Polo

photographs.’

‘Course they can. What did they say at the adoption society?’ She was trying to control her longing.

Rupert shook his head. Since they married there had only been truth between them. ‘I’m afraid they’re not going to give us a baby, but we’ll get one from somewhere.’

‘It’s OK. We’ve still got Tabitha and Marcus and the dogs,’ her voice faltered. ‘And Perdita,’ she was about to say. Rupert’s ability to have children seemed so at odds with her own recently enforced infertility. The reporters stepped up the hammering on the door.

‘How could Perdita have done it?’ she said in bewilderment. ‘To poor Daisy as well.’

‘I don’t give a fuck about Daisy. You’re the only thing I care about.’

Mrs Bodkin, Rupert’s ancient housekeeper, who’d seen endless dramas in her time, came into the hall. Thank God he had Miss Taggie. Seeing them in each other’s arms, she coughed.

‘It’s Tabitha on the private line, Mr Campbell-Black.’

Rupert picked up the telephone. ‘I was just going to ring you, darling. I’m terribly sorry. D’you want to come over?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Tabitha. ‘Your new intermediate daughter won’t take all our money, will she?’ Her shrill voice suddenly broke. ‘You won’t love her more than me, will you?’

‘I’m bloody well going to have it out with Daisy,’ snarled Rupert as he came off the telephone.

Ten minutes later his helicopter landed on Ricky’s front lawn, and this time the press fell back, scalded by the white heat of his rage. He found Daisy in Ricky’s kitchen, mindlessly making a shepherd’s pie for supper, not because Ricky wanted it, but to give herself something to do. A smell of frying onion, garlic, peppers and minced lamb drifted through the house. Ricky had pulled down the blue and white striped blinds so the hovering press couldn’t see in. For a second Rupert and Daisy stared at each other, both unable not to think of the night they had spent together. How could I? thought Rupert. Daisy looked utterly wretched, her red eyes vanished beneath red swollen lids as though they’d been stung by ants, her face blotchy from crying. An old grey sweater of Ricky’s couldn’t disguise the weight that had dropped off her.

‘Oh, Rupert, I’m so sorry.’ All Daisy could think of was how incredible that such an attractive man should once have screwed her all those years ago.

‘So you fucking should be!’ Rupert hurled his fury like acid in her face. ‘Why the hell didn’t you have an abortion?’

‘I didn’t have the money.’

‘You can’t prove Perdita’s my child. Bas has got black eyes just like hers. She could have inherited her riding skills from him or Billy. Bob Riley was almost an albino.’

‘I’m not going to say she’s yours,’ whispered Daisy. ‘I just said I was drunk, and can’t remember anyone there. It’s so awful. You and Taggie have been so sweet to me.’

‘Perdita’s completely fucked up Taggie’s chances of having or adopting a baby, and what about the effect on Tab and Marcus? God, I’m going to sue her into the next world. I’ll ruin her if it kills me.’

Daisy started to cry and throw whole carrots into the frantically spitting onions and mince.

‘It’s burning, lovie.’ Ricky crossed the room and turned off the gas. ‘Let’s leave it and have a drink.’

As Daisy collapsed on to a kitchen chair with her face in her hands, the twins bounded in.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ said Dommie, grinning at Rupert.

‘Orgy, porgy, pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them pregnant,’ said Seb. ‘Christ, I’m starving.’ Grabbing a spoon, he started eating the mince out of the frying pan. ‘What I feel most sorry for you about, Rupert, is having that frightful little shit, Red Alderton, as a son-in-law.’

‘It’s not funny,’ shouted Rupert.

‘Well, it’s not Daisy’s fault,’ shouted back Ricky, getting a bottle out of the cupboard, splashing whisky into four glasses and giving one to Daisy.

‘I don’t want a drink,’ said Rupert.

‘All the more for me,’ said Dommie, tipping Rupert’s share into his glass. ‘Are these for Wayne and Kinta?’ He picked the whole carrots out of the frying pan.

