But when she became pregnant Joe showed his true colours. He already had two grown sons from a previous marriage, and he wasn’t keen on Angel losing her figure. He even suggested that there was ‘no need to have it’. That provoked a fierce row in which she stood up to him so determinedly that he never mentioned it again.

But it was all for nothing. Two days later, she miscarried. In the weeks of depression that followed, she became, as he put it, poor company. He found a younger woman, a girl of twenty. He reckoned Angel was past her best, at twenty-eight.

She had always known that beneath the surface bonhomie Joe could be a very unpleasant man. Just how unpleasant she discovered during the divorce, when he drove her and Sam out of the house and gave her as little as he could get away with.

She cared nothing for the money. If it weren’t for her grandfather, she would have thought herself well rid of Joe.

After the hideously gaudy mansion in the heart of London’s West End where she’d once lived- ‘Nothing too good for my Angel!’-she now rented a small house on the edge of town, just big enough for herself, Sam and the two nurses. She’d taken it on a short-term lease, and in a few weeks she must have the Villa Tazzini ready for them all.

On the night before she left for Italy, she dropped in to Sam’s room.

‘I’ll be leaving very early tomorrow,’ she told him.

‘Why are you going away?’ he asked, puzzled.

‘Darling, I told you. I’m going to Italy, to see this house where we’re going to live. It’s my divorce settlement from Joe.’

‘Joe who?’

‘You remember Joe-my ex-husband.’

He frowned. ‘What became of Gavin?’

‘We quarrelled. Never mind all that now. We’re going to have a new home in Italy. Look, here are the pictures of it that I brought you. You’ll come and join me as soon as possible.’