Harlan’s attitude was so relaxed, so in charge. He looked her way and half-smiled, and she felt a shiver go right through her.

‘It suits him,’ she said. ‘Them being gone. Out of the way.’

‘Don’t let him hear you say that,’ Nipper said, giving her a steely-eyed look.

‘I’m not scared of him,’ said Belle. She nodded toward Ludo, who was lounging against the wall beside the door. ‘Or any of you pet apes he likes to hang around with.’

Then she thought of Harlan chasing her down the road in his Porsche, and his parting words to her, and suddenly she wasn’t so sure.

‘Well,’ said Nipper, standing up, ‘you fucking well ought to be.’

95

Milly sat on the bed up in her room, listening to the roar of conversation from the guests downstairs and glad to be up here, away from it. Away from the necessity to be polite, to play hostess. Because she guessed she was the hostess now.

Now that Mum was gone.

Milly gulped and blinked back tears. She felt scoured out, empty, finished. She sat there, slumped, and looked at the black bin bags stacked up high against the far wall of her bedroom.

Nula’s things.

Her designer dresses. Her furs. Her jewellery. Her make-up. Harlan had sent that dead-eyed creep Ludo upstairs yesterday and the bastard had bagged all her mother’s gear up and stuffed it in here.

‘You’ll want to go through all this, won’t you,’ Harlan had said to Milly. ‘See if there’s anything you want to keep? I might hold on to some of Dad’s pieces, there’s a few designer bits I like, but most of the stuff’s too loud for my taste,’ he said. ‘I’m taking over the master suite, anyway. The boys’ll move my stuff in there.’

Rotten bastard, she thought, but didn’t dare say it.

Now she wearily got to her feet and went over to the pile of bags. Her mother’s stuff. Crying, she opened the first. Such beautiful gowns. Sequinned and hand-stitched and worth a small fortune. And – oh God – here was the pastel blue shift Nula had been wearing the day before she’d left for the Med with Dad for their pre-anniversary cruise. The last time Milly had seen her alive.

Milly clutched at the silky fabric, brought it to her nose, inhaled Je Reviens, Nula’s signature scent. Sobbing, she dropped it back into the bag. Oh Christ. Oh Mum.