Freddy, a mountain of a man with a face as red as a Dutch cheese, was serving behind the bar.

‘Hullo, ugly mug,’ he bawled at me. ‘How the hell did you get past the doorman?’ Nearby drinkers looked at me in admiration. Only favourites and the famous got insulted. Freddy leaned over and pumped my hand vigorously.

‘Where the hell you been anyway, Octavia? Sneaking over to Arabella’s, I suppose. Can’t say I blame you, I eat there too. The prices here are too high for me.’ He bellowed with laughter, then added, ‘Your no-good brother’s already at the table upstairs drinking himself stupid.’

I followed the smell of garlic, wine and herbs up to the dining-room, waited in the doorway until I had everyone’s undivided attention, then sauntered across the room. The pink dungarees definitely had the desired effect; the front flap only just covered my nipples.

Xander was sitting at a window table, flipping through a Sotheby’s catalogue. He looked up, smiled, and kissed me on both cheeks. ‘Hullo, angel, you look positively radiant. Have I forgotten your birthday or something?’

Waiters immediately rushed up, spreading a napkin across my knees, pushing in my chair, getting a waiting bottle of Poully Fuissé out of an ice bucket, and filling up my glass. Xander ordered another large whisky.

Perhaps it’s because he is my brother that I always think Xander is the best looking man in the world. He is slim and immensely elegant, with very pale patrician features, brilliant grey eyes, fringed by long dark lashes, and light brown hair, the colour mine was before I started bleaching it. Even on the hottest day of the year he gives the impression of a saluki shivering with overbreeding. As usual he was exquisitely dressed in a pale grey suit, grey and white striped shirt, and a pink tie.

Impossibly spoilt, with all the restlessness that comes with inherited wealth, he moved through life like a prince, expecting everyone to do exactly what he wanted, and capable of making himself extremely disagreeable if they did not. Few people realized how insecure he was underneath, or that he employed a technique of relentless bitching to cover up his increasing black glooms. He was always sweet to me, but I was very glad he was my brother and not a boyfriend. Part of his charm was that he always gave one his undivided attention. He didn’t need to look over your shoulder, because he was always the one person people were looking over other people’s shoulders to see.

On closer examination that day, he looked rather ill, his eyes laced with red, his hands shaking. He had placed himself with his back to the window, but still looked much younger than his thirty years.

‘How are you?’ I said.

‘A bit poorly. I ran into a bottle of whisky last night. Later I landed up at Jamie Bennett’s. We smoked a lot of grass. I’m sure it had gone off. There was a case of stuffed birds in the corner and Jamie started cackling with laughter, saying they were flying all over the room, then suddenly he was sick in a wastepaper basket.’

‘What happened to you?’

‘I started feeling frightful too, and decided I must get home, so I drove very slowly to Paddington, but it wasn’t there, so I came back again.’

I giggled. ‘So you never got home?’

He shot me a sideways glance. ‘Can I tell Pamela I spent last night at your place?’

‘Of course,’ I said lightly. ‘It’s only another point she’ll notch up against me.’

Pamela had never forgiven me for slashing my wrists the day she and Xander got married, taking all the attention from her.

‘How’s our dear mother?’ I said.

‘Absolutely awful! You’ve no idea how lucky you are not being the apple of her eye. She rings up every day. Gerald is evidently threatening to walk out if she doesn’t stop drinking, so she has to resort to having quick swigs in the lavatory.’

‘Does she ever say anything about me?’ I asked. Even now I can’t mention my mother’s name without my throat going dry.

‘Never,’ said Xander. ‘Do you want to order?’

I wasn’t hungry, but I hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunch-time, and the wine was beginning to make me feel dizzy.

‘I’ll have a Cobb salad and a grilled sole,’ I said.

‘You really do look marvellous,’ said Xander. ‘What’s up? Someone must be. Who’s he married to?’

‘No one,’ I said, grooving four lines on the table cloth with my fork.

‘There must be some complication.’

‘He’s engaged,’ I said.

‘I didn’t know anyone did that any more. Who to?’

‘An eager overgrown schoolgirl; she’s so fat, wherever you stand in the room she’s beside you.’

‘Unforgiveable,’ said Xander with a shudder. ‘What’s he like?’

‘Tall and blond — almost as beautiful as you, and so gentle and sympatico.’

‘Rich?’

‘I don’t know. I haven’t asked him; not particularly.’

