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new year; naturally she hoped he had one, but she couldn’t remember his name. The young staff came and went like April showers nowadays; she rarely got the chance to know them.
    Lawrence followed his wife up the mahogany staircase. Two steps below her, his eyes were in line with her elegant, slim back, exposed by the daring dress that plunged to the waist, showing off her shoulder blades and the delicate bumps of her spinal cord. Impulsively he swept in and kissed her thin white skin. ‘You look beautiful tonight.’
    She stopped to appreciate the compliment and the sensation of his warm lips on her back. His whiskers scratched and stirred something. A memory rather than an actuality. A memory of wanting him, rather than the definite feeling of wanting him. Sex had once been so delicious and hopeful; now it was simply familiar. She turned and saw that his face was shining with expectation. It was different for him, clearly. The difference hurt her too.
    ‘Are you really so very tired, my darling? It is a new year after all.’
    That was true. She was too woozy to believe it might be properly satisfying, but she’d drunk an amount that meant it would be the uninhibited sort of sex that was always fun. She’d get into it once he started; she almost always did. Besides, he was her husband; she was his wife. It was her duty by law and tradition. She shouldn’t refuse him too often. Theirs was a rare marriage because it wasn’t made convenient by infidelity. Too many refusals might edge him along that dreaded path. ‘All right then, as long as you are quick,’ she replied. It was as generous an answer as she could muster.

6
    A VA THOUGHT THAT men had their uses – they were excellent at fetching her drinks and mink stoles when she needed them, buying meals and paying for clothes and all that – but she probably wouldn’t go so far as to say she’d ever met a
really
useful one. She would not even award her father that distinction; Ava had found she was not the sort of girl who simply adored her father, hero-worshipped him, just because of the intrinsic intimacy of their relationship. In fact, she found that the closer she was to a man, the more harshly she judged him. She could not ignore the faults that other women seemed to glide past. She saw the flaws and fears of men; she smelt out their inefficiency or arrogance, their wildness or weakness. Not that Sir Peter Pondson-Callow suffered from any of these specifically; he was not wild or weak or inefficient, and his arrogance at his abilities was countered by a deep sense of needing to be approved of. He was, however, a coldly ambitious man, and his ambition, left unchecked, could bubble into something more insidious, like greed or even cruelty. Ava had no problem with his avarice. He had made a lot of money – a
lot
– and she had benefited from his business acumen and ruthlessness; it would be churlish to despise him for that – foolish. Yet still she couldn’t quite adore him, couldn’t believe he was ideal just because he was her father. Unfortunately, he was not one hundred per cent appropriate; he wasn’t quite
quite
. Not quite dignified enough, not quite calm enough, a little too commercial in the drawing room and a little too friendly with shop girls, who he liked to impress by paying for everything with filthy wads of cash. Simply put, he was not a purebred, which annulled his chances of being properly useful to Ava, no matter how rich he might be.
    Her father had married her mother for money, and her mother, a plain girl, had married Pondson-Callow for his looks. They appreciated one another in much the way a farmer and a loyal sheepdog might: they accepted that their alliance was mutually beneficial, a fair deal. Undoubtedly, her mother had backed the right horse; her father had done a marvellous job at turning her respectable dowry into a small fortune. Before Ava was born he’d been awarded a knighthood for his industry; his efforts during the