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Venetia’s summer flew by. Work, Jack, work – with a two-week interlude at the Hotel Cala Di Volpe in Sardinia with Camilla, who had insisted Venetia needed the break. Venetia had spent the entire fortnight miserable, missing Jack so terribly she had forced herself to see a shrink on her return. Her discussion with eminent pyschotherapist Dr Margaret MacKenzie in her Marylebone practice had thrown up all sorts of thorny personal issues she would rather have pushed under the carpet, including her teenage abortion and subsequent sexual relationships. But it hadn’t been the quick fix Venetia had wanted. Dr MacKenzie explained that it was not her job to give Venetia any answers, only to guide her towards finding those answers herself.

‘How would you describe your sex life with your husband?’ Dr MacKenzie had asked Venetia from the comfort of her B&B Italia sofa.

‘Laughable,’ Venetia had answered, before telling her that over the past eighteen months she had constantly faked orgasms with Jonathon in the name of carnal duty.

‘And why do you think that is?’ the doctor had replied.

‘I got pregnant at seventeen. My father forced me to have it terminated, and for a long time I thought sex was dirty, guilty, wrong.’

‘Is that how you feel now?’

Venetia squirmed when she thought of her guilt over Jack Kidman. ‘Guilty, yes.’

‘Guilty about the act of sex?’ asked Dr MacKenzie after Venetia had told her about the affair.

‘Guilty about how I feel,’ said Venetia.

And that was at the heart of it, she thought as she walked away from the practice. It wasn’t just raw passion any more with Jack Kidman; it was a deeper, more spiritual connection than that. Infidelity was supposed to be something illicit, dangerous and destructive, wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to feel like this: something secure, protected and meaningful. Venetia didn’t need Margaret MacKenzie’s expensive services to tell her that her relationship with Jack was heading towards something more serious.

Ten days later Venetia lay in her lover’s bed, a shaft of morning light pouring through the window over their naked bodies.

‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Jack in a gentle, amused voice, his fingers removing a piece of stray hair from her face.

Venetia shifted her body against his. ‘I was just thinking I should get to work. It’s the show in ten days and I’ve so much to do.’

‘You should have stayed here last night. I thought Jonathon was away on business.’

‘I know,’ said Venetia, ‘But …’

She still did not feel that brave yet. What if Jonathon had phoned the house late at night? What would her housekeeper Christina have thought coming down to make breakfast to find nobody in the house? What if, what if, what if? It was all simply too risky.

‘Can I see you tonight?’ teased Jack, pulling her closer with his arm. ‘You’re starving me of attention.’

Thinking about Jonathon’s return from Geneva that afternoon, she suddenly found herself becoming very cross, angered by the injustice of the whole situation.

‘You’re so bloody selfish,’ she snapped, twisting her long body towards him.

‘Selfish?’ asked Jack, surprised.

‘It’s OK for you. You’re retired, you don’t have a job, you don’t live with anybody, you’re separated from your wife. You can come and go as you please. I wish it was like that for me too, but it’s not. Things are different in my world. I can’t afford to be so bloody selfish.’

She swung her legs out of the bed and pulled on a silk kimono, stalking into the en-suite bathroom to splash her face with water. Jack let her irritation wash over him and sat back in the bed to watch her, furiously flossing her teeth in front of the mirror. She padded across Jack’s huge Westbourne Grove apartment and into the high-tech stainless steel kitchen, opening the fridge to pour a glass of ice-cold milk into a crystal tumbler. Leaning her elbows on the marble top of the breakfast bar, she let the cool liquid slide down her throat. She heard his footsteps behind her and felt a pair of strong arms wrap themselves around her waist. For one moment, she didn’t look back, enjoying the sensation of his fingers touching her skin through the silk of the kimono. She could tell he was naked, too, feeling the shape of his penis push in against her back.

‘So leave him,’ whispered Jack.

Venetia spun around, stunned. ‘I can’t leave Jonathon,’ she said flatly.

‘Why not? You’ve told me you don’t like the way he makes you feel; you don’t have any kids. Do you even love him?’

She angrily pushed the hair back off her face and put the glass down on the marble, unfathomably finding herself wanting to defend her marriage. ‘Love hasn’t got anything to do with it. Jonathon is my husband.’

‘Love has got everything to do with it, Venetia.’ He looked at her, shaking his head, uncharacteristically losing his temper. ‘You’ve serious fucking issues.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning that you make excuses for people, stay loyal to people, no matter how badly they treat you, because that’s how you expect to be treated – badly. You will never be happy until you learn to say no, learn to walk away or learn to just be a little more selfish.’

