Perhaps one day, she’d have to go down the Botox route, like so many of her girlfriends already had, but at present she knew she looked younger than her thirty-eight years.

She put her head round the drawing room door to make sure the fire was still burning merrily in the grate, then wandered back to the kitchen and decided to treat herself to a glass of wine while she waited. Julian had said he should arrive sometime after seven, so, seeing that everything was done, she felt she deserved a drink.

Angelina took her wine back into the drawing room and sat on a corner of the deep sofa, careful not to crease the cushion behind her. She straightened the pile of House and Garden magazines that lay on the highly polished coffee table and looked round the room with a feeling of pride.

Everyone who came to the house remarked on what a glorious room it was. Even though it was large, she’d managed to make it feel cosy and warm. In fact, she’d had so many compliments on the way she’d decorated the house, she’d decided she might try it professionally. She was going to take a part-time interior design course in the summer – not that she expected it could teach her anything about interiors she didn’t already know, but because she felt it was important to potential customers that she’d had some kind of official training.

One of her girlfriends had already offered her a commission to do up a holiday cottage she’d just bought as an investment, and Angelina was looking forward to pottering around antique shops and choosing curtain material.

Especially now Rory was boarding during the week and Julian was never back home until later, if he stayed at all. It would give her something both enjoyable and financially rewarding to fill her days.

Angelina sipped her wine contentedly and allowed herself a smile at the way her life had worked out. A beautiful home, a child, and a wealthy, successful man to share her life with.

They needed to be circumspect at the moment. It would not be politic for either her reputation or Julian’s career if others found out she’d been having an affair with a lawyer who might not have represented her, but had advised her over the difficult circumstances surrounding her divorce.

But even that had worked out well. Angelina had been on the verge of telling David she was leaving him to be with Julian, just as David had lost his job, and the plot, and attacked her.

She’d called Julian, terrified, after the police had taken David away. He had taken control.

He’d suggested Angelina charge David with assault. She’d been uncomfortable about it, given the fact that she understood why David was so furious that night, but as Julian had pointed out, it was a great reason to petition him for divorce and keep her reputation intact at the same time.

The talk in the social circles both she and Julian mixed in would not be of ‘poor old David’, left by a wife he adored for another man, but sympathy for Angelina, a battered wife, married to a violent alcoholic. And she, for her own and her son’s protection, had no choice but to divorce him.