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Here, in a drawing-room in Belgravia, nearly thirty years later, she remembered her very words: ‘I only came to use you for a great fuck, Jarret. Now I’m going home. How do
you
like being used?’ He had slapped her face so hard she had fallen to her knees. But she had gathered herself up and walked away. That was the last time they had ever seen or spoken to each other.

Amy was not proud of that pathetic revenge. It had, she remembered, been sweet for a very few hours, but nothing more than that. And here Jarret was again, and Fee, trying to take advantage of her, she was certain of that, though she had yet to find out how. She knew that she could never allow that to happen. How very cruel and evil these men were, how clever and devious. The realisation dredged up a strange cunning and desire for greater revenge in Amy than she had ever known before. She could hardly equate these feelings with herself. At a certain moment Amy knew that this time round she would not walk away in a false glory of pathetic revenge, but would stay the course and fight Jarret and Fee. It was to be fire meet fire this time.

Almost without thought she found herself playing along with Jarret and Fee, allowing them to believe that
Jarret’s advances had worked; that Fee’s eccentric charm, his desire to make her one of the family – how she detested the way in which he referred to Jarret and Tennant and himself as ‘our little family’ – was winning her over.

Amy thought of those other women who had been part of that inner circle they squirmed in. It nearly prompted her to ask Fee what had happened to Savannah and the Contessa. Those two and how many more had once haunted her life with Jarret. But she saw no point. They would have been destroyed in one way or another, as Jarret had destroyed her by his so-called love. She could not help but wonder at how foolish she had been, and those other women, to have believed that he had loved them. Must a woman always delude herself that the man she loves loves her in the same way, with the same intensity, no matter that his actions decree differently?

Once she had thought of those women as the ghosts of past loves who haunted her life, and had hated them for that. Not now. Now she saw Savannah and the Contessa, and so many other women Fee and Jarret must have exploited, as sisters under the skin. She was about to go into battle against Jarret and Fee not only for herself but for them as well.

Fire with fire. Slowly, methodically, with incredible deviousness, she would strip them of all they possessed, destroy them publicly, and then she would walk out on them. She had hardly even to think about it, the plan seemed to formulate itself.

Very sweetly she told them, ‘I can’t believe this is
happening to us after all these years. I think it’s going to take me some time to get used to the idea that dreams do come true. I have a great deal to think about, I must go.’

Amy went to Jarret and placed her arms round his neck. She whispered something explicitly erotic in his ear and then kissed him on the cheek. When she released him she just caught the glance that passed between him and Fee and knew that she was not over-reacting to their reappearance in her life.

‘I wish I could come home with you but I can’t, my hostess would consider that very rude. She’s been wonderful to us, having us all here for so long.’

‘Still the great flirt, my dear Jarret.’

‘It means nothing and will mean even less now that I’ve found you again.’

‘Let’s spend the day together tomorrow, the three of us?’ suggested Fee.

‘And what about your hostess?’

‘I’ll work it out,’ said Jarret.

‘What time should we come to you?’ asked Fee.

‘Don’t, I’ll come to you.’

‘I would love Fee and Tennant to see your house.’

‘Not tomorrow.’

‘But here is impossible. We shan’t be able to talk or make plans,’ he said.

‘Oh, we’re going to make plans?’

Now Fee took over. ‘Jarret loves you so much that he forgets all the important things in his life – our lives. He’s always been that way when he’s with you.’

‘And that has always caused you a problem, hasn’t it, Fee?’

‘Frankly, yes.’

‘Oh, yes, let’s do be frank, Fee.’

‘Fee! Not now.’

Here it comes, thought Amy. She looked at Jarret. He was his usual calm, self-assured self, with that touch of incredible arrogance.

‘What’s wrong, Jarret?’

‘I don’t want him to impose our problems on you.’

‘What problems?’

‘Very serious problems that have to be solved because if they are we can all have the most wonderful, happiest years of our lives together. And if they are not … well, best not to think about that,’ said Fee.

