After all her years in the legal profession, Christine was not a woman to count her chickens until they were hatched, fledged and pecking around the farmyard – but, in this case, she felt a reasonable degree of confidence that, barring disasters and prison breaks, she and her family could look forward to a peaceful, prosperous and Rivelli-free future.

If he cosies up to me one more time I am going to scream . . .

It was weird being here, playing happy families, everyone so welcoming and accepting when not so long ago Victoria would have done anything in her power to drag Christine and her family into the gutter. But now they were all friends, just because she had the baby, who only had to wave his fat hands and gurgle in order to secure a roof over his head, food in his belly and the promise of a prosperous future. Of course she couldn’t turn any of it down – and they had been kind, all of them, without ever deliberately humiliating her. Putting up with Ben’s over-familiarity was a small price to pay. She wasn’t stupid; she’d tolerated worse things in order to keep herself housed, fed and decently shod. But this – gathering in a sunny Highgate kitchen with champange, daffodils and birdsong to toast the success of a woman who, only a little over a year ago, she had regarded as her most deadly enemy was . . . creepy.

A woman with whom she had shared not one but two lovers . . .

A woman who had given birth to the man who had fathered her child . . .

A woman in whose ex-husband’s Docklands flat she and Felix were now living . . .

It had been managed so tactfully. John Ferguson made all the proposals, in the most discreet way imaginable, over lunch, you understand, not in his office – this was a friendly arrangement, not a business deal, nothing legal about it. Victoria had been glad of the free meal – glad to get Felix out of the damp, noisy flat in Hackney, the nightmare of benefits, the banging of feet on the stairs, the mysterious rings on the doorbell in the middle of the night.

‘The thing is,’ said John, ‘there’s an empty flat in Docklands, the owner has gone abroad, the mortgage is paid off and the bills and service charges and so on are all taken care of . . .’

All taken care of . . .

The words made Victoria feel as if she was slipping into a hot, scented bath.

‘And it would just make so much more sense if you moved in there, at least until you’ve got yourself sorted out.’

Which will be never.