Don’t smoke, she thought. If you smoke now I’ll really strike you.

‘And if he did get mixed up, as you call it, with them, what on earth has it got to do with us? He’s a grown man; he can make his own decisions, choose his own chums. Not our affair surely.’ He opened the case.

‘No, Archie! It’s much too early for you. Not until after lunch, do remember?’

He shut the case with a snap, slid it into his pocket. ‘Forgot. You see? Losing my head.’

‘As soon as that wretched boat sails I just might make a tiny suggestion to them, unless they make one before … they aren’t insensitive, you know. I begged them to stay for the picnic. It was in their honour after all, do remember.’

‘Of course! I mean, my dear, I’m not suggesting you hurry them off, or anything, God forbid! Stay as long as you want them to, if they make you happy … but do remember that you are a frightfully kind creature, and people do rather take you for, well, for granted sometimes … become a little over-familiar. I notice the little things.’

Do you? Do you indeed? She got up from the desk, pushed her hair from her forehead. ‘Well. Perhaps in a day or two. Just let it go for the moment. I must go and put my face on, I look like the raft of the Medusa.’

At the door he turned, one hand toying with a button on his blazer. ‘A perfectly charming young couple, I do admit that. Charming. But total strangers really, aren’t they? Where do they come from? What do they do? Who are they really when all is said and done, eh? What are they to one?’ He cocked his head shyly to one side, smiled gently, opened the door and let himself out on to the gallery.

‘My life line,’ she said to the empty room.

The metal louvres were lowered over the portholes, permitting only a soft gloom to fill the cabin. It glittered here and there on the edge of a chromium table, the curve of a chair, a corner of the Hockney portrait, sparkled on the facets of a crystal jar of Agapanthus which partly obscured Grottorosso who lay sprawled, one hand across his forehead, one knee bent, on his surgical-looking bunk opposite her.

Minerva took out her cigarettes and lighter in the silence which had fallen on them for the last three minutes. Nando Belluno, sitting on her right, hand folded over his ample stomach, cleared his throat.

‘Will it drive you crazy, Bert? If I smoke?’

He waved a hand in the gloom, shook his head.

‘It’s just that I can think better with a cigarette … when I am able to think at all. What I don’t understand,’ she said, fitting one into an ivory holder, ‘is why the hell you were not wearing the masks? I mean, shouldn’t you?’