She’d been cool with McCracken all evening, mainly because back in his spacious pad in Didsbury his housekeeper had let it slip that she’d recently arranged the delivery of flowers, balloons and a birthday card to a former flame of his in Saltbridge, Crowley. More fascinating to Charlie, though, was McCracken’s own reaction. He’d seemed unconcerned that she knew, refusing to get into one of those edgy tit-for-tat games she liked to play when trying to wheedle out some truth about his latest infidelity. In fact, throughout the evening, despite the delicious and very expensive meal they’d just eaten, his conversation had been muted, as if his thoughts were somewhere else.

‘I mean, surely it’s only a coincidence that you’ve brought me here?’ Charlie said, fixing him with that cornflower-blue gaze.

‘Uh?’ He glanced up. ‘Charlie, you’ve known for yonks that Redwood’s is my favourite eaterie. No one does steaks like they do here. And I thought you liked it too.’

‘But we’re in Crowley,’ she replied. ‘And so is Saltbridge. Is she perhaps at one of these other tables as we speak, this mysterious lady from your past? Did you bring me here so that she could check out the opposition?’

‘Christ’s sake, Charlie … grow up.’

‘I’m not angry, Frank.’ She leaned back in her chair, adjusting her eye-catching décolletage. ‘I’m just interested to know.’

‘Cora’s not here,’ he said. ‘And she couldn’t hold a candle to you in the glamour stakes, so stop worrying. Look … she was a great lass, but she’s fallen on hard times. Don’t see any harm in helping her out a little.’

‘If that was all it was, I’d agree. But flowers, balloons, a birthday card?’

‘Charlie, it doesn’t mean anything, okay? Me and Cora … we were an item thirty years ago. These days, it’s just platonic.’

‘Oh, so you have been speaking to her then?’

‘My love, just content yourself with the knowledge that it’s a small world, yeah? None of us have any clue what or who is waiting round the next corner.’

‘Very profound.’ She fanned herself with the dessert menu. ‘But my petty jealousies aside, you, Frank McCracken, ought to know better than anyone how unwise it is to get involved with a woman who’s not in the life.’

‘Oh, she’s in the life. Or rather, she used to be. But she got out of it.’

‘She got out of it?’ This was the first thing Charlie had heard about this other woman that genuinely intrigued her. ‘And how did she do that?’

McCracken shrugged. ‘One day she just upped and walked.’

It seemed politic not to mention the fact that this was because Cora had just found out that she was pregnant. Charlie didn’t know that Frank had a daughter, and as far as he was concerned, it was best if she never did.