‘About four years.’

‘How did you meet?’

‘He’s a producer. In television,’ she added quickly, to differentiate this man as a working producer as opposed to simply a resident of L A. ‘I make these programmes where we discuss what’s on the market-’

‘I know. Infomercials.’ I smiled, thinking to show how up I was in the jargon of modern television.

Instead, she gave me a look as if I had slapped her across the table. ‘I hate that word!’ But the restaurant food wars had tired her out and she wasn’t looking for another fight. Instead she just sipped her drink and then said in all seriousness, ‘I prefer to think of myself as an ambassador for the buyer.’ She spoke the words with great gravitas, so I can only suppose she expected me to take them at face value. After a suitable pause she continued, ‘I went out with Donnie for a while, and then he proposed and I thought “what the hell”.’

‘Here’s to you,’ I said and raised my glass. ‘I hope you’re very happy.’

She sipped again, leaning back against the cushions. Predictably, her relaxation had brought down her guard and soon I learned that, as I had already surmised, she wasn’t very happy. In fact, I would be hard put to it to testify that she was happy at all. Donnie, it seemed, was a lot older than her and since we were both at the upper end of our fifties, he can’t have been much less than seventy. He also had less money than she’d been led to believe, ‘which I find very hurtful,’ and, worst of all, he had two daughters who wouldn’t ‘get off his back.’

‘In what way?’

‘They keep ringing him up, they keep wanting to see him. I know they’re after his money when he goes.’

This was quite hard to respond to. There was nothing unreasonable in their desire to see their father and of course they expected his money when he went. It didn’t make them unloving. ‘At least they don’t want it before he goes,’ I volunteered.

She shook her head fiercely. ‘You don’t understand. I need that money. I’ve earned it.’ She was extremely drunk by now, as she ought to have been, given how much Chardonnay, Merlot and Jack Daniel’s had passed down her capacious throat that evening.

‘Well, I’m sure he’s planning to give you a fair share. Why don’t you ask him?’

‘He’s planning to give me a life interest in half his money, which reverts to them on my death.’

What made this odd was that it was delivered as if she were describing a crime against nature, when it seemed eminently sensible, even generous, to me. I didn’t dare go that far, reasoning that while I knew Terry, Donnie was a stranger to me so he could not feel justified in relying on my help. I settled for: ‘That’s not what you want?’

‘Damn right!’ She reached across me for the bottle and filled her glass. As she did so, she caught sight of a framed photograph among a group of them arranged on the shelves behind the bar. It was of an elderly, white-haired man with two young women, one on either side. They were all smiling. ‘Those bitches,’ said Terry with soft malignity and reaching out with the hand that was not holding the glass, smashed the picture forward, face down. It hit the wood with a loud smack, but I couldn’t quite tell whether the glass had broken.

‘And you’ve been married four years?’ I asked tentatively, attempting to row for shallower water, but unable by the very nature of my task to leave her private life alone.

‘Yuh.’ More Jack Daniel’s poured down her ever-open gullet.

‘Then maybe he’ll alter things when you’ve been together for longer.’

‘Four years with Donnie is a lifetime, believe me.’ What always fascinates me about people like Terry, and I have known a few, is their absolute control over the moral universe. You and I know that she had been approaching desperation while making her dreadful infomercials and wondering if her life would ever begin again. Then along comes this nice, lonely old man and she decides to marry him, in the hope of inheriting everything to which she had no right whatever, and the sooner the better. She then discovers that he intends to leave his fortune to his two daughters, whom he loves and who are obviously the very people he ought to leave it to. They are affectionate and close to Donnie, and apart from no doubt loathing their new stepmother they are, I’m sure, normal, sensible women. Yet Terry, and others like her, are able to take this kind of simple tale and turn and twist it until, with a glass splinter in their eye and through some kind of tainted logic, they recast the universe making themselves the ones who have the right to complain. They are the deserving put-upon victims of a cruel system. They are the ones to be pitied. I tell myself that they must know they are living a lie, yet they display no sign of it, and usually their friends and associates give in eventually, first by pretending to take their side and often, in the end, by actually believing they are in the right. My own value system had, however, survived the assault and in fact I wanted to write to Donnie with my support there and then.

My ruminations were interrupted when Terry’s shrill voice brought me back to the present. ‘Get this!’ she shouted by way of introduction. Clearly, I was going to be treated to another example of Donnie’s outrageous choices, with most of which I was sure I would agree. ‘He’s even planning to leave a sum to Susie. Outright.’ She paused, to punctuate this unbelievable injustice. ‘But not outright to me. For me, it’s a “life interest”.’ She spat out the words, nodding almost triumphantly, as if at the end of a hilarious anecdote.

I was starting to like Donnie more and more. So much more than I liked his wife. ‘She is his stepdaughter.’

‘That’s funny!’ She rocked with artificial laughter.

‘Where is Susie? Is she in Los Angeles?’ With this question, as I should have seen, I had overplayed my hand. It was late and I was still faintly jet-lagged and perhaps, by this stage, a bit drunk and, anyway, I just wanted to get on. My words seemed to echo in the room, altering its atmosphere.

Terry was many things, but not stupid. ‘Why are you here?’ she said, and her voice suddenly sounded completely sober and absolutely reasonable.

You must understand that I was nearly at the end of my search. There were only Terry and Candida left, and so there had to be a fifty per cent chance that Susie was the Holy Grail Baby. In a way, I confess to hoping, for Damian’s sake, that it would be Candida Finch’s child, but there was no reason why it shouldn’t be this one. I felt I might as well just ask the question, far away from home as we were. I had no intention of telling Terry about the list and after all, Damian wouldn’t be especially newsworthy in this neck of the woods if Terry wanted to make a story about her infidelity to her first husband, which I doubted. ‘You said you’d been with Greg for quite a while when you got pregnant.’

‘Yes.’

‘Damian remembers that he had an affair with you around that time.’

She smiled, not immediately making the connection. ‘We didn’t have an “affair,” not then, not ever. Not what you’d call an affair.’ She had relaxed again and was once more drawling her words. In some way I thought she was rather enjoying herself. ‘We had a funny on-off thing for years. We never quite went out, we never quite broke off. If you’re asking if I was unfaithful, I never felt it counted with Damian.’

‘Anyway, the point is’ – this was it – ‘he wonders if Susie is really Greg’s daughter.’

I had expected at least token indignation but, unpredictably, Terry threw her head back and roared with laughter. This time it was completely genuine. For a while she was quite unable to stop and she was still wiping her eyes before she could answer. ‘No,’ she said at last, shaking her head, ‘she’s not Greg’s daughter.’ I said nothing. ‘You’re right. I had been sleeping with Greg for a long time by then, for quite a long time since I decided to get pregnant. I was taking no precautions and I began to wonder if he could have children. If he was, you know, fertile.’