Someone as alert as Charlie should have recognised it, from the speed and professionalism of the answer, but his mind was still occupied with thoughts of stamps and insurance cover arranged through social friends and so he initially missed the husky sensuousness.

‘Believe we met at Henley,’ he said brightly.

‘Henley?’

‘Boat races the other week. Remember me?’

There was a pause, for both of them a time for realisation. The woman spoke first because it was her business, after all.

‘Same as last time,’ she said, briskly. ‘If you want to wear that funny cap and striped blazer while we’re doing it, it’s kinky so it’s an extra?5. And the ruler is another?5, too.’

‘I need another sort of relief,’ said Charlie, for his own amusement. ‘I’ve got aching feet.’

‘Try a fucking chiropodist,’ said the voice, no longer husky or inviting.

He frequently had, remembered Charlie. The last one had wrapped his toes individually in little cocoons of cotton wool and put an additional?3 on the bill. Perhaps that was kinky, too.

2

Like the drawbridges that were the only entries to the castles of medieval times, a set of bridges staples the island of Palm Beach to the Florida mainland, with Lake Worth forming the moat. Only very rich people ever lived in castles and only very rich people live in Palm Beach. Perhaps in unconscious envy of medieval times, when the division of wealth between those who had and those who had not was more clearly defined, a few of the residents have actually invoked castellated architecture for their mansions, which jut out, ridged and angular, among the more traditional hacienda constructions showing the Spanish influence throughout the State.

An eccentric newspaper magnate who had been a personal friend of Henry Morrison Flagler, the Standard Oil founder credited with the single-handed development of Palm Beach as the resort it now is, was responsible for just such a construction at the end of a small but usefully private road that loops off Ocean Boulevard.