‘I’m going to have a shower and change into something more comfortable,’ she said, setting down her glass irritably. ‘My feet are killing me.’

‘Well don’t be long, please. We need to finalize the button-holes. Did you see Pip’s email? There’s been a disaster with the twister roses. Plague of whiteflies apparently, such bad luck. We need to go back to the drawing board . . . She suggested ranunculus,’ her mother called to her retreating back.

Charlotte raised a feeble hand in acknowledgement and climbed up the stairs, her mother’s crystal tones still wafting enquiringly behind her. Happy Ever After came at a high price.

Madrid

‘I feel like I’m going mad.’ Lucy Santos’s pretty plumped mouth settled into a bitter line. ‘No one in this house speaks English. Not her.’ She nodded towards the housekeeper polishing a juicer. ‘Nor her.’ She nodded towards the nanny, playing with her four-year-old in the garden. ‘Rob said it didn’t matter, that it was a good thing because it forces Leo to speak Spanish, but if there’s anything important I need to communicate, I have to get Rob to say it when he gets in.’

Charlotte frowned, she had distinctly overheard the house-keeper speaking in English on the phone when she had popped to the loo earlier. ‘First off, fire the housekeeper and get one who does speak English. Secondly, have you started the Spanish lessons we discussed?’

Lucy snorted. ‘For all the good it’s doing me. Hola. Que tal. That’s about it.’

‘Keep at it. You’ll be surprised what a difference it makes, being able to understand and be understood.’

Lucy’s gaze flickered to her resentfully. ‘I bet you’re fluent.’

There was judgement in the pronouncement; defensiveness; insecurity. ‘I came here a lot as a child, which helped, and I did do a Spanish module at university,’ Charlotte conceded.

‘Let me guess – Oxford.’

‘Cambridge,’ Charlotte shrugged. ‘But don’t assume that means anything. I got a third.’

Lucy’s eyes twinkled with delight. ‘Seriously?’

‘Having too much of a good time, I’m afraid.’ Charlotte gave a secretive smile.

The admission made Lucy relax somewhat. ‘Well it obviously didn’t hold you back. Look at you now: wealth counsellor for a fancy private bank. Who even knew that was a thing?’

‘Trust me, for as long as there’s money in this world, there’ll be people who need me. Money is like beauty: a blessing and a curse; people think it’s the answer to everything but it destroys as many lives as it saves. Any rich person will tell you that money is a prison.’

‘Ain’t it just,’ Lucy muttered under her breath. She was curled up and almost lost from view on one of the vast cream leather sofas. Absolutely tiny, her five-foot-one frame was gym-whittled and elevated by cork wedges, her long balayaged caramel hair giving another inch of height. An enormous aquamarine ring kept glinting on her finger, and the rips on her sprayed-on jeans were so numerous as to suggest she’d been attacked by wolves.