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with only a cheeky Latvian housekeeper for intermittent company.
    Once again he was hot property, but this time it was because he’d made a spectacularly stupid mistake. This time the press was baying for his blood. He was a hated man. He was a national disgrace. Probably right now there were MPs demanding for capital punishment to be brought back for people like him.

CHAPTER SIX
    “You’re not cross with me, then?”
    Ronnetta laughed. “Cross with you? I wish I’d been there to witness your performance! As well as all your previous ones. I really had no idea what you’d been getting up to behind my back. Certainly no clients have ever said anything to me in the past. Although when I come to think about it, there was one woman who mentioned something about how efficient you’d been; that it was typical of where you were from. I didn’t give it another thought.”
    “But what if Mr. Shannon complains to you?” Alice pressed. “What if he says I didn’t know my place, that I was rude to him? Which I was. Take my word for it; I was breathtakingly rude to him.”
    “Stop beating yourself up. If he was going to complain, don’t you think he would have done so by now?”
    It was a good point. Most people who have a beef about something usually complain straight away. They like nothing better than to make a huge fuss while they’re still steamed up. But twenty-four hours had passed since Alice’s encounter with Mr. Shannon, so maybe Ronnetta was right and he’d decided not to make a fuss. Was he a classic example of having a bark worse than his bite? He had seemed happy enough yesterday when she’d left him. She’d known, however, just absolutely known, that the first thing he would have done after she’d driven off was to check the till receipts she had given him, to see whether a bolshy Latvian had had the nerve to rob him.
    “What interests me more,” Ronnetta said, leaning across her desk with a rattle of bangles and poking the air with a biro, “is what Mr. Shannon is doing here all on his own in a great big place like Cuckoo House. And why, I want to know, has someone else down in London made all the arrangements for his stay? What’s that all about? You don’t suppose he’s some kind of criminal, do you? Or how about an informant who’s in hiding? Maybe MI6 is behind this and Cuckoo House is a safe house for him.”
    Alice laughed. “You’ve been watching too many episodes of Spooks . If he was being hidden because he was in danger, do you suppose for one minute they’d allow a stranger to come in and clean for him?”
    “Mm…perhaps not. So what was he like? Good-looking bloke? Single?” Ronnetta wiggled her eyebrows. “If yes to either of those last two questions, do you think he’d like some company? I’m sure I could make myself available.”
    In her own words Ronnetta had been divorced since the Crimean War and whilst there had been many a romantic entanglement in the intervening years she had not yet found that special person to be Husband Number Two. The search was ongoing. “I’m not sure about his marital status or that he’s your type,” Alice said. “To be honest, I don’t see him as being anybody’s type. He’s got an attitude that could etch glass.”
    “Haven’t we all at times? How old do you reckon?”
    “That’s a tricky one.” Alice didn’t want to say outright that she thought Mr. Shannon was too young for Ronnetta, so instead she described him, scruffy clothes and all.
    “He sounds like he needs someone to take him in hand,” Ronnetta said, slipping the biro between her lips and sucking on it—despite the hypnotherapy, she had yet to lose certain urges and habits. “I’m intrigued,” she added. “Keep me posted.”
    The mobile on her desk rang; she picked it up to take the call. Alice took it as her cue to leave. They both had work to do. She quietly closed the door of Ronnetta’s office—a 9 Swift Corniche three-berth caravan parked in her back