Daisy started to cry again. Back in the house she put the telephone back on the hook. Immediately the Daily Star rang.

‘Hi, Daisy, great about Perdita. You must be a very proud Mum.’

‘I am.’

‘Great about Rupert accepting paternity.’

‘It’s lovely, but I don’t want to talk about it. I won’t have any mouth left if I keep shooting it off.’

Slamming down the receiver, Daisy took it off the hook again. She tried and failed to paint and then at eight o’clock took a large vodka and tonic into the sitting room to watch a recording of the match. It was the real thing this time, all six chukkas and Luke winning the MVP award. His freckles were exactly like the puppies, thought Daisy. He’d be lovely to paint. And then she saw Chessie hurtling into Ricky’s arms, and, feeling as though someone had dropped a tombstone on her from a great height, turned off the television. All hope gone. She’d never, never, known misery like it.

Outside the wind was rising, so she shut the windows. In the kitchen the puppies were chewing up a dark red book called The Nude in Painting. On the table was a thank-you letter Violet had started to the mother of her boyfriend:

‘I had a really good time,’ read Daisy. ‘It’s lovely to get away from Rutshire. Mum’s so depressed at the moment.’

And I hoped I was putting on a brave face, thought Daisy. Wondering if Red Indians put on brave faces when they got up in the morning, she started to cry again. The only answer was to get drunk. Sobbing unceasingly, she finished the vodka bottle and then passed out.

She woke to find herself on the drawing-room sofa with the dogs crammed into two armchairs gazing at her reproachfully. Outside the Niagara Falls seemed to have been diverted under the house. Whimpering, she opened the curtains and shrieked as a laser beam of light pierced her eyes. There had obviously been a terrific storm in the night. You could have gone white-water rafting on the Frogsmore as it hurtled past. Branches littered the lawn. She could see several trees down in Ricky’s woods and the track to Eldercombe was full of puddles turned the colour of strong tea by the disturbed earth.

Incapable of anything else, Daisy carried on crying. As the telephone was off the hook, a succession of reporters were reduced to rolling up at the house to discuss Perdita’s great triumph. Unable to face them, Daisy took refuge in the potting shed. Here she discovered the nude she’d done of Drew three years ago and brought it into the kitchen determined to burn it.

At lunchtime, when the whole valley was steaming and a primrose-yellow sun had come through the mist like a halo searching for a saint, a car drew up outside. It was Violet, delighted Perdita had won, but more interested in the weekend she’d just spent in the Lakes with her new boyfriend.

‘How d’you tell you’re in love, Mum?’

‘D’you go weak at the knees when he kisses you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Violet perplexed, ‘because I’m always lying down. Are you all right, Mum? You look awful.’

‘I think I’m getting gastric flu,’ muttered Daisy.

‘Oh, poor you! Go to bed. Why’s the telephone off the hook?’ asked Violet, putting it back. Immediately it rang.

‘It’ll be for me.’ Violet snatched it up, then, in disappointment as she handed Daisy the receiver, ‘It’s for you.’

‘Where the hell have you been?’ howled Ricky.

‘Oh, out and about.’ Daisy tried desperately to sound bright. ‘It’s terrific you won. You sound as though you’re just next door.’

‘I am next door,’ said Ricky brusquely. ‘We’ve got to talk. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

Violet picked up her car keys: ‘I’m just popping down to the village shop for some cigarettes. D’you want anything?’

But Daisy had bolted upstairs, cleaning her teeth until they bled, scraping the olive-green moss off her tongue. However many vats of eyedrops she poured into her eyes, they still glowed like carbuncles, remaining determinedly piggy and swollen. Sailors could climb the rigging of wrinkles under her eyes, and when she tried desperately to rub them away they wouldn’t shift. Frantically she slapped green foundation over her red-veined cheeks, but she still looked like a ghoul, so she rubbed it off, which made her cheeks glow brighter than ever.

Suddenly she remembered the mess in the kitchen and, clutching her pounding skull, stumbled downstairs and started throwing things into the washing-up machine. The puppies were now calmly eviscerating a cushion, scattering feathers all over the hall.

‘Oh, oh, oh,’ wailed Daisy. It was all hopeless. Slumping down at the kitchen table she started to cry again. Ethel shambled over and put a muddy speckled paw on her knee. Jumping up, Little Chef tried to lick away her tears, but they flowed even faster. Then, through the shaggy curtain of clematis and honeysuckle, she saw Ricky’s car draw up and, despite everything, felt her stomach disappear as she watched him get out. He looked shadowed under the eyes and terribly grim. Next minute she winced as Little Chef dug his claws into her jeaned thighs and shot off through the door, screaming with joy to welcome him.

