“Daddy, Daddy,” she squealed in delight, running towards him, “Daddy home,” then seeing blood on his face, “Daddy got a hurt.”

“Poor Daddy’s indeed got a hurt,” said Rupert, pulling a couple of tissues out of the box on Helen’s dressing table to stem the bleeding. Then, gathering Tab up in his arms, he walked out of the room. “I’m beginning to think you and Badger are my only fans.”

Helen, with a superhuman effort, pulled herself together. “Daddy has cut himself shaving,” she told Marcus. Everyone loved everybody, she went on. She was absolutely fine. Anything to ward off an asthma attack. But thin mucus was trickling from his nose, a sure sign that one was on the way. He was having difficulty in breathing. Oh God, it was her fault for locking herself in her room and not coming to say good night. He must have heard her crying.

“Relax, Marcus, please.”

Soon she had laid him facedown across her lap, tapping his frail ribs with cupped hands to force the mucus out of the bronchial tubes as the physiotherapist had taught her. He had swallowed so much phlegm, eventually he threw up all over her and the carpet. By the time she had got him to bed and calmed him down, read him a story and cleaned up the mess, it was long after midnight.

The light was on in Rupert’s dressing room. On the bed she found Rupert fully dressed, stretched out fast asleep with the sleeping Tab in his arms. Photographs of Rock Star were scattered all over the bed and the floor. In their blond beauty and their carefree abandonment, they were so alike. When Helen tried to take Tab back to her own bed the child went rigid in her sleep and clung on, so Helen left them.

Back in her bedroom, she wearily took a couple of sleeping pills and tried to think rationally about her marriage. She was trapped, trapped, trapped. She longed to leave Rupert, but where could she go? Certainly not home to her parents. The tensions of those two months in Florida last summer had put paid to that, and how could she ever afford Marcus’s colossal medical bills in the States? And if she walked out, taking the children, they would have to give up so much: Penscombe, the valley, the swimming pool, the camp up in the woods, the tennis court, the horses, the skiing, the jet-set existence, the fleet of servants, not to mention the library and the pictures, which they would probably appreciate later. All this for life in a one-bedroom flat. Janey at least had a career and could support herself; Helen had nothing. Her novel, to be honest, was merely a series of jottings. She poured everything out in her journal, sometimes leaving it around in the hope that Rupert might read it, and realize how unhappy she was. But he only read Dick Francis and Horse and Hound. Maybe he was as unhappy as she was and only bullying Marcus to work off his frustrations.

Yet she was only twenty-seven. Was this emotional dead end really all there was to life? Admittedly there were times of comparative contentment when Rupert was away, which was, after all, eleven months of the year, interspersed with periods of desperation like the present one, when he humiliated her publicly by chasing other women, and now giving her the clap.

She was only twenty-seven. She longed for love but, having been married to Rupert for six and a half years, she felt she had become what he kept telling her she was: boring, prissy, brittle, and frigid. He had so sapped her self-confidence that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to hold another guy. She knew she attracted people like Malise, Dino, and James Benson, but was sure they would all lose interest once they got her into bed.

Zonked by sleeping pills, Helen didn’t come down until eleven o’clock the next day. She found Marcus guzzling German chocolates, sweet papers everywhere.

“Where did you get those from?” she said furiously.

“Daddy bought them for me.”

Helen went storming into the tackroom. “You’ve given Marcus candy.”

“You’re always reproaching me for not giving him presents. The one time I remember, I get it in the neck.”

“You know the kids aren’t allowed candy except after lunch. How can I raise them when you spend your time undermining my authority?”

“What authority? Producing a whining, sickly little milksop.”

“That’s because he’s terrified of you.”

The marriage limped on for a few more weeks. Helen continued to paint the house different colors, spending a fortune on wallpaper and fabrics. “One day I’m going to wake up and find I’ve been completely reupholstered in Laura Ashley,” grumbled Rupert.

As Dr. Benson had predicted, Helen and Rupert recovered from the clap. Rock Star continued to sweep the board and provide a powerful new interest for Rupert, achieving almost a walkover at the Olympia Christmas show.

The following Sunday, the last before Christmas, Janey and Billy lay in bed reading the papers.

“Christ,” said Janey. “Have you seen this?”

