“Not easy for you, I expect,” Hillier noted. “You’ll be missing them.”

“I’ll be busy,” she said. “And you know what boys are like. Eight years old? They need supervising and plenty of it. As both Bob and his wife are at home, they’re in a good position to keep them on the straight and narrow, a far better position than I’ll be in, I daresay. It should be fine.” She made the situation sound ideal: herself hard at work in London, nose to the metaphorical grindstone, while Bob and Sandra breathed copious amounts of fresh air in the countryside, all the time doting on the boys and feeding them home-cooked chicken pies filled with everything organic and served with ice-cold milk. And, truth be told, that wasn’t too far from how it likely would be. Bob, after all, adored his sons and Sandra was perfectly lovely in her own way, if a bit too school-marmish for Isabelle’s taste. She had her own two children, but that hadn’t meant she had no room in her home and her heart for Isabelle’s boys. For Isabelle’s boys were Bob’s boys as well, and he was a good dad and always had been. He kept his eye on the ball, did Robert Ardery. He asked the right questions at just the right time, and he never made a threat that didn’t sound like an inspiration he’d just been struck by.

Hillier seemed to be reading her, or at least attempting to, but Isabelle knew she was more than a match for anyone’s effort to see beyond the role she played. She’d made a virtual art of appearing cool, controlled, and completely competent, and this façade had served her so well for so many years that it was second nature by now to wear her professional persona like chain mail. Such was the result of having ambition in a world dominated by men.