‘I waited for your brother, Clotilde. I waited for him the next day. I had put on my very best dress, a shower of stars around my eyes, roses in my hair. I waited for him all night. I wanted him to be my first. Your brother, and no one else. So I waited beneath the stars until they went out one by one When the last one had faded, I thought he was an utter bastard and I went to bed feeling nothing but contempt for the male of the species. The next morning, at dawn, I found out. The accident … The unthinkable …’ The crimson nails sank into her hand, but Clotilde didn’t draw back. ‘I swear, Clotilde, I swear, every time I make love, and God knows it happens often enough with all kinds of men, I never forget to think of your brother. If I was a writer, I think it would be a dedication, or something like that. Yes, Clotilde, I never forget to dedicate to him that “little death” that he never knew. Which I had refused him, out of defiance, out of stupidity. And perhaps even today, if I seldom say no, even to the most awful jerks, if I rarely wake up next to my conquest of the night before, it’s so that Nicolas will forgive me.’

Maria-Chjara went on sobbing as she spoke, but Clotilde had stopped listening. Her brain was concentrating only on certain truths.

Maria-Chjara wasn’t lying, that much was obvious.

So Cervone had made it all up.

But why?

Out of jealousy? Out of spite?

Or was Cervone’s game simpler than that? She had only to connect two facts: Cervone had made up the story of an accident to explain the damage to the Fuego’s steering. But Sergeant Cesareu Garcia was unequivocal: the bolt had been tampered with, the steering rod had snapped, and the policeman hadn’t mentioned a twisted steering column. He had talked about sabotage. Who could have an interest in lying about the cause of her parents’ accident but the saboteur himself?

Maria-Chjara got to her feet and smiled as she looked at the disaster in the mirror.

‘With only a few minutes to go before the concert, it’s going to be difficult to paint a new masterpiece.’ She put out her tongue at her reflection. ‘They don’t care anyway, they don’t come to see me for my beautiful eyes.’

With the skill of one accustomed to performing the gesture on a daily basis, her fingers deftly removed her bra while her other hand plucked her white bikini from the clothes-rail.

‘According to clause 1 of my contract, I am to dive into the pool precisely at the end of the second verse of “Boys Boys Boys”, wearing a bikini. According to paragraph a) of clause 1: a bikini size 36 C.’