“Hell,” said Billy. “D’you think it’s true?”

“I’m sure, and checked for libel, or they wouldn’t risk it. Helen’s going to do her nut.”

The Campbell-Blacks were having roast beef for Sunday lunch. Rupert was just carving second helpings when he was called away to the telephone. Helen cleared away the children’s plates, helping them to apple pie and cream, and then settled down with the Sunday papers to wait until Rupert came off the telephone. She glanced at the one on the top of the pile. It was an awful rag, but you had to read it. Some starlet named Samantha Freebody was naming her loves on page six, the little tramp. Helen read about the antics of several deviant vicars and lascivious witches, then turned to page six and froze, for there, confronting her, was a large picture of Rupert lying on a beach in bathing trunks, eyes narrowed against the sun, glass in his hand, palm trees in the background.

“One of my most thrilling affairs,” Samantha Freebody had written, “was with international show-jumping ace Rupert Campbell-Black. I was filming in Portugal and he came out for five days as part of the British show-jumping team. We met at a party. I was swept off my feet by his blond, blue-eyed good looks, and his air of tremendous self-confidence. He’d had a good win in the show ring that day and, having met me, was keen to keep on riding all night. At first I resisted his advances; I didn’t want to appear cheap. But a tide of champagne and euphoria swept us down to the beach and at two o’clock in the morning we made passionate love under the stars, until the warm waves washed over us. For the rest of the five days we were inseparable, loving each other all night. By day I would go and watch him in the ring. After five days we decided to end our idyll. He had other shows to go on to; I had to finish my movie. He was married, his wife expecting her second baby. It was only fair to give him back to her, but I really enjoyed the novelty of our naughty, racy lovemaking.”

“Can I get down?” said Marcus for the second time.

“May I?” said Helen automatically, getting up and lifting Tab out of her high chair. “Go and watch television, darlings.”

Upstairs she locked herself in the loo and threw up and up and up. Rupert was waiting as she came out.

“What on earth’s the matter? You sound like Jake Lovell before a big class.”

“Look at this,” croaked Helen, handing him the paper.

Rupert skimmed through it without a flicker of expression. “Load of rubbish; don’t believe a word of it.”

“The dates tally. You were in Portugal just before I had Tab.”

“Just ignore it,” said Rupert. “That girl’s publicity mad.”

“I don’t understand you,” screamed Helen. “You go berserk if anyone criticizes the way you ride.”

“I ride for a living. That’s what matters. I don’t fuck for a living.”

“Could have fooled me. She obviously does.”

“I wonder how much she got,” said Rupert, picking up the paper again.

“Aren’t you even going to sue?”

“What’s the point?” Rupert shrugged. “If you leave mud to dry, you can brush it off. What did you do with the roast beef? I want a second helping.”

“You can honestly eat having read that?” said Helen, appalled. “And how am I supposed to cope? Mothers sniggering at the playgroup. Mrs. Bodkin, Charlene, and the grooms all talking their heads off.”

“I’m sure they’ll enjoy it enormously.”

“How can I ever hold my head up in the village shop again?”

“Ask them to deliver,” said Rupert.

Matters were not improved a week later when a leading columnist in the Sunday Times took Samantha Freebody to the cleaners for naming names.

“How must Rupert Campbell-Black’s unfortunate wife and children feel?”

The answer was much, much worse. Everyone who hadn’t seen the original piece rushed off to the library to read it. A couple of days later Janey rang up Rupert to wish him a Happy New Year.

“And for God’s sake hide Private Eye,” she went on. “You’ve been nominated White’s Shit of the Year.”

“Thank God it’s 1980 now,” said Rupert. “Apart from buying Rocky, 1979 hasn’t been the greatest of years.”

In the evening Rupert found Helen in the drawing room writing letters. He wished she wouldn’t always wear her hair up these days, like a confirmed spinster.

“Applying for a new husband?” he said.

Helen gritted her teeth and didn’t answer.

Rupert crossed the room, and kissed the nape of her white neck. “I’m sorry I gave you the clap and went to bed with Samantha Freebody. I am totally in the wrong. There is absolutely no excuse. But the more you reject me and take no part in what I do, the worse it becomes. Come on, get up.”