His words were so raw and truthful and brutal, that she physically ached. ‘If you’d had my father, you’d understand,’ she said softly, too pained to respond with any anger.

Jack came and held her chin between his fingers. ‘You deserve to get whatever you want, Venetia. Don’t let your father make you think you’re not worth it. Because you are.’

She nodded.

‘I love you,’ he said quietly.

Venetia went to take a breath, but nothing seemed to happen. Her throat felt clamped in a vice with a sense of rising panic. He loved her. It seemed about two minutes ago, that night under the stars in Seville when they’d first kissed. Now he was suggesting breaking up the fabric of her life as she knew it.

She pressed her fingers against his back, pulling him as close as she could. She knew what she wanted. She wanted Jack Kidman. But she didn’t know if she was strong enough to have him.

It was half past twelve by the time Venetia got back to her shop. Brix Sanderson was waiting for her on the roof terrace, sipping a cup of Earl Grey tea – no milk, but a thick wedge of lemon. Brix was London’s top fashion PR and one of the capital’s most fabulous dykes. She had a long mane of auburn curls, an eighties nose-job and the urgent manner of someone who always got things done.

‘Nice spread,’ said Brix with a wicked smile as Venetia strode onto the terrace.

‘Sorry?’ said Venetia.

‘This!’ said Brix, motioning towards the table. ‘You’ve got such sodding good taste!’

Even a cup of tea at Venetia Balcon’s shop was an event. The wrought-iron table was covered with an ebony-coloured linen tablecloth. The china was sparkling white, Art Deco in design. Sachets of tea sat colour-coded in another circular china bowl, while napkins, starched white and stiff, were folded like Origami figures on the table.

‘Thanks for coming to the store,’ said Venetia, pulling up a chair. ‘And sorry I had to cancel lunch, I’m too busy to even think about going anywhere other than here or home,’ she said, feeling slightly guilty that she’d had enough time to spend the entire morning in bed with her lover.

She knew that Brix would have been equally busy in the throes of Fashion Week. Her agency, Blue Monday, did the PR for many fashion labels not dealt with in-house, plus numerous other premium brands such as a large champagne house and a luxury make of car. Venetia was delighted to have secured Brix’s services for the launch of the Venetia Balcon women’s-wear range. Hovering around the age of fifty, Brix had three decades’ experience of the fashion world under her belt. It also did no harm that she lived with Ginger Foxton, the country’s most influential fashion writer.

Venetia poured herself a cup of tea from the pot, letting the tobacco-coloured leaves whirl through a silver strainer.

‘So what did you think of New York?’ she asked Brix, knowing that she had arrived back in London from Manhattan that morning where one of her clients was showing at New York Fashion Week.

‘Really gorgeous,’ she gushed, throwing a clump of dark red curls over one shoulder. ‘I usually get much more excited about Fall collections, but this year – well, put it this way, you’re right on the money.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Venetia, puzzled.

‘Well, from what I’ve seen over there, next summer is going to be all about little tea dresses, crisp tailoring and lovely sorbet colours.’

Venetia thought nervously about the collection she was preparing to show on the following Wednesday in London. Tennis whites, sheer cashmere, butter-soft accessories, long pale palazzo pants and vintage-feel camisole tops.

‘Oh, that sounds rather like where I’m coming from,’ she said, her voice betraying her disappointment.

‘Don’t worry darling,’ Brix laughed at Venetia’s fashion naivety. ‘It’s cool to be thinking along the same lines as the other big names. You don’t want to be channelling military if Marc Jacobs has decided it’s going to be all about boho this year. It’s good commercial sense that you’re in the same ballpark as all the other big designers, although the Venetia Balcon range does have its own unique twist, which is great. Anyway,’ said Brix excitedly, pulling off her Fendi leather jacket and flinging it over the back of the chair, ‘guess who’s coming to your show?’

‘Who?’

‘Only Miranda Seymour!’ beamed Brix, putting her cup down with a rattle.

‘No! Christ, that would be such a coup!’

Miranda was America’s most influential glossy magazine editor. Feared and admired in equal measure, she had the power to make or break any designer. Certainly she had the clout to pull a struggling novice from obscurity and make them the next Donna Karan. Despite the fact that Miranda was English, she very rarely made an appearance in her native city for Fashion Week, choosing to go straight from the New York shows to Milan a week later. Her thinking was that London just wasn’t a significant enough fashion capital for her to deign it with her presence.

‘But why on earth is she coming to my show?’ said Venetia, still in shock.

‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ laughed Brix, clearly delighted. ‘She doesn’t usually bother with London, but she’s collecting some gong from some university or other. Her assistant called me and asked for a ticket for the Venetia Balcon show while she was in town. If you ask me, the woman is just obsessed with the whole English upper-class thing. I mean, you do tick all the right boxes, don’cha?’ said Brix, her south London accent becoming deliberately more pronounced. ‘You’re an aristo, you’re Serena Balcon’s sister, and you live this glamorous life with the hedge-fund husband. No doubt she saw your house in American Vogue. Put on a good show, young lady, and mark my words, she will champion you.’

Brix pulled a large brown lizard-skin notebook from her Mulberry bag and began running through her notes with Venetia. ‘As you know, your ten a.m. show slot is considered something of a graveyard,’ she began.

Venetia was aware of this, but she’d had to pull every contact she had with the British Fashion Council just to show her debut collection in the first place. Such an unknown was lucky to be part of the shows at all.

‘However, the response is just phenomenal,’ said Brix. ‘Every UK glossy magazine editor is coming. All of the key fashion writers, plus the usual celebrities that turn up to these things. I take it Serena is coming?’

Venetia nodded.

‘The Times want to run an interview with you, the Saturday Telegraph magazine want to do Diego: that’s if we can get him photographed this week.’

‘I’ll give him a ring now,’ said Venetia, picking up her mobile.

Leila Barnes, Venetia’s assistant, walked onto the terrace with a rather unsettled look on her face. ‘Venetia, can I talk to you one second?’ she asked. Venetia immediately picked up on the anxiety in her voice and excused herself from Brix, moving through the French doors that led back into the building.

‘The police are here to see you.’

Venetia’s first thought was for her Range Rover, which she had parked on a meter outside the shop. Surely that hadn’t expired yet? She walked into her office where two police officers – one male, one female – were sitting down, looking very uncomfortable, on the upright leather chairs.

‘Mrs von Bismarck?’ asked the female officer as she stood up.

‘Yes, that’s me,’ said Venetia as calmly as she could. ‘Please, sit down. Now what can I do for you?’

The policewoman was around thirty, with an intelligent face and pale brown hair tidied neatly behind her head. She introduced herself as Sergeant Gillian Finch, cleared her throat, and waited as Venetia sat down behind her desk.

‘I’m afraid it’s bad news,’ she said softly, cutting straight to the chase. ‘It seems there has been an accident – a fire at Diego de Bono’s apartment in North London.’

Venetia felt her blood run cold. ‘He’s all right, isn’t he?’ she barked, the words almost jumping out of her throat. ‘I mean, when was this? Where is he? What’s happened?’

The two officers looked at each other briefly before Sergeant Finch continued. ‘I’m afraid Mr de Bono was killed in the fire …’ She paused hesitantly as the shock registered on Venetia’s face, her hand flying to her mouth.

‘But that’s not exactly why we’re here, Mrs von Bismarck.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she replied, her voice quavering with anxiety.

‘We have reason to believe that your husband was also in the house at the time of the fire.’

Finch stopped, allowing the full gravity of the situation to sink in. ‘We have found a body we believe to be that of your husband, and we would like you to come with us to identify the body.’

She was hysterical now. ‘Jonathon is dead? That’s what you’re telling me? At Diego’s house?’ said Venetia, her fingers clutching at her breast. ‘It’s ridiculous. My husband hardly knows Diego. What would he be doing at his flat? What makes you say such things?’

‘The body is partially burned,’ said the other policeman, not meeting her gaze, ‘but there was identification in the clothing. Credit cards, and so on. They all have your husband’s name on them.’

‘No, it’s not right, it can’t be.’ She started to shake her head slowly.

‘I think you had better come with us, madam,’ said Sergeant Finch. ‘So we can get this cleared up as soon as possible. I think it’s best if we drive you,’ she added kindly, putting a hand on Venetia’s shaking shoulder.

Venetia waved a hand in front of her face. ‘Yes, yes, um, I’ll come, yes, I just need to … I need to tell my colleague.’

She took slow deliberate steps towards the terrace, her head down, pressing her fingertips against her temples.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Brix, standing up immediately. Venetia took a deep breath, trying to think rationally. She put one hand on the black tablecloth, trying to steady herself as she looked up at Brix, her face pale.

‘There’s been a fire,’ she stuttered, her eyes dazed. ‘Diego has been killed.’

She could see Brix’s mouth open in horror, like a movie in slow motion.

