Prologue Kelly Hartford looked out of the taxi window and scanned the horizon for a landmark – a loch or a folly or a particularly tall tree – that might give some clue that they were heading in the right direction. It was exactly ten years to the day since she had last visited, and she’d forgotten how far beyond the back of beyond her friend lived. Apart from a few tiny crofters’ cottages on the moor, they’d not passed a house or car in over thirty miles. Kelly didn’t know how Cassie stuck it. A sunbeam streamed in through the window, dazzling her momentarily, and she rooted around in her bag for a pair of shades. She had also forgotten how much longer the days were up here in the summer. It was the end of August and just coming up to seven o’clock, but the sky was still noon-blue. It would be nearer eleven before the sun doffed its cap for the day and dropped behind the hills. The taxi took a left fork in the seemingly endless road. Stretching her thumbs out the way her physiotherapist had shown her, Kelly resumed her speed-texting. But not for long. The car started hitting potholes and she had to grab the headrest for support. ‘Jeez-us,’ she muttered as the overexcited suspension tossed her about. ‘It would have been smoother coming by camel.’ The dour driver said nothing, but she knew this pitted farm road was the landmark she’d been looking for. Up ahead, she could see the eagle-topped pillars and lodge house announcing the perimeter of the estate and the end of her long journey. She had been travelling for a full day now – having caught a connecting flight to Edinburgh at Heathrow – and she was desperate for a shower and a power-nap before the party kicked off. She knew she’d been cutting it fine catching the later flight. If she’d gone from Newark, she’d have landed three hours earlier and she could have rested all afternoon and caught up with the others, but who was she kidding? She was a JFK-only girl, and anyway, Bebe was going nuts trying to get the collection finished – she’d practically had a coronary when Kelly had insisted she really did have to leave her post to fly to Scotland for a party. They were in the final two weeks before the collections, and it had been the least she could do to stick around until the very last, hand-luggage-only, gates-closing minute. The heather-topped moorland stopped abruptly at the gates as they swept into an avenue of towering Scots pine trees whose needles covered the ground like a carpet. Slowly the taxi meandered round high compacted banks of quivering maroon acres, purple rhododendrons and springy lawns of magenta clover. The sudden riot of manicured colour heralded the imminence of the great house, and as the car passed between a pair of gigantic domed yew trees flanking the drive, she thought it looked grander than she remembered – and pinker. Hewn from indigenous rock, it usually looked brown in the customary rain, but tonight, as it basked in the late-summer sun, it positively blushed with delight. Tall, with six gable ends as peaked as witches’ hats, it had a sweep of stone steps up to the front door and heavily leaded windows, of which the centrepiece was a massive picture window which ran across the central facade, flooding the inner hall with light and affording a sensational view of the Lammermuir Hills from the minstrels’ gallery within. As the taxi slowed on its approach to the front steps, Kelly quickly turned the volume on her iPhone up to max – she didn’t want to miss any calls once inside the enormous house – and purposely dropped her shoulders a good two inches from her ears as she took a series of deep yogic breaths. Bebe would be fine without her. She’d be back on the plane tomorrow night and straight into the office for Monday lunchtime. Most people took longer bathroom trips than that. The grandfather clock chimed seven times in the hall below, just as the champagne cork popped and Suzy poured them each a glass. ‘Cheers!’ Cassie beamed, her eyes glittering brightly as she tucked her legs underneath her on the bed. ‘To us.’ Anouk tipped her head to the side. ‘Don’t let your husband hear you say that,’ she teased in her silky French accent. ‘Strictly speaking it’s to you and him tonight.’ Cassie shrugged happily and sighed. Anouk was right, of course. They’d managed ten years together in a day and age when most couples couldn’t manage two, and to celebrate they were throwing a huge bash that was as big as, if not even bigger than, their wedding. But even though Cassie was proud of their achievement – not least because it meant she’d upheld her side of their ‘agreement’ – she was even more excited about the fact that it was the perfect opportunity to corral her best friends from their far-flung corners of the world. She knew that Suzy, Anouk and Kelly all hooked up reasonably regularly. After all, London, Paris and New York were practically commuter routes for them – but diversions up to the Scottish Borders? Not so much. This was the first time they’d all be together since her wedding – well, once Kelly got here. Cassie watched as Suzy carefully lifted up a pale blue box with chocolate-brown polka dots from the far side of the bed. ‘Well, the champagne may be for you and Gil,’ she said, grinning, ‘but these are for us.’ Inside were four overscaled cupcakes, all frosted with the palest lemon icing and topped with a white rose. ‘Magnifique,’ Anouk sighed, leaning over to pass one to Cassie. ‘Oh my God – they’re so cute,’ Cassie squealed, holding hers up to the sunlight. ‘They’re like baby bunnies.’ Dundee cake was a far cry from the chichi delectations that flirted from the bakery windows in Pimlico, Cassie mused. ‘They’re passion fruit?’ she asked, spraying crumbs everywhere. Suzy nodded. ‘You like? I’ve been developing the recipe with the bakery for a wedding I’m doing. It’s taken for ever to get it right – one lot was too gloopy, the next not tangy enough. But I think it’s there now – don’t you?’ Cassie swooned in agreement. ‘Is the bride behaving herself?’ Anouk asked, reclining against the pillows and eating her cupcake in tiny little pinches. Suzy rolled her eyes. ‘Do they ever? Just about the only thing she hasn’t changed her mind about is the groom – and with a month to go, there’s still time.’ Anouk giggled, shaking her head. ‘I don’t know how you put up with it. All that stress you’re absorbing.’ Suzy eyed her rounded tummy. ‘Well, I could do with absorbing a lot more. Why is it that my brides always lose at least a stone for their weddings, but I only ever seem to put it on? I mean, I’m the one with all the hassles – dealing with the florists, double-booked venues, unreliable bands, coked-up DJs, truculent vicars . . . You name it, I’ve dealt with it. You’d think I’d be the one losing weight.’ Cassie sighed. For as long as she’d known her – which was since birth – Suzy had been permanently on a quest to make herself smaller. Already five foot ten by the age of twelve, with a build that had been athletic even at her thinnest, she’d always felt like she took up too much room, and the adolescent desire to conform had never left her – particularly, it seemed, as she now worked with diminishing brides on a daily basis. Still, whatever Suzy felt about her weight, Cassie thought she looked better than ever – younger than her thirty years, for a start, with her velvety, rosy-hued complexion, her dark brown ‘Bambi’ eyes and a layered style she’d settled on that made the most of her too-fine dark blonde hair. Anouk, on the other hand, was Suzy’s opposite in every way. Dark, petite, knowing. Her thick chestnut-brown hair was expensively cut in a long tousled bob that cut in perfectly beneath her pronounced cheekbones, her nose was straight and fine, and her full pout was tantalizingly offset by a hint of overbite. Compared with Suzy, she looked older than her thirty years, though not because of wrinkles or anything as bourgeois as ageing – Cassie well knew that the contents of Anouk’s bathroom would out-stock Space NK and that she had a beauty regimen that would put Cleopatra to shame. Rather, she had a worldly air, a sophistication that was rarely worn on such dainty shoulders but was more often seen on women ten, even twenty, years her senior. ‘Honestly, I think living in these cities is bad for your health,’ Cassie said reprovingly. ‘From what I can see, it makes you all neurotic about your figures. No one thinks twice about things like that up here.’ ‘Why not?’ Anouk asked. ‘What’s wrong with looking after yourself?’ ‘But that’s just the thing. It’s not looking after yourself. It’s denying yourself. All of you always seem to be starving yourselves to some ridiculously low weight that just isn’t sustainable. Everyone should just relax and . . . enjoy cupcakes,’ she sighed, taking the last remaining bite. ‘That’s what’s so hateful about you,’ Suzy snarled. ‘You’re slim without even thinking about it. At least I can take comfort in the knowledge that Anouk and Kelly suffer terribly to stay thin.’ ‘I do not suffer,’ Anouk pouted, looking insulted that she should ever be thought to do anything so inelegant. ‘Oh no? Then how come you get tinier every time I see you?’ ‘I am Parisienne, chérie,’ she shrugged, as if that explained everything. ‘It’s in my DNA.’ ‘Hmph, that old chestnut.’ ‘What are you wearing tonight?’ Anouk asked Cassie, still pinching away at her cake. ‘I trust you have frittered away the family trust on something fabulous?’ Cassie shook her head, knowing the consternation this would cause. ‘Afraid not. The shooting season starts next week and I’ve been up to my eyes in the kitchens, trying to get ahead. It hasn’t helped that we had a bumper crop of damsons this summer and I’ve been trying to get everything off the tree and jammed.’ Anouk dropped her hand in disgust. ‘You ditched a new dress for damsons?’ ‘It’s never jam tomorrow in this house, is it?’ Suzy muttered, rolling her eyes. Cassie shrugged. ‘I’ve not been able to get off the estate for over a month now,’ she said, getting up and walking over to the wardrobe. ‘And anyway, Gil always liked this black velvet dress that I bought a few years ago for New Year. I’ve probably only worn it three or four times.’ She held it against herself – knee-length, off the shoulder with a velvet rose centrepiece. ‘It is Laura Ashley.’ ‘Laura . . .’ Anouk mouthed, looking aghast at Suzy. ‘Hey, I know it doesn’t look anything on the hanger, but honestly, when it’s on . . .’ She caught sight of Suzy’s sceptical expression. ‘Look, I’ll put it on now. Then you’ll see it’s not so bad.’ She wriggled out of her dressing gown just as the door burst open. Kelly took one look at Cassie in her once-white Playtex bra and baggy knickers and her jaw dropped. ‘Oh my God! It’s worse than I thought.’ Cassie shrieked and bounded over, swamping Kelly in a delighted hug. Anouk picked up the velvet dress, grimacing. ‘It is so much worse than you thought,’ she said to Kelly, who was peering at her over Cassie’s shoulder. She threw the dress down on the bed and lit a cigarette. Suzy poured a fresh glass of champagne and sauntered over, waiting for Cassie to release Kelly. ‘You’re still a stranger to colour, I see,’ she tutted, handing Kelly the glass and kissing her affectionately. ‘And you’ve lost weight. You’re too thin.’ ‘There’s no such thing,’ Anouk purred, holding her cigarette behind her as she kissed Kelly on each cheek. ‘Exactly,’ Kelly agreed. They’d always been partners in crime and were both rampantly, defiantly single and at the height of their seductive powers. They even looked similar. Kelly was also a shimmering brunette, though her hair was reed-straight and longer than Anouk’s, her nose more retroussé, her eyes hazelnut-coloured and almond-shaped. ‘I see I’ve come at just the right time,’ said Kelly, taking Cassie by the shoulders and giving her a Paddington Bearlike hard stare. ‘What the hell are you doing to Anouk?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘She’s French, Cass. You can’t walk around in underwear like that. She doesn’t have the constitution for it.’ ‘Well . . . I . . . But . . .’ she stammered, looking between her tragic bra and Anouk, who had one hand on her hip and one eyebrow raised to heaven. ‘Well, Gil doesn’t mind,’ she blustered. ‘Honey, right this instant, it’s a mystery to me how you two have got to ten years together.’ Kelly took a sip of her drink. ‘You’d be kicked out of bed in Manhattan!’ ‘Institutionalized in Paris,’ Anouk drawled. Cassie looked to Suzy for the final nail in the coffin. ‘Sorry, sweets,’ she shrugged. ‘Can’t help you. London’s definitely not calling.’ ‘Urrrgh, you’re a nightmare, the lot of you,’ Cassie said defensively, reaching for the towelling dressing gown heaped on the floor. ‘I’d forgotten how high-maintenance you all are. I don’t know how your men put up with you.’ She hated it when they ganged up on her like this. They might all live in different countries and be products of different cultures, but it seemed as though ‘sophistication’ was an international language that linked her glamorous, urbane friends together. It wasn’t as if their day-to-day lives overlapped: Kelly had her own fashion PR consultancy in Manhattan, Suzy was a high-octane wedding planner in London and Anouk was a sought-after jewellery designer in Paris, who refused to sell through boutiques and would only accept new customers if they had contacts with at least three of her existing clients. And yet the three of them invariably used the same miracle moisturizer, carried the same Balenciaga bag, read the newspaper on their iPad and minimized their bottom in MiH jeans. ‘Hey, chill – it’s not like I’m surprised, or even disappointed,’ Kelly said, winking as she unzipped her overnight bag and pulled out a petal-pink tissue-wrapped bundle. ‘Because I just so happen to have a little gift for you.’ Cassie took it gingerly, looking slightly afraid of what she might find in there. She shook open the paper and a midnight-blue silk dress slid out. ‘Oh! What a beautiful nightie!” she exclaimed, running her hand over the fabric, her indignation instantly forgotten. The others burst out laughing. ‘Shall I wear it tonight?’ she asked coquettishly, holding it against herself. ‘Oh, you’ll wear it tonight, all right,’ Kelly laughed. ‘But to the party. This ain’t no nightie!’ ‘What?’ Cassie said, alarmed. ‘But it’s so . . . skimpy. Gil would be mortified if I . . .’ ‘Au contraire, Gil will be delighted to see his wife look so alluring,’ Anouk asserted. ‘Put it on.’ Knowing she had no choice in the matter, Cassie slid the dress over her head. The silk felt exquisite next to her skin and she noticed, now that it was on, two tiny lace peekaboo crescents arced over her hips. A tiny but incredibly sexy detail. ‘Wow!’ Suzy gasped. ‘New season?’ Anouk asked Kelly. Kelly nodded. ‘Bebe Washington label. Gisele’s walking in it in the show in a few weeks.’ ‘I want it,’ Anouk purred. ‘You shall have it. Got anything special in mind?’ Kelly asked. ‘Oh yes,’ Anouk said, refusing to elaborate. Cassie couldn’t stop looking at herself in the mirror. She looked so . . . different. Not like herself, somehow. She wasn’t sure what Gil would say, despite the girls’ assurances. She looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. Outside, the piper had started playing, beckoning the revellers towards the Lammermuir estate as he paced solemnly back and forth across the lawn. She wondered whether Wiz would be able to get here early. She’d said she would try. Wiz’d tell it to her straight. After all, she was her go-to friend up here, her rock, her lunch companion and closest confidante – the one who’d taken her under her wing when she’d first arrived, not yet twenty-one, fresh from the air-conditioned climes of expat living in Hong Kong and new to the nuances of grouse-moor farming. She looked down at the trio of childhood friends who were sitting together in a gaggle on the floor, examining a heap of shoes that had been upended from one of Anouk’s many bags. Their friendship had been arranged practically before their births. Their fathers had all been CEOs of the multi-national cosmetics conglomerate Neroli – Kelly’s for the Americas in New York; Anouk’s for Europe, excluding the UK, in Paris; Suzy’s for the UK in London; and Cassie’s for Asia in Hong Kong. Before the girls were even born, their mothers had all been good friends, meeting regularly around the world for coffee and shopping trips as they accompanied their husbands to AGMs and conferences. And when the girls had been born, all in the same year – surely a collaboration by their mothers? – the friendship was handed down a generation as they shared crèches, rattles and nannies. Their parents couldn’t have been remotely surprised when, aged thirteen, the girls mounted a pressure group to be sent to the same boarding school in England, and they’d enjoyed five blissful years together, as close as sisters, sleeping in the same dorm, playing in the same lacrosse team, swooning over the same boys . . . until Cassie had blown it. Perhaps ‘blown it’ was too harsh, but she’d always had the feeling that by marrying Gil so early, she’d popped their sealed bubble. She’d met him at the Grosvenor House Ball in London and he’d swept her off her feet, not just with his extraordinary confidence and intelligence, but more particularly with his voice: crystal-cut with a whisper-soft burr. She would do anything for that voice – it had seduced her away from her virginity, taken her away from her friends, made her wait for the baby she yearned for . . . There was a knock at the door. ‘Cassie?’ Talk of the devil. Cassie’s eyes widened in panic. He couldn’t see her looking like this – half-dressed in a nightie over her ‘grubby’ underwear with no make-up on. The girls clearly had the same thought and sprang up off the floor to group around her like a footballer’s wall, just as Gil peered in. He took in the scene of desolation – the empty cake box, the half-drunk bottles of champagne, the piles of shoes, the dresses on the beds and the huddle of women, two of them in identikit towelling robes and hair turbans. ‘I thought I’d find all of you in the one room together. Heaven forbid you should get ready in your own rooms,’ he quipped. He stepped into the room, looking relieved that everyone was ‘decent’. He was already dressed for the festivities, wearing a bottle-green velvet smoking jacket and trousers in the family’s dress tartan. His sharp, hawkish features – which always looked so intimidating in his barrister’s gown and wig – were softened by the anticipation of the night’s revelries. ‘You’ve put me in the Faerie Room, Gil,’ Suzy said accusingly, hands on hips. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten that’s the one that’s haunted. You weren’t the only one who didn’t sleep a wink on your wedding night.’ Gil laughed softly at her allusion to the lap-dancing pole the girls had put up in his room. ‘I’m sorry Archie couldn’t make it this weekend. It would have been good to see him.’ ‘Well, you’re not as sorry as he is,’ Suzy replied on behalf of her errant husband. ‘Camel racing with clients in Abu Dhabi is not his definition of a good time. The poor boy’s terrified. I had to give him the beta blockers I keep on standby for my nervous brides.’ Gil chortled and looked at Kelly, dressed top to toe in black – the only one who didn’t look as if she was staying at a spa. ‘And how was your flight, Kelly?’ ‘Oh, you know . . . a supermodel in full tantrum in front, a drunk sleeping on my shoulder and an air hostess with rage issues. The usual,’ she said drily. He looked at the women clustered around Cassie, whose blonde curls were poking out from the middle of them. ‘Why’re you all standing like that around my wife?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘You haven’t done anything to her, have you?’ ‘No. We’re just getting her ready,’ Suzy said quickly. ‘It looks like you’ve got her so drunk she can’t stand.’ ‘Non!’ said Anouk. ‘It’s just bad luck for you to see her before it’s time,’ Kelly explained. ‘It’s bad luck for me to see her in her wedding dress,’ he said, frowning. ‘Not at the anniversary party ten years later.’ ‘Pah! You say tom-aaaah-to, I say tom-ay-to,’ Kelly argued, making him grin. ‘Fine,’ he said, holding his hands up in defeat. He stood on tiptoe, trying to catch sight of his wife. ‘Well, just so you know, darling, our guests are arriving.’ Cassie nodded from behind the wall of friends. ‘Ten minutes.’ ‘Uh-huh,’ he said knowingly, backing out of the room. ‘I’d like to see the odds they’re offering for that.’ He shut the door on the telltale sounds of women in a rush – zips opening, wardrobe doors banging, the shower running. It was going to be half an hour, minimum. Cassie was still looking at herself in the mirror when Kelly got out of the shower. ‘You can see my knickers through this dress,’ she hissed, panicking. She knew the girls were going to make her wear the dress, and that Gil would disapprove. The girls knew it too – why else would they have hidden her from him? ‘Don’t wear any,’ Anouk said across the room as she applied her eyeliner. Cassie looked at her in horror. ‘I’ve already thought of that,’ Kelly said, going over to her bag and throwing a plastic packet on the bed. ‘Flesh-coloured too.’ Cassie picked it up. ‘Spanx? What’s that?’ Everyone rolled their eyes. ‘Sausage knickers, Cass!’ Suzy said. ‘They hold your fat bits in and give you a smooth line under the dress. I make all my brides in bias-cut wear them.’ ‘What shoes have you got?’ Kelly asked, already dreading the answer. Don’t say pumps. Don’t say— ‘I’ve got some nice kitten heels I bought in the L.K. Bennett sale last Christmas.’ There was a heavy silence. ‘What? They’re my best ones.’ Anouk sighed and went to the jumble of shoes in the middle of the floor. She picked up a strappy gold Louboutin with a four-inch heel. ‘Try that. We’re the same size.’ ‘Oh, you have got to be joking. I don’t wear anything higher than a welly-boot all year round. You can’t seriously expect me to get down the staircase in those. I’d have to slide down the banisters.’ ‘If that’s what it takes,’ Anouk shrugged. Cassie sighed and slipped them on, instantly rocketing up to six foot. She had to admit they were stunning with the dress, and they certainly felt more comfortable than they looked. But then she hadn’t tried moving yet. Which reminded her . . . ‘I hope you’ve all remembered there’s reeling later on. You’ll need sensible shoes.’ ‘There’s no such thing,’ Anouk and Kelly declared in unison. ‘Sweetie, the only thing I intend to be reeling from tonight is the drink,’ Suzy said, wriggling into her dress and making them all – even Cassie – dissolve into laughter. Forty-five minutes later, the four women descended the winding staircase arm in arm like a daisy chain. Even Cassie couldn’t remain oblivious to the stares that met her. None of her friends – Gil’s friends – had ever seen her look like this before. She felt incredible. Anouk had plaited her muddy-blonde hair in Grecian style across the front, leaving the rest to fall in heavy ripples down her back, and Suzy had made up her huge round blue eyes with gold and bronze shadows and put a matt stain on her wide, ever-smiling mouth. Her friends had stood back and admired her like a work of art they had produced. She bore no resemblance to the woman who’d been digging in thirty raspberry bushes in the garden in floral dungarees and one of her husband’s moth-eaten lambswool sweaters at two o’clock that afternoon. She knew she looked good, but what worked at a fashion show in Paris or at a cocktail party in Manhattan wasn’t what cut it with the Scottish shooting set. Gil was ten years older than she was, and all his friends older still. Did she look . . . appropriate? She scanned the room anxiously, hoping to find Wiz’s eyes before Gil’s. Cassie couldn’t see either of them, but there was no doubt that everyone else thought the dress was a hit. As they reached the ground floor, a cloud of guests and perfume enveloped her and she quickly became separated from the girls. ‘Hello . . . How lovely to see you . . . Oh, you are kind . . . Hello . . . Are you well? . . . So pleased you could make it . . . Oh, do you think so? . . . You look radiant too . . . I know, divine weather, isn’t it? . . . Hello . . . Thank you for coming . . .’ But there’s only so much revolution one party can take, and as a glass was placed in her hand by a man who’d matched his sporran to his beard, the conversation returned to the dull but familiar territory of the abomination of the wind farms on the Earl of Luss’s neighbouring estate. Discreetly, she let her eyes graze the room. A string quartet was playing in the minstrels’ gallery, the men were dressed in trews or kilts, some with sashes and flamboyant horsehair sporrans that fell to their hemlines. The women were equally grand in full-length gowns with heirloom jewels. They looked stately and impressive, but as her eyes flickered between them and her modish urban friends in cascading coral silk-plissé ruffles (Anouk), intricate ethnic gold beading (Suzy) and laser-cut jet satin (Kelly), it occurred to her that the grandes dames looked exactly the same as they always did at these events. Just like the house, she thought. They were hemmed in, curtailed, by tradition. The hall looked imposing as usual – even a bunch of daisies in a teapot would be imbued with gravitas in these baronial surroundings – but it looked the same as it probably had at every party that had been thrown here in the last two hundred years. The antler-framed chandeliers flickered with as-yet-unseen candlelight, thick swags of ivy were draped around the austere family portraits, slightly fraying faded ceremonial flags hung from brass holsters in the walls, and the enormous stone fireplace had been filled with a profusion of garden flowers and thistles – it was too warm for a fire tonight. Only the bright red balloons tied to the banisters at every other tread and shouting ‘We Are 10’ showed that it was Cassie who was the mistress of the house, not her scary mother-in-law, nor indeed any of the women who glared grimly down from the walls. Across the room, she could see that the girls – who were sticking together like barnacles – had nabbed Wiz first. More formally known as Lady Louisa Arbuthnott, Wiz was the prized daughter of the most senior judge in the country, Lord Valentine, and as well as being Cassie’s best friend, was one of the best-connected women in Edinburgh. She did events like these in her sleep. Wind farms, poor grouse stocks, declining peat bogs in the central belt – she could extrapolate and amuse on every topic. Nothing fazed her. No one bored her. Everyone adored her. Dressed in an elegant olive-coloured silk column dress with black pearls at her throat, her reddish-auburn hair wound up into a chignon, she was the only other woman here who could rival the outsiders for style. She was as much at home in the city as in the country, and as a senior partner at Edinburgh’s leading divorce firm McMaster & Mathieson, she