All was darkness. Luciana contemplated going to investigate the cause of such despair. After hesitating for a moment she tried the handle of the door, but it was locked. When she rattled it, she thought she heard a gasp from inside and the sobbing stopped abruptly to be followed by a complete, unnatural silence as though someone were holding their breath. ‘Marnie?’ called Luciana softly. ‘Marnie, are you in there?’ There was no reply.

Luciana gave herself a bracing little mental shake and thought better of her impulse to investigate. She was not used to having her heart rent – only broken – and as she turned away she found the sensation as persistent and uncomfortable as indigestion. She walked firmly on towards the main building; towards cocktails and glitter and a four-course dinner, though the echo of the child’s misery remained in her head in the most disconcerting fashion. She found herself stopping and straining her ears to listen long after it would have been possible to hear any but the loudest sound.

Old memories stirred in Luciana of a child long ago who had also been terrified of the dark, but she thrust such intrusions aside, and, like the toads, headed resolutely for bright lights and the enticement of food.

Chapter Two

During the day, at the Old Sugar Plantation, a bar operated by the pool, serving delicious light snacks and salads as well as drinks, but in the evenings exotic cocktails were served in the Great Room, which Stella had furnished with beautiful antique colonial furniture. On the walls there was an impressive display of buy-your-own-ancestor type portraits in heavy gilt frames, their expressionless faces disfigured by cracked varnish. If anyone exclaimed on a likeness to herself or Mike, Stella felt she had arrived. She fluttered from guest to guest in a vivid blue silk jumpsuit, her dark hair tossing about her shoulders. There were those who wondered if Stella’s ancestry was a little more mixed than the bogus Anglo-Saxon family portraits suggested; she had her hair expensively straightened and took care to let it be known that she’d been educated at an exclusive English school. There was talk of well-heeled relations who had lived for generations in Gloucestershire but also of a raven-haired beauty of a Portuguese grandmother – which explained her own dramatic dark colouring.