Her name was Casey Fernandez. She was 34, shoulder-length hair the colour and sheen of a horse-chestnut fresh from its case, deep dark eyes, high cheekbones, a mouth that promised much and (as I discovered) delivered more. We were not exactly living together all the time, which explains how it came about that we had been fucking several times a week for more than three months before she told me about the soirées at Lady T’s.

Fernandez was a name she had acquired from a husband who was no longer relevant. “A mistake,” she said with a grimace as though she had stepped in something nasty in the street. As for Casey - that had been imposed on her parents at the whim of baseball-loving grandparents who had been hoping for a boy.

I first saw her one morning when she came into my gallery with her father. Daddy had long ago made his first million out of real estate and multiplied it shrewdly when Wall Street could still be trusted. Then he started signing cheques with lots of noughts in favour of the party that dined out with Wall Street. In time that led to his appointment to the Court of St James. Daddy liked the perks that went with the posting: white tie dinners at Buckingham Palace, centre court seats at Wimbledon, a Covent Garden box for the ballet (but not the opera, which sent him to sleep by singing in a language he didn’t understand). These and more he enjoyed to the full. But now regime change in Washington had led to musical chairs in Grosvenor Square. Casey brought him to me because she was staying on in London, which she loved, and was preparing to adorn the walls of her mews cottage by way of a going-away present from Daddy. She chose two overpriced pictures by a self-taught young man from Orkney who was currently enjoying a surprising popularity. Daddy signed the cheque, I attached “Sold” stickers to the frames, and Casey said she would call back later to collect. They had other calls to make. I said that would be fine as long as she returned before seven, when I close.

Something in her smile and a handshake that was more of a squeeze made me curious, but I decided I was reading too much into it. My thinking changed when she sent away the taxi in which she arrived at two minutes to seven. How did she propose to transport her two paintings? While I pondered, she asked if she might browse. “Or am I keeping you from something?”

“No, not at all.”

Not anticipating refusal, she was examining once again exhibits she had seen earlier in the day. I was recalling that handshake, but at the same time I wasn’t inclined to hurry someone who might buy again; she had already ensured that I would be able to report a lucrative return to