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his hand with as much warmth as I could, which wasn’t much since Akito had a grip whose vice-like crush implied long hours practising karate or some other fortifying regimen. We exchanged a few brief inanities about the markets and then turned back to the women.
    ‘Don’t I even get a “hi”, Nori?’ asked Kim, and, after the briefest of pauses, the two women embraced, Honoria smiling at Kim as might a mother at a lovable but incorrigible child. ‘Nori’ was the family nickname for Honoria and a vast improvement it was over the original, but Nori preferred Honoria, especially from her inferiors, which was almost everyone.
    Laughing, Kim broke away from Honoria and, ignoring me, seated herself in a patio chair quickly held for her by the good-looking Japanese, Akito.
    ‘Well, Kim,’ said Honoria, her blue eyes intense with something, but whether pleasure, interest in her cousin’sescapades, or combativeness, I couldn’t tell. ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘Into New York last night,’ Kim said. ‘Then here this morning. Then Mr Akito kidnapped me as I arrived and insisted he show me the river.’
    From behind her chair Akito smiled easily and, after his older colleague and Mr Battle had settled into chairs, seated himself next to Kim.
    ‘The victim went willingly,’ he said in barely accented English. ‘It may even have been her idea.’
    ‘Details,’ ‘said Kim. The point is we had a lovely morning, and – how are you, Uncle?’ This last she addressed to Mr Battle, who looked as if he deeply disliked being called ‘Uncle’, which, I guessed, probably accounted for Kim’s using the term.
    ‘I’m fine, Kim,’ he said with a scowl. ‘I’m fine. I’m glad you’ve all enjoyed yourselves. Gentlemen, have you had lunch?’
    ‘Miss Castelli introduced us to a most interesting pizza restaurant,’ said Akito. ‘Part of a chain, as I understand it.’ I was impressed that his little half-smile indicated absolutely no suggestion of what he might be thinking about the merits of eating at the local Pizza Hut.
    ‘How are you, Nori?’ asked Kim, her wide brown eyes mischievously alert. ‘Haven’t you got a wedding coming up one of these days?’
    ‘Oh, yes, I think you’re right,’ said Honoria. ‘But in the winter, I believe. I’ll have to check my calendar,’ she added in a tone of heavy irony.
    Kim finally turned her eyes on me, a glance that although little different from the one she’d bestowed on the others, nevertheless sent my heart unexpectedly racing ahead as if a fire alarm had been set off. Although Kim was smiling and her eyes were bright, I, though unaware of it at the time, was glaring at her: I knew chaos when I saw it.
    ‘And you must be Larry,’ she said. ‘I bet you know the date. Nori says you’ve got a good head for figures.’
    Since my head, if not my eyes, had been gaping at her breasts, which I was sure had been swaying bra-lessly beneath her loose sweatshirt, her statement that I had a good head for figures seemed to be some sort of
double entendre.
I flushed.
    ‘February twenty-eighth,’ I managed to answer.
    ‘He wanted the twenty-ninth,’ said Honoria, smiling. ‘But I pointed out there was no such date.’
    While everyone else smiled at this little hit, I felt another burst of annoyance. I knew that the invasion of Kim was a Saddam Hussein: a sudden, unexpected new element which was bound to upset the markets. Chaos had come.

8
    The rest of the day only proved my first intuition was correct. When we ended up playing tennis for an hour and a half Kim continued to be provocative – in all senses of that word. While the rest of us dressed in trim white shorts, blouses, socks and tennis shoes, Kim came out as the feminine equivalent of Andre Agassi: scruffy sneakers, raggedy cut-off blue jeans, and a multicoloured T-shirt that looked like an explosion in a paint factory.
    And her playing style was no better. Whereas Honoria and I had competitive spirits of