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I’d hate to leave all my friends and start again somewhere fresh, however good it was there.’
    Amanda looked at her watch. ‘Hey, guys. Let’s get chocolate. Only five minutes left.’
    Isabelle shook her head. ‘Yeuch. I’m hardly awake. Count me out.’
    Tamsin shook her head. ‘Not hungry.’
    Suzanne touched Amanda’s arm. ‘I would love to,’ she said. She felt that chocolate and a fizzy drink might well get her through the rest of the morning. ‘Where do we get it?’
    Amanda looked surprised. ‘Really? Excellent! A snacking buddy. The fourth form sell it in the corner of the hall. I could murder a Mars Bar and a Diet Coke. How about you?’
    ‘Mmm. Twix. And Diet Coke.’
    And they walked off, arm in arm. Suzanne was pleased to have a tall, blonde friend who liked chocolate, and she made a point of blanking Jackie, who was skipping around with two other girls, trying to catch her sister’s eye.

chapter five
Susie
    Les Landes, France
    August 2005
    We were sitting outside, on a warm evening. I could barely remember the winter. It seemed to have been hot for ever.
    There was a bowl of cheesy vegetable pasta in front of me. This was my favourite dish from Roman’s repertoire, and I was relishing the prospect of eating it. I speared a pasta butterfly. Inside the house, the phone rang.
    I looked at Roman pleadingly.
    He shook his head. ‘It’s for you,’ he said, in the drawling public school English that he had learned from his father. ‘You know it.’
    I sighed and scraped my chair back. During the summer, we entertained so often that when we had a few days without any guests, I liked to savour the peace. In winter, I would rush for the phone. Now I resented it. I was precariously balanced between terror and excitement about the upcoming weekend. I didn’t need anything to disturb my equilibrium.
    I decided to answer it in the office. I hoped it was neither Jackie nor Amanda. Amanda had called four times over three days, wanting to know about the night-time temperatures, the necessity of jackets, whether I wanted her to bring me some Marmite, and whether I had a cat. One of the children was ‘sensitive’ to cats. Luckily we ran a cat-free household.
    Amanda had always been demanding. I couldn’t wait to see her, but speaking to her all the time without having caught up properly was weird. As for my sister, she had been trying very hard to muscle in on my reunion. We had completely fallen out over my refusal to allow her to join us.
    ‘Âllo? ' I said in my best French voice, hoping to confuse whichever of them was disturbing my evening.
    ‘Hello,’ said a woman. She sounded unsure of herself, which ruled out both Amanda and Jackie. ‘Erm, is that Susanna Chapman?’
    I sensed a work call, so I put on my polite voice.
    ‘Yes it is!’ I said. I sat down at the trestle table where our finances were supposed to be managed by whoever could be bothered to do it, which was generally me. ‘How can I help you?’ I picked up a pen and doodled a flower and a bumble bee on a post-it note.
    ‘Um. This is going to sound odd.’ Her voice was crisp. ‘We haven’t met, but I believe you have painted some portraits of me. Which is weird, isn’t it? My name is Sarah Saunders. There’s one picture where you painted me lying by a swimming pool. One where I’m sitting on a wall by a village on a hill. And one where I’m reading a book outside a cottage in Greece or somewhere. They all have your signature on the bottom corner. It’s taken me a while to track you down.’
    I smiled. This sounded like another commission, and although I was already busy, you could never be too popular. I forgave her for coming between me and my dinner.
    ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Hello! Of course I know you. You’re Neil Barron’s wife. You’re lovely to paint.’ I swivelled in my chair, trying to see whether Roman was eating my food.
    ‘I’m Neil Barron’s wife?’ she echoed.
    ‘Aren’t you? He commissioned them for