‘Oh, you know – busy. Travelling a lot, here, there, everywhere.’

‘Yes, I have heard you are much in demand these days. Your name has come up at some dinners recently.’

‘Oh? Should my ears be burning?’

‘Always!’ Katerina laughed. ‘It is only good things of course.’ The circles Katerina moved in were richly bohemian in mix and her dinner parties were legendary, placing ambassadors next to burlesque dancers, next to teachers . . . Charlotte’s father had known her before he met her mother, back when he was a jet-setting bachelor, and Charlotte had often suspected they had been more than friends, at least for a while. She suspected her mother sensed it too, for she had always disapproved of what she called Katerina’s ‘high spirits’ and had firmly vetoed her father’s suggestion that she be Charlotte’s godmother. ‘I’m so sorry I cannot make your wedding next week. But tell me, what happened to the handsome devil that was your first husband?’

‘Oh, I’m afraid we divorced a long time ago.’

‘But, darling, why? He was the most beautiful creature I ever saw.’

‘Good looks were about all he had going for him.’

‘Tch, looks are underrated, if you ask me. All everyone seems to care about these days is personality and sense of humour. A man that makes you melt, now that’s where real happiness lies.’ She cackled away; her love of good-looking younger men unabashed and well documented. ‘Besides, I was still hoping you might convince him to sit for my students.’

As well as heading up the Neo-Classical Art division at the Prado, Katerina also ran small but very highly regarded life-drawing classes in the loft of her sprawling home; and it was almost impossible to get in – Katerina’s policy was one out, one in, prompting people to remark in only half-joking tones that they’d happily kill for a place.

Charlotte cracked a smile at the thought of the wayward Rt Hon. Julian Fairfax sitting for her – not because of the stripping off, he was wildly uninhibited, but of him sitting motionless for three hours. Three minutes would be their lot. ‘I’d let that one go,’ she grinned. ‘Unless perhaps you gave him a sedative first.’

‘Don’t put it past me, darling.’

Charlotte laughed. ‘Actually, it’s your classes I wanted to talk to you about. I have a client who’s new to Madrid and she’s really struggling. I’m keen to get her back into painting again, it was her great passion but she gave up for the sake of her husband’s career; I think it would really help give her some focus and get her in with some like-minded souls.’

‘Uh-oh,’ Katerina murmured, knowing exactly where she was going with it.

‘I know it’s a total long shot, but I don’t suppose you’ve any spaces?’

‘Ha! As if! My God. Picasso himself would have to wait.’

‘Oh.’

There was a half-pause and then a sigh as though she was acting against her better instincts. ‘But for you, darling, anything. You know what your father was to me. I would deny him – and you – nothing. Tell her to come to the studio the day after tomorrow, eight o’clock.’