‘Jesus, oh my God, oh my God,’ said Brix after a few moments.

‘And maybe Jonathon too,’ said Venetia, her voice a cracked whisper. ‘They say Jonathon was in his flat too.’ She looked up at Brix, trying to make sense of it all. ‘But I don’t see how that can be … They hardly know each other …’

As she looked up at Brix, she saw a flicker of something dart across her face. Knowledge … embarrassment? Brix would not meet Venetia’s gaze. Despite her shock, she did not miss it.

‘Brix, what is it?’

Brix sat back down and stared intently at her tea cup, dipping a silver spoon into the liquid and watching it go round and round in spirals.

‘Brix, tell me! You know something, I can see it!’ said Venetia, her voice stern.

‘No, I don’t know …’ said Brix quietly.

‘Tell me! Is it about Diego and Jonathon?’

Brix looked up, her eyes meeting Venetia’s. ‘Jonathon and Diego did know each other. They were … friends. I’ve seen them around town together over the summer.’

Brix had paused slightly on the word ‘together’ and Venetia hadn’t missed it. An ugly thought rolled to the front of her mind that she tried to bat away. Together? Did she mean together?

She knew in her heart that Jonathan had had affairs in the time that she had known him. Mysterious receipts for florists and hotels, female callers putting down the phone as soon as she answered, the rumours he’d been seen at one of those high-class sex parties where the rich and decadent explored the darker side of desire. But she had become an expert at ignoring anything in Jonathon’s life that she did not see with her own eyes. She knew that Brix knew more, but at that moment she didn’t want to know.

‘I’m going with the police,’ she said softly.

Brix nodded. ‘Do you want me to do anything? Do you want me to come with you?’

Venetia shook her head and turned to follow Sergeant Finch. Her Range Rover was outside, but she could not drive, her hands shaking like a blender on low speed. She sat in the back seat of the police car – isolated, vulnerable, looking straight ahead, seeing nothing. On autopilot, she punched Camilla’s number into her mobile phone and waited for it to ring. Cool, calm Camilla. She needed her.

‘Hello, Camilla Balcon.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Venetia? Are you OK?’

‘Not really, I … I …’ The voice down the line was soft and cracked. ‘Listen, Camilla, where are you?’

‘Working from home.’

‘Cam, I need your help.’

Her voice was beginning to wobble now, the tears beginning to come.

‘Van, where are you? What’s going on?’

There was silence. ‘Look, tell me where you are,’ said Camilla urgently. ‘I’m coming to get you.’

Venetia had never been to a mortuary before. Her mother’s death had been the only death she had experienced, and she’d been ten years old then. The nearest she had come to the body was seeing the walnut casket at the funeral from the front row of the church, festooned with lilies and roses the size of saucers. But she had seen enough crime dramas on Sunday-night television to know what to expect. A sterile, fluorescent-lit building, like a long, deserted school.

Venetia and Sergeant Finch were greeted by a mortician who led them silently into a cold, plain room. Her shoulders clenched with tension as the mortician led her to a slim table, on which a long shape was covered in a sheet.

‘It was the smoke inhalation that was fatal,’ said Sergeant Finch, trying to sound reassuring. ‘The face largely escaped burns.’

Her clammy palms gripped the leather straps of her handbag as Gillian Finch pulled back the sheet covering the top of the body. Instinctively Venetia flinched and looked away. Cursing herself, she forced herself to look at the face of the body. The eyes were shut, leaving two dark crescents beneath the forehead, but she would recognize the shape of Jonathon’s face anywhere: the high cheekbones, the continental nose, the stern lip. She resisted the urge to choke.

‘It’s him,’ she said, turning to look at the policewoman. The mortician slid the sheet back over his face, silently closing a chapter in Venetia’s life.

Camilla was sitting on the grey plastic chair in the reception area. As she saw Venetia, she stood up and walked slowly towards her, stilettos tapping on the bare floor.

‘I am so sorry, Van,’ said Camilla, hugging her. ‘Come on, I’m taking you to my house.’

Camilla looked at Sergeant Finch. ‘Is there anything else?’

The policewoman looked at Venetia sympathetically. ‘No, I have Mrs von Bismarck’s number and your address. I will have to come and speak to you later today or tomorrow to ask some more questions.’

Venetia looked at her. ‘What else is there? What more do you know? Please tell me,’ she croaked.

‘Early word from the fire investigation officer is that it was probably started by a cigarette down the back of the sofa. There were several wine bottles near where the fire had started. I think the two men had been drinking.’

‘Where were they found?’

Sergeant Finch avoided her gaze.

