‘Well, I’m sure he doesn’t need your concern.’ Denys looked her over. ‘I think you should visit the hotel boutique, my pet. Buy a new dress as a demonstration of good faith.’ He nodded. ‘Something short and not too sweet to show off your tan.’

‘Dad, I have plenty of clothes.’ Joanna spoke with a touch of weariness. ‘Besides, we have no money to waste on empty gestures.’

‘Not waste, darling. Investment. And please keep your voice down when you call me—that,’ he added irritably. ‘Someone might hear.’

‘And draw the correct conclusion that I’m actually your daughter instead of your supposed niece?’ She shook her head. ‘How long can we keep this farce going?’

And, in particular, how long before you grow up? she wondered in unhappy silence as her father’s mouth tightened petulantly. Before you acknowledge that you haven’t been forty for some time. That your hair is only blond because it’s tinted, and you’re not wrinkled because you’ve had an expensive facelift.

‘It’s working very well. For one thing, it explains the same surname on our passports,’ Denys retorted. ‘And, as I told you at the outset, it doesn’t suit my image to have a daughter who’s nearly nineteen.’

And it doesn’t suit me at all, Joanna thought bitterly. How long will it be before I can have a real life—the life I once planned?

Teaching languages had been her aim. She’d been studying for her A levels prior to university when her mother had been taken suddenly ill, and diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Two months later she was dead, and Joanna’s relatively stable existence up to that point ended, too.

Denys, summoned home from America as soon as his wife’s condition became known, had been genuinely grief-stricken. It had been his inability to settle rather than any lack of caring that had kept them apart for so much of their married life. Gail Vernon wanted a permanent home for her only child. Denys needed to gamble much as he needed to draw breath.

However, he was a generous if erratic provider, and, to Joanna, he had seemed an almost god-like being, suntanned and handsome, whenever he returned to the UK. A dispenser of laughter and largesse, she thought, his cases stuffed with scent, jewellery and other exotic gifts as well as the elegant clothes he had made for him in the Far East.

‘If he ever gets stopped at Customs, he’ll end up in jail,’ his older brother Martin had muttered.

Yet, somehow, it had never happened. And perhaps Uncle Martin had been right when he also said Denys had the devil’s own luck. But lately that luck had not been much in evidence. He’d sustained some heavy losses, and his recoveries had not been as positive as they needed to be.

He was invariably cagey about the exact state of their finances, and Joanna’s attempts to discover how they stood had never been successful.

‘Everything’s fine, my pet,’ was his usual airy reply. ‘Stop worrying your pretty head and smile.’

A response that had Joanna grinding her teeth. As so much did these days.

At the beginning, of course, it had all seemed like a great adventure. The last thing she’d expected was to be taken out of school and whisked off abroad to share her father’s peripatetic lifestyle, travelling from one gambling centre to another as the mood took him.

Uncle Martin and Aunt Sylvie had protested vociferously, saying that she could make a home with them while she finished her education, but Denys had been adamant.

‘She’s all I have left,’ he’d repeated over and over again. ‘All that remains of her mother. Can’t you understand that I need her with me?’ he’d added. ‘Besides, a change of scene will be good for her. Get her away from all these painful memories of my lovely Gail.’

With hindsight, Joanna wondered rather sadly if he’d have been so set on her company if she’d still been the quiet, shy child with braces on her teeth. Instead, she’d soared into slender, long-legged womanhood, her chestnut hair falling in a silken swathe to her waist, and green eyes that seemed to ask what the world had to offer.

Which, at first, seemed to be a great deal. The travelling, the hotel suites, the super-charged atmosphere of the casinos had been immensely exciting for an almost eighteen-year-old.

Even the shock when she learned that Denys wasn’t prepared to acknowledge their real relationship hadn’t detracted too much from the appeal of their nomadic existence. Or not immediately.

She’d realised quite soon that women of all ages found her father attractive, and tried, without much success, not to let it bother her. But while Denys was charming, flattering and grateful, he was determined to make it clear that it would go no further than that.

‘I need you to be my shield—keeping my admirers at a distance,’ he’d told her seriously. His tone had become wheedling. ‘Treat it as part of the game, darling. Mummy always told me how good you were in your school plays. Now’s your chance to show me how well you can really act.’

But why were you never there to see for yourself? Joanna wanted to ask, but didn’t, because her father was continuing.

‘All you have to do, my pet, is stick close to me, smile and say as little as possible.’