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I’m a regular at the NFT,’ she added, proudly but a little defiantly also.
    ‘Exactly. You aren’t capable of sitting on your arse and doing nothing, any more than Mum was, any more than I am, if I’m honest. So what’s behind this sudden and irrational decision?’
    ‘I have an assistant in the agency, Fanette. You remember her: you met her last time you came to see me in London. I felt it was time to give her more responsibility, with a view to her taking over from me completely.’
    I laughed as I topped up her glass. ‘Adrienne, she must be pushing fifty-five by now. She’ll be ready to retire before you are. Come on, straight answer. I’m my mother’s daughter: you couldn’t bullshit her, and it won’t work with me either.’
    She frowned as she looked across the wide bay, at the lights of Santa Margarita. ‘It seems that it won’t,’ she murmured. Her eyes snapped back towards me. ‘I had decided that I wasn’t going to broach the subject, you know; after this afternoon, after seeing what a nice life you have now, I realise I have no business interrupting it.’
    ‘With what?’
    ‘A mad idea I had. But forget it: it’s quite inappropriate. Your father would go berserk if he knew I had even thought about it.’
    I chuckled again. ‘Dad doesn’t do berserk. Dad does “Primavera knows best”, meaning that if your idea is that crazy I’ll be the first to tell you. So out with it.’
    ‘If you insist. It’s Frank.’
    Why hadn’t I guessed that? I should have known from the off that the only person in the world who could divert Auntie Ade’s attention from her agency and her clients was her precious wayward son.
    ‘What about him?’ I asked, trying to stay casual. ‘He’s not in trouble again, is he?’
    ‘I don’t know. The fact is, Primavera, I don’t even know where he is.’>
    ‘Is that unusual? I mean,’ I added hurriedly, as I saw her eyebrows start to knit, ‘does Frank always make a point of letting you know where he is?’
    ‘Yes, he does,’ she said, mollified. ‘He always keeps in touch.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘Mostly by email: he says he has a lap-top and that he’s on-line virtually all the time. We live in a virtual world now, my dear.’
    ‘But when did you see him last?’
    She thought about her answer. ‘Fifteen months ago, on the first anniversary of the day that I reached the age I never mention. I thought I’d got away without anyone twigging I was a year older, but Frank turned up out of the blue and took me to dinner at the Savoy.’
    ‘And you haven’t seen him since then?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘You said “out of the blue”. Does that mean he wasn’t living in London at the time?’
    ‘He hasn’t lived in London since they gave him his passport back, and that was going on for three years ago. When he got out of the pokey he had to report to a probation officer for a year and have a registered address, so he moved in with me. But as soon as he was free to travel, he was off. A pity: when he was with me he got involved with the agency. He did very well: for a while I entertained hopes that he’d come in with me as a partner, but when I made the offer, he told me it wasn’t what he wanted to do.’
    ‘And what did he want to do?’
    ‘He was rather vague about that.’
    ‘Where did he go when he moved out?’
    ‘Switzerland. He got a job as a chalet maid in Davos, in an international ski facility called Cinq Pistes.’
    ‘As a what?’
    ‘Chalet maid. I’m not kidding. He filled out an application on the Internet, using his proper name, Frances. The company who owned the resort assumed he was female and took him on.’
    ‘What happened when he turned up?’
    ‘He showed them the name on his passport and pointed out that he had ticked the “M” gender box on the form, so any misunderstanding was theirs. They huffed and puffed, but in the end they agreed that he could give it a try.’ She smiled. ‘He lasted two weeks as a cleaner: that was how