Josh, who was deeply interested in becoming a detective when he grew up, nodded.

‘Somebody else was upstairs.’

‘I knew that,’ Ella piped up, anxious not to be outdone. ‘I went into the wrong room by mistake and there was someone hiding under the duvet in a big bed.’

Josh was a particular fan of Inspector Poirot. His expression serious, he said, ‘Were they dead?’

‘Well, I could hear breathing.’

‘That’s a relief then,’ said Maxine cheerfully. ‘At least he was alive.’

Josh stared at her. ‘Why did you say he? How do you know it was a man?’

She grinned. He wasn’t the only one to be intrigued. For the first time in her life Thea was being secretive and there had to be a particularly good reason why.

‘I don’t know,’ she told Josh. ‘Lucky guess.’

Chapter 24

Janey, hampered by the tray of flowers in her arms, was about to push open the door of the restaurant with her bottom when it was done for her. She tried not to look too taken aback when she saw that it was Nina.

‘Oh ... hi,’ she said quickly, terrified that her voice sounded artificial. Nodding down at the tray, brimming with delphiniums, pinks and snowy gypsophila, she added stupidly, ‘Just delivering the flowers.’

‘Bruno told me to expect you,’ Nina replied. ‘One of the waitresses dropped twenty-eight dinner plates last night so he’s gone out to get replacements.’

She was wearing a long, droopy dress of pale blue cheesecloth, several silver necklaces and flat, hippyish sandals laced around the ankles with leather thongs. No matter how many times Janey had tried, she simply couldn’t envisage Bruno and Nina in bed together. She couldn’t even imagine them sharing the same laundry basket.

‘Heavens!’ Putting the tray down, she wondered how quickly she could arrange the flowers and get away. ‘He must have been furious. He’ll be looking for a replacement waitress.’

‘It wasn’t her fault.’ Nina, lighting a cigarette and sitting down to watch Janey at work, appeared unconcerned. ‘She was taking the stack of plates down from a high shelf in the kitchen and Bruno pinched her bum. She screamed and dropped the lot. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t a great deal he could say.’

Here, thought Janey, was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. This was her chance to assuage her own conscience, to gain first-hand proof of the understanding shared by Nina and Bruno, to prove without a shadow of a doubt that what she was doing wasn’t wrong.

‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ she said, her tone ultra-casual, her fingers trembling only slightly as she pushed cones of bottle-green oasis into each of the vases. ‘Bruno, I mean, flirting with other women?’

Nina, looking amused, blew a perfect smoke ring.

‘By that I presume he’s been flirting with you.’

‘No ...’ Flustered, Janey felt the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘Well, maybe a bit, but not me in particular.’

‘Of course not,’ Nina replied mildly. ‘Just you and every other woman he sets eyes on.

That’s Bruno’s way, I’m used to it by now ... and it is only flirting, after all. Harmless enough stuff.’

Janey felt her stomach begin to churn. What she and Bruno had been doing went way beyond a harmless flirtation. Was Nina bluffing, playing the part of the tolerant partner, or had Bruno been lying to them both? Not having the nerve to ask outright, however, she resorted to lies of her own.

‘My husband was the same,’ she said, improvising rapidly, ‘but I found it harder to cope with than you do. I kept wondering if, well, if that was all it was.’

‘You thought he might be having an affair?’ Nina looked interested. ‘And was he?’

Despising herself, Janey shook her head. ‘I don’t know. If he was, he disappeared before I could find out.’

‘Of course.’ Remembering, Nina nodded. The next moment she added unexpectedly, ‘But you only felt that way because you were jealous.’

Janey looked up at her. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘I have no reason to be jealous.’ Leaning forward, Nina stubbed out her cigarette. Clasping her hands together in her lap, she said simply, ‘I love Bruno. I trust him. And ‘I know he would never be unfaithful to me.’

This was no bluff. Her calm belief in him was staggering. Feeling sicker by the minute, Janey said, ‘What would you do if he was?’ Hastily she added, ‘In the future, I mean.’

Nina gave the hypothetical question some thought. ‘I’d be devastated,’ she said at last, and smiled. ‘Goodness, it’s not something I’ve ever really considered. Bruno’s my whole life. It would mean he’d betrayed me and my love for him.’ She paused, then said, ‘I could never forgive him for that.’

