Since then, they’d done everything, been everywhere together. Leanne got around town on a motorbike – ‘And not just because I’m an unreconstructed dyke,’ she said, ‘it also happens to be quicker than a car’ – and soon had Victoria perched behind her, blonde hair tucked up under a black crash helmet, thighs open around Leanne’s backside. After a few nervous trips around the back streets of Notting Hill, during which Victoria clung on to Leanne’s waist in terror, she learned how to balance, to lean into corners, to keep her hands by her side and to enjoy the freedom and speed.

Leanne took her to art openings, private views and gallery parties – oh, this was a step up from the fashion world! This was real talent, not just the ability to sew a straight seam and bung on a few sequins. These were people who could charge six or seven-figure sums for one-off pieces of work that were neither decorative nor representative, things that you often needed a couple of sheets of A4 to explain. Leanne taught her what to like and what not to like, and Victoria, a fast learner in this as in all that Leanne was teaching her, soon realised that one liked things more the bigger the price tag. Art was a game she could play. Not only did she appreciate it – she had talent. Leanne told her so. Under her tutelage, there was no reason why Victoria shouldn’t become an artist in her own right. How much more satisfying than fashion, where she could screw as many designers and manufacturers as she liked, and still never get her own line.

For the first time in ten years, she was thinking of a future on her own terms – not just about how she could fit in with Rivelli. He’d learn, soon enough, just how much she missed him. The bastard had thrown her over in favour of that stringy old cow of a barrister – well, they were welcome to each other. Let him go. The divorce will go through, I won’t hear from him for a while, perhaps he and Christine will try to make a go of it and then he’ll come sniffing around again. Will I take him back? We’ll see . . .

She had never felt so at peace with herself. Why, if the opportunity came to hurt Rivelli – if she had a chance to use the evidence of his affair with Christine, that she had so painstakingly accumulated through Joel – she wasn’t even sure that she could be bothered. Perhaps it was time to leave the past behind. The art world – Leanne’s world – was the future.

‘Oh shit. You can’t be.’

‘Well I am.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘What do you bloody think I’m going to do about it.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘You said that already.’