And the good-natured, big-hearted giant steeled himself to feel even worse the following day.

Chapter 19

‘Well, this is a bit more like it.’ Bella smiled across the white-linen-clad, ice-bucketed table and raised her wine glass at Andy. ‘Cheers, my darling!’

‘Cheers, my darling too. In fact, I should probably say, salut, santé and bonnes vacances!’

Andy’s brilliant scoop being published had coincided with Bella finishing the painting she had been working on for the last couple of months: a portrait of a very rich socialite’s very spoilt cat, sitting on a pink velvet cushion. Bella had loved the cat – an adorable tabby whose parentage had to have been all over the place – and had done justice both to her tawny colours, she’d thought, and to her exceptionally pretty and equally tawny eyes. The socialite (a charming man of a certain age who dabbled in antiques and would have been called a confirmed bachelor in different times) had loved the painting so much that he had given Bella a couple of grand extra, just for ‘seeing the real Mimi’.

Never terribly practical when it came to money, Bella had made a spontaneous decision to blow it on a dirty weekend in Paris to celebrate Andy’s scoop. So here they were, sitting outside a bustling bistro on the rue Soufflot, just south of the Panthéon, in the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank. (Left Bank, or Rive Gauche, always made Bella think of the perfume her mother used to wear in the seventies.)

Paris was enjoying an Indian summer, so she was able to wear one of her favourite frocks – a sixties-inspired pale pink sleeveless A-line minidress that showed off her legs and skimmed over her tummy. Which was just as well, as she was planning to make the most of all the yummy French food over the next couple of days. The diet could start again on Monday.

‘Oh, this weather is so gorgeous,’ she said happily, feeling the sun hot on her bare arms. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a misery guts all summer – I think this is what I’ve been missing!’

‘You can stop apologizing now.’ Andy smiled. ‘Yes, you’ve been a complete pain in the arse, but I did neglect you, so we’re probably quits …’

‘It was certainly worth you neglecting me to expose that repulsive Lubanov character. I’m so proud of you, my darling – you are going to get so many awards for that.’

‘Maybe.’ Andy smiled. ‘But the main thing is that no one else can suffer at his hands now.’

‘Yes.’ Bella shuddered. ‘It’s quite horrific to think about what all those girls had to go through.’

‘Well, let’s not think about it at the moment. I don’t want anything to intrude on our romantic weekend. In fact, Belles, how about we both switch our phones off for the next twenty-four hours? No Facebook updates, no emails, no BBC News, just us? In the city of lovers.’ Bella could hear him putting quotation marks around the last phrase, as he tilted his head to one side and smiled at her through his geeky specs.