It was very tall, extremely elegant in pleated honey silk, over forty, with legs as long and slender as the prongs of a tuning fork. She moved slowly towards them across the Negresco terrace with over-studied cool; hand lightly on hip, the other resting at her throat amidst a tumble of gold chains, arm a-glitter with chain bracelets, twenty rings to her fingers.

Desmond rose, pulled out a chair. ‘Bea Huntlee,’ he said. ‘Of Huntlee and Palmers, you know?’

‘Not the Reading Huntleys: I’m not biscuits,’ she said, sitting with extreme grace. ‘Portobello. Interior Decorators. Inching, with wild abandon, towards Sloane Street. And you,’ she said turning slowly to Marcus and fixing him with enormous brown eyes ‘are divine!’ He blushed, dropped an olive. ‘We’ve never met? And I’ve worked with Desmond, in the trade as it were, for donkey’s years, but better late than never.’ She peered across the table, moved aside a bottle of Perrier. And who is that hiding its light under a bushel of Hungarian cross-stitch?’

‘It’s mine,’ said Marcus, recovering. ‘Leni Minx.’

‘We’ve met!’ said Bea with conviction. ‘Certain of it. Bell rings.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Leni, her voice fuzzed with awe. ‘I come from Germany.’

‘Well, so what? I’m neither allergic nor nationalistic, and I’ve an amazing memory for faces. I know we’ve met, or I’ve seen you, and I do wish that you’d stop crouching there in your chair as if the gates of hell were about to open just behind me. I’m really amazingly simple: the maquillage is a “front” to hide my natural terror. Face comes out of a bottle: several: eyelashes are fur, the hair is a switch, and dyed at that. It’s not black at all. Mouse. Feel better? I’m a total fake, which is why you have had to wait such hours for my over-rehearsed entrance, and why I move very carefully, as if I might put my back out. It’s not the back: I just could fall apart at the seams with fright.’ Suddenly she leant towards Leni, lowered her voice. ‘And Miss Minx, if you are dazzled by the vulgar display of gold which you see before you, so you should be. It’s worth a small fortune; which is why I can’t insure it, and why I have to wear it all. All at once. It weighs a ton and ruins the dress. Givenchy would strike me dead. But what …’ she said with a sigh, ‘is a tart to do?’

Leni laughed suddenly. Which relieved Desmond greatly. He knew Bea’s performance off by heart; he also knew the effect that it could have on some people, especially women, who resented it or were irritated by it, overlooking, as they did, the fact that the directness and boldness of her attack concealed a quaking heart and a deep sense of inadequacy. Although Beatrice Huntlee had made a wild success of all her business ventures her emotional life was a series of charred ruins dotted along the rocky path of her life. The sort of disaster score she held made a woman extremely unhappy and uncertain, Desmond knew. And he forgave her all the bombast because he enjoyed, enormously, her company, her wisdom, and her shrewdness.