Ten minutes later, she was clambering up the hill behind the hotel. Even in her enthusiasm to get to the olive grove and back in time for dinner, she couldn’t help noticing how amazingly beautiful it was tonight. The sea had a phosphorescent shimmer about it, making it almost green rather than blue, the colour of Murano glass, and the faintest mist blurred the horizon. The sun was sinking fast in the sky.

She quickened her steps, almost colliding with Juno the goat.

‘Bloody animal!’ She rubbed the ankle she had slightly twisted trying to avoid her. ‘Why do you like me so much? Do I have a scent of male goat about me?’

She stroked the rough fur on Juno’s neck, and Juno rubbed against her enthusiastically.

‘Look, Juno, I am Pandora Perkins, the scariest PR in London, and I am not, I repeat not, a goat, either male or female. Now move!’

Juno refused to budge a centimetre, while Dora’s shoulders sagged as she thought how inappropriate her ‘scariest PR’ tag sounded now. Who did she scare these days? Who did she even represent? She had become far too involved with the career of Venus Green, and her other clients had quietly dropped off. She’d always worked solo anyway and now she wasn’t working at all. The impact of that suddenly hit her like a speeding train and she had to sit down, which Juno took as encouragement to come and playfully butt her.

Dora had her own flat and some savings; not that much, but some. A few years ago she might have sold her business. She’d even had offers. But that was hardly going to happen now.

She found she’d arrived in the olive grove, and stared round her. Something seemed different, although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. She breathed in deeply. No scent of myrtle tonight. That was rather a relief.

She picked her way through the trees towards the tumbledown house that had belonged to old Yannis.

And then she realized.

The unusual marble bench that had been here last time she’d visited – the one she’d sat on with Ariadne – had gone.

Suddenly breathing fast, Dora got out her phone and looked at the photograph of the missing Aphrodite. The figure was reclining on a couch that was incredibly similar to the missing bench. Could the figure of the goddess have been split from the marble section she was lying on? Both sections would be immensely heavy. Or had Xan found the statue in two parts and, perhaps unable to move either unaided, hidden one part by leaving it in plain sight until he could think of a way of removing it?