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and an occasional Jag, and wondered, as she made her way up the shallow stone steps to the main entrance, whether her working outfit of dark trouser suit, cream shirt and low heels was classy enough for this assignment. Inside, a low key but elegant lounge, almost deserted, stretched out in all directions and she hesitated for a moment to take stock. It was, she thought, more like the entrance to a five-star hotel than a sports club, the directions to the gym, the squash courts, the pool and the changing rooms so discreet as to be almost invisible. But she was not alone for more than a coupleof seconds before a young man in an understated uniform of light trousers and blue club blazer approached with a welcoming smile.
    ‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m meeting Jenna Heywood,’ Laura said.
    ‘Ah, yes, Ms Heywood said she was expecting a guest for lunch. She’s in the bar already, I think. Would you like to come through?’
    Laura followed her guide through a door to one side of the lounge into an extensive bar with picture windows overlooking the rolling golf course on one side and offering a view of an indoor swimming pool on the other, where a number of young men were powering through the water with splashy aggression. Jenna Heywood apparently spotted her guest before she spotted her, and Laura became aware of a tall woman of about her own age breaking away from a convivial group at the bar and approaching across the thick pile carpet in a black skirt not much longer than a mini teamed with breathtaking heels and a plunging neckline in embroidered scarlet silk.
    ‘Laura?’ she said enthusiastically. ‘I’m so glad you could make it. I thought it would be good to have a quiet chat up here before I take you to United. This is so much more comfortable. It’s a real asset to the old town, don’t you think?’
    Reluctant to admit she had never been to the club before, Laura just nodded and allowed herself to be steered towards a table by the window with two comfortable armchairs arranged to face the windows and the view of the golf course. A waiter was hovering almost immediately.
    ‘Just a tonic with ice and lemon,’ Laura said. ‘I’m driving.’
    Jenna looked disappointed. ‘You’ll have a glass of wine with lunch?’
    ‘Yes, that would be fine,’ Laura said, and sank back into her chair while Jenna dealt with the waiter, thankful for a moment to observe this phenomenon who appeared to have shaken Bradfield’s sporting community to its foundations simply by being young, elegant and female, an effect that Laura had hoped, maybe naïvely, had passed into history.
    Jenna was tall and fashionably slim, her blonde hair worn loose, long legs crossed to display her Jimmy Choos, and her clothes evidently straight from the sort of designer shops that Laura could only gaze at in a state of financial shock when she occasionally passed them by. But when Jenna turned back to her guest Laura could see that she was not some ditzy clothes-horse . There was humour in the perfectly made-up face and a sharp intelligence in the blue eyes. Jenna Heywood was no fool, Laura thought, any more than her father had been, and she guessed that the middle-aged and complacent directors at Bradfield United, who seemed intent on derailing her plans, might find that they had bitten off more than they could chew.
    ‘So,’ Jenna said consideringly. ‘You’re the features editor for the
Gazette
? You don’t do sport then?’
    Laura shook her head.
    ‘That’s Tony Holloway’s baby,’ she said. ‘I expect you’ve met him.’
    ‘Yes,’ Jenna said noncommitally, with a faint smile. ‘My father had a run-in or two with Tony, I think, as the team lurched from the bad to the appalling over the years.’
    ‘I think Tony’s mother put him in United colours from the moment he was born,’ Laura said with a grin. ‘I’m not surewhy sports reporters think they’re exempt from trying to be objective, but a lot of them