Feeling safer, knowing that if nothing else, she could at least duck, she slid her eyes towards the woman. She was sitting up now, quite awake, perched on the front of the chair with her knees pressed together and watching Effie with an expression of bafflement; she seemed completely unperturbed by the big cat sitting, panting, beside her. Her dark hair was styled in primped waves that scalloped around her doll-like face and she was wearing a mustard knitted jacket and skirt, with a knitted striped camisole and strings of luminous white beads around her neck. Effie had never seen anyone who looked quite like her before. She had an air of careless elegance about her.

‘My name’s Sibyl, Sibyl Wainwright, but all my friends call me Sid.’

‘Sid?’

‘It’s cuckoo, I know, but my father did so want a son. It was no secret, poor Papa; at least this way one could oblige.’

‘Oh.’ Effie could relate to that.

The woman was smiling expectantly and Effie realized an introduction was expected from her too. ‘I’m Euphemia Gillies, but everyone calls me Effie.’

‘How do you do. I say, are you just back from France?’

‘France?’ Effie was struggling to keep up with this woman’s conversation, the threads picking up and being left off at odd tangents.

‘I’m just back from there myself. We went for a quick blast on Dickie Grainger’s new yacht. He’s devilishly pleased with it, though I can’t say I blame him. It is rather sweet and I find I colour so much more easily on the water . . .’

Effie was almost able to forget there was a cheetah sitting next to this woman as she chattered aimlessly.

‘You’ve got such a wicked tan. It’s all well and good getting out of our corsets and buying Madame Chanel’s clothes,’ she said, pinching lightly at her skirt, ‘but I think it’s the suntan that’s really pip. So where do you go?’

‘Go?’

‘In France? I’m not really given to the Atlantic coast personally. Deauville’s just a little too breezy for me and Île de Ré’s wretched to get to without your own ketch. Parts of Provence are rather sweet though. Don’t you think the smell of lavender in the air is just divine?’

‘Divine?’ A voice from the other side of the door echoed and in the next moment it was opened. ‘Good Lord, Sid, what on earth are you doing in h—?’

Sholto walked in, the words dropping from him like birds shot from the sky as he saw Effie standing there, half hidden by a chair.