Page 109 of Private Lives

‘Although it would make a great story. “MP Had Affair with Dead Model”.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

The atmosphere was now decidedly hostile.

‘I’m just trying to get a picture of Amy’s life in the months before she died. Were you having an affair with her?’

‘No I was not!’ he said angrily, then stopped himself. ‘I met her once at a party as I recall,’ he continued more evenly. ‘Perhaps we flirted, I don’t really remember. I’m a single man, it’s hardly the stuff of news.’

There was a long pause. Anna heard Andrew’s voice nagging at her. Don’t piss him off.

‘Who was it said I’d had an affair with her?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

He gestured towards the garden gate. ‘Then I think this discussion is at an end, don’t you?’

She couldn’t believe she had failed to gain any information from him. Then again, the man’s a politician, she reminded herself. He’s hardly going to break down and confess, is he?

She leaned across the table, picked up the photograph of Amy and put it back in her bag.

‘You asked me if Andrew knows anything about this case,’ she said as coolly as she could. ‘The answer, for now, is no. I’m one solicitor, looking into this on behalf of a family. But as you can imagine, I’ve got a lot of heavyweight media contacts . . .’

‘Who all love the lawyers at Donovan Pierce, I’m sure,’ he said sarcastically.

‘What if the family go to the press? Then it’s out of my hands. They think Amy was murdered, and for someone this is a really big scoop. Tell me what you know, Gilbert. So I can manage it.’

‘Look, as I said, I barely knew her, but from what I saw, she was a good-time girl. Isn’t it more likely that she was drunk and slipped on the stairs?’

‘I never said she slipped on the stairs. Or that she was drunk.’ She searched his face for a sign that he had been caught out, but there was nothing.

‘I suppose I absorbed the news story more than I’d thought.’

‘Her inquest got barely a few column inches.’ She paused. ‘You’re a smart guy, Gilbert. You know how bad this could look for you.’

He held up the palm of his hand. A cabbage white butterfly hovered around it.

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘But don’t play with me, Anna, because I have lawyers too.’

‘Tell me about Amy,’ she said quietly.

It was a few moments before he spoke again. ‘I met Amy at a house party in Knightsbridge. We had sex that night and a few times after that in London. I suppose you could call it an affair, but it was a very short-lived thing.’

‘Why did it finish? Was she not good for your image?’

‘No, she wasn’t really appropriate. I know my love life is flamboyant, but a party girl like Amy on my arm would give Private Eye a field day.’

‘So you finished with her.’

He shifted in his seat.

‘Plus she’d met someone new.’

‘Who was it?’

A red rash had begun to flower from the opening at Gilbert’s neckline.

‘I’m not sure.’