Jilly Cooper - Score!

‘We all are,’ said Eulalia reverently.

Even buckets of wine couldn’t make the party gel. There was no birthday boy to blow out the thirty-five blue candles on the big chocolate cake. People loved Mikhail and hated seeing him so hurt and humiliated on his birthday.

It was eerie in the shadowy garden: owls hooted, moths scorched themselves on flambeaux, gasping unwatered plants failed to revive in the cooler night air. Baby’s protestations that Charles V had been a real ghost began to stack up, as Granny, summoned to take a call from Giuseppe, found him still on his troop ship in the Bosphorus.

In Bernard’s office, Tristan, Oscar and Valentin were still wondering after Baby’s fainting how much of tonight’s film they could salvage. Having raved over Granny’s patchwork quilt, which was on display and lighting up the summer drawing room like a rainbow, the rest of the guests had spilled out into the garden.

Sexton, who was heartbroken that his plan to bring Lara over had misfired so tragically, had arrived with Hermione, who having heard about, but not yet read, Beattie’s piece was delighted at Chloe’s discomfiture. Considering herself an expert on the subject of the press, she decided to charm the grotesque Eulalia Harrison. After all, the Sentinel ’s circulation nudged the Guardian ’s.

‘Have you heard my latest CD?’

‘I have indeed,’ said Eulalia, in her refined ultra-intellectual Islington twang. ‘I am a long-term fan, Dame Hermione.’

‘Then you shall come to luncheon at River House.’

Determined not to fall into Chloe’s trap of bitching up others, Hermione beckoned Lucy over.

‘This is my personal make-up artist, Lucy Latimer. You’ll want to talk to Lucy about me, and probably to our Woman Friday, Rozzy Pringle. By the way, Rozzy, my rose-lined green cloak has a tear. Rosalind’s very nifty with a needle, Eulalia.’

‘And a great singer,’ said Lucy defiantly.

‘Come and meet Sexton Kemp.’ Hermione took Eulalia’s arm. ‘Sexton went to Eton, you know.’

‘Bitch, bitch, bitch!’ said Lucy, to Hermione’s broad departing back. ‘Omigod,’ she screamed, as a ghostly apparition appeared unexpectedly out of the ebony depths of the maze. ‘Oh, thank goodness it’s you, Alpheus.’

‘Either of you two seen Cheryl?’ An enraged Alpheus glared towards the terrace where Rannaldini, still in his tails, the skull leering from his cummerbund, was now standing.

‘How dare he say artistic consideration come before continuity?’ fumed Simone, as Rannaldini clapped his hands and announced the cabaret.

Earlier in the shoot, after a particularly trying day, Meredith and Rannaldini had joined Tristan in his caravan and, over a bottle of whisky, they had discussed everyone. Rannaldini had taped the conversation and now relayed it on speakers around the house and garden.

Clearly Tristan had been enjoying the catharsis of a really good bitch. The sound of his laughter, which had not been heard since the auto da fe , drew the outside revellers in round the terrace.

Having mimicked most of the cast, particularly Pushy and Alpheus, Meredith had savagely taken the piss out of Sexton, but his venom had been reserved for Hermione, as the wife of Bob, his long-term lover. Tristan had defended her manfully, only when Meredith started impersonating her in a screeching falsetto could he be heard crying with helpless laughter.

Initial guffaws from the guests quickly faded into appalled embarrassed silence. Sexton looked as though he was going to cry.

‘I never knowed I was that common.’

No-one dared look at Hermione, who for once was lost for words.

As Tristan wandered into the party, Rannaldini could be heard saying on the tape, ‘Do you theenk we should replace Hermione?’

‘Superfluous Harefield,’ giggled Meredith. ‘Well, Pushy’s already sung her top notes, so why not get some pretty actress, half her age, to play her on film?’

‘With an ass a quarter the size,’ Tristan had suggested, to shouts of mirth.

‘Turn that bloody thing off,’ howled the real Tristan, and his hands were round Rannaldini’s neck. ‘I keel you, you bastard.’

If Wolfie, Bernard and a racing-up Valentin hadn’t pulled him off, he would have strangled Rannaldini. ‘D’you want to screw up everything we achieve, you fucking madman? Let me get at heem,’ he snarled, struggling to break free of their clutches.

‘My dear boy,’ sneered Rannaldini, straightening his collar, ‘how very excited you’re getting over a bit of fun.’

A second later, everyone was distracted by Hermione screaming.

‘It isn’t true about my top notes?’

Sexton was about to protest that of course it wasn’t, but Pushy was too quick for him. ‘Ay’m afraid it is, Hermione,’ she said smugly. ‘Roberto couldn’t bear you to sound less than perfect.’

Screeching that she would get both Pushy and Rannaldini, and never work with Tristan again, Hermione flapped off towards River House, so like a great goose that everyone expected her to break into flight.

‘Shame the river’s too low for her to drown herself,’ sighed Baby.

But her departing screech was interrupted by a far more pitiful sound. In the summer drawing room, Granny was crouched weeping over his patchwork quilt, which had been slashed into such tiny pieces that, unlike Foxie, it couldn’t be sewn together again. Like eaglets fluttering round a mother bird with an irrevocably broken wing, Lucy, Baby and Flora surged forward, frantic to comfort him, but Granny refused to let Tristan call the police. ‘No, no, nothing can bring it and my darling boy back again.’

Ten minutes later, utterly unmoved by such tragedy, Pushy returned from cleaning her teeth in Helen’s bathroom (after all, it would be hers soon) and, sidling up to Rannaldini, asked if it were too early to slope off to the watchtower.

‘Frankly it is,’ smirked Rannaldini. ‘Because I ’ave subsequent engagement,’ and singing, ‘Life is just a bowl of Cheryl,’ he disappeared into the dark.

Ten minutes later he let himself into the watchtower.

‘My darling,’ he crooned to Mikhail’s Lara, who Clive had just smuggled down a newly strimmed ride. ‘Don’t spoil your lovely eyes with tears. Suffering will make your wayward husband sing even more beautifully, and you will have a night to tell your great-grandchildren about.’

Then, as a feisty blonde in a foxglove-pink and purple dressing-gown came down the spiral staircase, ‘I don’t think you know Cheryl Shaw.’

The next two and a half days, thank God, were rest days. Tristan had a big press screening of The Lily in the Valley in Paris on Saturday night, and then a lunch party for Aunt Hortense’s eighty-sixth birthday on Sunday. Night-shooting would start on Monday evening.

Roused early on Saturday morning from the same hideous nightmare, Tristan found his light on and Rannaldini standing in his bedroom doorway. With his bare muscular chest soaring out of tight black trousers, he was hideously reminiscent of himself in The Snake Charmer .

‘If I have any more hassle from you,’ Tristan reached for a Gauloise with a shaking hand, ‘I’m taking my name off this film.’

‘What name?’ taunted Rannaldini. ‘You’re not a Montigny any more. In fact, your lack of roots is showing, my dear.’

Tristan felt churning black loathing. Unless he jumped to Rannaldini’s tune, the bastard would tell the world Étienne wasn’t his father.

‘Hurry or you’ll miss that plane,’ smirked Rannaldini, ‘and do give my best to Claudine Lauzerte.’

Strolling down the landing, Rannaldini was greeted by his cat, Sarastro, mewing with rage. Stooping to stroke him, Rannaldini found his white fur drenched. How could this be, when it hadn’t rained for weeks? Out of the window, through the pre-dawn half-light, he saw Rozzy with a watering-can, like a nurse in the trenches, trying to bring succour to his dying plants.