‘I’m not very good about solving other people’s problems. I’ll come back when you’ve worked them out. Does that sound familiar, Jarret? Now I really must go.’

He went to Amy and grabbed her by the arm. ‘I thought we’d left the past behind us, forgotten?’

Amy removed his hand from her arm and caressed his cheek with her hand, leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the lips. ‘Forgotten but not forgiven.’

She was walking from the room. Once more Jarret stopped her by taking her arm. They gazed into each other’s eyes. ‘Please, I want us to begin again. I’ll prove to you that I love you – I began and you responded. You knew that it was right for us to be together. We need to begin anew, start a fresh life. In time you’ll forgive me because I’ll leave you with no other choice. There is no
other man who can love you as I will, and we know you will never love another man as you loved me … as you will love me again. I’ll make you happier than you’ve ever been. I need you, Amy. I’ve always needed you in my life.’

‘Let me think about us tonight.’

‘It isn’t just us, it’s my life, my son, the son you and I never had. I want to share him with you, make him too a part of your life. He’s the most important part of mine.’

For Amy that was the lowest, the cheapest shot he could have delivered. Unforgivable! She had been all alone when she carried their son, alone when she had buried her beautiful six-week-old child, alone when she mourned him, alone every day of her life when she remembered him.

‘Once you told me all the paintings you ever painted were mine, yet you never gave me one. Now you tell me you want to share your most precious possession: a son. Don’t ever again promise me things you have no intention of delivering! Next you’ll be promising me a
palazzo
, or maybe a
yalis
. And when I arrive with my luggage? A closed door. My dear, handsome, charming Jarret, I’ve been there, done that. You’ll have to do better than tempt me with poetic promises this time round.’

‘Then there is another time round for us?’

The look of relief on his face was a sight for Amy to behold, but the look on Fee’s was astounding. Amy was more curious than ever to know what they wanted from her.

‘Let’s talk about things tomorrow.’

‘And make love tonight. Take me home with you.’

‘You’ve forgotten the Belgravia lady.’

‘Tomorrow, then.’

‘Yes, tomorrow. I’ll come early and we’ll do some of the London galleries and lunch with a friend of mine, and by then I expect you to tell me why, aside from your grand passion for me, you have sought me out and are promising me undying love until death do us part.’

‘You don’t believe how important you are to me?’

‘Oh, but I do. Two taxis to seek me out? That’s more money than you’ve spent on me since the first day I met you.’

Fee began to say something and Amy swung round to face him. ‘Not a word. I would tread very carefully if I were you.’ And she left the room.

Jarret walked her to the car. ‘You mustn’t be too harsh with Fee. He has always praised you, wants to be your friend.’

‘Jarret, Fee needs me just as once before he needed me. At that time he found me and brought me to you to help you over a depressing time in your life. I lost my illusions a very long time ago. It would be no bad thing for you to remember that this time round and inform Fee of the fact. See you in the morning.’

All the way home from London there was not one moment given over to thoughts of Jarret and Fee. They were out of Amy’s mind immediately she drove away from the Belgravia house. Her mind was instead focused first on the traffic leaving London and then on her work
in progress. Lastly, as she drove down the track through the trees to her house, now brightly lit, about the sex she’d had with Jarret and the thrill of intense sexual attraction.

She entered the house and called out, ‘Dave.’

‘I’m in the kitchen, Miss Ross,’ answered the off-duty policeman who acted as a guard over Amy’s house when she had something as valuable on the premises as the Soutine. It was an extra precaution against theft. The house would remain inhabited by someone at all times while the Soutine was there.

The two had a cup of coffee together and then Dave went off duty. Amy made herself an omelette and called Charles.

‘Hi, it’s me. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’

‘I have people here for dinner, but if it’s brief, what can I do for you?’

‘You could lunch me tomorrow and three others who might amuse you.’

‘Sure, do you want to explain further?’

‘No, I want an objective opinion. All you have to remember is, it’s past tense. People who popped up from nowhere.’

