‘Quite.’ Flora refused to be fazed. ‘Bit Hammer House of Horror. In fact, extremely so,’ she added, as Natasha led her in through a side door past a darkly panelled room containing rows of gleaming black riding boots and a daunting collection of spurs, bits with chains and hunting whips, many of them with lashes. ‘I didn’t know your father was into SM.’
Normality was restored by a delicious smell of mint and fennel drifting from the kitchen. Kitty, spectacles misting up, her face as red and shiny as a billiard ball, damp patches under the arms of her straining blue cotton dress, was cooking Sunday lunch.
‘This is my stepmother,’ announced Nastasha disdainfully, dumping two carrier bags of washing on the floor at Kitty’s feet. ‘And please handwash my purple flares. You shrunk my red pair last time.’
‘I thought stepmothers were supposed to be wicked,’ said Flora. ‘My mother has never handwashed anything in her life. You’re bloody lucky, Natasha. How d’you do?’ she smiled at Kitty.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Kitty wiped a red hand on her apron. ‘Blimey, it’s ’ot.’
‘I’m afraid these melted in the car.’
Giving Kitty a squashed box of Terry’s All Gold, Flora reflected that Kitty reacted as though they really were gold, going even brighter red with pleasure.
‘’Ow very kind of you, Flora, that’s really fortful.’
‘Not really,’ said Natasha bitchily. ‘Wolfie gave them to her, but she doesn’t want any more zits.’
‘That was another box,’ snapped Flora.
‘How are yer mum and dad?’ asked Kitty.
‘OK, but Mum’s getting horribly thin. These are hers although she doesn’t know it.’ Flora held out the bottom of the slate-grey shorts she was wearing with a pale pink camisole top. ‘They’re part of a size ten suit, and they’re already miles too big for her.’
‘They’re gorgeous.’ Natasha took a bottle of wine from the fridge and sloshed it into two glasses. ‘I wish I had a mother over here who was trendy enough to nick clothes from.’
Flushing, Kitty asked her how work was going.
‘Boring, and even more boring talking about it.’ Natasha handed a glass to Flora. ‘I’ll show you your room. I don’t know why you’re bothering about lunch, Kitty. It’s much too hot to eat.’
‘I’m starving,’ said Flora. ‘See you in a bit, Kitty.’
Later she and Natasha sprawled in the window-seat looking at old photographs.
‘Isn’t Papa ravishing?’ sighed Natasha.
‘Quite.’ Flora examined a coloured photograph of Rannaldini shooting in the bracken. ‘He’s a bit urban, as though he pays some peasant to throw mud over his gumboots every morning, and tread in his new Barbour in the autumn like grapes. He is good looking for a wrinkly though,’ she added kindly. ‘What’s his Christian name?’
‘Roberto.’
‘I shall call him Bob,’ said Flora, draining a second glass of wine.
‘I wouldn’t,’ said Natasha. ‘An American baritone called him Bob at a dress rehearsal, and never made the opening night.’
‘Bob Harefield’s a sweet man,’ said Flora giggling. ‘That ghastly Hermione isn’t short of a few Bobs, is she? Oh Christ!’ Flora suddenly remembered Kitty, who fortunately seemed to be preoccupied, putting peeled prawns and sliced cucumbers round a sea trout.
‘I’m starving now.’ Natasha grabbed a chunk of Cheddar from the fridge and, removing the clingfilm, took a bite, before smoothing away the toothmarks with her thumb. ‘Thank God! Here’s Wolfie; we can have lunch.’
Having been given a Golf GTi for his eighteenth birthday, Wolfie Rannaldini insisted on driving everywhere. Blond, ruddy complexioned, beaky nosed, solemn and ambitious, when he wasn’t training for various school teams, he was swotting for his A levels. He had taken after Rannaldini’s German side, while the volatile, histrionic, over- emotional Natasha seemed all Italian. Unlike his sister, he gave Kitty a hug, before pulling Flora up from the window-seat, seeking her mouth and letting his hand slither under the pink camisole top for a quick squeeze. Having dismissed love as a girl’s concern, he had been knocked for one of the sixes he was always hitting by Flora.
