was watching racing on television with the sound turned down. Her face was deathly white, except for her reddened eyes, but nothing could take away the beauty of her long pale legs.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
Sharon, who had better manners, jumped down and brought Wolfie a small rug, revealing a pile of dust. Wolfie handed Tab her bag.
‘I brought this back.’
‘Thanks.’ Staggering to her feet, kicking an empty half-bottle of vodka under the sofa, antagonism fighting with loneliness in her eyes, Tab asked him if he’d like a cup of tea.
Wolfie followed her into the kitchen and nearly fainted.
‘I’m sorry.’ Tab smashed a cup, as she tried to get the kettle under the tap in a hopelessly overcrowded sink. ‘I only tidy up before Isa comes back.’
She had cut herself on the cup. Tugging off a piece of kitchen roll, Wolfie wrapped it round her finger, then started to load the contents of the sink, mostly glasses, into the dishwasher, which was empty except for a shoal of silver on the bottom.
‘How’s your marriage?’ he asked.
‘A bed of roses.’
Wolfie looked sceptical.
‘With the thorns sticking upwards,’ said Tab.
‘You could stop drinking.’
‘I don’t drink at all, I’ve given up.’
‘What’s this, then?’ Wolfie produced the Evian bottle out of her bag.
Tab brightened. ‘I’d forgotten that. I think we’re out of tea-bags.’ Fretfully she opened a cupboard and a lot of pasta packets descended on her head. ‘Oh, Christ, we’d better have a slug of that instead.’
But before she could grab the Evian bottle, Wolfie had emptied it into the sink.
‘Whydya want to waste perfectly good alcohol?’ screamed Tab. ‘Now what am I going to do?’
‘Go to AA.’
‘One is supposed to meet rather nice men there. I might find a new husband.’
‘I’ll take you along. There must be a Rutminster branch. I’ll check out the time of the next meeting.’
‘Just stop it,’ Tab flared up again.
Hearing a patter on the trees outside, Wolfie glanced across the valley at tassels of rain hanging from the clouds. They wouldn’t be shooting for a bit.
Why had she been so upset at lunchtime? he asked, knowing the answer, but feeling she needed to talk.
‘It reminded me of my own baby,’ muttered Tab. ‘Isa won’t discuss it — won’t really discuss anything. Then I got a letter from Mummy this morning, raving about my brother Marcus’s recital in Moscow. And how charming Alexei, Marcus’s lover, was being. I bet she drives him crackers, and the mean old cow’s locked her bedroom door so I can’t help myself to her stuff.’
Wolfie laughed but, noticing Tab shivering, unearthed a bottle of orange squash, poured an inch into a mug and switched on the kettle as she talked.
‘Even if everyone else thought I was a nightmare,’ Tab was saying, ‘I was always convinced I could whistle Daddy back. Marrying Isa was the easiest way to hurt him. Christ, I need a drink.’
Wolfie poured the boiling water on to the orange squash.
‘Have this instead.’
‘And another thing,’ Tab was pacing round the kitchen, ‘everyone cooing over the photograph of that baby reminded me how jealous and awful I was when my stepsister Perdita arrived, and even worse when Daddy and Taggie adopted Xav and Bianca. I tried to be good, but I wasn’t.’
As she hung her blonde head, she reminded Wolfie of the cowslips fading in the valley.
‘So did I,’ he said roughly. ‘I was Papa’s first child, and now I have seven stepbrothers and sisters, not to mention Little Cosmo, and a pack of illegits, and I wanted to kill each one when it arrived. I remember thinking, When will Papa ever have the tiniest bit of love or time left for me?’
‘You do make me feel better,’ sighed Tab. ‘If Mummy suddenly gets pregnant we can drown our sorrows.’
As she took a sip of orange squash listlessly, Wolfie noticed how thin her arms were. ‘When did you last eat?’
‘Dunno.’
The telephone rang.
‘You answer it.’ Tab led him back into the sitting room.
If it were Isa, it might make him sit up, but it was Bernard breathing fire.
‘Gotta go,’ said Wolfie, putting down the receiver, then blushing. ‘Would you like to have dinner tonight?’
‘Men don’t ask me out.’
For a second Wolfie thought Tab was going to cry.
‘You’re like a very rare and beautiful orchid,’ he stammered. ‘People feel they ought not to pick you.’
‘That’s nice.’ For a second Tab examined Wolfie’s dark blue eyes, matching his polo shirt, his square-jawed, slightly old-fashioned Action Man features, his reddish complexion turning brown. He would make a good, dependable friend.
‘I’d like to,’ she said.
‘I’ll take you to Shako’s.’
‘We’d never get in.’
‘Wanna bet? There are advantages in having a famous surname. We can take your dustbins to the tip on the way.’
‘Oh look! There’s Daddy.’
Tab lurched towards the television, turning up the sound and fingering her father’s face. Wolfie and he were both tall and blond but it was like comparing a cob with a thoroughbred.
Rupert had just paid seventy-five thousand to make a late entry in the Derby.
‘That’s a lot of money,’ John Oaksey was saying. ‘You must be sure Peppy Koala’ll do well.’
‘Very,’ said Rupert.
‘Oh, my God.’ Tabitha had turned as pale green as her vest. ‘If Peppy Koala wins, Isa will murder me.’
She rang at nine o’clock just as Wolfie was leaving Valhalla, her voice slurred.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t make it.’
‘Course you can, I’ve already left.’
The heatwave chugged on. Between filming, people played croquet and tennis, swam in Rannaldini’s beautiful pool, got lost in the maze and helped Granny knit squares of his patchwork quilt. The hawk-eyed Simone went round routing out sunbathers because a tan screwed up continuity. Rozzy watered dying plants, sewed thousands of seed pearls on an ivory satin dress for Hermione to wear at Philip II’s coronation and kept wonderfully cheerful.
Dr James Benson had been so kind to her, she told Lucy with passionate gratitude. He was such an attractive, sympathetic man. Whenever Rozzy had to disappear for treatment, Lucy covered up for her, explaining she’d had to rush home to deal with some domestic problems. Lucy spent much of her spare time surreptitiously making Rozzy a wig.
As befitting an international maestro, Rannaldini jetted in and out criticizing everything and everyone, slowing down filming, when it was already disastrously behind schedule, and sending costs spiralling. Rumours of the runaway budget were sweeping Europe and Hollywood. Tristan had already ploughed in five million and seen it vanish, mostly in Meredith’s decorating costs. It was as though Rannaldini had thrown petrol over the notes and set fire to them. But Tristan couldn’t stop to worry about money: finishing the film was all that mattered.
Alpheus, too, was making no attempt to keep down the budget. Having finally screwed a Jaguar out of Sexton, he now wanted a runaround for Cheryl.
‘He’s already giving
Poor Cheryl spent a lot of time spying up trees and was mistaken for a member of the press by Mr Brimscombe, who removed her ladder to much squawking.
Hermione insisted on her limo to and from River House being on permanent standby. She also demanded
