Now he was living a different life. He regularly attended charity events, kept up the pretence of being a legitimate businessman. In evening dress, him and Nula went everywhere in high society, to the royal enclosure at Ascot, the masked ball at Versailles, where once the Sun King Louis had reigned. Now Charlie Stone held court there, drinking Cristal champagne and eating beluga caviar. He attended the carnival in Venice, his costume – and Nula’s – extravagant in the extreme, their masks trimmed with gold thread.

They took luxurious breaks in Cap d’Antibes at the summer home of their Colombian associate, Javier. He had an exclusive and breathtakingly beautiful seafront villa there and treated them as his honoured guests to lavish lunches and trips over to Monte Carlo, where his superyacht was moored up in the bay.

‘This is a bit of me, all this,’ Charlie said when he was laid out on the sun deck of Javier’s yacht. But inside, he was starting to wonder if it really was.

Charlie was over the moon that Nula was pregnant again. Lady Luck was smiling down on him. He could have his longed-for son. Oh, he had Harlan, but Harlan was adopted. This boy would be his own flesh and blood, and a carefree life in the country was what every kid should have, he really believed that.

So for now? He was staying put.

41

It was another hellish pregnancy. Low already, shocked to the core by what Jill had told her about Charlie, Nula plunged into carrying the baby and her moods were unfailingly dark. Only her journals gave some relief while she carried the child; she wrote in them almost manically, jotting everything down. She had to come off the tranquillizers she routinely took because of the baby.

Her moods sank lower, and lower. This time, she was convinced, whatever the consultant said, she was going to die. She was sick, horribly sick, for most of this pregnancy; it was far worse than it had been with Milly and travelling around with Charlie was no help because every day she longed to say to him, I know what you did, you bastard. But she couldn’t say it. Didn’t dare.

She felt like a bloated Zeppelin, engorged while this alien thing grew inside her, robbing her of vitality, cheating her of life.

She was going to die.

She knew it.

But then, when her waters broke and finally the day came and she was transported to the hospital to give birth – and Charlie wasn’t there, again, as per fucking usual – it all went like clockwork. Four hours after she hit the maternity ward, their son was born. Her precious baby boy, her beloved baby Jake.

42

‘That’s it then, yeah? No more after this,’ said Charlie. Finally he’d pitched up at her bedside and now he held his newborn son in his arms.