‘I said it’s not Daisy’s fault,’ repeated Ricky icily.

‘Bloody is,’ said Rupert. ‘Fucking hippie bringing up her fucking children by Dr Spock rules, letting them run wild, and everything hang out. If she hadn’t spoilt Perdita rotten, none of this would have happened.’

‘Balls,’ yelled Ricky. ‘Perdita just happens to have inherited your sodding awful nature.’

‘Who tried to bail you out of prison, and appealed against your conviction?’ demanded Rupert in outrage.

‘Below the belt,’ said Seb.

‘So was Rupert’s dick,’ giggled Dommie. ‘You shouldn’t go round screwing girls when they’re stoned.’

‘This isn’t getting anyone anywhere,’ said Ricky. ‘Are you going to admit paternity or not?’

‘Like hell I am. I’d rather father a mamba.’

‘With Red geeing her up, she may easily take you to court,’ said Seb.

‘Let her,’ said Rupert flatly. ‘After what she’s done to my children and Taggie twice, I’ll bury her.’

Rupert’s children were not the only ones affected. Violet was devastated, particularly when her boyfriend’s parents suddenly withdrew a long-standing invitation to spend a weekend at their house. At Eddie’s prep school the rest of his form trooped down to the kitchen and read the cook’s copy of The Scorpion.

‘Common Entrance, Common Entrance,’ chanted Blair-Harrison, the most evil boy in the class. ‘Your mother seems to have a communal entrance.’

And Eddie had hit Blair-Harrison across the classroom breaking two of his flawless front teeth. One of Dancer’s minders had brought Eddie back to Robinsgrove where he had fished and shot clays and apparently happily watched television. But after midnight, long after Daisy had been knocked out by one of Ricky’s pills, Ricky found Eddie sobbing his heart out.

‘How could Mum let all those blokes stick it in her?’

‘It wasn’t her fault,’ said Ricky. ‘Someone got her drunk and drugged her.’

Eddie clenched his fists. ‘I’m going to kill Perdita.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ said Ricky grimly.

He wanted nothing more than to concentrate on his polo. His house had been besieged by press for forty- eight hours, and when he went to the Rutshire to play practice chukkas the following day they were ten deep round the clubhouse waiting for him.

For once the expletives were worse off the field than on. The twins, losing their tempers, had started hitting balls at the reporters’ ankles, and the police had been called. Miss Lodsworth had for once been on Apocalypse’s side and had driven The Times cameraman off with her shooting stick. Decorum, the bull terrier, had bitten both The Scorpion and the Guardian.

Ironically Ricky had become the hero of the press. The cameraman with Beattie Johnson had taken a photograph of Ricky throwing Beattie out of the window and sold it to the Sun who’d put it on their front page.

Over in Palm Beach Perdita was on the rack. Electric gates and Rottweilers kept out the press, but not the feelings of utter horror at what she’d unearthed. Talk about Pandora’s boxing ring.

Still smarting with rejection that Rupert had turned her down so summarily on finding her in his bed, she had been plagued since then by embarrassingly erotic dreams about him. But now the scalding hot lava of humiliation was pouring over her as she realized she’d tried to bed her own father.

Red the unpredictable, however, was absolutely delighted. Any novelty and strangeness excited him.

‘What a good thing you didn’t get him into bed in Florida,’ he said gleefully. ‘He’d probably have negated the pill and impregnated you.’

‘Don’t be disgusting,’ screamed Perdita. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I’d never have tried to pull him that night. If you hadn’t been getting off with that girl from Vanity Fair, I’d never have got pissed and spilled the beans to Simpson Hastings.’

It was a further source of irritation that no-one believed she hadn’t taken a massive pay-off from The Scorpion. Red caught the short back ends of her hair, yanking her head back, his eyes blazing with desire.

‘Rupert’s mega-bucks, just think what we can screw him for.’