Restless, her head spinning as she tried to figure it out, she paced the floor, stopping to stare out the window. She couldn’t sit around doing nothing; finding out how Oliver got her address would be a start.

The invoice from the hotel was in her handbag. So were scraps of paper and receipts from what seemed like hundreds of things. In frustration, she upended the bag on the table to search among the detritus, finding the invoice and smoothing it out to read the phone number.

She picked up the house phone and rang, tapping the table nervously as she waited. ‘Hello,’ she said, ‘My name is Molly Chatwell, I’d like to speak to a manager, please.’ Go straight to the top, it often worked.

She was holding on for a few minutes before a softly spoken voice said, ‘This is Sylvia Reekie. I’m the duty manager, how may I help?’

A blend of truth and lies was the best approach. ‘I was staying in your hotel over the weekend and I met someone… someone new… just briefly. There was no exchange of names or addresses and yet this person subsequently turned up on my doorstep here in London. I was wondering if there was any possibility he might have obtained my address from one of your staff.’

The softly spoken voice held an air of righteousness when it replied. ‘We would never give that information out, Ms Chatwell, it is against our policy. We take an extremely serious approach to customer safety and that includes personal details.’

‘But if he’d asked one of the junior staff, a waiter or gardener, say?’

There was the sound of an indrawn breath before the manager replied. This time there was steel behind the softness. ‘Every one of our staff receives the same training regarding client privacy. Is this a legal matter, Ms Chatwell? Something we here at Semington House should be concerned about?’

How far were the police going to follow up what Molly had told them? ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t really know the answer to that. Not yet anyway.’ She hung up without another word and sat staring at the phone. She needed someone to talk to. Rebecca would have been her first choice, the way she often had been over the years. Molly had spoken to her a couple of times since she’d left but it wasn’t quite the same. She still felt like a traitor for letting her go.

She checked the time. Almost nine. Petra would be on her way to work. Work! Molly dialled her office, put on a throaty voice and said she wouldn’t be in, hanging up on the words of sympathy.