Score!

decent electrolysis.

‘It’s well worth it at your age.’

Tears of such humiliation had gushed out of Rozzy’s eyes that Tristan was genuinely able to congratulate her on a wonderfully convincing performance, which didn’t cheer Rozzy up one bit.

Happily, Hermione’s comeuppance was in train. Oscar, who was not the most famous director of photography in the world for nothing, had decided to avenge both Chloe and Rozzy.

That evening, as everyone poured into the viewing room to watch the rushes, all that could be heard was Hermione’s agitated squawking. Having lit her from beneath in her nude scene with Alpheus, Oscar had made her bottom look enormous.

‘The great globe itself,’ said Granny, in a sepulchral whisper.

‘You should have reduced it with a darker base, Lucy,’ giggled Meredith.

‘Any moment, David Attenborough will pop up and lecture us sotto voce on the mating habits of the hippopotamus,’ cried Baby, in ecstasy.

Shouts of ‘My bottom is not that big, my bottom is not that big,’ were drowned by cheers, particularly from Chloe, who gave Oscar a big kiss.

‘What are you doing after this?’ she murmured. ‘I owe you.’

Tristan laughed, but was cross with Oscar because they ought to reshoot. He was overruled by Sexton and Rannaldini, who both liked big bums and small budgets.

‘Do you know the meaning of the word “callipygean”?’ asked Sexton cosily, as he tried to bear Hermione away for a consoling drink.

Hermione shrugged him off. She wasn’t going to let such a common little man take advantage.

Alpheus had laughed as heartily as anyone over Dame Hermione’s humiliation, until Rannaldini sidled up to him.

‘May I be honest, Alpheus? You look in great shape in those nude shots.’ Alpheus preened. ‘But in future I think you should leave off the false nose. It looks a leetle grotesque.’

Later, on the terrace, oblivious of an exquisite coral sunset, Hermione and Alpheus could be seen berating a sleeping Tristan.

Sexton was not cast down by Hermione’s rejection. He had just come back from Cannes where, showing a ten-minute trailer of Chloe and Alpheus in the sack in order to sell more distribution rights, he’d had to massage even bigger egos than theirs. Now he retreated to the production office and continued four different deals on four different mobiles. ‘I may look calm,’ he was fond of telling people, ‘but I’m not.’

Poor Hype-along Cassidy was not feeling calm either. Controlling the publicity was a nightmare. Hermione, incensed that nothing about herself had appeared recently, was unaware that her sacked make-up girl had just dumped in News of the World: ‘How I Concealed Dame Hermione’s Turkey Neck, and How She Ate Technicians for Breakfast.’

Hype-along’s rise at dawn on Sunday mornings to empty the village shop of papers was becoming a common occurrence. He’d also had terrible trouble with Baby, who, when he’d taken him up for interviews in London, had fallen asleep over drinks with the Guardian, and on the way to lunch with Lynn Barber had jumped taxi to buy clothes in Jermyn Street and not been traced till the following day.

Saddest of all, Tristan, the person to whom everyone wanted to speak, was so violently anti-press he wouldn’t give interviews at all. Hype-along, however, was working towards a quiet lunch at the Old Bell with Valerie Grove of The Times.

‘I think Oscar and Chloe are an item,’ Griselda told everyone, as Chloe looked more and more magical in the rushes and Oscar slept even more during the day.

But Chloe was not out of the woods. Baby was watching porn on the Internet one afternoon when up popped a teenage Chloe, cavorting with a black girl and a goat.

‘Goodness,’ gasped Lucy, when Baby rushed in to tell her. ‘Was the goat female?’

‘I saw its udder shudder. In mitigation, it did appear to be having a good time.’

‘I do hope Rannaldini doesn’t know about it,’ shivered Lucy. ‘I’m sure he’d use it against her.’

Someone was pinching clothes from Wardrobe, especially ties. Griselda and Simone, whose continuity was being screwed up, went out to the Heavenly Host to drown their sorrows and asked Lucy to join them, which at least gave Lucy a chance to quiz Simone about Tristan.

‘What’s his auntie Hortense like?’

‘A battleaxe, who demand the whole time,’ sighed Simone. ‘And not at all motherly to Uncle Tristan. When she drop him as a baby in drawing room, she ring for maid to pick him up.’

Then Simone added slyly: ‘Valentin, Sylvestre and Ogborne wanted to crash dinner tonight, Lucy. They all fancy you, but they know you only ’ave eyes for Uncle Tristan.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ spluttered Lucy, sending her glass of red flying. ‘Of course I don’t.’ Then, as she frantically mopped up with her pink scarf, ‘I wouldn’t dream—’

‘Dream is perhaps the only thing you should do,’ said Simone gently. ‘I love my uncle Tristan but he is very damaged.’

Terrified by the ghostly sightings inside Valhalla, Lucy had taken to sleeping outside in her make-up caravan, which seemed less claustrophobic than those little cells and long, dark, spooky corridors. But returning from the Heavenly Host, as she scuttled past silent generators and empty dark-windowed Hair and Wardrobe departments, she wasn’t sure. It would be so easy for a ghost to leap out from behind an empty lorry. Even the moon and the stars had deserted her.

As she approached her caravan, still upset by what Simone had said about Tristan, she froze at the sound of pitiful, anguished sobbing. Oh, God, was it the ghost of Caroline Beddoes, mourning her lost love, the blacksmith?

‘You might at least try and look fierce,’ she hissed at James, who’d stopped in his tracks with his head on one side.

The sobbing grew more pitiful. Lucy’s Dutch courage evaporated.

‘Who’s there?’ she quavered, as she unlocked the caravan door, screaming as a grey shadowy figure loomed over her.

Then, as she fumbled for the light switch, she heard James’s bony tail whacking against the open door and Rozzy’s choked voice saying, ‘Don’t turn it on, I look so terrible, and I don’t want any of the others to know.’

‘Whatever’s the matter? Let me get you a drink.’

‘I don’t want one.’

Lucy did. As she fumbled her way to the fridge, Rozzy was racked by a fit of coughing. Then it all came tumbling out. She’d been to the doctor that evening to hear the result of some tests, and been told she’d got throat cancer.

‘Oh, Rozzy.’ Lucy collapsed on the bench seat opposite.

‘There are lots of things one can do,’ wept Rozzy. ‘Voice boxes, treatment, operations and things, but my career’s finished. I’ll never sing again. Even worse, we’re so broke, Lucy, and I’m all we’ve got to live on. I feel the prison doors clanging shut on a solvent future.’

Lucy was devastated.

‘You’ll be able to earn money as a PA. Everyone thinks you’re brilliant. You must get a second opinion. The Campbell-Blacks and Rannaldini have a brilliant private doctor, James Benson.’

‘I couldn’t possibly afford him.’

‘I can,’ said Lucy stoutly, as she took a bottle out of the fridge. ‘You’ve been so good to me.’

As soon as she’d poured Rozzy a drink, Lucy wrote her out a cheque for six hundred pounds. After all, she got paid at the end of the month.

Later, refusing all Lucy’s entreaties to sleep in the caravan, Rozzy insisted on dragging herself back to the cells.

‘I don’t want people suspecting anything.’

‘You must tell Glyn.’

‘I can’t.’ Rozzy started to cry again. ‘He’ll be so cross with me. Thank you, Lucy, for being such a friend.’

Lucy didn’t sleep all night, thinking of a ravishing voice that would sing no more, like a nightingale being strangled. She had been sworn to secrecy, but Tristan, seeing her red eyes next morning, wheedled the truth out of