They’d come here once on holiday, when the kids were quite small, staying in a villa that belonged to a client of Andy’s, a lovely place up in the hills with a pool. The children adored it, splashing around all day, playing with some French kids from the villa next door, ending up brown as berries and bilingual. Christine and Andy spent the days sleeping, reading, shopping and eating. It all seemed wonderful at the time. She knew now, of course, that he’d been unfaithful to her even then – possibly, almost certainly, with someone connected to that very job. His client’s wife, perhaps? His daughter? Or another architect? Someone from the surveyor’s department? Who knew? Where there were women, there was danger.

And he hadn’t changed, apparently. If what Isabelle had oh-so-casually let slip was true, Andy was still making a fool of her, even now, after the divorce. All that bullshit about trying again, putting the past behind them – which she had been stupid enough to fall for, duped yet again by the fact that there was a man in her bed making love to her – it had all been lies. Of course it was lies. They always lie, all of them. Andy, Joel, Rivelli, they all used her, lied to her, kept her quiet with flattery and sex and then, once they’d lulled her into a false sense of security, wham! Out went the rug from under her feet, down came the hammer on the same old bruise, smash went the delicate crystal fantasy that she’d been constructing in her head.

Perhaps this whole crazy pilgrimage to France was some weird act of revenge. But if that was true, it wasn’t just revenge on Rivelli that interested her. It was revenge on the whole bloody pack of them. She would put Rivelli behind bars, she would put Andy behind her, she’d do her time in Siberia and then, when the briefs started coming in again, she would dedicate the rest of her life to bringing down vengeance on every erring bastard of a husband who thought he could get away with taking his wife for a ride. So what if they weren’t the high-profile, highly paid cases that would buy a luxury lifestyle and get her silk before she was fifty? She wasn’t interested in all that any more.

She was a woman with a mission, and this was just the beginning. Now there was no stopping her.

Except, that is, for the traffic around Nice, which showed no sign of moving.

‘Surprised to see me?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming out?” I wanted to show you that I wasn’t just sitting on my arse all day while you were at work. I was going to auditions, and I got a job.’ He held out his hands. ‘And here I am.’

‘Yeah – but porn . . . Are you sure?’