‘God?’ I repeated.

‘The big man himself.’ He flicked the ash from his cigarette and pointed with the glowing tip, to emphasise each word. ‘They’re super-evangelical, fundamentalist Christians and they run their businesses accordingly. Massively conservative, Bible-thumping types who have certain expectations of their top people.’

‘In terms of personal life?’

‘In terms of everything. They’re doing the pre-signature due diligence checks now, and those bastards are thorough. They make HMRC look like fucking amateurs. They’re going through everything in forensic detail, not just the business and the company projections, but past history going back twenty years, potential staff issues, black sheep in the family, client connections, potential negative headlines, any skeletons in the closet. Needless to say, any hint of a potential new partner shagging around will send all the red flags up in Oklahoma City, that’s for sure.’

‘Would they pull out?’

‘If they find out she’s been playing away from home? Oh, they’ll cut their losses, no question. The slightest sniff of a scandal and it will be goodbye buyout, goodbye payoff. Goodbye eight million quid.’

I took another small sip of the brandy. ‘And Rowan knows this?’

He snorted. ‘Yeah, but she thinks she’s smarter than them.’

‘Then she’s taking an astronomical risk.’

‘That’s my wife for you. Always gung-ho, always the risk-taker.’

‘If it’s true.’

He gave me an exasperated look, as if I’d not been paying attention. ‘Something’s going on. I’m bloody certain of it.’

Creeping back to the bedroom, I climbed into the big four-poster bed and laid my head on the pillow. The air conditioning purred a steady stream of cool air; Sean’s breathing was deep and slow beside me.

I pulled the sheet up to my neck and stared at the ceiling.

Ten months earlier

Ten months earlier

‘This is the year that school gets real.’

Her mum had been saying it all summer. She ignored it: hard work had never been a problem for her. Top 5 per cent since primary school, ever the competitive one. Just like she ignored the sixth-formers who said GCSEs didn’t really count for anything, that getting the top grades didn’t matter, were just a stepping stone to A-levels. That might be true for most people, but not if you wanted to be a doctor. The medical schools did look at your GCSE grades – they looked at everything, to decide who got a place and who didn’t. To make sure you’d not just fluked good A-levels after making a mess of your GCSEs.

And anyway, when her mum said her thing about school ‘getting real’ in Year 11, what she actually meant was ‘This is not the time to get distracted’.

In her mum’s eyes, distracted equalled boys.

Boys will get you side-tracked.

Boys will get you focusing on the wrong things.