As she gazed across the room at Patrick and Claire, Dulcie realised it was time to prove she could be civil too. As civil as Patrick was to me when I told him our marriage was over, she thought sadly. Patrick hadn’t argued or punched her or started shouting about money; he had simply moved out.

Dulcie wondered if it had been easy for him to stay civil because he hadn’t felt that much for her anyway.

Imagining that this was true made her want to cry. Hastily she pulled herself together.

Either way, it’s my turn to do the decent thing, Dulcie realised. Patrick hasn’t put the pressure on, but that’s just the way he is. And he’s with Claire now. Of course it’s what he wants.

As Terry offered to refill her glass, she tried not to look at his nose. He seemed charming, and he had organised Pru’s divorce from Phil with admirable speed and minimum fuss.

‘Maybe I could come and see you at your office,’ Dulcie said casually.

Terry didn’t seem surprised, he just reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. His brief smile as he passed her one of his business cards was sympathetic.

‘You want a divorce as well?’

No, but my husband does, thought Dulcie with an ache in her chest like homesickness. And under the circumstances it seems the least I can do.

Chapter 48

The next morning Liza had to be up early. She had an appointment with her publishing editor in London at ten and a restaurant in Windsor to review at one thirty. To save time, she was wearing her frump gear and wig.

‘You remind me of someone I got chatted up by yesterday,’ said Kit, taking a bite out of Liza’s toast as he squeezed past her in the kitchen. ‘Old dear with a walking stick, kept nicking stuff from the buffet.’

‘Marjorie.’ Liza nodded and shoved the rest of the toast into his mouth; she was already running late. ‘She told me if she was fifty years younger she’d give me a run for my money. You wouldn’t believe the comments she made about your bum.’

‘That’s me,’ said Kit with a broad grin. ‘Irresistible to older women.’ He grabbed Liza around the waist as she tried to rush past him. ‘Hang on, I haven’t had a kiss yet from my future wife.’

Liza, who was on her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth, kept her lips clamped together.

‘Was that it?’ Kit looked appalled. ‘If that’s how you kiss future husbands, forget it.’

He leaned against the door frame and watched her brushing her teeth.

‘I want to see a dramatic improvement in kissing technique by this evening,’ he warned.

‘Who would you like me to practise on, my gay editor?’ Liza spoke through a mouthful of toothpaste.

Kit grinned.

‘Practise on the back of your hand. Dulcie told me yesterday it’s what you used to do when you were eleven.’

‘We all did!’ Liza looked indignant. ‘Why, what did you practise on?’

The grin broadened.

‘Girls.’

From the radio in the kitchen came the sound of the eight o’clock pips. Liza groaned and brushed faster.

‘God, I love the way your bottom wriggles when you do that.’

The toothbrush clattered into the basin. Liza wiped her mouth on a towel, grabbed her coat and bag from the hall and almost fell over putting on her shoes.

‘I’m late late late.’ Whirling around, she planted a speedof-light kiss on Kit’s face, missing his mouth by an inch. "Bye. Back by six.’

As she raced out to the car, almost sending a pensioner flying, Kit stood in the doorway and yelled, ‘What is it with you call girls nowadays? That was another crap kiss.’

Leo Berenger was at his desk when Kit turned up at nine for their meeting with a new firm of architects. The plans for the latest Berenger development, on the outskirts of Oxford, were already well underway. Leo had been studying the proposed drawings for a selection of four- and five-bedroomed Tudor-style properties since before breakfast and was impatient to bounce several ideas off his son before the architects arrived.

The last thing he needed to hear was Liza Lawson’s name.

‘No, no.’ The impatient wave of his arm swept several drawings to the floor. Dammit, hadn’t Kit got that woman out of his system yet? ‘I don’t want to meet her. Why the hell should I?’

Kit shrugged. He hadn’t seriously expected any other reaction.

‘No reason. We’re getting married, that’s all.’

Leo Berenger didn’t go in for double-takes. Yelling ‘You’regetting what?’ wasn’t his style. He simply shook his head and leaned back in his chair, his expression grim.

‘When?’

‘December.’

‘If you do, you’re a bloody fool.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Kit. ‘I think I’m bloody lucky.’

‘I suppose she’s pregnant.’

‘No.’

‘So what’s she after, a share of all this when I kick the bucket?’ This time his irritated gesture encompassed the view from the windows, the offices occupying the whole of the top floor, the house itself. ‘Because I tell you now, she’ll have a bloody long wait.’

