He turned the paper between his fingers. His hands were heavy and strong, the hands of a workman, not an international financier.

His face was the same; blunt-featured, with a heaviness about it that had little to do with the shape of features, and more to do with a glowering intensity in his eyes. That, and his tall, broad-shouldered body, attracted the kind of woman-and there were plenty of them-who gravitated towards power. Physical power. Financial power. All kinds. Since the break-up of his marriage he hadn’t lacked company.

He treated them well, according to his lights, was generous with gifts but not with words or feelings, and broke with them abruptly when he realised they did not have what he was seeking.

He could not have said what that was. He only knew that he’d found it once, long ago, with a girl who had shining eyes and a great heart.

He barely remembered the boy he’d been then, full of impractical ideas about love lasting forever. Not cynical, not grasping, believing that love and life were both good: a foolishness that had been cruelly cured.

He brought himself firmly back to the present. Dwelling on lost happiness was a weakness, and he always cut out weakness as ruthlessly as he did everything else. He strode out of the office and down to the underground parking lot, where his Rolls-Royce-this year’s model-was waiting.

He had a chauffeur but he loved driving it himself. It was his personal trophy, the proof of how far he’d come since the days when he’d had to make do with an old jalopy that would have collapsed if he hadn’t repaired it himself.

Even with his best efforts it was liable to break down at odd moments, and then she would laugh and chatter as she handed him spanners. Sometimes she would get under the car with him, and they would kiss and laugh like mad things.

And perhaps it was a kind of madness, he thought as he headed the Rolls out of Rome to his villa in the country. Mad, because that heart-stopping joy could never last. And it hadn’t.