Liam put his arm around her waist and helped her off the court. Dulcie was sweating, trembling, as weak as a kitten and unable to hit a ball for toffee; it wasn’t hard to figure out.

‘Flu,’ he announced. ‘That’s what it is. You’re going down with flu.’

Dulcie almost collapsed with relief. ‘Oh I am, I am. I knew I wasn’t well! Flu, that’s it—’

‘Home,’ Liam instructed. ‘And straight to bed.’

‘Um, about tomorrow ... I was going to invite you round to my house for dinner?’ Dulcie began to panic at the thought of not seeing him.

But Liam shook his head.

‘Sweetheart, you’ll be in no state to cook dinner. I’ll see you when you’re better. Maybe next weekend,’ he gave her waist an encouraging squeeze, ‘or the week after that.’

Liza, who had caught the end of Dulcie’s lesson, was in the car park chucking her squash racket and sports bag on to the back seat of her white Renault.

‘This is my friend Liza,’ said Dulcie, gesturing weakly. ‘I’m sending Dulcie home,’ Liam explained. ‘She’s sick.’

‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Liza. Honestly, what was Dulcie like? Did she seriously expect to get away with this? Clinging on to Liam’s arm, Dulcie gasped, ‘We th-think it’s flu.’

‘Sure it’s not mad cow disease?’ said Liza.

Chapter 21

‘How’s the invalid?’ Liza asked gravely when she phoned the next morning.

‘Not funny,’ Dulcie wailed. ‘I’m telling you, flu would be a doddle next to this. I’m totally and utterly seized up.’

Since leaving school, reaching for the next custard cream had been about as energetic as Dulcie got. Hurling herself without warning around a tennis court for sixty minutes had sent every muscle in her outraged body into spasm.

‘I’m in bed,’ she groaned. ‘I crawled to the bathroom earlier. It took me an hour to get back.’

Liza grinned. ‘You need looking after. Want me to phone Liam and ask him to pop over?’

‘Don’t you dare. Ouch.’ It even hurt holding the phone up to her ear. ‘God, this is agony. I’ll never walk again.’

‘Can’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Liza was cheerful and not the least bit sympathetic. ‘Told you not to overdo it, didn’t I? Take some paracetamol, you’ll feel better in a day or two.’

‘I can’t get to them, they’re downstairs.’ Dulcie pleaded feebly, ‘You could come over, couldn’t you, just for a few hours? I really do need looking after. I’m helpless.’

‘I think you mean hopeless. And no, sorry, I can’t.’ Having pulled open her wardrobe doors, Liza stood and surveyed the neatly lined-up contents. ‘I’ve got something else on.’

The peacock-blue silk shirt, she decided rapidly. Black leather trousers and her high-heeled black ankle boots. Why not? Just because she was joining the protesters didn’t mean she had to dress like one.

‘Something more important than your best friend starving to death in her own bed?’ Dulcie sounded hurt.

‘No, but I can’t back out now. If I did,’ said Liza, ‘then I’d really be a wimp.’

Driving towards West Titherton, Liza barely noticed the dazzling scenery, the white clouds drifting high in a duck-egg-blue sky, dappled sunlight sweeping over the rolling Mendip hills and the thousand different shades of green that made up the countryside in late spring.

She still didn’t know how Alistair Kline had managed to bamboozle her into going along today.

But that, Liza supposed, was what successful barristers were all about. It was their job to persuade you to agree with them, to convince you – against your better judgement – that they were right.

‘It’s simply a matter of following through.’ Alistair had been forceful. ‘You start something, you finish it. That letter to the paper generated a fair amount of publicity, if you remember. People will expect you to be there. They’d be disappointed if you didn’t turn up, Liza,’ he went on, his expression sorrowful. ‘Disappointed in you for not caring enough to make that small effort—’

‘Stop,’ Liza groaned, ‘this is worse than The Waltons. Okay, I’ll do it.’

Alistair instantly reverted to a normal tone of voice. ‘Great. See you there then. Ten o’clock sharp.’

She wondered despairingly how she could ever have thought he was shy.

Liza slowed as she reached the brow of the next hill. Below her lay West Titherton, a golden toy village surrounded by a patchwork of fields, some dotted with. immobile black and white cows, others with clusters of sheep.

To the left of the village the protesters were already gathered at the site of the proposed new development, milling around the yellow bulldozers that stood ready, waiting to swing into action.

It was very much a last-ditch protest. The amateurish ruse of planting a rare breed of wild orchid in the path of the diggers hadn’t worked. Berenger’s had their planning permission and that was that. Basically, the new estate was going to be built but – the protesters were determined – not before the last drop of bad publicity for Berenger’s had been squeezed out.

