But then she realized that tears were streaming down her face, too. It was all starting to remind her of things she had done with Mark. She pulled away.

‘I’m sorry, Dan. I’m really sorry. I like you so much, but I can’t. I just keep thinking about Marky.’

Dan watched as she picked up the sheet off his bed and wrapped it around herself, suddenly self-conscious, and started crying again.

He was tempted to tell her to piss off – he had enough girls interested in him, after all. But then she said, ‘I really didn’t mean to be a prick-tease. I’m sorry, Dan. You’ve been such a good friend to me. I’ll go now.’ As she started to put her clothes back on, Dan felt a wave of compassion. He wanted to protect her, he realized.

‘Don’t be silly, Sambo. It’s your loss.’ He tried to make a joke of it, and Sam gave a grateful hiccup of laughter. ‘And you can stay here for a bit, if you fancy it. How about we just get stoned instead?’

As he started to roll the spliff, he resolved that however much he liked Sam, he would never try it on with her again. They could stay friends, for sure, but he’d never been turned down twice by the same girl before. His ego simply wouldn’t stand for it.

Chapter 12

‘Oh, Philippe, I do not want to do ze washing-up,’ pouted Rosaline. The ridiculously pretty blonde French au pair that Philip’s ex-wife, Lucinda, in a masterstroke of bitchiness, had seen fit to send out to Paxos with their teenage children, was standing at the kitchen sink wearing only a white crochet bikini and an ankle bracelet. She looked like nothing so much as a young Bardot.

‘Don’t you worry, Rosaline,’ Philip smiled, trying not to look at her bouncing young bosom. ‘Alison will do it. You go out and enjoy the sun.’

‘Oh, merci, merci! You are verrrry kind!’ Rosaline leant up to kiss him on the cheek and skipped out into the garden.

Paxos, the smallest and most beautiful of the Ionian islands, lies 11 kilometres from Corfu, a shimmering beacon of peace and tranquillity in a glittering turquoise sea. Philip, Alison, Toby, Imogen and Rosaline were staying for two weeks in a luxurious bougainvillea-covered villa that had been built around an old olive press. It was a short car ride to the nearest unspoilt beach (they were all unspoilt, really – in complete contrast to Philip’s children), but there was a large pool in the villa’s extensive grounds and plenty of scope for spending day after heavenly day just relaxing in the sunshine.

Not so for Imogen and Toby. Imogen’s constant refrain was, ‘Daddeeee, I’m bored.’ She didn’t seem capable of lying in the sun with a book, splashing about in the pool, playing cards or backgammon with her brother, or indeed taking pleasure in anything but constant whingeing. This morning she had been pestering Philip to take her paragliding, on a beach the other side of the island. For once, Philip had refused to pander to his darling daughter’s demands, pointing out quite reasonably that, having spent the previous two days water-skiing and windsurfing, it was time to make the most of the expensive villa he had hired for them all.