‘Not if you lie.’ He flopped back onto the sofa and closed his eyes. ‘And it’s worse than that anyway.’

‘Why?’ I looked down at the envelope. ‘What’s in here?’

He didn’t answer; didn’t open his eyes.

I resisted the urge to say, ‘Another woman?’ Instead, I opened the envelope and slid the sheets out. Photographs of Marcus, down a side alley somewhere I vaguely recognised. Following a man, going in a door.

Underneath the picture: a photocopy of a bank statement.

An electronic payment from Marcus’s personal savings account into that of a G. A. Chattel; an eye-watering sum.

‘Who is G. A. Chattel? And why the hell were you paying this much?’ It was a jaw-dropping amount, including many zeros.

‘G. A. Chattel doesn’t actually exist, Nella, as it turns out. Stupid twat that I am, I really thought that bloke in the picture was someone called Chattel, a Mail journalist, who wanted to interview me.’

‘Right.’ I felt remarkably calm, all things considered. ‘But?’

‘It was a set-up. Chattel is actually a freelancer called Sid Wright – who just happens to be writing a huge exposé on old families who made their fortunes in the slave trade. Selling – chattel.’ He slapped his own forehead with his hand. ‘What a fucking fool!’

‘But’ – I shook my head as if I was confused – ‘your dad was an electrician.’

Who I’d never met. Both his parents had died before we’d been introduced by a friend of my old flatmate – Rebekah – in a Chelsea nightclub, on my twenty-sixth birthday. Marcus: a young City trader, hungry to prove himself in his own right, still dropping his aitches at that stage and watching too much football. He was quite – exotic, I thought, back then. Handsome – and sexy because he was, frankly, a nice bit of rough.

‘Yeah, he was. An electrician – whose great-great-granddad was a prolific slave trader.’

‘What?’ I stared at him.

‘It’s complicated.’ Marcus shut his eyes again.

‘So you’re saying,’ I could hear myself talking very slowly, ‘you’re saying that your family – they made money from the slave trade?’

‘Yep. A lot of money, I’m afraid.’

All this time he’d portrayed himself to me as a true working-class hero, a man made good – though he didn’t make it obvious to our crowd. Someone who – with the help of the free market – had managed to climb up in the world. And all this time, it seemed his family of origin might have been of better social standing than my own.

‘Not that I ever saw any of it.’ His eyes snapped open again. ‘Louisa’s family disowned her when she ran off with a gardener from the local village.’

‘How frightfully Lady Chatterley,’ I said drily. ‘And who is this Louisa?’

‘My great-grandmother on my father’s side, died long before I was born. And she was the granddaughter of Tobias Cleland.’

‘So?’ It still didn’t tell me what I needed to hear.