Victoria collared Massimo as he was leaving the Whitney and about to get into a waiting car. Throughout the reception he had acted as if she was invisible – perhaps he really hadn’t seen her, surrounded as he was by business associates, although, Victoria noticed, his head turned when any pretty woman walked past. Well, she looked better than all of them, of that she was sure. She had not been the mistress of a high-powered garment designer for ten years without learning a thing or two about dressing to impress.

‘Fancy seeing you here,’ she said, blocking his exit to the street. ‘We really must stop meeting like this.’

She watched his eyes, knowing every hidden meaning in those flickering brown depths. Would he simply say ‘excuse me’, and make his escape? Would she see the greenish sparks of anger beneath the contracting black brows?

‘I am going to dinner,’ he said, ‘and then to a party at Diane von Furstenberg’s.’

Much depended on what Victoria said, or did, next. She decided to keep her mouth shut, and to let her coat fall open. The Marchesa did its work, and Massimo’s eyes dipped rapidly to her legs.

‘Would you like to accompany me?’

Antony, once again, had fallen for Cleopatra. She took his proffered arm, and followed him to the car. Perhaps she looked less like marriage material than she might have liked – but at least she was in the back of a chauffeur-driven limousine, with Massimo’s mouth on her neck, and his hand travelling up her thigh to discover – how this would please him – that she was not wearing underwear.

Dinner was dreary, and the party an unpleasant crush, but Massimo remained by her side, whispering obscenities in her ear. He did not say that he had forgiven her for what happened in London, and for all she knew he intended to drop her like a stone when the night was over, but for now, at least, he was hers, and she had every intention of leaving a lasting impression.

‘That girl over there is cute,’ she said, nodding towards a curvaceous twenty-year-old that Massimo had been ogling ever since she walked in the room.

‘She is pretty enough.’

‘Shall I go and talk to her?’ She knew just how much Massimo liked a threesome, and while it was not something she regularly encouraged, the current situation called for extreme measures.

‘If you like her, baby.’

‘I think she’s lovely.’ He was excited by lesbianism, although, as a good Catholic, he was disgusted by it too. ‘Don’t you think we’d look nice together?’