It turned out to be the eating room; there was a big teak table with six pricey-looking chairs around it and a bowl of flowers in the middle. A couple of nasty prints hung on the pastel walls and a framed photograph stood on a sideboard. I weaved across and picked it up. It showed the lady I was drinking with, a man and two children. Bettina looked a few years younger and a few pounds lighter. I studied the man; he was a heavy character with a round face and receding hair which he wore longish with thick dark sideburns. He was packed into an executive suit with the trimmings and had his arm around Bettina and the girls. But he was smiling as if the camera was on him alone. With him the photographer had failed to achieve the family feel. He was the type to make every post a personal winner. The girls looked to be about ten and twelve, they were round and red like their dad — their mother was right, they’d need the money.

She wandered in and handed me the glass. Her own was full but if she was the drinker I thought she was she’d have sneaked one out by the ice cubes. She stood beside me, close.

‘That’s us,’ she said.

‘Nice family.’ I put the picture down.

She stayed where she was and I was pinned in a corner. In her high-heeled sandals she wasn’t much shorter than me. She tossed back her hair and put her hand on my arm.

‘You know Richard and I have an arrangement when we go to Singapore. Want to know what it is?’

‘Sure.’

I sipped rum and looked at her eyes. The lids were drooping and the pupils were dilated. She was well on the way to her afternoon nap. She had just one thing in mind now and there was no point in pretending to be a journalist or a gentleman. I took hold of her arm to steady her. It was a nice, firm arm. She leaned into me.

‘We give each other two free nights, no questions asked. Understand?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’m a passionate woman.’ She pressed her breasts against me and set her glass down to have both hands free.