The lady asked me to meet her at an Italian restaurant just behind Knightsbridge but she wouldn’t give me her name. She told me she would book the table in my name. The restaurant was discreet and intimate, the tablecloths thick, smooth and gleaming white, the cutlery heavy and the wine glasses as light as feathers. The staff members were equally discreet. I presume that they were used to catering for trysts and liaisons.
Her accent on the phone had been precise and upper class. She might not be English by birth but she had almost certainly been to an English boarding school. When she arrived I was surprised that she appeared younger than I had pictured. It was hard to imagine what her background might be. Her ancestors might have come from India or South America, or both. Most likely she was the result of several generations of high-level global mixing. Whatever her history the result took my breath away. I was pretty sure that I recognised her face from the society pages of glossy magazines, but I still had no idea who she might be.
Her manners were immaculate but she was wary, like a wild animal, apparently unsure whether I was going to turn out to be friend or foe. The waiters came and went from the table and she slowly relaxed. As she allowed snippets of her story to emerge bells rang in various compartments of my memory. I recalled seeing her pictured with a much older husband in the society pages of glossy magazines. I remembered that there was some sort of divorce being threatened and a great deal of money was at stake, as well as the custody of children. There was an estate and an inheritance, which included a stately home and some dispute over the paternity of the children in the marriage.
‘I think it will be hard to sell this to a publisher while the divorce and the court case are still under way,’ I warned. ‘The legal difficulties would make them very nervous.’
‘It is of no importance,’ she said. ‘I just want to have my story written down and then we can put it in a bank vault. I want it to be there for my children to read later so that they will know my side of the story, and I want my husband and his lawyers to know that the book exists.’
‘Blackmail?’ I asked, laughing in an attempt to take the sting out of the word.
‘Insurance,’ she corrected me, flashing a row of perfect white teeth.
It seemed that we had connected successfully.
‘We have a house in Villefranche,’ she said. ‘There’s only the housekeeper down there at this time of year so we won’t be disturbed. How long would we need to spend together?’
‘A week would be fine.’
‘And you don’t mind that I may be the only person ever to read the manuscript?’
‘It’s you I’m writing it for. As long as you are happy with it then I will be happy with it.’
Several months later, once the book had been written and safely deposited in the bank, and the lawyers had finished wrangling, I read that she had received one of the largest divorce settlements ever.