Jilly Cooper - Score!

Being called at such short notice, Rozzy had had no time to wash her hair — which Lucy was able to hide under a very pretty, short, curly wig — or to remove a few hairs from her chin and upper lip.

‘Some Immac will take them off in a trice,’ said Lucy soothingly.

‘We haven’t got time,’ quavered Rozzy.

‘Course we have.’

‘Lucy,’ screamed Hermione.

‘Don’t leave your old bags unattended,’ quipped Meredith, as Lucy belted off to Hermione’s caravan.

‘I’ve nicked a toenail,’ moaned Hermione, ‘and it’s sticking into my big toe. Have you got a plaster?’

‘Only to put over your mouth,’ muttered Lucy.

‘Are you nearly ready, Luce?’ Wolfie appeared at the door. ‘My father’s about to boil over.’

As a result Lucy only had time to put a bit of slap on Rozzy and pray that the dark base would hide any hairs, before Sylvestre arrived to mike her up.

Alas, poor Rozzy, struck down by nerves, fled to the honeywagon, from which, because naughty Sylvestre had not switched off the mike, the whole crew could hear the sound of Mount Etna erupting.

‘Mrs Pringle’s got the runs,’ giggled Pushy Galore.

‘Pity she’s not playing for England,’ sighed Ogborne. ‘They’re fifty-two for four.’

Even Bernard was smiling. Everyone, however, managed to compose their faces as Rozzy arrived on the set, except Hermione who, with merry laughter, proceeded to explain the joke.

‘That’s enough, Hermione,’ snapped Bernard, seeing Rozzy going crimson. ‘Rozzy looks beautiful, and the hair is very nice.’

‘That style makes you look years younger,’ conceded Hermione, ‘but you’re a little too red in the face.’

‘Probably a hot flush,’ sighed Rozzy.

‘Oh, no, dear, you’re well past that.’

‘Let’s go for a quick rehearsal.’ Tristan came off his mobile to Aunt Hortense. ‘Rozzy, you look wonderful.’

‘He could make a warthog feel like Helen of Troy,’ grumbled Pushy.

I’m Elisabetta’s lady-in-waiting, I ought to be playing the Countess, she thought furiously as, with the rest of the ladies of the chorus, she bobbed around in front of a hedge of white roses trying to get into shot.

‘“Countess,”’ sang Alpheus sternly, ‘“at daybreak you will return to France.”’

‘Burst into tears, Rozzy,’ shouted Tristan.

Rozzy’s only problem would have been holding them back any longer. Particularly when Hermione repeatedly stroked her face as she mimed her consoling aria and, between takes, loudly advised Rozzy to invest in some decent electrolysis.

‘It’s well worth it at your age.’

Tears of such humiliation had gushed out of Rozzy’s eyes that Tristan was genuinely able to congratulate her on a wonderfully convincing performance, which didn’t cheer Rozzy up one bit.

Happily, Hermione’s comeuppance was in train. Oscar, who was not the most famous director of photography in the world for nothing, had decided to avenge both Chloe and Rozzy.

That evening, as everyone poured into the viewing room to watch the rushes, all that could be heard was Hermione’s agitated squawking. Having lit her from beneath in her nude scene with Alpheus, Oscar had made her bottom look enormous.

‘The great globe itself,’ said Granny, in a sepulchral whisper.

‘You should have reduced it with a darker base, Lucy,’ giggled Meredith.

‘Any moment, David Attenborough will pop up and lecture us sotto voce on the mating habits of the hippopotamus,’ cried Baby, in ecstasy.

Shouts of ‘My bottom is not that big, my bottom is not that big,’ were drowned by cheers, particularly from Chloe, who gave Oscar a big kiss.

‘What are you doing after this?’ she murmured. ‘I owe you.’

Tristan laughed, but was cross with Oscar because they ought to reshoot. He was overruled by Sexton and Rannaldini, who both liked big bums and small budgets.

