‘You haven’t got a temperature,’ she told him. ‘And I don’t think you’ve got a pain anywhere. I suspect, my lad, you’re just having a major strop.’

Any attempt to get him back in the cot, however, met with stern resistance, so in the end Joanna bowed to the inevitable, heated up his milk, and carried him out to the twilit verandah, settling his squirming red-faced person gently but firmly in the crook of her arm.

‘This had better not become a habit,’ she said, dropping a kiss on his silky head.

By the time he’d drunk nearly all the milk his eyelids were drooping, but he was still attempting to cry intermittently as he fought against sleep.

‘Drastic measures called for, I think,’ Joanna whispered to herself, and, cuddling him close, she began to sing, clearly and very sweetly, a song from her own early childhood, ‘"There were ten green bottles, hanging on the wall …"’

As the number of bottles gradually decreased, she allowed her voice to sink lower and lower, until it was barely a murmur, and Matt, thumb in mouth, was finally fast asleep.

Joanna sat for a while, looking down, smiling, at the sleeping baby. A faint breeze had risen, bringing a delicious waft of the garden’s evening scents. And also, she realised, something more alien. A faint but unmistakable aroma of cigar smoke.

But Chris, she thought, puzzled, was a non-smoker. Besides, it would be another half-hour or more before he and Julie returned.

Suddenly nervous, she wanted to call Who’s there? but hesitated for fear of waking Matt. In the next instant she thought she could hear the sound of footsteps quietly receding, yet wasn’t entirely sure.

She got carefully to her feet, listening hard, but there was nothing—only the distant sound of the sea.

I’m imagining things, she thought. Because I’m feeling jumpy about tonight. That’s all it is.

Which was probably why the breeze seemed suddenly colder, too, she thought, shivering as she carried Matt inside and closed the door.

The crochet dress did not improve on acquaintance, Joanna thought, sighing, as she made a last check of her appearance. Worn with knee-length white boots that laced up the front, the outfit presented itself as the kind of sexy tease which needed a certain amount of sophistication to carry off, and she knew she was nowhere near that level.

However, she’d done her best. She’d used the heavier foundation she reserved for these occasions, transforming her face into a blank canvas, then smoothed shimmering silver on to her eyelids, accentuating it with softly smudged black liner, before adding two coats of mascara to her long lashes. The bronze blusher on her cheekbones had a touch of glitter, too, and she had applied a deeper shade of the same colour to her mouth.

Fancy dress and a mask, she told herself, as she applied scent to her pulses, her temples, and the valley between her breasts. Think of it that way.

There was room for very little but the basics in her tiny evening purse, and as she searched in her shoulder bag for the compact of pressed translucent powder she always wore, she found the slip of paper Chris and Julie had given her, with their name, address and telephone number.

It was the nearest to a friendship she’d achieved since leaving Britain, and it was also a possible lifeline, she thought wryly as she tucked it carefully into her wallet.

Denys was pacing the sitting room, and he gave a nod of judicious satisfaction as she emerged from the bedroom.

‘Once dinner is over,’ he told her, ‘someone will come to escort us up to the Gordanis suite.’

‘Very formal.’ Her tone was dry. ‘As are you,’ she added, removing a speck of fluff from the lapel of his dinner jacket. ‘Is the black tie strictly necessary?’

He shrugged. ‘It’s a big night. And a very big game. Mr Gordanis can afford to impose his own rules.’

But can you afford to play by them? was the question she did not dare ask as they took the lift down to the dining room.

She ate sparingly at dinner, and drank even less, noting that her father was being equally abstemious. Afterwards they drank coffee on the terrace outside the dining room while the time ticked slowly past, building the tension inside her.

She said, ‘Do you think it’s not going to happen—that we’ve been forgotten?’

‘No.’ Denys shook his head. ‘Apparently, he plays for amusement first with some of his friends. After they leave, the stakes rise and the game becomes serious. We’ll be sent for soon.’