She tasted something bitter in her mouth – the taste she always got when she thought about her precarious position, her vulnerability. Nothing was in her name. She’d asked Massimo a hundred times if he would sign over the deeds of the flat to her, or at least put some serious money into a savings account, something for a rainy day – because, come what may, as the mistress of a wealthy Catholic businessman, she was going to be rained on, heavily and at length, sooner or later. And when that wealthy Catholic businessman was married to an equally Catholic wife, the mother of a disabled son who, even in his twenties, needed full-time home care, the rain would be that little bit harder. Every time Victoria raised the subject of divorce or marriage, of settlements and outright gifts, Massimo ducked and dived with his usual charm, showered her with affection and presents, stayed for a few days, making love more energetically than usual, then disappeared again, the questions unanswered, unaddressed. Occasionally, when pressed, he’d say things like ‘It’s all yours, baby . . . It’s all for you . . .’, which made Victoria hope that maybe, after all, he’d made arrangements. But at other times – on rainy days like today, for instance – she was sure that he had not. If it came to a choice, the wife would always win. Mistresses, even as loyal and beautiful as Victoria, were dispensible. A wife was for life.

If only she could do what Adele had done . . . But Adele, as she never tired of reminding Victoria, was the smart one. She’d arrived in London in the seventies, with nothing but a secretarial qualification from a college in Geneva, and supported herself with a string of temporary day jobs while concentrating on her real career in the evenings. This involved dressing up in smart clothes, sitting in expensive bars in Mayfair, trying to appear available without looking like an out-and-out prostitute, until some tired businessman offered to buy her a drink. After several abortive affairs, Adele landed the big catch – the unmarried son of a banking family, who whisked her off to Capri and Cannes, showed her the high life and brought her back to London with a bump – in her tummy. Nine months later, she produced a son and heir to the family fortunes, and made it perfectly clear that her little bundle of joy would be willing to waive his rights as the legitimate inheritor if recompensed with a substantial trust fund which she, his poor wronged mother, would manage. The relevant pieces of paper were signed, and today Adele and her son Hugo, now a strapping twentysomething, lived in the lap of luxury, in a mortgage-free house in Notting Hill that was worth well over ten times what had been paid for it. Her name was on the deeds, her income was protected, and her wise investments (managed by one of her many subsequent lovers) guaranteed for mother and son a comfortable old age.