Score!

Denston, a fawning little creep who ran the London office, informed him that Liberty Productions’ cast for Don Carlos had cleaned up in the awards.

Alpheus P. Shaw, who was playing Philip II — Howie consulted his pocket computer — was Artist of the Year. Glamorous Chloe Catford, the mezzo, who had posed naked on her winning record sleeve, was the People’s Favourite. Solo Vocal had gone to Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, the Opera Award to Hermione, while Early Opera had been awarded to Granville Hastings, who’d been cast as the Grand Inquisitor. Fat Franco’s Italian Love Songs had been voted Best-selling Record. Most prestigious of all, Rannaldini had won Record of the Year.

‘Odd that you all know in advance,’ said Tristan, accepting a glass of Sancerre.

‘Not at all.’ Howie Denston lowered his voice. ‘Singers have such monstrous egos you’d never get them to an award ceremony unless they knew they’d won.’

Nor was it a coincidence that all the cast of Don Carlos — except Fat Franco — were Shepherd Denston artists. This was because Rannaldini had recently wangled himself the chairmanship of the agency. He had therefore ensured that 20 per cent of the vast fees earned by the singers in the film would go back into Shepherd Denston’s pockets.

Howie Denston, known as Mr Margarine because he spread his oily charm so widely over his artists, had now abandoned Tristan and bolted back to the foyer to await Hermione and his new chairman, who were probably having a bonk upstairs and bound to be late. Tristan didn’t mind being left. He was always happy watching people.

Also at the Shepherd Denston table, besides the award winners, was the retiring chairman, who had an ulcer. Next to him sat Serena Westwood, out of pinstripe into clinging scarlet, acting cool towards Tristan, determined to show him what he had missed by not seducing her in Prague.

Rannaldini, who’d done the seating plan, had also sat Serena next to Giuseppe Cavalli, a hunky young bass, who’d be winning awards in a year or two. Giuseppe had been cast as the ghost of the Emperor, Charles V, who appears at the end of the opera and draws his grandson, Carlos, into the safety of the tomb.

No-one was likely to be safe with Giuseppe, who was an unghostly thug with shoulder-length black curls. Given to check shirts tucked into bulging jeans, he had a huge fan mail from women, but was in fact the lover of Granville Hastings, known as ‘Granny’, who could have uncheerfully murdered Rannaldini for continually fixing Giuseppe up with rich single women. Lone parents were even more predatory than loan sharks, reckoned Granny.

Elegant, tall, silver-haired, always exquisitely dressed, Granny appeared a cosy old pussy-cat. Inwardly his heart was breaking. For years he had sung Philip II, the finest bass role in the repertoire, but now, at nearly sixty- four, he had been demoted to the just as difficult but more pantomime villain role of the Grand Inquisitor. As the bigger part, Philip also got the bigger pay cheque, and keeping Giuseppe was very expensive.

Alpheus P. Shaw III, a very successful, self-regarding American bass sitting at the head of the table, was pointedly ignoring Granny because they had just sung Philip and the Inquisitor in the same production in Paris. Granny, supposed to be blind in the part, had totally upstaged Alpheus by bumping into furniture and at one moment, when Alpheus was hitting a ravishing top note, putting his finger into a candle flame and saying, ‘Ouch.’ Alpheus, who had no sense of humour, had been outraged.

A magnificent-looking man, with red-gold hair brushed back from a noble forehead, Alpheus looked as though he’d been carved out of Mount Rushmore. Married twenty years and the father of three fine sons, he was also a stern upholder of family values.

As he forked up a smoked-salmon parcel with his right hand, however, Alpheus’s left hand foraged between the plump, white thighs of Chloe the mezzo. He and Chloe had fallen in love two years ago when they both appeared in Aida. Engagements had separated them, so they had accepted parts in Don Carlos to be together in the long weeks of recording and filming. Alas, Alpheus’s wife, Cheryl, harboured suspicions, and was threatening to join him on location.

The great din of chatter suddenly stopped as Rannaldini stalked in with all the prowling chutzpah of a leopard who has no intention of changing a single spot.

No star in decline wins Record of the Year.

‘It’s God,’ murmured two record executives, as he swept past them.

He was followed by Hermione Harefield, looking slightly flushed. The lunchers giggled as they noticed the jacket of her purple Chanel suit had been wrongly buttoned up.

‘Gangway, gangway for Dame Hermione,’ yelled Howie Denston pummelling aside other late-comers and sycophants, as Hermione glided across the room as stately as the QE2.

‘I so wanted to creep in here anonymously,’ she was saying loudly.

Embracing Tristan, with whom she intended having an affaire on location, kissing Sexton with whom she did not, Hermione totally ignored that upstart Chloe the mezzo, whom she disliked intensely, and Serena, whom she’d not forgiven for sending the wrong flowers, and Granny, who had never treated her with due reverence. Instead she turned to Alpheus, who was going to sing her husband.

‘Your Majesty.’ Hermione curtsied skittishly.

‘Madama,’ replied a bowing Alpheus, equally skittishly as he held her chair for her.

Everyone was very sad Rozzy Pringle, who was playing Elisabetta’s page, hadn’t made the lunch. She was singing Octavian in Budapest, but sent tons of love. Later, a delightedly squirming Howie would accept the Solo Vocal Award on her behalf.

‘Rozzy’s so lovely,’ sighed Chloe, as Alpheus removed his burrowing hand to cut up his chicken Cenerentola. ‘She’s got no ego problem, unlike some.’ She glared at Hermione.

‘I hope,’ Hermione glared back, ‘that Rozzy is not overstretching her voice. I never do more than forty concerts a year.’

‘Why have you never done a Three Sopranos, Dame Hermione?’ asked the retiring chairman, with all the enthusiasm of one who knows he will never have to handle it.

‘There is only one soprano,’ said Alpheus.

Hermione bowed her head. ‘Your Majesty is gracious.’

Conversation kept being interrupted by waiters grinding black pepper and pouring wine and water.

‘Still or fizzy, Dame Hermione?’

‘Still, please.’

‘One would have known that you would choose only something that ran deep like yourself,’ observed Alpheus playfully.

‘Great big plonker,’ muttered Granny.

‘Amen to that,’ said Chloe.

Alpheus was hung like a donkey.

‘Oh, look,’ she nudged Tristan, ‘here’s your leading man.’

Causing howls of mirth by wearing a vast T-shirt saying, ‘I’ve beaten anorexia’, Franco Palmieri, who was playing Carlos, had reached the Megagram table next door. Appropriating four buckling chairs, he waved jauntily at Chloe then scowled at Alpheus, whom he detested even more than Granny did.

‘Fat Franco longs to be the Fourth Tenor,’ Chloe whispered to Tristan, ‘but very sensibly the others won’t let that conniving shit near them. Don’t worry,’ she added, as she picked the fruit out of her glazed apricot tart, ‘hatred always produces incredible sexual chemistry.’

‘I prefer happy team,’ protested Tristan.

‘With Rannaldini as team leader?’ asked Chloe incredulously. ‘They say his dagger follows close upon his smiles.’

‘He is very great friend,’ said Tristan coldly.

‘Good, perhaps you’ll have a benign influence on him.’

Tristan was heartbreaking, Chloe decided. Those bruised eyes seemed to read her soul. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ she added. ‘The funeral must have been harrowing. Claudine Lauzerte looked stunning.’

‘She did.’

But even Claudine’s divine presence had not distracted a paparazzi frantic to find out, among other things, why Rannaldini (in even more built-up shoes so as not to be dwarfed by Tristan’s three tall brothers) had carried the coffin.