Bella followed her gaze. Sitting at the wheel of a convertible red Porsche was a baby-faced boy of immeasurably arrogant demeanour. If the car wasn’t clue enough, everything about his appearance screamed money – from the slicked-back dark brown hair and ruddy pink cheeks to the immaculately faded jeans and butter-soft leather jacket. While this might conceivably have had some allure on an older man, on a boy of barely 21 it was both loathsome and faintly ludicrous.

‘He is sooooo uncool.’ Sienna rolled her eyes at Bella as she picked up her vintage lace parasol. ‘He hangs out at places like Whisky Mist and Mahiki, trying to suck up to Harry Wales. He’s thick as pigshit too – God knows how he got into King’s. But he’s so loaded he’s got half the boring wannabe Sloanes at college eating out of his hand.’

If Sienna thought he was loaded, reflected Bella, the baby-faced Josh must be rich as Croesus. Certain sectors of society had yet to be hit by the recession, it seemed.

‘Toby, shut up, you fucker! You’re such a fucking loser!’

‘Cretin! Thunder thighs! Fatso!’

‘Loser! Wankstain! Fuckwit! Toby’s a fuckwit, Toby’s a fuckwit!’

Alison put her fingers in her ears and tried to ignore the screaming bickering of her teenage almost stepchildren as she concentrated on the details of the latest horrible case she was working on. You’d think the classically (some might say boringly) wood-panelled, leather-upholstered study would be soundproof, but no. Their spoilt, public-school, brattish voices, an entire floor up, would probably pierce the thick concrete walls of a torture cell (the like of which the creeps she was defending would doubtless end up in, if she didn’t sufficiently deploy the Human Rights Act).

Alison was meant to have married Andy last year. They’d been together for thirteen years, ever since Cambridge, and it had seemed like a logical progression. But she’d become so caught up in the minutiae of organizing the perfect wedding, and keeping her bloody parents happy, that she’d lost sight of the fact that, somewhere along the line, they had fallen out of love with one another. When her older boss Philip, senior partner in her law firm, came on to her one night they were both working late, she’d felt properly alive again for the first time in years. They’d actually fucked on his desk. The age gap suited them both – it made Philip feel virile and Alison desired – something Andy hadn’t managed at all in the last few years of their relationship, though he’d done his best to pretend. And the Eaton Square house was the pinnacle of her grandiose domestic aspirations.

She hadn’t reckoned with the bloody teenagers though.

‘LOSER, LOSER, LOSER, LOSER, LOSER!’ Now they were stamping, banging on the floor above, to the extent she was worried the ceiling might fall in. Something sounded like gunshot. Little sods. She took a deep breath and ventured upstairs, to the room directly above her study – their playroom. For God’s sake, at their age.