I was babbling, and totally avoiding the subject. Ginger frowned sternly at me.

Spike was still fiddling with the Andy Warhol zip on the front of the album, trying to undo it.

‘Cranks,’ Ginger said. ‘Total nutjobs, right, Tara?’

Spike smirked over his shoulder at us, not taking it remotely seriously.

‘Dates from hell,’ he chuckled. ‘Well, we’ve all had a few of those, right?’

‘And one of them – one of these cranks – is a man,’ Ginger said. ‘And he’s starting to scare Tara.’

Spike finally looked up.

‘To really scare her,’ Ginger said.

‘OK,’ Spike said, paying attention at last.

‘He’s not leaving Tara alone,’ Ginger continued. ‘It’s starting to worry you, right, Tara?’

They both looked at me. I nodded.

‘So who’s this guy?’ Spike said, looking back at the Sticky Fingers album. But he wasn’t messing about with the zip now.

I said nothing. I had no idea what to say.

‘He’s a disgruntled client,’ Ginger said simply. ‘And he’s making a nuisance of himself.’

‘What – online?’ Spike said. ‘Like – what are they called? – a troll?’

‘No,’ Ginger said, with married impatience. ‘Not a bloody troll, Spike. This guy has turned up at Tara’s office, all right?’

‘There was some online harassment,’ I said, thinking of the three photographs of me sleeping in a stranger’s bed that appeared on my phone. ‘But it’s escalating now. And as Ginger says – one morning this guy turned up at the office.’

Spike was still not quite getting it. How could he?

‘And what did he want?’

‘He’s just some random madman, all right?’ Ginger said, heating up. ‘Who knows what he thinks he wants?’

Spike looked at Sticky Fingers thoughtfully.

‘Call the police,’ he suggested, carefully placing the LP back in its correct spot. Christian’s record collection was fanatically alphabetical.

‘Are you kidding?’ Ginger said. ‘The police are not going to do anything, Spike! Not until it’s too late.’ She looked at me. ‘Tara thought you might be able to help.’

And there it was at last – a direct appeal to the macho Australian male’s sense of chivalry. Spike looked at me, and then his wife, and finally at the child monitor, where Buck the dog was starving in the Yukon.

I knew what he was thinking. It was a fair question. What about your husband?

‘Christian doesn’t know,’ I answered. ‘And I don’t want to worry him.’

Spike raised his eyebrows. Why me?

It was another fair question.

‘There’s nobody else I can ask, Spike,’ I said, and it felt like the one true thing that Ginger and I had told him. ‘There’s nobody else close enough to ask.’

I gave him the business card that James Caine had given me in Tokyo and Spike stared at it as if it was written in a language that he could not understand.

‘Well,’ he said quietly. ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’

Ginger impatiently snatched the business card from him.

‘Oh, just forget it, Spike,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it myself. I’m going to sort this creep out. I mean it! You think I don’t?’