‘Where were they found?’ Venetia repeated, her voice trembling. She knew the answer. She predicted the words that were to come out of the policewoman’s lips before she had time to say them.

‘In bed,’ said Gillian Finch softly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Venetia clasped her sister’s arm as they walked across the car park towards Camilla’s Audi. It was drizzling, the lunchtime sunshine having given way to iron-grey clouds. They sat in the front seat of the car. The only sound was the tap-tapping of rain on the windscreen as the inside of the car steamed up. Venetia stared down at her lap, examining a piece of thread on the seam of her trousers, trying to remember the last thing Jonathon had said to her. She couldn’t remember. She laughed. It came out cruelly, like a bully’s laugh.

‘We were both having affairs, did you know that, Camilla?’ said Venetia. ‘Both with other men, as it turns out.’

Camilla remained silent.

‘I know things weren’t perfect between Jonathon and me, far from it. But what did I do that was so wrong? Why was he seeing Diego? A man?’ She gulped for breath and her composure crumbled, her head slumping to her chest as she sobbed. ‘What did I do?’

Camilla reached over and took her trembling hand. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault,’ she repeated quietly.

Venetia inhaled deeply and struggled to pull herself together, staring in front of her and trying to count the splats of rain falling on the glass. ‘It doesn’t matter now. I won’t be seeing Jack Kidman again.’

Camilla knew exactly what her sister was trying to do. Punish herself for Jonathon, punish herself for trying to find affection outside a loveless marriage. ‘Van, you don’t have to …’

‘I’ve got to cancel the show as well,’ said Venetia coolly.

‘Are you sure?’ asked her sister. ‘But you’ve worked so hard.’

‘I have to,’ said Venetia quietly, pulling at the loose thread until it came unravelled completely. ‘I have to do it for Diego.’

Camilla looked at her, not understanding her loyalties. ‘But he was seeing your husband.’ She stopped herself.

Venetia laughed sadly. ‘Doesn’t make sense, does it? Nothing makes sense.’

The show did go on. Oswald insisted on it.

‘Until Jonathon’s estate has cleared, I still have forty-five per cent voting rights in this company,’ he had told her, grinding down her best intentions until, ultimately, she was too weak to resist.

The timing of her debut collection couldn’t have been worse: the day after her husband’s funeral. Her world, once so calm, ordered and simple, was shifting beneath her feet like sand.

Venetia couldn’t spend a second at rest or her head would become a hive of guilt, doubt and pain. It wasn’t the grief that was unbearable, it was the betrayal. Had her husband really burnt to death? Was he really having an affair with another man – her own designer? Was it all her fault, some twisted retribution for her own infidelity with Jack? And Jack: she couldn’t allow him to creep into her thoughts. Not now.

As the show approached, Venetia’s legendary poise vanished. Her skin was sallow and dull, her hair untidy and her clothes creased. She was running on empty, and only the thought of bad reviews for the collection kept her going. Model castings, the fittings, all the frantic preparations for the debut collection were conducted in a fog of numbness and desperate energy. She couldn’t let herself fail at this, not when she had made a mess of everything else.

In the event, the tent at London Fashion Week was packed. Diego’s death was the best possible publicity for the show. The fashion rumour mill went into overdrive about how he died, and Venetia felt a fool. Brix Sanderson scotched much of the scandal, telling everyone that Jonathon and Diego had been together to discuss business. If the truth had got out, that the two men had been meeting for sex, Brix knew that Venetia would completely retreat from the world – and she was not going to let that happen to her friend.

At the start of the catwalk, Flower Productions’ elaborate waterfall effect had been replaced by a huge black-and-white portrait of Diego. Venetia simply nodded when she had seen it, managing to swallow the bile she had felt rising in her throat. But, as the show’s production manager had pointed out, they needed impact. And it worked. Half the people in the front row were crying as the models stalked the catwalk in the beautiful selection of clothes. The show got a standing ovation.

Backstage, Venetia couldn’t move for the number of people piling towards her to offer their words of both condolence and congratulations. Miranda Seymour shuffled backstage in a fitted grey cashmere jacket with a huge silver fox fur collar and kissed her twice on the cheek. ‘If you can continue that vision, you’re ready for New York next season. Call me,’ she added, and disappeared.

Front of house, Oswald held court on the front row, basking in the attention and clear delight of the fashion royalty, whom he didn’t really understand but wanted to. Behind the scenes, hiding behind a huge rack of clothes, Venetia listened to the laughter, the applause and the sounds of delight. She’d never felt more desperate.