Arthur left, and shortly after, Douglas came into the dining room. He moved around the table and sat on the other side facing Evie. He looked haggard. There was a couple of days worth of stubble on his face, his hair was unkempt and there were dark rings under his eyes. He seemed to have lost weight and his face was gaunt and pallid despite his sun-tanned skin. Evie waited for him to speak.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t have had to walk in on … that.’

‘So if I hadn’t seen you, it would be fine? As long as I didn’t know about your dirty little love nest? As long as I hadn’t interrupted what you were up to? If I had sent you a telegram to warn you that I was coming to visit you could have hidden her away and it would have been all right, would it?’

‘When you walked in I’d just told her she couldn’t stay any longer. That we were finished.’

Evie snorted. ‘Yes, it looked like it. A perfectly normal way to end a relationship – make love all day long then, while she’s giving you a massage, tell her to pack her bags.’

‘It wasn’t a relationship. She was my housekeeper. And we hadn’t been making love.’

‘Shut up, Doug. I don’t want to hear any more. You disgust me.’

‘But that’s it. It was just sex. It didn’t mean anything. And when you walked in I’d already told her it was over. It was only a massage. It didn’t mean a thing. None of it meant anything.’

Evie snorted in derision, got up from the table and was about to move towards the door.

He leaned across and gripped her arm, holding her back. ‘Please hear me out, Evie. I beg you.’

She shook her arm free of his hold. ‘I don’t understand you at all. I feel polluted just listening to this.’

‘It started after Felicity and I parted.’

For a moment Evie thought she’d misheard. ‘Parted?’

‘My marriage to Felicity was the biggest mistake of my life.’ He shook his head rapidly and added, ‘No the second biggest. The biggest was what has just happened.’

His words shocked Evie. ‘Go on,’ she said, curious to hear about Felicity – even though she knew it would make no difference to the final outcome.

‘I was besotted with Felicity. She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen and I believed I was in love with her. But once we were married I soon discovered she was mean-spirited, always finding fault in everything and everyone. Joyless. From the early days of our marriage she denied me her bed whenever she could. It felt like a miracle to me when we found out she was expecting Jasmine. I’d hoped that Penang would have been a new start for us but it was Felicity’s idea of hell. She hated the place and hated being pregnant. The birth was difficult and she showed no affection towards the baby and wanted little or nothing do with her. She made no secret of her contempt for me.’