‘Don’t be like that,’ he said, but his voice was almost obliterated by the sound of the tannoy. ‘Go and enjoy yourself and I’ll do my best to get there. But the taxi queue is about a mile long and—’

‘This is meant to be our special night, Kev, I thought we could use this time to sort through a few things… I should have stayed at work.’

‘We can still make a night of it,’ he said tensely. ‘Or if we can’t, I’ll take you somewhere nice tomorrow. I’d better go – the longer I’m on the phone, the less chance I’ll have in the scrum.’

Sure, it was a Friday night, but she had left work during a double murder investigation, against all her better instincts, and was in half a mind to head back to Southend. After a few days in which she had nearly been beaten up, blown to kingdom come and mown down by a car, it really was the icing on the cake.

‘Why does this always happen?’

‘I said I’m sorry,’ he told her.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she snapped. ‘Just get here.’

She threw the phone down just as another car beeped behind her.

‘Okay,’ she complained over her shoulder. ‘Keep your hair on.’

Accelerating hard, pushing her Spider’s knackered engine to the limit, she turned the radio back on. Dead Or Alive was playing, and usually she wouldn’t be able to resist singing along to ‘You Spin Me Right Round’, but her mood had soured and she switched it off in irritation.

Fifteen minutes later, she pulled up outside the hotel, which looked very grand and historic in its beautiful landscaped grounds, and swung into a parking place.

Sasha pulled her holdall from the boot and went into the large reception hall. A wide staircase with dark banisters snaked upstairs, sinister suits of armour stood guard, and a gallery of sombre seventeenth-century dignitaries stared gravely from huge paintings on the wood-panelled walls. Sasha heard piano music coming from the bar to the right of Reception and saw men in smart suits and women in expensive dresses heading in for pre-dinner cocktails. She felt self-conscious in her M&S trouser suit.

‘I’d like to check in, please,’ she told the man at the front desk.

‘What’s the name?’

‘Sasha Dawson.’

The receptionist’s fingers clacked a keyboard. After an age, he said, ‘Mr and Mrs Dawson, you’re booked into one of our suites.’

‘It’s just me,’ she told him. ‘My husband is caught in London – there’s some kind of problem and no trains are running. It’s a nightmare, apparently.’

‘Really? That’s the first I’ve heard of it.’ The man raised an eyebrow. ‘I just checked in some other guests who’ve come down from London.’

‘Good for them,’ said Sasha shortly, and felt immediately churlish.