The Villa of Secrets

There wasn’t much opportunity to chat to Tash over breakfast because the lady in the voluminous smock sat next to Cleo and occupied her for most of the meal.

Noreen, it turned out, was a psychotherapist from Connecticut. She was eighty-one years old, though she looked and behaved like a much younger person, and had recently remarried.

‘My first husband died of a heart attack three years ago,’ she explained.

‘I couldn’t bear to rattle round our big house on my own for the rest of my days, so I went online.