‘Say no more. One o’clock in the dining-room.’

Amy turned lights off and made certain the security alarms were on, then went up to the library. She should have felt tired, but she didn’t. She felt restless, somehow unable to get the sex she had had with Jarret out of her mind. He was right about one thing: the chemistry between them was still there, but how strange that it
meant absolutely nothing to her. She didn’t even feel sad about that.

A fax came through with a list of dates suggested by the curator of one of the New York museums for a viewing of the Soutine. They wanted assurances of a first refusal. She faxed back the date that suited her best. Exhilarated that they were off the ground with the Soutine, Amy decided to take the Kramer Gallery file up to bed with her and make a stab at looking through it. She was halfway up the next flight of stairs to her bedroom when several photographs in the folder slipped out and fell on the stairs. She gathered them up and tossed them and the folder on to her bed before going to the dressing-room where she drew herself a bath.

Half an hour later, smelling of almonds, her skin glistening smooth, and wrapped in a celadon-green terrycloth bathrobe trimmed with robin’s-egg-blue bands of satin, she approached the bed. Amy’s intention was to scoop up the file and photographs that she had tossed there so she might remove the eighteenth-century Persian embroidered coverlet. But she never touched it. Her attention was drawn to a large glossy black and white photograph of a magnificent eighteenth-century wooden mansion, a
yalis
, garden and hills rising behind and above it. The photograph had been taken from the water, the Bosphorus. Amy’s blood ran cold. She stood next to her bed, looking down at the photograph, frozen to the spot. She knew without reading the documentation that went with that photograph that it was Jarret and Fee’s house.

An image of that heartbreaking letter in violet-coloured ink from the Contessa Armida Montevicini flashed before Amy’s eyes. That letter that had revealed to her what a grand passion can do to a once proud woman of character and substance. The romantic, elegant scrawl in violet ink had been for Amy the final humiliation of loving a bounder who could so cruelly strip a once remarkable lady of all dignity by making her beg for his favours in bed. The elegance, the splendour of that house, it was all there in that photograph. It could have been no one else’s
yalis
.

Instinctively she knew the house was why Fee had arrived at her door when she was on her way to Switzerland. He and Jarret somehow knew that she was going to have something to do with the
yalis
, or could have, or might. But how had they known when she had no idea herself until the very minute she saw the photograph?

When Amy did finally reach out and take the photograph in her hands, she sat down on the bed close to the lamp and studied it in a better light. This house that had caused her so much anguish was an amazingly romantic place. One had only to look at it to imagine the gaiety, intrigue and assignations that once had taken place there. It seemed to have a life of its own. It seemed all wrong that it should have fallen into the hands of Jarret and Fee. Amy opened the folder on the bed and sought information on the house, but before she found it she discovered several other views of the
yalis
. Two photographs were quite old and in one she thought she
saw the shadow of a woman standing in an upstairs window.

Photograph in hand, Amy ran downstairs to the library and her desk. There she switched on the desk light and took her magnifying glass and saw for the first time the Contessa Armida Montevicini. Her image was grainy, but made an impression not easily forgotten. She was old, her hair white, and dressed elaborately. Her face was impressive, more like a queen’s than a countess’s. Amy sensed that she must once have been magnificent.

She put the photograph down on the desk. To think that once she had dreamed she would live with Jarret in that house: the house he’d coveted so much, that he had never invited her to visit, that she had never seen until now. What was it in Fee and Jarret that made them ruin women for houses, give up love for their passion to possess? If Amy had not understood it thirty years ago, she understood it even less now.

Taking the photograph to return it to its folder, she was about to switch off the desk lamp but hesitated. Light was falling on her picture on the cover of
Art News
magazine. The Terry O’Neil photograph did her more than justice – that was something else she would take Anthony to task for; he had given it to the magazine, no one else could have. It was a portrait he had had the photographer take of Amy and the one he kept on his desk. She picked up the magazine and read the date. It had been three weeks getting to her, the magazine was nearly a month out to subscribers.