‘Pretty good, man,’ said Marco, stepping out of bed stark naked and making for the shower.

‘Shall I come back later?’

‘What’s the time?’

‘Nearly ten.’

‘Oh Christ . . .’

‘We were supposed to have a meeting at nine, in case you’d forgotten, but under the circs I can hardly blame you. He’s gorgeous.’

‘You know him?’

‘Yeah . . . You don’t? He’s kind of famous.’

‘What for? Fucking? He deserves an Oscar for that.’

‘Lucky cow. Actually, he’s a dancer. Tell me you know that.’

Isabelle was giggling, and buried her face in the duvet.

‘You were having a good time last night, Princess. You weren’t by any chance on drugs, were you?’

‘Is my mother paying you to spy on me?’

‘Absolutely. Well?’

‘Of course I wasn’t, dickhead. What about you? Where did you disappear to?’

‘A club in the Village.’

‘Oh, “a club in the Village” was it? And did you catch his name?’

‘I certainly did. And I hope that’s all I caught as well.’

‘You are disgusting.’ She sat up. ‘Now close your eyes while I find a dressing gown.’

‘Come on, I’ve seen it all before.’

‘That’s as may be, but I’m famous now, so you can bloody well do as I say.’ She was only half joking. ‘Right. That’s better. You can turn around now.’

‘Thank you, Superstar. Now, while you were on your back, some of us have been up since crack of, talking to London.’

‘Everything all right?’

‘Very much so. You’ve been in the papers again.’

‘Not falling out of clubs with Jessica Rodean, please.’

‘No. They’re reporting you as a local girl made good, actually. The talk of the New York fashion scene and so on. They’ll go mad when they hear about last night.’

‘They won’t hear about last night.’

‘Oh, I think they will, darling. The place was full of press. That was rather the point of it all. I thought you knew.’

‘Yeah, right, of course,’ said Isabelle, who naively thought that a VIP area was for VIPs. ‘What else?’

‘Fax from Dan Parker.’

‘Oh.’ Isabelle wrapped the dressing gown a little more tightly around herself. ‘How is Dan?’

‘It wasn’t a social fax, I’m afraid. Just a long list of sales figures.’

‘All good?’

‘All very good. Not least because it means that we’ve got Rivelli over a barrel.’

‘How so?’

‘If he doesn’t pay us the money that he owes, we won’t send on the order books. Simple, really.’

‘You surely don’t think that we can hold someone like Rivelli to ransom, do you?’

‘I’d say that’s exactly what we can do. You don’t seem to comprehend just how famous you’re becoming. The balance is tipping. It’s now about how much people need us, not how much we need them.’

‘Hmmm . . . Nice to be wanted, isn’t it?’