‘Well that’s no good then.’ Xander broke a roll impatiently with his fingers, then left it. He watched his figure like a lynx. Then he sighed, ‘You’d better tell me about him.’

Conversation was then impossibly punctuated by waiters laying tables, asking who was having the smoked trout, giving us our first courses, brandishing great phallic pepper pots over our plates, and pouring us more wine. A quarter of an hour later I was still picking bits of bacon out of my avocado and chopped spinach.

‘Am I boring you?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Xander gently. ‘But it really doesn’t matter. You have got him bad. What about Charlie?’

‘Charlie who?’ I said.

‘Like that, is it? Who’s going to be the other guy on the boat?’

‘A friend of Jeremy’s called Gareth Llewellyn.’

Xander looked up. ‘He’s supposed to be rather agreeable.’

‘If you like jumped-up Welsh gorillas,’ I said.

Xander laughed. ‘He’s phenomenally successful — and with birds too, one hears.’

‘Oh, he’s convinced he’s got the master key to everyone’s chastity belt,’ I said. ‘But I’ve had the lock changed on mine. He doesn’t like me very much. He caught me swapping extravagant pleasantries with Jeremy. He knows something’s up.’

‘Well, I’d get him on my side, if I were you,’ said Xander. ‘He sounds pretty formidable opposition.’

Now we were into the rat-race of the second course. Waiters kept butting in, asking if I wanted my sole on or off the bone, offering vegetables and salads, more wine and more phallic pepper and tartare sauce.

‘Everything all right, sir?’ said the head waiter, hovering over us a minute later.

‘Yes, perfect, if you’d go away and leave us alone,’ snapped Xander.

‘There’s only one thing,’ I said, pleating the table cloth with my fingers. ‘Can you possibly lend me £200?’

‘What for?’ said Xander.

‘I need some clothes for the weekend.’

‘You’ve got quite enough,’ sighed Xander. ‘As it is, Covent Garden comes to you every time they want to dress an opera.’

‘Just £200,’ I pleaded. ‘I promise, once I hook Jeremy I won’t ask you for another penny.’

‘Darling, you don’t seem to realize that things are frightfully tight at the moment. There’s a little thing called inflation which neither you nor Pamela seem to have heard of. We’re all going to have to pull our horns in. My dear father-in-law’s been on the warpath all morning, bellyaching about my expenses. I gather this year’s accounts are pretty disastrous too.’

‘For the whole group or just Seaford-Brennen?’

‘Well Seaford-Brennen in particular. Everyone’s very twitchy at the moment. Something’s obviously up! Directors going round after dark piecing together one’s torn-up memos. Every time you go down the passage, you’re subjected to a party political broadcast on behalf of the accounts department. Both Glasgow and Coventry look as though they’re going to come out on strike — the shop stewards so much enjoyed appearing on television last time.’

‘Things’ll get better,’ I said, soothingly.

‘Bloody well hope so,’ said Xander. ‘I’ve borrowed so much money from the company they’ll have to give me a rise so I can pay them back. Thank God for Massingham, at least he’s on my side.’

Hugh Massingham was managing director of Seaford-Brennen, a handsome, hard-drinking Northerner in his late forties, who liked Xander’s sense of humour. They used to go on the tiles together, and bitch about Ricky Seaford. Hugh Massingham liked me too. When my father died six years ago he had looked after me, and eventually we’d ended up in bed. The affair had cooled down but we’d remained friends, and he still spent odd nights with me.

‘He sent his love,’ said Xander. ‘Said he was going to come and see you next week.’

I wondered, now I’d fallen for Jeremy, if I’d be able to come up with the goods for Massingham any more. Never mind, I’d cross that bridge party when I came to it.

Depression suddenly seemed to encompass the table. I could feel one of Xander’s black glooms coming on, probably caused by my tactlessly rabbiting on about Jeremy — which must only emphasize the stupid mockery of his marriage.

I took his hand.

‘How’s Pamela?’ I said.

‘Not awfully sunny at the moment. She’s spending the weekend at Grayston with Ricky and Joan, and I’ve refused to go. I have to put up with my dear father-in-law five days a week, I need a break at weekends. And I can put up with Joan even less, the great screeching cow. No one can accuse me of marrying Pamela for her Mummy.’

I giggled. ‘What’s she done now?’

‘Alison’s pregnant.’

‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

Alison was Pamela’s younger sister, only married this year.

‘And dear Joan never stops subtly rubbing Pammie’s nose in it that she isn’t,’ said Xander.