‘Oh, please,’ pleaded Daisy, clutching her head as Ethel let out her great bass-baritone bark and the puppies took up a yapping chorus.

Ricky looked even grimmer as he came through the door with Little Chef wriggling ecstatically under one arm. Then he caught sight of Daisy and stopped short.

‘Jesus! What’s up with you?’

‘Hangover,’ muttered Daisy. ‘I feel dreadful.’

‘Shouldn’t drink so much. Serves you right.’

‘I’ve been under a lot of strain. D’you want a cup of coffee?’

‘No. I want you to come outside.’ Taking her hand, Ricky dragged her protesting out on to the lawn where everything dripped and sparkled in the sunlight.

‘I know the garden’s a mess,’ groaned Daisy as the two-foot grass drenched her jeans. ‘Lend me a combine harvester and I’ll make you enough hay to see even Wayne through the winter. I promise I’ll tidy up everything, including myself. I know it’s awkward with Chessie coming back, but we won’t get in your way.’ Then, seeing the unrelentingly bleak expression on his face, ‘Just let us stay till Christmas.’

‘No, I w-w-want you out of here t-t-tonight.’

Daisy’s lip started to tremble: ‘But you’re supposed to give us a month’s notice.’

‘I’ve changed the lease.’ Ricky removed a burr from her hair with a desperately shaking hand. ‘There’s a new clause which says you can’t stay here any longer if your landlord falls in love with you.’

But Daisy wasn’t listening. ‘We’ve got nowhere to go.’

Roughly Ricky turned her round to face the sun, examining her deathly pallor, the hectically reddened cheeks, the swollen eyes spilling over with tears.

‘I’m totally repulsive,’ she sobbed.

But when she tried to jerk her head away, his hands closed on either side of her face like a clamp.

‘Look at me.’

With infinite reluctance Daisy raised her eyes. Even jet lag couldn’t ruin his bone structure or the length of his dark eyelashes.

‘It’s not fair you should be so beautiful,’ she mumbled helplessly, ‘and we’ve got nowhere to go.’

‘What about R-r-r-robinsgrove?’ stammered Ricky. ‘You can bring Perdita and Violet and Eddie and Ethel and the puppies, even that inc-c-c-ontinent cat if you like. I love you,’ he said desperately. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘Me marry you?’ mumbled Daisy incredulously.

His face was suddenly so unbelievably softened that she had to drop her eyes hastily, fearing some cosmic, practical joke.

‘Oh, please,’ Ricky spoke to the top of her head. ‘I couldn’t understand why I was so bad-tempered in America. I couldn’t sleep – I mean even less than usual. Then I realized I was missing you hopelessly all the time. I had to fight the t-t-temptation to ring you and beg you to come over.’ He smiled slightly. ‘I searched everywhere for daisies, but the lawns are so perfect over there they don’t have any.’

The rosiness of her cheeks spread to the whole of Daisy’s face, but she simply couldn’t get any words out. To save her trouble Ricky bent his head and kissed her, first very shyly and tentatively, then, when she responded with alacrity, very hard indeed, by the end of which Daisy’s knees had literally given way for the first time in her life and as she couldn’t speak or stand up they collapsed on to the old garden bench she still hadn’t got round to painting.

‘But what about Chessie?’ she mumbled finally.

‘Buggered off with Red.’

‘What! When?’

‘The night of the Westchester. She vanished in the middle of dinner. I went back to the house we’d rented. I couldn’t face any more celebrating. Didn’t feel there was anything to celebrate. Half an hour later Rupert rolled up with a letter to me that Red had had delivered to the restaurant. He said he was desperately sorry, but he’d been hopelessly in love with Chessie ever since she’d become his stepmother, but had been fighting it because he hadn’t wanted to screw up his father. It all falls into place – why he was so irredeemably bloody to her always, why he was so frantic to beat us. He was far more terrified she’d come back to me than Bart was. Then she hurled herself on me after the match and it finished him off completely. So he finally thought, Sod Bart, declared himself and they ran off.’

‘Goodness,’ said Daisy in awe. ‘Just like that?’

‘Well, not entirely,’ Ricky shrugged. ‘They’ve obviously been sidling round each other for ages. Perdita admitted she caught them in bed after the polo ball.’

‘Oh, the poor little duck,’ said Daisy appalled. ‘Why didn’t she tell anyone?’