retained a personal shopper at Harvey Nicks who made a point of reserving the key pieces from the designer collections for her. Her head was thrown back in laughter at something Kelly had said and they were all smiling, but Cassie was fluent in the group’s microscopic body language and her stomach lurched – Anouk had her eyes fractionally narrowed, Suzy was smiling slightly too brightly, Kelly’s chin was dipped a bit too low. Although the girls had never mentioned it, there was an unspoken tension – jealousy, she supposed – surrounding her friendship with Wiz. Cassie knew they all did their best to keep her in the loop. They spoke regularly on the phone and sent emails; they had even persuaded her to leave status updates on Facebook, but after a fortnight’s rotation of Cassie Fraser is . . . drinking a cup of tea/sitting at the computer/bored, they had begged her to stop. The simple fact that she’d never seen sausage pants and thought gladiator sandals were last worn by the Romans highlighted just how far outside their orbit she was circuiting. They might be old friends, but their lives were very different now, and the truth was it was Wiz who now knew her best. When Cassie’s beloved father had died four years ago, it had been Wiz who’d booked the tickets for her to go back to Hong Kong for a couple of months to be with her mother. And it worked both ways. When Wiz’s husband, Sholto, had walked out on her when she was five months pregnant with their son Rory, it was Cassie who had attended all the antenatal classes with her, held her hand during the birth and become a besotted godmother. For nearly ten years, the two separate strands of friendship had worked in perfect harmony because they had never overlapped. Tonight was a first for all of them. Making a vague excuse about circulating, she tried to make her way over to the girls, but the demands of courtesy in response to the attention engendered by her dazzling dress meant it was like wading through mud. By the time she grabbed Suzy’s arm, Wiz had gone. ‘Where is she?’ she asked, disappointed. She desperately wanted her opinion on the dress. Gil was still cloistered in a group out of eyeshot somewhere. ‘She had to take a phone call. Someone called Martha?’ Cassie nodded. ‘That’s her nanny.’ ‘Right. Well, she’s in the study.’ ‘Thanks. I’ll come straight back,’ she said, smoothing her palms anxiously on her thighs. She wound her way through the crowd, trying to keep her eyes down. ‘Sorry, phone call . . . excuse me . . . I’ll be straight back . . .’ The door to the study was ajar, but she could hear Wiz’s soothing voice as she said goodnight to Rory. ‘I love you, darling,’ she heard. ‘Be good for Martha, okay . . .’ Cassie smiled and stopped just short of the doorway, not wanting to intrude. Rory was three now and had just started at nursery, but he already had a social diary that outranked Cassie’s, and she had joked on more than one occasion that it would be easier to schedule a meeting with the Pope than a playdate with Rory. If he wasn’t at kindergarten he was at baby-gym, yoga, French classes or toddler football, or otherwise napping. Cassie knew from the newspapers that ‘overscheduling’ was a modern parent’s malaise, but there never seemed to be any mention of the other modern dilemma – the earnest godparent worrying about her place on the sidelines of the child’s life. She leant against the door jamb, tracing the navy and bottle-green tartan wallpaper with her fingers. ‘And remember to brush your teeth. Martha told me you had ice cream for pudding . . .’ Cassie looked back towards the hall and watched as the waiters walked around with trays of drinks and the guests took them graciously. No one would do anything as improper as get drunk tonight. ‘Okay, Daddy’s here to say night-night . . .’ What? Cassie stood up straight, the sound of blood rushing to her ears. Sholto was here? She shook her head. Wiz had had no contact with him since he’d left – nearly four years ago now. And there was no way Gil would have invited him. He knew as well as she did what a betrayal – not to mention humiliation – it had been for Wiz when he’d walked out. ‘How’s my little man been today?’ The pounding in her ears got louder and she felt her heart begin to pump more quickly. ‘The castle? . . . Good boy . . . Well now, do as Mummy says and brush your teeth . . . I’ll be home in two sleeps, okay? . . . I miss you, Ror. Sleep tight . . .’ said the voice, that oh-so-distinctive voice that she had first fallen in love with.