Fleur Delay watched her brother disappear into the cathedral then opened her bag and from it took a small pack of tablets. She slipped one into her mouth and washed it down with a swig of water from a bottle in the door pocket.

Letting Vince loose in a cathedral was not normally an option, but it had seemed marginally better than collapsing in the car park.

She took another tablet. After a while she began to feel a little better. All the car windows were wide open to admit the morning air. Now she closed them and took out her mobile phone. There was no one in hearing distance but minimizing risk was an instinct so deep ingrained it had ceased to be a thought process.

She speed-dialled a number. It took a long time for it to be answered.

‘Buenos días, señor,’ she said. ‘Soy Señora Delay.’

She listened to the response for a while then interrupted in English.

‘Yes, I know it’s Sunday and I know it’s early, but I don’t know where it says in our very expensive agreement that you stop working for me at weekends or before nine o clock. I’ll write it in if you like, but I’ll cut your fee by half, comprende usted?’

She listened again, cut in again.

‘OK, no need to grovel. I just want a progress report. And before you start on with the crappy reasons why things move so slowly over there, you ought to know I’m looking to move in a bit earlier than planned. Four weeks, tops. That means not a day longer than four weeks, OK?’

After she’d finished her call, she opened the windows again and took another drink of water.