She took a deep, shaky breath. If she was fired it would be all over the newspapers in five minutes. She had nothing, after all, to lose. ‘A long time ago,’ she said very slowly, ‘I behaved very badly.’

‘Has that got to do with what we’re talking about?’

‘I – I don’t know. I – I’ve been reminded of it lately. I – helped destroy a person.’

‘What, murder?’

She gave a little uncertain laugh. ‘No of course not.’

Bud Martin suddenly stood up. ‘Juliet. We all behave badly, especially people in our business. You just have to learn to live with it. I thought you meant you were a child murderer or something really interesting.’ He didn’t see the look on Juliet’s face as he went to answer the discreet knock he had heard at the door.

Bud returned to the bed with a man wearing jeans and a very nicely cut blue jacket. He was not young, or old, just a pleasant-faced person who could have been on his way to work, or to the movies, or to dinner. He smiled at Juliet, a warm open smile. ‘Hi,’ he said.

‘Now then,’ said Bud Martin. He stared at Juliet for a long moment. ‘We are going to behave very badly but I understand –’ and he flashed her a very quick look ‘– that you like this way of behaving badly.’ The man took some bottles of oil out of the pocket of his jacket, laid them on the table beside the bed, took off his jacket.

Her face was ashen even as a pulse began beating between her legs, even as she felt a rush of moisture there, almost like a pain.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, and the cliché ran round and round in her head I don’t know what you mean I don’t know what you mean.

The man opened the oils on the table by the bed and Juliet watched him. Her whole body ached to be touched, to be soothed. She still sat huddled against the headboard, but her hand, without her knowing it, went to her own shoulder, moved very very gently down her own arm. Bud Martin saw, stood up. ‘That’s my girl,’ he said quietly but she did not hear him.

The man leisurely took off all his clothes except his undershorts. He did not look in the least alarming. He did not have an erection. He was as impersonal as Grover could be when he wanted to be. He opened one of the bottles.

‘Could you take off your clothes please?’ he said pleasantly.

Almost mesmerised, Juliet began to undo the buttons of her silk shirt. ‘Are you going to give me a massage?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Yes,’ said the man.

‘The kind you like,’ said Bud Martin.