On the whole, Joanna thought she’d managed pretty well, even when the leering looks and muttered remarks from many of the men she encountered made her want to run away and hide.

The mother of Jackie, her best friend at school, had become involved in the women’s movement, and held consciousness-raising sessions at her house. The iniquity of women being regarded as sex objects by men, had been among the favourite themes at those meetings, and while she and Jackie had giggled about it afterwards, Joanna now thought ruefully that Mrs Henderson might have had a point.

Eventually, it had all ceased to be a game, and she’d begun to see her new life for the tawdry sham it really was, and be troubled by it. Realising at the same time that there was no feasible way out. That, for the time being, she was trapped.

Denys was speaking again, his voice excited. ‘I’m going to start making enquiries. Find out who the new arrival is, and if he’s likely to visit the Casino.’ He gave her a minatory nod. ‘I’ll see you back here after lunch.’

Here we go again, Joanna thought with a sigh as she heard the suite door close behind him. Looking for a non-existent pot of gold at the end of a dodgy rainbow.

‘All I need is one big win.’ She had lost count of how many times her father had said this over the past months.

And she sent up a silent prayer to the god of gamblers that the unknown owner would stay safely aboard his yacht for the duration. Although that, of course, would not help with the looming threat of the hotel bill.

She stayed on the balcony for a while, drinking another cup of coffee and enjoying the sunlit freshness of the morning after the unexpected heavy rain with thunder, lightning and squally winds of the previous night. But she was still unable to fully relax, not while the question of how long they could go on living like this continued to haunt her.

‘You’re my little mascot,’ Denys had told her jubilantly in the early days, but she hadn’t brought him much luck recently.

I shall have to start avoiding the front desk and use the staff entrance in the daytime, too, instead of just the evenings, she thought wryly as she pushed back her chair and went through the sliding glass doors into the sitting room.

The chambermaids were due soon, and she had to make sure that all signs of her nightly occupation of the sofa were removed from their eagle-eyed scrutiny.

It seemed a long time since their budget had been able to run to a suite with two bedrooms, and while she didn’t begrudge her father his comfortable night’s sleep, quite understanding that he needed to wake completely refreshed in order to keep his wits sharp, nevertheless she missed the peace and privacy which the sitting room could not provide.

When she was sure all was as it should be, she packed sun oil, her coin purse and a paperback book into her raffia bag, together with two leftover rolls from breakfast wrapped in tissues to provide her with a makeshift lunch.

She pinned her hair up into a loose knot, covering it with a wide-brimmed straw hat, then pulled a white cheesecloth tunic over her turquoise bikini, donned her sunglasses and picked up her towel. Thus camouflaged, she set off down to the swimming pool.

Few people, if any, recognised her in the daytime. Wearing espadrilles instead of the platform-soled high heels that Denys insisted on took at least a couple of inches from her height, and with her hair hidden, her face scrubbed clean of its evening make-up, and wearing a modestly cut bikini, she attracted little attention even from men who’d been sending her openly amorous looks the night before.

The St Gregoire charged a hefty number of francs for the hire of its loungers on the paved sun terraces, so Joanna invariably chose instead to spread her towel on one of the lawns encircling the pool, a practice not forbidden, but muttered at by the man who came to collect the money from the paying guests.

Ignore him, Joanna told herself, rubbing oil into her exposed skin already tanned a judicious golden brown. And try to pretend the grass isn’t damp while you’re about it.

She turned on to her stomach, and retrieved the book she’d found in a second-hand store just before they’d left for France, a former prize-winning detective story by a British author called P. D. James, which had attracted Joanna because its title, An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, seemed to sum up her current situation.

Maybe I could become a private investigator, she mused, finding her place in the story. Except I don’t have someone likely to die and leave me a detective agency.

A more likely scenario, if things went badly wrong this time, was a swift return to the UK and a job for Denys in Uncle Martin’s light engineering works. It had been offered before, prompted, Joanna suspected, by her uncle’s very real concern for her future. Although he’d had plenty of troubles of his own in the past few years with the imposition of the three-day week, strikes and constant power cuts to contend with.