‘That was clever,’ said an ironic male voice above her head. ‘I’d just had it resprayed, too. Ten out of ten for timing!’

From this angle he looked enormous. His head of thick, dark hair towered over her from a great height and his shoulders seemed broad enough to blot out the sun. Hastily Gina got to her feet, but he still had eight inches over her, and it was exasperating to have to express her righteous indignation looking up.

‘Clever isn’t the word I’d choose,’ she said. ‘Selfish and arrogant, maybe.’

‘Who?’

‘Whoever parked this Rolls using two parking spaces, and leaving me no room to get out.’

‘Just how much room does this peanut on wheels need?’

‘We can’t all drive a Rolls,’ she said, incensed at this slur on her beloved.

‘Just as well. If you drove a Rolls the way you drive this-this-’

‘You’re encroaching on my space. You didn’t even leave me enough room to open the door. You had no right to park like that.’

‘Actually, it wasn’t me. My chauffeur parked it.’

‘I might have known.’

‘I see! If owning a Rolls is a crime, having a chauffeur is a hanging offence, right?’

‘It’s all of a piece, isn’t it? Anyone who can afford a chauffeur doesn’t need to think of other people. Why didn’t you stop him doing this?’

‘Because I wasn’t in the car at the time. This is the first I’ve seen of it, and I’ll agree he didn’t do a brilliant job. But let’s face it. He still left you room to back out, if you’d gone in a straight line. You’re not supposed to do a sharp turn, or did nobody tell you?’

‘If you’d left me my rightful space,’ Gina said crossly, ‘I’d still have missed you, no matter how many sharp turns I did.’

‘Your steering is defective,’ the man said, with exasperated patience. ‘And you’re damned lucky it came to light now and not when you were trying to avoid a truck.’

He was right, of course. That just made it worse. Now she was faced with a huge repair bill.