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eye.’
    â€˜I bet she flies.’
    â€˜I’m not so sure,’ said Tom. ‘She looks like she’s sitting a little too low in the water.’
    â€˜That’s to fool idiots like you. I’m telling you, she flies.’
    â€˜Well, let’s find out, shall we?’
    He leapt from the quayside on to the varnished fore-deck, turning in time to see Lucy’s look of incredulity give way to realization.
    â€˜Don’t tell me, the royalties on your last book came through.’
    Tom was on the point of revealing all – this was exactly as he had imagined it happening – but he held himself in check. ‘Something like that.’
    Lucy kicked off her shoes and joined him on the foredeck, barely able to contain her excitement. ‘She’s not French. Where’s she from? Where did you find her? What’s she called?’
    â€˜No . . . Sweden . . . Marseilles . . . Albatross .’
    â€˜ Albatross – I told you she flies! What is she, thirty feet?’
    â€˜Twenty-eight.’
    â€˜Her skinny lines make her look longer.’
    Lucy dropped into the deep cockpit, running her hand along one of the benches before gripping the tiller and staring up at the tall mast. ‘Oh, Tom, you’re a lucky man.’
    â€˜I thought we’d sail the rest of the way to Le Rayol.’
    â€˜What about the car? My luggage?’
    â€˜Pascal’s going to drive it over.’
    She smiled, aware now that she’d been set up. ‘I’ll have to change my clothes first. I can hardly go to sea dressed like this.’
    â€˜There’s a shirt and some shorts down below. No standing headroom in the cabin, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to crouch.’
    The mainsail was already rigged, and while Lucy changed, Tom rigged the jib.
    â€˜Good work,’ came a voice from behind him as he was finishing up. Lucy was barefoot and wearing an old cap tilted at a rakish angle.
    â€˜Thanks, Skipper.’
    Her face lit up. ‘Really?’
    â€˜Take her away. There are winches for both halyards, so any half-decent sailor should be able to handle her solo, even in a blow.’
    Her eyes narrowed at the challenge.
    They slipped the lines and backed the sloop out between the pilings into the harbour. Tom made to paddle the stern around.
    â€˜Stand down, bosun, if you know what’s good for you.’
    Lucy raised the tall jib so that the wind brought the nose around and the boat began to make gentle headway.
    â€˜So, tell me more about your antidote to Hugo Atkinson,’ she demanded.
    â€˜Well, he’s American, and he’s a painter.’
    â€˜A good one?’
    â€˜Good enough for Yevgeny and Fanya to take him on.’
    â€˜That sounds suspiciously like a no.’
    â€˜He’s of the wilfully modern school. You know the sort of thing . . . a bowl of fruit can’t be allowed to actually look like a bowl of fruit, it has to look like it’s been hurled to the floor, trampled by a battalion of the Welsh Guards, scooped up with a shovel and dumped back on the table.’
    Lucy laughed. ‘Well, obviously Yevgeny and Fanya see something you don’t.’
    â€˜Large profits, I suspect.’
    Yevgeny and Fanya Martynov were an eccentric couple, White Russian émigrés who ran a thriving Left Bank art gallery in Paris devoted to the avant garde . They had summered in Le Rayol for the past four years, following their purchase of a pseudo-Palladian villa up on the headland towards Le Canadel. They operated an open-house policy for artists of all kinds, and the steady stream of painters, sculptors and photographers passing through La Quercia was always a welcome source of entertainment.
    â€˜They’ve put Walter in the cottage so that he can work in peace.’
    â€˜Walter?’
    â€˜He’s not as stuffy as he sounds, and he knows how to swing a tennis racquet.’
    â€˜Have you played