Rupert had actually met Amanda Hamilton before, at a party last June, and had promptly asked her out to lunch.

“No, I can’t,” she had replied in her shrill, piercing voice. “Next week’s Ascot.”

“The week after then.”

“No, that’s tennis.”

Rupert was slightly taken aback, until she explained that Wimbledon went on for a fortnight and she had to be in her seat on the center court by two o’clock every day.

After that, she explained patiently, there would be a trip to America with Rollo, then Goodwood, and then Scotland.

Now, holding her in his arms in the twilight gloom, as the band played “This Guy’s in Love with You,” Rupert admired her rounded, magnolia-white shoulders. A side door suddenly opened to admit a couple to the dance floor, and Amanda Hamilton’s Scotch-mist-soft complexion was briefly illuminated. She didn’t duck her head, for her unwrinkled, untroubled beauty had no need of dimmer light.

“How was Wimbledon?” asked Rupert.

“Very exciting. He’s spoilt, that American who nearly won, but my goodness he can play tennis. I rather admire that kind of drive. It seems odd that no one minds painters or musicians or actors having tantrums, but tennis players, who are, after all, kind of artists, are expected to behave themselves. He’s rather like you, in fact. You’ve had a bad press recently, haven’t you?”

“You noticed?” said Rupert.

“Fighting with judges, frolicking with starlets, beating up your horses.”

Rupert shrugged.

“D’you beat your wife, too? Is that why she looks so miserable?”

Rupert glanced at Helen, who was still sitting frozen, gazing into space.

“What do you think?” he said.

“She looks as though the dentist is filling her back teeth, having forgotten to give her an injection.”

Rupert grinned.

“I don’t think it’s funny. Why are you consistently so foul to her when she’s so beautiful?”

“She’s given me up for Lent.”

“Don’t blame her, with you running after everything in skirts — or trousers — these days. Girls don’t seem to wear skirts anymore.”

“You seem to have been taking a great interest in my career.” His hand was beginning to rotate very gently on her back.

“It amazes me that someone with such dazzling qualities should be quite happy about presenting such an appalling image to the outside world.”

“I know what my friends think. Other people don’t matter.”

Amanda Hamilton shook her head so the pearl combs gleamed in her dark hair.

“One day you might get bored with riding horses and want to try your hand at something more serious.”

“Like taking you to Paris.”

“Rollo was saying the other day that one felt rather insulted if Rupert C-B hadn’t been to bed with one’s wife.”

Rupert tightened his grip, his hand moving upwards until he encountered bare flesh.

“I’d hate to insult Rollo,” he said softly.

“He could do you a lot of good. Have you ever thought of going into politics?”

“No.”

“You’d be very good. You’ve got the looks, the force of personality, the magnetism, the wit.”

Rupert laughed. “But not the intellect. My wife says I’m a dolt.”

“You’ve got common sense, and I’ve heard you’re a very good after-dinner speaker.”

“I speak much better during dinner — and to one person, preferably you. When are you going to dine with me?”

“We’re off to Gstaad tomorrow. Oh, listen, the music’s stopped.” She clapped vaguely and turned towards her table.

Rupert grabbed her arm. “Wait. It’ll start up again in a second.”

“No,” said Amanda, with gentle firmness. “We’ve danced quite long enough. Go back and look after your poor little wife. You must both come and dine with us when Rollo gets back from Moscow next month.”

“No, thank you. I’ve got absolutely no desire to get better acquainted with your husband.”

Amanda smiled and patted his cheek.

“Think about politics as a career. I mean it seriously.”

Rupert stared at her unsmilingly.

“Seriously,” he emphasized the word, “I’m only interested in getting a gold at the moment.”

Two days later, Jake Lovell walked down the long corridors of the Motcliffe Hospital to say hello to the matron and in the hope of catching a glimpse of the angelic Sister Wutherspoon. By some stupid Freudian misreading of the diary, or perhaps because he was so anxious to get the go-ahead to ride again, he had arrived for his appointment with Mr. Buchannan five hours early. Mr. Buchannan was operating, said the secretary, and couldn’t possibly see him before four o’clock.

