Jilly Cooper - Score!

‘Here’s one soprano who isn’t working at the moment.’ He chucked a photograph on the table.

The girl wore an ivory silk shift. She had a shiny dark red bob, pale gold skin sprinkled with freckles like a tiger lily, and cool, watchful green eyes.

Viking put a tape in the machine. Her voice was of such piercing, distinctive sweetness that Tristan had to hear only a few bars.

‘Bravo, Viking, who is she?’

‘Flora Seymour — she’s Georgie Maguire’s daughter, so it’s in the genes. She played the viola in my old orchestra, but trained as a singer as well. She’s got the most angelic voice in the world.’

‘Give me her telephone number,’ said Tristan.

He met a lot of opposition. Serena, Hermione and Chloe all thought Flora was a tramp, probably because she’d had affaires with both Rannaldini and Viking, and because they’d all three had designs in the past on the filthy rich, if slightly shady, George Hungerford, with whom Flora was now living.

Rannaldini didn’t want any advice from Viking and he’d fallen out badly with Flora. But he doted on her voice, which had never been properly exploited. He was enough of a mischief-maker as well to see the potential for avenging himself on Flora’s lover, George Hungerford, who as managing director of the Rutminster Symphony Orchestra had foiled Rannaldini’s takeover bid and who, as a developer, was also threatening to slap a motorway through Valhalla.

Sexton, who was watching the mounting costs in horror, was in favour because Flora sounded cheap.

‘How d’you know her so well?’ asked Tristan.

‘I was once hopelessly in love with her,’ said Viking.

Answering his mobile, he wandered out of earshot to speak to his new wife. ‘Abby darling, I love you too. I’ve also been matchmaking,’ he lowered his voice. ‘I’ve posted Tristan de Montigny down to Rutminster Hall to see Flora.’

Flora sat naked on the white shagpile drying her hair. In the long gilt bedroom mirror she could see three moles on her inside thigh and soft red pubic hair, still damp from the bath. Her small freckled breast rose every time she lifted her arm, but her two spare tyres didn’t shift.

Schiller’s Don Carlos was now open between legs grown far too chunky to play a page-boy poncing about in white tights. She mustn’t get too engrossed in the story, or she’d forget her hair and the sleek bob would shoot upwards like an explosion in a mattress factory.

‘A hundred eyes are hired,’ she read.

Surrounded by George’s guards, who watched her every move, Flora identified with Carlos. Then she looked up at George’s photograph on her dressing-table: cropped-haired, square-jawed, dark brown turned-down eyes, mouth set like a steel trap in the Harvey Smith/John Prescott rough, tough North Country mould — himself against the world. Only Flora knew how sensitive and kind George was behind the façade, but he was terribly possessive.

Having screwed up his first marriage because he was a workaholic, George had taken the autumn off to cement his relationship with Flora, but had returned to work because mega property companies and orchestras don’t run themselves. Most of his time was spent in Germany. Flora wanted to travel with him, but she couldn’t bear to be parted from Trevor, her little black and tan terrier, who was now asleep with a red ball in his mouth on the vast oval bed, whose headboard hummed with every dial. When she was away Trevor wouldn’t eat, and neither he nor she would survive quarantine, so she stayed behind and missed George dreadfully.

Flora was also lonely because her great friend Marcus Campbell-Black, having won the Appleton, was now blissful in Moscow with Alexei Nemerovsky, and her other friend, Abigail Rosen, was having a baby and blissfully happy married to Viking.

Abby, a maternity dress hiding a non-existent bulge, had recently driven down for the day and chided Flora for putting on weight.

‘You’ve never been an achiever, Flora. You never really concentrated on your singing career, and you’ve never stuck to a diet.’

‘Too right,’ Flora agreed gloomily. ‘I’m the one who should be wearing the maternity dress.’

‘George is an incredibly attractive man,’ went on Abby. ‘If you’re going to keep him you mustn’t let yourself go.’

Flora’s hair was dry now. Thick as the shagpile inside, snow was growing on the window-ledge. Tomorrow she and Trevor would build a snow-dog. As she reached for her glass of champagne, Trevor flew off the bed, rushing downstairs in a frenzy of excited barking. Outside, Flora could see the lights of Rannaldini’s helicopter bringing Tristan from London. Trevor had mistaken it for George’s.

The heat of the hair-dryer had removed any need for blusher. Ringing her eyes with brown liner, Flora wriggled into a pair of black jeans, covered the flesh that spilled over the waistband with one of George’s evening shirts, squirted on Coco Chanel and belted downstairs. The Frenchman who came through the front door with snowflakes in his hair was so handsome and so near Flora in age that she promptly had another glass of champagne on an empty stomach out of shyness.

Tristan, however, noticed a Schubert quintet, in which he had often played the cello part, on the music stand in the drawing room and they were off, chattering dix-neuf to the dozen. Tristan was only too happy to tell Flora all about Tab’s wedding because it gave him an excuse to talk about Tab.

‘She’s the most beautiful thing I ever saw,’ confessed Flora, ‘but crazy like a fox, and so volatile. It must be like being married to Mount Vesuvius. I gather Rupert pulled out of Don Carlos as a result.’

Tab’s wedding took them down one bottle, then they moved on to the recording. As Flora’s parents lived in Paradise Valley next to Rannaldini and Hermione, and she knew Chloe, Serena and Meredith too, the gossip on that took them most of the way down another. Tristan, who’d noticed all the burglar alarms and the grilles on the windows, thought Rutminster Hall was ghastly, but improved by George’s Rottweilers stretched out in front of the fire. By the time they’d finished the second bottle, he’d ceased to worry about all the guards.

‘Where are you filming?’ she asked, as they tottered in to dinner.

‘Valhalla.’

‘Then I can’t do it. George would never allow it,’ squeaked Flora in horror, then shut up because two of George’s guards were serving steak and kidney pie and pouring a matchless Margaux.

After they’d shut the door, Flora told Tristan how strapped George was for cash.

‘He owes the Germans about forty million in bridging loans. If it were me I’d never sleep again. If I’d taken the part I could have helped out with a few bills, but truly I’m too fat. I’ve got a treble chin, although most trebles don’t have chins like mine.’

Tristan laughed. He thought Flora utterly ravishing and said there would be masses of time for her to lose any weight before filming started at the end of March.

‘But I haven’t got page’s legs.’

‘As it’s in modern dress, Tebaldo’s become one of those handsome detectives Princess Diana and Princess Anne seemed to get so close to. So your perfectly OK legs will be hidden by trousers.’

‘But the main drawback,’ went on Flora, ‘God, I hope this room isn’t bugged, is working with Rannaldini. George is insanely jealous and has never forgiven Rannaldini for beating me up and trying to rape me last August. I promise you it’s true,’ she added, seeing Tristan’s look of horror. ‘Rannaldini wanted me to stay the night with him after singing in The Creation but I bolted back to George.’

Then, after a large glass of Armagnac, she said, ‘I’ll do it, if George says it’s OK and if I can bring Trevor. Perhaps he could wear lifts and audition for one of Philip II’s wolfhounds.’