Will looked at Isabelle, her face buried in a pile of sherbert-coloured silks, pinks and oranges and yellows, eyes closed, inhaling as if she could smell colour. She was wearing a simple white dress, broderie anglaise on the bodice, her brown skin peeping through the holes. Her backside filled the skirt. Isabelle was not one of the fashionable skeletons that clattered and chattered around the exhibition hall. She had tits and arse. She was unambiguously a woman. And, as such, she would remain a business partner, nothing more.

But if that’s all she was, why was Will getting a hard-on in his jeans?

‘Oh Will, look at this!’ said Isabelle, holding up a length of yellow organza, the sort of colour that made you think of lemon sorbets on hot afternoons. ‘It feels wonderful.’ She moulded it against her torso. ‘Look how it falls . . .’

It fell beautifully, hanging from Isabelle’s breasts, skimming her knees. It would look so much better with nothing on underneath . . .

Will blushed, and cleared this throat. ‘Trust you to pick the most expensive one,’he said, sounding gruffer than he intended. ‘You couldn’t have one of the synthetic weaves, could you? Oh no. Princess Isabelle has to have the very finest Italian silk.’

Isabelle looked at him with a question in her eyes, the joy draining from her face.

‘But you’re right, of course,’ said Will, forcing himself to sound upbeat. ‘It’s beautiful. You are beautiful.’ The words slipped out, hung in the air for a moment. Will started scribbling serial numbers in his notebook. Isabelle watched him, her eyebrows drawn together, as if she was trying to work out a complicated bit of mental arithmetic . . .

It was hard, sometimes, not to wonder ‘what if . . . ?’.

Am I being a fool? Am I just another middle-aged, only-just-premenopausal woman, allowing herself to be taken for a ride by an unscrupulous, gold-digging toyboy? Is Joel really interested in me – as he gives a very good impression of being – or does he just want access to my wallet, my lifestyle, my ‘other rich girlfriends’? Am I setting myself up to be a victim? Worst of all, thought Christine, am I making an idiot of myself in the way that Linda does every six months? Will it be me sobbing into a bucket of booze, stuffing my face with comforting bars of Green and Black?

Banishing such thoughts, Christine poured a glassful of white wine into a saucepan, where it sizzled with garlic and onion and oil-coated arborio rice. She stirred gently, savouring the aroma. Joel was due in twenty minutes, and she thought it would create a good impression if she was at the stove, whipping up a simple risotto – delicious, classy, but easily dismissed as ‘Oh, this? It’s nothing, just the sort of supper I have all the time . . .’ She did not want to appear to be making too much of an effort. She did not want him to think that this oh-so-casual dinner invitation, given almost as a throwaway at the end of a training session, accepted in the same light manner, was a big deal.