‘What do you know about my life?’ he said, startled, and she screwed up her nose in rueful mockery.

‘I’ve spent the last two years in doctors’ waiting rooms.’

‘So?’

‘So I reckon I’ve read every issue of Celebrity magazine that’s ever been printed. With you being rich and influential, and associated with every celebrity bash worthy of the name, your life is fair game. I know how rich you are. I know you don’t like oysters and you never wear navy suits. I also know you were in a car crash with your childhood sweetheart about fifteen years ago. Her father and your father were partners. She’d been at your parents’ company Christmas dinner alone, and then she’d collected you from some celebrity bash you’d been organising. She was killed outright. Your parents disowned you then. They said she’d been drinking because she was angry. They said if you’d stayed in the family law firm like you were supposed to it would never have happened. And you…The glossies say you’re still grieving for your lost love. Are you?’

‘No,’ he said, stunned.

‘I hope you’re not.’ She took a deep breath, deciding whether to be personal or not. What the heck? ‘It’s hard,’ she confided. ‘Ben’s only been dead for two years, but you know, my photographs of Ben are starting to be clearer than the image I hold in my head. I hate that. Are you better at it than me? Can you remember…what was her name? Or do you only remember photographs?’

‘It was Christa,’ he said, in a goaded voice. ‘I can’t imagine why you’d be interested enough to read about us.’

‘I wasn’t very,’ she admitted. ‘It was just something to read in the waiting room-something to take my mind off what was happening to Henry. But I remember thinking it was crazy, wearing the willow for someone for fifteen years.’