‘Did you beat Fleetley?’ asked Kitty.
‘Slaughtered them.’ Wolfie got a can of beer out of the fridge.
‘Any runs?’
‘A hundred and twenty, and three wickets.’
‘But that’s wonderful.’
Kitty is nice, thought Flora, who could never work up an interest in cricket.
‘They were pissed off,’ went on Wolfie. ‘When we got out of the bus, the Fleetley XI sneered at us, and said: “What’s it like being at a second-rate public school?” I said: “I don’t know, I’ve only just arrived,” and then we buried them. This is seriously funny.’ He unrolled a long school photograph. Flora and Natasha screamed with laughter, for there grinning in the third row, just behind Miss Bottomley was Flora wearing a gorilla mask.
‘They’ve printed six hundred and sent most of them out without checking,’ said Wolfie in amusement. ‘Bottomley will go ape-shit.’
‘Gorilla-shit,’ said Flora. ‘Come and look, Kitty.’
Kitty giggled so much she had to remove her glasses and wipe her eyes.
She’s not much older than us, thought Flora in surprise, and on closer examination decided that if Kitty wasn’t remotely beautiful, she had a sweet crumpled face, and certainly wasn’t the total dog Natasha made out.
‘You look nice, Tasha,’ she said, turning back to the photograph.
Too voluptuous at present, despite long thin legs, Natasha had shaggy black curls, Rannaldini’s heavy-lidded dark eyes, a big pouting mouth like a frog, and a sly, sliding, slightly Asiatic face, giving off the possibility of great glamour to come. Watching the three of them laughing together and seeing Wolfie’s hand creep round Flora’s slim waist to find her breast again, Kitty felt a wave of envy. Then she turned in terror and nearly dropped the potato salad, as the room was plunged into darkness by the unexpected arrival of Rannaldini’s helicopter blotting out the sun.
‘Fuck,’ said Wolfie, who’d been planning to spend the afternoon in the long grass with Flora.
Only Natasha was delighted when five minutes later the house was flooded with Mahler and Rannaldini stalked in. He was followed by Tabloid, his favourite and more ferocious Rottweiler, who would have plunged his teeth into Nastasha, when she rushed forward to hug her father, if Rannaldini hadn’t shouted and given the dog a vicious kick in the ribs, which triggered off a serious of howls.
‘Pavarottweiler,’ said Flora disapprovingly. ‘I heard you bullied your soloists.’
‘Was the recording cancelled?’ asked Natasha hastily.
‘I made everyone rise early to beat the heat.’
Once home, Rannaldini established his ascendancy with the inevitable jackbooting. A brilliant imaginative cook, he often produced Sunday lunch himself, cooking as he conducted, keeping five saucepans going at once, mixing, tasting, stirring, ordering Kitty around like a skivvy. But today, as lunch was ready, he kept everyone waiting out of malice, sending Kitty scuttling to get him a drink, going through the synopsis she’d typed of his post, faxes and telephone messages, finding fault with everything, snarling like Tabloid, who lay panting at his feet, if she didn’t know the answer.
In his post was a letter from some distinguished composer saying the concert in the Albert Hall, out of which Flora had walked, had been the most marvellous thing he’d ever heard.
‘A peety you meesed most of it.’ Rannaldini chucked the letter across to her.
‘Expect the old sycophant wants you to commission another symphony,’ said Flora unrepentantly. ‘Basically I thought the
Terrified that Rannaldini might see her laughing, Kitty gave the mayonnaise a stir to check it hadn’t curdled.
‘You will never find a more exquisite voice,’ said Rannaldini icily.
‘Passion and thrust are what matters. Hermione’s got no soul.’
Beneath the pale red fringe which was tangling with her sooty eyelashes, Flora’s cool cactus-green eyes, a
