‘Hi, hi, how wonderful to see you.’

‘You too, babe,’ said Mark, getting up to kiss her and letting his gaze roam unnecessarily over her body. She tried not to let her internal disgust become apparent.

‘Natalia!’ said Justin. ‘Not looking a day over twenty!’

If this drunken, arrogant old pig thought that she would be flattered by this, he was very much mistaken. She knew how great she looked. She spent enough time and money on it.

‘Joining us for a drink then?’ asked Justin.

‘No no no. I thank you, but there are people I must see. Wonderful to see you again.’ Natalia blew them both a kiss with her long, perfectly manicured fingers and walked over to the bar. Both men watched her extraordinary bottom, atop those extraordinarily long legs, as she departed. Justin gave out a low whistle.

Club 55 was the ultimate jet-set destination in St Trop, created in 1955 when Roger Vadim was filming Brigitte Bardot frolicking on the beach in Et Dieu … créa la femme. Legend had it that when the crew mistook a local fisherman’s cottage for a bistro, the owner’s wife happily fed them all and Club 55 was born.

The restaurant, laid out behind the beach under tamarind trees, was stylishly understated, all white wooden tables and chairs with sun-faded blue tablecloths that echoed the blues of sky and sea in the dazzling sunlight. Seated at practically every table were girls, exquisite like butterflies in pink-and-turquoise kaftans, jewelled flip-flops and enormous designer shades. With few exceptions, the mahogany-tanned men footing the bills were several decades older than them.

Mark and Justin had moved to the bar area for their cognacs. The white stone bar and seats, white linen cushions and white sand emphasized the patrons’ expensive tans. Mark was surprised they hadn’t somehow managed to bleach the palm trees to match the rest of the decor.

The behaviour here was more outrageous than in the restaurant area. Even Mark and Justin cringed as they witnessed yet another gold-toothed rapper standing on a table and spurting yet another 2,000-euro bottle of Cristal over a gaggle of giggling, bikini-clad models. Wasn’t the world meant to be in some kind of financial meltdown?

‘I wonder what the poor people are doing today,’ said Justin, and Mark barked with laughter.

A man who put the sleaze into sleazy approached their table. Of indeterminate age, he was rocking a luridly patterned Roberto Cavalli open-to-the-waist silk shirt atop obscenely tight white jeans. His obviously dyed-black hair looked as if it had been washed in industrial oil and his bling out-blang everybody else on the beach.

‘Hey, Justin, my man!’ He stretched out his arms in greeting and Justin rose to his bare feet.

‘Stefan. Long time no see. Wotcha been up to, mate?’

Stefan winked.

‘Half the girls in this bar.’ His accent hovered somewhere between LA, mittel-Europe and Peckham.

All three men laughed, though Mark felt slightly uneasy. Although neither he nor Justin were by any stretch of the imagination clean-living paragons of virtue, there was something seriously unpleasant about this geezer. Though he had to admire the bastard’s taste, if what he was saying were true.