Parking the Renault at the roadside where everyone else had left their cars, Liza joined the rest of the group. Sixty or seventy in total, they were a mixed bag, ranging from New Agers to Nimbys (those outraged members of the middle classes who don’t mind anything being built so long as it doesn’t happen anywhere near them, i.e. Not In My Back Yard).

The ground was dry and the sun blazed down, but all the Nimbys were wearing Barbours and Hunter wellies. The New Agers wore holey jeans and layers of jumpers in various shades of black.

Everyone pursed their lips at the sight of Liza in her dazzling peacock-blue shirt. She couldn’t have looked more out of place if she’d worn a ball gown in a butcher’s shop.

Alistair bounded over to her.

‘Going on somewhere, are we?’ Eyeing the gold chains around Liza’s neck, disappearing into her cleavage, he looked as if he were itching to tell her to do a couple more buttons up.

‘Lunch with Liberace, by the look of it,’ Liza heard one of the dreadlocked New Agers murmur, nudging his friend.

‘Sure you won’t be cold?’ asked Alistair.

‘I’m fine.’ Pointedly Liza shielded her eyes from the sun. ‘Sure you won’t be warm?’

‘I’m wearing three sweaters,’ Alistair told her with pride, ‘in case they try setting the dogs on us.’

Liza kept a straight face.

‘If they set any dogs on me,’ she promised, ‘I’ll tie their paws up with my necklaces.’

‘Hmm. I don’t know how you’re going to climb bulldozers in those heels.’ He glanced disapprovingly at her boots. ‘Alistair! I’m here, okay? Supporting the protest. I am not climbing up on any bulldozers.’

Alistair looked resigned. She wasn’t taking this seriously at all. Liza had turned out to be a major disappointment, he thought sadly. All the more so since she had truly been the woman of his dreams. He adored her, he simply didn’t understand how she could not be as concerned about preserving the environment as he was. Together, Alistair thought sorrowfully, they could have made an unbeatable team.

Still, she was the nearest to a celebrity they’d got and the press were kicking their heels waiting for the action to begin. Signalling to the chaps from the Evening Post who were eating Big Macs

– any excuse to wind up the vegetarian New Agers – Alistair steered Liza towards them.

‘They want a photo of you waving a placard. And make a point of telling them how committed you are to the cause,’ he instructed briskly, ‘despite your clothes.’

For ten minutes Liza answered questions put to her by the reporter, who sounded almost as bored as she was. Then it was the photographer’s turn. He spent ages organising Liza in the foreground with a motley crew of placard-waving New Agers behind her and the bulldozers strewn with banners bringing up the rear.

He was halfway through the reel of film – and startled to find himself already half in love with Liza – when the contractors rolled up in two filthy white vans and the carefully arranged group photo promptly disintegrated.

Within seconds, the bulldozers were swarming with protestors. Minutes later the police arrived.

Scuffles broke out. Alistair punched one of the bulldozer drivers on the nose.

‘Want to wait in my car, love?’ the Evening Post reporter offered, clearly worried about blood getting spattered on Liza’s silk shirt. But the photographer was waving his arm, beckoning her over. A group of the less nimble protesters were staging a sit-in, blocking the path of the rumbling bulldozers.

‘Come on,’ bellowed the photographer, ‘it’ll make a great picture!’

‘Do as he says,’ Alistair bellowed even more loudly, from his precarious position on top of one of the diggers. ‘Get over there!’

Liza hesitated. She didn’t really mind joining the sit-in. She didn’t even mind getting her leather trousers muddy. What did bother her was being picked up and carried away like a struggling beetle by the police ... and being photographed in that position.

Talk about undignified.

All eyes were on the tremendous struggle in progress. Since no one’s attention was on the road behind them, and the noise of the heavy machinery drowned everything else out, nobody saw or heard the dark-green Bentley purr to a halt behind the police van.

Liza was still torn between not wanting to look a wimp and not wanting to look a prat. Most of all she wished she hadn’t been feeble enough to give in to Alistair’s emotional blackmail. She could be playing squash now, she thought with longing, or at home working on ideas for the new food book she had just been commissioned to write.

Damn, thought Liza, even waiting hand, foot and finger on dipstick Dulcie would be fun compared with this.

‘Liza, will you stop faffing around and JOIN THE BLOODY SIT-IN,’ roared Alistair, kicking out at one of the contractors who was trying to grab his ankles, and pointing imperiously down at Liza.