them at the airport, Sheena said, but no sign of Lorna herself until they arrived at the Ritz. The reunion between mother, son and stepfather had taken place in the Congletons’ private suite. Lorna had opened her arms dramatically but Rory had failed to fly into them. Lorna had clearly been very put out and Sheena got the feeling that she had wanted to impress her husband with a touching tableau of a maternal reunion with a beloved child but that the scene had not gone according to plan. A huge pile of presents on the sofa had eventually got Rory thoroughly over-excited and silly, reported Sheena disapprovingly, but not happy, and when, shortly after their arrival, the smartly uniformed temporary nanny turned up Sheena thought she looked more like a gleaming bathroom tile than a warm human being with a love of children. ‘No lap,’ she told Isobel. ‘Poor wee mite – he might as well cuddle up to an ironing board.’ Sheena herself had an ample lap – indeed she was ample all over, spilling over like a cornucopia. Isobel couldn’t help wondering what sort of sartorial impression her extremely tight jeans, snug-fitting lime-green stretch T-shirt, silver nose stud and magenta-streaked hair would have created on the senator. Warm hearts were possibly not high on his list of priorities. When Sheena had discovered that Lorna and her husband were going out to dinner that night and that Rory would be left alone with a strange nanny in a grand hotel, she had offered to ditch her own plans for the evening, help put Rory to bed and stay till he was asleep – an offer which was firmly turned down. ‘I felt like a traitor when I left him,’ she told Isobel. ‘He was like so reproachful and I don’t think he’ll ever trust me again. He goes “Don’t go, don’t go” and your sister looks furious and that senator or whatever he calls himself made me feel like he’d got something nasty on his shoe.’

‘What was he like?’ asked Isobel curiously.