Score!

never have children. Lucy and I went to France to prove it wasn’t true so now he can marry you, if you want him to.’ He took her hands again.

‘You and Lucy went all that way.’ Tab’s forehead wrinkled trying to understand. ‘So you’re not in love with Lucy?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Why were you kissing her, then?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your memory,’ said Wolfie, trying to smile. ‘We were comforting each other. We thought you loved Tristan.’

‘I’ve been so jealous,’ mumbled Tab. ‘This is seriously embarrassing, but once you’d gone away I realized it was you I loved, not Tristan. He’s so ratty and obsessed with his film. I feel safe with you. I’ve wanted to kill Lucy for the last few days.’

Wolfie was struck dumb again as the colour flooded his incredulous, bewildered, hopeful face.

‘Your father?’ he mumbled. ‘He’d never approve. I’m three-quarters Kraut, a quarter Italian, a Rannaldini, and a disinherited one at that.’

‘That doesn’t matter a stuff. Dad really likes you.’ Tab stretched up her hand to touch his face. ‘You’re much more his cup of Earl Grey than Tristan. He loathes intellectuals.’

‘How d’you feel now?’ Wolfie trapped her hand, covering the palm with kisses.

‘My head aches, but my heart doesn’t any more.’

‘You mustn’t try to talk.’

‘I don’t want to talk, I want to kiss you.’

I shouldn’t be doing this to Tristan, thought Wolfie, but he bent his head and very gently kissed her dry lips, which immediately opened.

‘Stop that at once, you must not excite the patient,’ said an outraged nurse, who’d bustled in with a torch to check Tab’s pupils.

‘Yes, he must.’ Tab’s hand clamped round Wolfie’s neck. ‘It’s exactly what she does need.’

Outside, Rupert, trying to get through to Gerald Portland, had to cope with another casualty. This time it was Xavier, sobbing his heart out. Rupert was touched. Perhaps, at last, his son was mellowing towards his stepsister.

‘It’s all my fault,’ wailed Xav. ‘Tab was so horrible this morning, I prayed she’d die.’

For a second Rupert had difficulty in keeping a straight face. ‘It seems you didn’t pray hard enough,’ he said gravely. ‘She’s getting better by the minute.’

‘Will she be coming back to live with us?’ Xav asked gloomily.

Looking through the glass into Tab’s room, Rupert could see Wolfie taking off Tab’s wedding ring and throwing it in the bin. ‘I rather doubt it,’ he said.

‘D’you think her horrible mother could go and live with them both?’

Five minutes later, walking at speed along the corridor, Tristan went slap into Rupert and steeled himself for more abuse. But Rupert seemed in an excellent mood.

‘She’s come round. Go and say hello.’

As Tristan tiptoed in, Wolfie slid out without a word. Outside he leant his hot forehead against a cool corridor window, raising two sets of crossed fingers to the skies.

‘My poor darling, ’ow are you?’ Tristan took Tab’s hand.

‘OK.’ She forced herself to look at him. After a day in the sun, he was going brown again. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. ‘Look,’ she muttered, ‘I know I threw myself at you. Wolfie told me why you backed off, but you mustn’t feel guilty about Claudine because I’m in love with Wolfie.’

Tristan noticed her ringless finger and her mud-splattered face. Only the ticking clock broke the long, long silence. ‘I know you are.’

Looking up, Tab was amazed to see happiness and sweetness in his face.

‘Darling Tab, you gave me the most beautiful night of my life.’

‘I thought I was so in love with you.’

‘And I with you, and I still think Wolfie is the luckiest guy in the world.’

‘You shouldn’t look so relieved,’ grumbled Tab. ‘It isn’t very flattering.’

‘It isn’t very flattering that your father looks ecstatic as well. I’m sorry, cherie, I’ve been like a bear with a hurt head and you had that ’orrible fall.’

‘Wolfie thinks you’ll be cross with him.’

‘Au contraire. I come not for Wolfie’s blood but his car keys. When he saw ambulance, he leave Lamborghini across gateway so the unit cannot get in or out. His burglar alarm is going off every second so Sylvestre is going ape-sheet. Worst of all, Alpheus’s suit is locked inside so we cannot film last scene.’

The moment Tristan returned to the set an anxious Rozzy asked after Tab.

‘Out of danger,’ said Tristan happily, ‘and absolutely crazy about Wolfie, which lets me off the hook.’

‘Oh, I’m so pleased for them both,’ sighed Rozzy, taking Alpheus’s suit from him. ‘I wonder if it needs a press.’

‘Don’t bother,’ said Tristan. ‘Oh, Rozzy, I was such a bastard to Lucy earlier. Now I’m worried stiff. Someone tried to kill Tab, they slashed your dress yesterday, the murderer’s on the rampage, and Lucy’s not answering her mobile.’

‘Leave a message on her bleeper.’

‘I’ve been leaving them all day. I need her to make up Alpheus. We can cover his Shirley Temple curls with straw hat, but only Lucy can give those commonplace features an air of nobility. And to tell the truth,’ confessed Tristan wryly, ‘I shouted at her because I miss her so much.’

‘I’ll find her.’ Rozzy patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry.’

79

Rupert managed to catch the five fifty news on a hospital television. That pompous ass Gerald Portland was giving a press conference at Rutminster police station. He was flaunting a purple spotted tie with a purple striped shirt and kept smoothing his chestnut hair for the cameras.

‘We are treating this incident as attempted murder,’ he was telling the rugger scrum of reporters. ‘But happily I can confirm that Tabitha Lovell is no longer in a life-threatening condition.’

After that, Portland’s emergency meeting of the Inner Cabinet was most embarrassingly interrupted by an apoplectic telephone call from Rupert. ‘I merely said she was no longer in a life-threatening condition, Mr Campbell-Black.’

‘Don’t be fucking stupid. The person who’s just tried to kill her for a second time has already killed two people and tried to bump off half a dozen more, and is still on the loose. If that isn’t fucking threatening her life, I don’t know what is. All you overpaid cretins do is waste tax-payers’ money chasing the wrong people.’

‘We are about to make an arrest,’ said Portland huffily.

‘Well, until the killer’s behind bars, I want a dozen men guarding Tab at the hospital — and while you’re on, never, never, never wear spots with stripes.’

‘Bastard!’ Portland slammed down the telephone.

But nothing could dent his euphoria. The DNA testing had at last produced a match.

‘Who is it, Guv?’ begged DC Lightfoot in excitement.

Gerry Portland turned to Gablecross, not without a certain satisfaction. ‘I’m afraid it’s your girlfriend Lucy Latimer, Tim.’

‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Karen indignantly.

‘She never had a cast-iron alibi,’ went on Portland. ‘She was allegedly walking that dog when both Rannaldini