Janey wanted to cry, because Bruno had betrayed them both and because her own newfound happiness had been nothing but a sham. She too had trusted him, had believed him when he told her he loved her. For the first time in almost two years she had felt like a human being, experiencing emotions she’d thought she might never feel again.

And it had all been an illusion because Bruno didn’t have an understanding with Nina and had lied to them both in order to satisfy his own selfish craving for adulation and sex. Janey wondered how many other gullible woman had fallen into the same trap. Most of all she hoped Nina would never find out.

But ignorance was bliss and whilst her own world crumbled around her, Nina’s train of thought was moving on to more relevant matters. Happily lighting up another cigarette and flicking back her long straight hair, she settled herself more comfortably in her seat. ‘Come on, Janey, cheer up. No use dwelling on the past. You’re coming to Bruno’s party on Friday night, aren’t you?’

Dumbly, Janey nodded. Her name was already on the guest list. She wouldn’t go, of course, but a last-minute excuse was easier than coming up with something plausible just now.

‘It’s going to be great fun,’ said Nina with more enthusiasm than Janey had known she possessed. Then she sighed and added plaintively, ‘The trouble is, I haven’t a clue what to get him for his birthday. I’m hopeless at choosing presents. What do you think, Janey? Any ideas?’

A monogrammed chastity belt, thought Janey. And a muzzle. Aloud, she said, ‘I don’t really know. How about aftershave?’

‘Oh!’ Nina started to laugh. ‘I think Bruno’s worth a bit more than that, don’t you? He is my life partner, after all. I was thinking more along the lines of a new car.’

During the next two days, Janey didn’t have a chance either to see or speak to Bruno. By Friday night she was in a turmoil about whether or not to go to the party. The thought of turning up, being sociable towards Bruno and Nina, and allowing him to think that nothing had changed seemed hideously hypocritical.

But on the other hand, and for purely selfish reasons, she was tempted to go anyway.

Bruno’s famous birthday parties were a social landmark in Trezale, enormous fun and always riotously successful. His friends, glitzy and glamorous and all at least as extrovert as Bruno himself, descended from all corners of the country for the event which invariably carried on into Saturday. Last year the gossip columns had been full of the stories about the playboy racing driver, water-skiing naked at dawn across Trezale Bay and eloping the next day with the only just divorced young wife of a particularly pompous Tory MP. The marriage had lasted seven months and six days, which was seven months longer than anyone who knew either of them had predicted. Earlier in the week Bruno had shown Janey the fax sent by the same racing driver accepting his invitation to this year’s party: ‘Me and my skis say yes, yes, please,’ he had scrawled across the top of the page. Below it, he had written out fifty times: ‘And this time I must not elope.’

Oh sod it, thought Janey, throwing down the evening paper and switching off the television.

She’d been looking forward to this party for weeks. The prospect of sitting alone in her flat mourning the loss of a bastard with whom she should never have got involved in the first place and consoling herself with a hefty bar of Cadbury’s fruit and nut was too depressing for words.

She was going to do herself up, take herself along to the party, flirt with strangers and have an all-round bloody good time. Telling Bruno to get stuffed could wait until next week.

And who knew whom she might meet, Janey decided, daydreaming as she turned on the bath taps and tipped in at least half a pint of peach bubble-bath. As long as she maintained a positive attitude the possibilities were endless. And if the worst came to the very worst, there was always the water-skiing racing driver .. .

By eight-thirty she was almost ready and for once, to her immense relief, everything seemed to be going right. The black sequinned dress she so seldom had the opportunity to wear looked as good as it always did, enhancing the curves she wanted enhanced and discreetly skimming over those she preferred to keep to herself. Wickedly expensive but worth every penny, it imbued Janey with self-confidence and glittered like coal when she moved.

Her hair, too, had decided to behave this evening; the bronze combs holding it up at the sides were staying firmly in place and even the loose blond tendrils at the nape of her neck were falling naturally into place instead of sticking out at silly angles as they so often did when she tried to look chic.

Bronze eyeshadow, black mascara, a bit of eyebrow pencil and two coats of pinky-bronze lipstick later, Janey was done. Stepping back and surveying her reflection in the mirror, she decided that if she said so herself, she looked pretty damn good.