But she had fallen in love, after all. Only... but she turned her mind away again, for the hundredth time.

*

‘You can’t be serious!’

Elvira Pugh, crime-writer, ex-wife of Terence Blue, was hardly ever shocked, but she stared at her old friend Pauline Bonham in amazement, saw how she stood very straight, very strong, found herself thinking, My God she is still so beautiful.

‘I am deadly serious Elvira, I was never more serious in my life.’

‘How do you know?’

‘A – little bird told me,’ said Pauline.

‘Terry – impotent! I find that impossible to believe. No, it’s absolutely impossible – he must’ve just been having an off night. Anyway he’s been terribly terribly ill, he nearly died.’

‘This information pre-dates the stabbing,’ said Pauline stubbornly.

Elvira got up from the long polished table in her dining room where the two had been sitting with their coffee as they talked, walked to the window. She stared out through the rain at the gently rolling Berkshire fields that stretched out, it seemed from this window, for eternity. After some moments she looked back at Pauline who was wearing a bright red lipstick and staring at Elvira intently.

‘And you want to use this – information to – bargain with him?’

‘Yes.’

‘To blackmail him?’

‘No, no, that’s not what it is. You misunderstood, or I explained it badly. I want to use it to help him at his trial. But in return he must help me.’

‘But he’ll never agree to such a plan Pauline.’ Elvira actually gave a little laugh. ‘I mean frankly can you imagine Terence agreeing to that?’

‘As a last resort? If he thinks he’ll be convicted?’

‘I think he’d rather go to prison.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Anyway he is totally convinced he’ll get off because he didn’t do it, he says there’s no case to answer.’

‘The pre-trial committal thought there was, you told me.’ Pauline’s voice was cold.

‘I know.’ Elvira turned angrily. ‘Do you know that little shit Simone Taylor had bruises all over her breasts, which were seen by London doctors? Or so she says. Stu got all the American papers for me.’ Stu was Elvira’s present husband who had previously been unhappily married and sometimes couldn’t believe his luck in finding Elvira. He was a very rich farmer and horse-breeder who named members of the Royal Family among his acquaintances and who, when Elvira laughed aloud in bed (as she did sometimes, thinking of a new twist, a new plot for one of her books), laughed too, in his sleep, in sympathy. Elvira loved him deeply.