The man who owned the discreet boat moored on a little-known tributary of the Thames made a great deal of money from rich Americans. The name of the boat was Rose II but the rich Americans, passing the information about the boat amongst themselves, called it The Little Love Boat.

Bud Martin, the Oscar-winning American film director, and Waylon Jones, a less successful American television director, had both been working in London. Yesterday they had hired the discreet boat for two days and would have one more meal on board later before Bud flew back from London to Los Angeles that evening. They had both brought young girls along: the girls, tanned and lithe and, of course, beautiful, lay on the deck in their bikinis and dark glasses in the hot afternoon sunshine.

The men had not seen each other for many years. They had come across each other in a restaurant in London; had spent most of yesterday, when they arrived on board, locked in the cabins with the large beds and the mirrors on the ceilings and the girls. Now the two men sat in the shade on the other side of the deck from the girls, talked, drank chilled white burgundy; the girls were out of earshot. The boat moved gently in the water, sometimes pulled a little against a rope; this was a secret part of the river: only long, dry grass almost as far as the eye could see. A waiter stood at the stern of the boat, staring at the water.

The men talked of Harvard where they’d first met, and their youth, as well as business; each had noticed the other was going bald. They stretched their brown Californian legs out in front of them, looked across sometimes at the young girls, lying there. They were both the same age: sixty-one.

‘Had dinner with Joseph Wain this week,’ said Bud Martin. ‘Remember him?’

‘One of the Heads of British Commercial Television, right?’

‘Yeah. Spent some time at CBS, got a lot of British programmes shown in America in the eighties.’

‘Joseph Wain? Have I met him?’ And then Waylon laughed suddenly. ‘The one with the hair?’

Bud leaned back and stretched. ‘Yeah that’s him. Surprised hair I remember the office girls in CBS used to call it. He’s cut it off now, looks much like the rest of us.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Says he’s working on the most exciting television project he’s ever come across. He was a bit cagey, wouldn’t tell me too much about it except to say it’s international.’

‘What, pre-sold to the States?’

‘No, I think he was talking much bigger. Pre-sold to the world.’

‘What, before it’s made?’

‘He says.’

‘Lucky motherfucker.’

‘He says it’s the first time he’s had people begging to give money.’

‘Jesus, who’s in it? Princess Diana?’

‘He said he was hoping for Nelson Mandela.’

‘What?’