‘Dad.’ Wearily, Kit picked up the scattered drawings. Argument or no argument, the architects who had produced them would be here at any minute. ‘This has nothing to do with your money. I love Liza and I’m going to marry her.’

‘And nothing I say will make a blind bit of difference, I suppose.’

Was this his father’s way of acknowledging and finally accepting the situation? Kit wasn’t sure; all he knew was there needn’t be a rift between them.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Kit smiled slightly and said, ‘No. I’ll marry her anyway.’

He got no smile in return. The expression on Leo’s face was one of undiluted disgust.

‘Go on then, do it. Make your own mistakes, see if I care.’ He leaned forward in his chair and jabbed a solid finger at his son for emphasis. ‘Just don’t ever ask me again if I want to meet her.’

The meeting was over by eleven. Relieved, Kit saw the architects to their car. When he returned to the office, his father was barking instructions down the phone to one of the contractors, swigging black coffee and chewing his way irritably through a pack of Rennies.

‘Okay if I disappear for an hour or two?’ asked Kit, when he had hung up the phone.

‘You can disappear for the next twenty years if you want to.’

Kit decided to ignore this. He reached for his jacket.

The last Rennie was noisily crunched up and swallowed. ‘Don’t bother sending me an invitation to the wedding, by the way.’

His father was clearly still simmering with fury, his face red, his fists clenched on the desk. Kit wondered if he was about to have a heart attack.

To placate him, and maybe lower his blood pressure a couple of notches, he said, ‘Dad, it doesn’t have to be like this. If you got to know Liza, you’d understand—’

‘Christ almighty, what is this?’ Leo roared, thumping the desk with his hand. ‘Who d’you think we are, the bloody Waltons?’

So much for making an effort. Kit shrugged.

‘Fine, have it your way,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ll be back around one.’

Marriott’s was the smartest jewellery shop in Bath, occupying a prime position on one of the smartest streets. Inside, the décor was opulent and suitably restrained, all slate-grey velvet, gleaming silver and the kind of lighting that made the most miserable diamond chip glitter like the Koh-i-noor.

Not, of course, that Marriott’s went in for diamond chips, Kit thought wryly. He wasn’t likely to forget this fact either, since as a child – and with Christmas approaching – he had heard his mother say Marriott’s was her favourite shop. He had duly trotted along with his pocket money the following week and asked one of the assistants to show him some necklaces. Very sweetly refusing to accept Kit’s seventy-three pence, the assistant had popped a Bic biro into one of Marriott’s sumptuous satin-lined, slate-grey velvet boxes and sent Kit happily on his way.

Now he was browsing with rather more than seventy-three pence in his pocket, and just as well.

There were some pretty startling price tags on display.

One of the assistants approached noiselessly across the plush, pale-grey carpet.

‘Diamond rings ... er, engagement rings,’ Kit murmured, slightly embarrassed.

She smiled.

‘Certainly, sir. How many?’

Kit relaxed and grinned back.

‘Just the one, for now.’

The woman, who was in her early forties, began unlocking cabinets. She was plump but attractive, with baby-blue eyes and a dimply smile. Kit wondered how long she had worked here and if she was the one who had given him the biro in the velvet box all those years ago.

The first tray of rings was brought out for Kit’s inspection. He picked up one, a fire-flashing oval solitaire, and turned it this way and that, imagining it on Liza’s finger.

The assistant was wearing L’Air du Temps. She smiled at Kit. ‘I know, it’s a beautiful ring.’

The more he thought about it, the more he felt she could be the same woman. Kit glanced at the other customers in the shop – a smart American couple, an old man and a middle-aged woman in a crumpled green Barbour – and said, ‘Have you been working here long?’

There was suppressed laughter in the assistant’s eyes. ‘Fifteen years. Why?’

‘Sorry,’ said Kit, ‘it wasn’t meant to sound like a chat-up line. I just wondered if—’

‘Everybody FREEZE!’ screamed a male voice as the door was flung open and two men in balaclavas burst into the shop.

One of the other assistants let out a terrified whimper. The American couple, like something out of a gangster movie, put their hands up.

‘Nobody move!’ yelled the second balaclava-ed figure, yanking open a black leather bag and grabbing the tray of rings Kit had just been looking at. The oval solitaire disappeared into the bag along with the rest. The first man pointed a sawn-off shotgun at the assistant who had whimpered.