Score!

Rannaldini refused. He never drank before a concert, so Wolfie left a single glass on Lucy’s table and told his father he was wanted on the set in two minutes.

Rannaldini was intensely sexually excited at the thought of being on camera. As Lucy removed the pale blue overall and was nearly asphyxiated by Maestro, his aftershave, he rose, a magnificent figure in white tie, black cummerbund embroidered with a silver skull, and beautifully cut black trousers.

He had other sexual games planned for later in the evening, but as Lucy put back the tops on her bottles, he couldn’t resist putting a hand up her skirt.

‘I know you want Tristan,’ he purred, ‘and he loves only Tabitha, but don’t be sad, Lucy, you have interesting body, and eef I give you few lesson, you could be very passionate.’

His probing fingers wandered upwards.

Utterly revolted, Lucy leapt back, jolting the table, spilling the champagne. The next moment she had slapped Rannaldini’s face.

‘I don’t care if you fire me,’ she said furiously. ‘And I’m not toning those down,’ she added, as her finger- marks reddened on Rannaldini’s cheeks.

Rannaldini laughed, smelling his fingers in ecstasy. Shrugging on his new coat, the poetry of whose cut was undeniable, he adjusted his gardenia, picked up the glass of champagne and raised it to his lips as he strode towards the Great Hall. But before he could take a sip, Hermione’s top E, as she warmed up in her dressing room, had shattered it. Rannaldini’s smile broadened. He had been right not to drink.

‘Maestro Rannaldini,’ tiny Simone stepped bravely into his path, ‘you were not wearing cummerbund with death’s head in opening shots.’

‘When did continuity take precedence over aesthetic consideration?’ said Rannaldini haughtily. ‘The skull forecasts death of Carlos and Elisabetta,’ and, shoving Simone out of the way, he strode on.

Half an hour later, Baby was tempted to walk out. Hermione had obviously persuaded Rannaldini to substitute a different take of the last duet to the one on the cassette, which he had been sent. On that one she had had a distinct wobble. Now, over the speakers, she sounded wonderful and he distinctly off.

Fucking bitch! Baby wanted to kick her on the ankle as he gazed soulfully into her eyes.

‘Farewell, my son, farewell for ever,’ sang Hermione.

One camera was trained on Rannaldini. A second, up on a crane, kept cutting from stage to royal box to enraptured crowd. Suddenly Philip, the Grand Inquisitor and a pack of paparazzi in leather, their long lenses raised like machine-guns, charged in. Philip had just grabbed Elisabetta, when the ghostly presence of Charles V slowly emerged from his tomb.

Giuseppe has got back after all, thought Baby, in surprise, as his glorious rich voice poured out of the speakers like the expensive red wines of which he was so fond. As the rest of the cast fell back in terror, Rannaldini whipped the orchestra through the last deafening chords, but as the ghost put out his hand to seize Baby’s, Baby crashed to the ground in a dead faint.

‘Pissed again,’ said Ogborne.

‘It was a ghost, a real ghost,’ protested a terrified Baby, when he came round. ‘He cast no shadow on the wall, and his hand went straight through mine.’

‘I told you never to touch spirits,’ chided Granny.

No-one, on the other hand, had seen Giuseppe arrive or leave.

Returning to her caravan still shuddering from Rannaldini’s grope, Lucy found that the spilt champagne had burnt a hole right through the red checked cloth to the table beneath. Someone was trying to kill either her or Rannaldini.

She gave a shriek as a tall figure loomed out of the darkness, but it was only a hollow-eyed Wolfie. Was she coming to Mikhail’s birthday party? Lucy was knackered, but she loved Mikhail. Hoping a few drinks might dull her sense of foreboding, she decided to pop in for an hour, and went slap into a full-dress row.

Chloe and Mikhail had both had tip-offs that they’d landed the parts they wanted in Samson and Delilah. A plastered Mikhail was just kissing Chloe in congratulation, covering himself in crimson lipstick, when — with fiendish timing — Rannaldini urged Mikhail’s newly arrived wife, Lara, to peep out of her bedroom window for a sneak preview of her beloved. Her reunion with Mikhail was therefore most acrimonious, and no-one emerged from any birthday cakes.

