‘Oh, that’s great! Thank you, Kat, you are wonderful. Is it still the same address?’

‘Of course. And will you come too? Let’s have dinner after!’

‘I’ll be back in London by then. Ma’s working herself up into a frenzy for the final wedding prep so I need to be around.’

‘I’m sure,’ Katerina said lightly. There was no love lost between the two women, though they kept a civil face on it. ‘Well listen, if you have time for lunch, drinks, coffee, whatever you can manage, call me. I’m dying to see you and hear your news properly.’

‘Well, I’m here on a priority project so I’m rather at the beck and call of the client at the moment but if I possibly can, you know I will.’

‘I know you will, darling.’

Charlotte remembered something suddenly, something which had completely slipped her mind earlier. ‘Oh and by the way, before I forget – there was something else I wondered if you could help me with.’

‘Go on.’

‘I saw a painting in the French Art gallery today. A small oil by Chardin. I wondered if you could find out anything about it – like how it came to be with you? Who sold it and when?’

‘I can certainly try. What is the name of the painting?’

‘Basket of Wild Strawberries.’

‘Okay. Is it important?’

Charlotte bit her lip, holding her voice firm. ‘Only to me.’

Chapter Ten

Marina wasn’t at the apartment but Charlotte found her anyway, by chance, forty minutes later as she was walking towards the address supplied by Mateo’s report. She would have walked straight past the lavateria had it not been for the shouts inside. A man and woman were arguing, the man’s arms thrown up in the air as the woman furiously tore clothes from the drum of the machines and dumped them in her basket. It was sheer luck that Charlotte happened to glimpse Marina bent down behind them, behaving as though nothing untoward was happening as she pulled her own clothes free and stuffed them in her own basket. From the look on her face she was unperturbed by the warring couple beside her, merely rolling her eyes in a bored expression as the man’s waving arms knocked a shirt from her hands and she had to stoop to pick it up again.

Charlotte watched from the distance, seeing the resignation in Marina’s movements; this was the only life she knew: hard, mundane, repetitive, small. It felt almost perverse to Charlotte that she should be standing there, not five metres away, with a letter in her bag offering this woman ten million euros, a one-way ticket out of this.

Marina glanced up, as though sensing Charlotte’s stare, stiffening as she saw that she was indeed being watched. Charlotte instinctively held up her hand in an awkward wave but Marina simply tipped her head quizzically in return and continued pulling her wet clothes from the drum. Had she been expecting Charlotte later?