The day had already been full of omens. It had snowed heavily since lunchtime the previous day and he and Tory had had to dig out the car that morning. Two magpies had crossed his path as he was leaving Warwickshire. An odd number of traffic lights had been green on his way through Oxford. He’d taken fifty-one strides from the car park to the front door. There were eleven people in the lift. His horoscope said the aspects for Venus were good and this was a make-or-break day. He hoped to hell it wasn’t the latter. He’d had enough of breaks. He vowed that if Johnnie Buchannan told him he could ride again, he’d make the Olympic team. The individual event on September eighth was exactly six months away.

The nurses on the ward greeted him like a long-lost brother.

“My, we are walking well. You’ll be beating Seb Coe in the eight hundred meters at this rate.”

It was very warm in the hospital. Outside, the snow was still falling thickly, blurring the outlines of the trees, laying a clean sheet over the lawn. Orange streetlights glowed out of the gathering whiteness. Feeling totally blanketed against reality, Jake asked after Sister Wutherspoon.

“She’s having two days’ leave,” said Joan, Sister Wutherspoon’s spotty, fat friend, “but she was absolutely furious to miss you. She left you her number in case you felt like ringing her at home,” she added, excited at the prospect of matchmaking.

Jake pocketed the number. He had five hours to kill. He might as well ask her out to lunch. On the way to the telephone he passed by some of the private rooms and heard an unearthly animal screaming like a rabbit caught in a snare. The screams increased, growing more terrible.

Anxious to disassociate himself, Jake walked on. Rounding the corner, he was sent flying by what seemed like a huge bear jumping out of a room at him.

“What the fuck?” he snapped.

Then he realized it was a woman in a huge blond fur coat, tears streaming down her face. She looked half crazy with terror.

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I don’t know what to do. Marcus. Such terrible screaming. Something must have gone wrong.”

Jake realized it was Helen Campbell-Black.

“Where is he?” he said over the screaming.

“In there. He’s just had his tonsils out. They said not to visit till later, but I wanted to be here when he came back from the theater.”

Jake took her arm. “Let’s go and see him.”

Marcus was still screaming. He was as pale as his pillow; his white nightgown, like a shroud, was splattered with blood. Jake stroked the child’s red hair gently.

“He’ll go to sleep soon.”

“Can’t they give him something to stop the pain?”

“He’ll just have had a huge shot of morphine. Every time he swallows, it must be like an axe on his head.”

Gradually the screams subsided into great wracking sobs, until finally Marcus fell into an uneasy whimpering sleep.

“He’ll be okay now,” said Jake, straightening the sheet.

“Are you sure? W-why did he scream so much?”

“They have to wake them up immediately after the operation to make sure everything’s all right. We went through the same thing with Darklis and Isa. They were both perfectly okay when they came around later. Darklis was as cheerful as anything, eating ice cream and raspberry jelly by the evening. When she woke up, she asked, ‘When am I going to have my tonsils out?’ ”

Helen looked at him stunned, as though only half-listening to what he was saying.

“W-why it’s Jake, isn’t it? Jake Lovell?” she said slowly. “I didn’t recognize you.”

“You weren’t exactly in a recognizing mood.”

Suddenly she jumped out of her skin at the sound of more screaming coming down the corridor.

“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “It’s only another child coming back from the operating theater. They all sound like that.”

Woken, Marcus started crying again. Helen rushed to his side. “Oh, please don’t, angel.”

In a few seconds he’d fallen back to sleep again. They waited for quarter of an hour. Every noise seemed magnified a thousand times — a car horn outside, a nurse laughing in the passage, even the snow piling up on the window ledge outside, but Marcus didn’t wake. Jake looked at his watch: “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.”

“I can’t leave him.”

“Yes, you can. I’ll have a word with my friend, Joanie. If he makes a squeak they’ll ring us at the pub and you can rush back.”

Outside, the snow was still falling — heavy flakes like goose feathers, bowing down the privets in the hospital garden, settling on the collar of Helen’s fur coat, forming points on the toes of her tan leather boots, clogging up her eyelashes. Jake walked slowly. It was treacherous underfoot. He couldn’t afford to fall over, today of all days. They had only got as far as the car park when she broke down again.

“I can’t go. I’m sorry.”

He led her to his Land Rover, sitting her down on a noseband and a copy of Riding magazine. Snow curtained all the windows. All Jake could do was say, “There, there,” gently, almost absent-mindedly, patting her shoulder.