‘Do you know the meaning of the word “callipygean”?’ asked Sexton cosily, as he tried to bear Hermione away for a consoling drink.

Hermione shrugged him off. She wasn’t going to let such a common little man take advantage.

Alpheus had laughed as heartily as anyone over Dame Hermione’s humiliation, until Rannaldini sidled up to him.

‘May I be honest, Alpheus? You look in great shape in those nude shots.’ Alpheus preened. ‘But in future I think you should leave off the false nose. It looks a leetle grotesque.’

Later, on the terrace, oblivious of an exquisite coral sunset, Hermione and Alpheus could be seen berating a sleeping Tristan.

Sexton was not cast down by Hermione’s rejection. He had just come back from Cannes where, showing a ten-minute trailer of Chloe and Alpheus in the sack in order to sell more distribution rights, he’d had to massage even bigger egos than theirs. Now he retreated to the production office and continued four different deals on four different mobiles. ‘I may look calm,’ he was fond of telling people, ‘but I’m not.’

Poor Hype-along Cassidy was not feeling calm either. Controlling the publicity was a nightmare. Hermione, incensed that nothing about herself had appeared recently, was unaware that her sacked make-up girl had just dumped in News of the World : ‘How I Concealed Dame Hermione’s Turkey Neck, and How She Ate Technicians for Breakfast.’

Hype-along’s rise at dawn on Sunday mornings to empty the village shop of papers was becoming a common occurrence. He’d also had terrible trouble with Baby, who, when he’d taken him up for interviews in London, had fallen asleep over drinks with the Guardian , and on the way to lunch with Lynn Barber had jumped taxi to buy clothes in Jermyn Street and not been traced till the following day.

Saddest of all, Tristan, the person to whom everyone wanted to speak, was so violently anti-press he wouldn’t give interviews at all. Hype-along, however, was working towards a quiet lunch at the Old Bell with Valerie Grove of The Times .

‘I think Oscar and Chloe are an item,’ Griselda told everyone, as Chloe looked more and more magical in the rushes and Oscar slept even more during the day.

But Chloe was not out of the woods. Baby was watching porn on the Internet one afternoon when up popped a teenage Chloe, cavorting with a black girl and a goat.

‘Goodness,’ gasped Lucy, when Baby rushed in to tell her. ‘Was the goat female?’

‘I saw its udder shudder. In mitigation, it did appear to be having a good time.’

‘I do hope Rannaldini doesn’t know about it,’ shivered Lucy. ‘I’m sure he’d use it against her.’

Someone was pinching clothes from Wardrobe, especially ties. Griselda and Simone, whose continuity was being screwed up, went out to the Heavenly Host to drown their sorrows and asked Lucy to join them, which at least gave Lucy a chance to quiz Simone about Tristan.

‘What’s his auntie Hortense like?’

‘A battleaxe, who demand the whole time,’ sighed Simone. ‘And not at all motherly to Uncle Tristan. When she drop him as a baby in drawing room, she ring for maid to pick him up.’

Then Simone added slyly: ‘Valentin, Sylvestre and Ogborne wanted to crash dinner tonight, Lucy. They all fancy you, but they know you only ’ave eyes for Uncle Tristan.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ spluttered Lucy, sending her glass of red flying. ‘Of course I don’t.’ Then, as she frantically mopped up with her pink scarf, ‘I wouldn’t dream—’

‘Dream is perhaps the only thing you should do,’ said Simone gently. ‘I love my uncle Tristan but he is very damaged.’

Terrified by the ghostly sightings inside Valhalla, Lucy had taken to sleeping outside in her make-up caravan, which seemed less claustrophobic than those little cells and long, dark, spooky corridors. But returning from the Heavenly Host, as she scuttled past silent generators and empty dark-windowed Hair and Wardrobe departments, she wasn’t sure. It would be so easy for a ghost to leap out from behind an empty lorry. Even the moon and the stars had deserted her.