Lara kicked off by slapping Mikhail’s face so hard he fell in a nearly empty fish-pond. She then turned on Chloe. ‘You are scarlet voman I read about in Evening Scorpion on vay down.’

‘Oh, Beattie’s piece must have come out,’ said Chloe, in excitement. ‘If you’ve got a copy, I’d love to see it.’

So Lara slapped Chloe’s face as well. Chloe’s squawks, however, were nothing to her hysterics when she tracked down the Scorpion. Beattie had portrayed her as a ruthless careerist and husband-snatcher, and quoted all the bitchy remarks Chloe had made off the record, including the one about Hermione farting every time she hit a top note.

‘Delilah was an absolute cow,’ said Baby reassuringly, ‘so you’ll only have to play yourself, Chloe.’

Chloe fled sobbing to her room. Mikhail, trailing muddy pond weed, stormed round Valhalla trying to find Lara. Everyone, as a result, was very wary of a grungy crone in granny specs and flowing black robes, who was reverently being hawked round the party by Hype-along as Eulalia Harrison of the Sentinel. Eulalia was doing an in-depth piece on the whole production that would redress the harm done by Beattie. Helen, who loved the arts pages in the Sentinel, had even given Eulalia a bedroom in the south wing.

Eulalia had already cornered Flora about her famous mother. ‘Perhaps you could spare me a moment in the foreseeable future to discuss Mother’s new album and your debut in Carlos.’

‘I’d like that,’ said Flora. ‘The album’s great, and thank goodness you reminded me, I promised Rozzy one for her horrible husband’s fiftieth birthday. He’s a mad fan of Mum’s.’

‘We all are,’ said Eulalia reverently.

Even buckets of wine couldn’t make the party gel. There was no birthday boy to blow out the thirty-five blue candles on the big chocolate cake. People loved Mikhail and hated seeing him so hurt and humiliated on his birthday.

It was eerie in the shadowy garden: owls hooted, moths scorched themselves on flambeaux, gasping unwatered plants failed to revive in the cooler night air. Baby’s protestations that Charles V had been a real ghost began to stack up, as Granny, summoned to take a call from Giuseppe, found him still on his troop ship in the Bosphorus.

In Bernard’s office, Tristan, Oscar and Valentin were still wondering after Baby’s fainting how much of tonight’s film they could salvage. Having raved over Granny’s patchwork quilt, which was on display and lighting up the summer drawing room like a rainbow, the rest of the guests had spilled out into the garden.

Sexton, who was heartbroken that his plan to bring Lara over had misfired so tragically, had arrived with Hermione, who having heard about, but not yet read, Beattie’s piece was delighted at Chloe’s discomfiture. Considering herself an expert on the subject of the press, she decided to charm the grotesque Eulalia Harrison. After all, the Sentinel’s circulation nudged the Guardian’s.

‘Have you heard my latest CD?’

‘I have indeed,’ said Eulalia, in her refined ultra-intellectual Islington twang. ‘I am a long-term fan, Dame Hermione.’

‘Then you shall come to luncheon at River House.’

Determined not to fall into Chloe’s trap of bitching up others, Hermione beckoned Lucy over.

‘This is my personal make-up artist, Lucy Latimer. You’ll want to talk to Lucy about me, and probably to our Woman Friday, Rozzy Pringle. By the way, Rozzy, my rose-lined green cloak has a tear. Rosalind’s very nifty with a needle, Eulalia.’

‘And a great singer,’ said Lucy defiantly.

‘Come and meet Sexton Kemp.’ Hermione took Eulalia’s arm. ‘Sexton went to Eton, you know.’

‘Bitch, bitch, bitch!’ said Lucy, to Hermione’s broad departing back. ‘Omigod,’ she screamed, as a ghostly apparition appeared unexpectedly out of the ebony depths of the maze. ‘Oh, thank goodness it’s you, Alpheus.’

‘Either of you two seen Cheryl?’ An enraged Alpheus glared towards the terrace where Rannaldini, still in his tails, the skull leering from his cummerbund, was now standing.