“Fancy him, do you? So does my dear wife. She is dear, too. At least you earn your keep. She’s a parasite.”

“Didn’t know Helen came from Paris,” said Ivor, in surprise.

Everyone laughed, which for a moment eased the tension.

“There’s a marvelous concert at the Hollywood Bowl tomorrow,” Helen said to Malise, “and tomorrow they’re doing Hamlet in Russian. I’d love to go.”

“Count me out,” said Rupert. “Why not Black Beauty in Urdu? The only use for the Hollywood Bowl is to be sick in it.”

Fen resisted the temptation to giggle.

“There’s a very naughty movie on at the Rialto,” said Suzy, who, irritated to find she’d been ousted from her place next to Jake, wanted to get back in on the action. “Why don’t we all go tomorrow night?”

“My wife is not interested in sex,” said Rupert flatly.

Jake had been watching Rupert for some time. His eyes narrowed and his right hand played idly with the knife he’d been given to cut the cake.

“I’m not surprised,” he said, “being married to you.”

Rupert looked up. There was a long embarrassed pause. Then Fen said desperately, “Ivor and I are going on a tour of movie stars’ homes tomorrow. We’re going to see Rudolph Valentino’s grave, and…” Rupert put a hand on her arm. “Shut up, darling,” he said softly. “Jake was talking.”

“Why don’t you give her a break for a change?” said Jake.

“What kind do you suggest, a broken jaw, perhaps?”

There was another awful pause.

“Just because you rode like a costive chimpanzee today,” said Jake “and screwed up the chances of the best horse in the class, you don’t have to take it out on her.” He was quivering like a leopard about to spring.

“Oh dear,” drawled Rupert. “We have grown in status since we won our silver medal this afternoon, haven’t we?”

“Shut up,” yelled Jake.

“Been at the human growth hormone, have we?” taunted Rupert. “Little man has had a happy day and is now making a big big night of it. Gypsy, my arse! You’re just a little suburban creep whose mother screwed around so much she couldn’t remember who your father was.”

Jake picked up the knife.

“No,” thundered Malise.

Suddenly the whole restaurant had gone quiet.

“You little creep,” said Rupert gently. “The only thing I’d use you for is to measure my tennis net.”

Helen leapt to her feet, knocking over her wineglass.

“Stop it,” she screamed. “Just because you’re jealous as hell of Jake, you have to spoil everything.”

“St. Georgia to the rescue,” said Rupert.

“I’m going,” said Helen. “Thank you, Malise, I’m real sorry, everyone,” and she fled out of the restaurant, a shimmering column of gold, cannoning off tables, blinded by tears.

“Aren’t you going to cut that cake?” said Griselda.

Rupert caught up with Helen outside the restaurant. They stood side by side, not speaking, while the doorman conjured up their car. Helen was amazed that Rupert could be so charming, when Michael Caine stopped on the way out and asked them to a party the following night.

“Shut up,” he snarled on the journey back when she asked him to drive slower. “Let me get home in one piece. Then we’re going to do some straight-talking.”

At the Eriksons’ house the servants had gone to bed. Drunk though Rupert was, he managed to switch off the burglar alarm, before going into the drawing room and pouring himself a glass of neat whisky. Helen walked towards the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Bed. I’ve had enough of you for one day.” Careful, she told herself, careful. But all those things that Malise and Fen had said earlier about Tory and not rocking the boat had only made her more desperate.

“Come here,” said Rupert.

It was not a voice to disobey. Rupert once again had that curiously dead expression on his face that always heralded trouble.

She removed her gold high heels, which would impede a quick getaway, and sank into the white warmth of Suzy’s sumptuous fake-fur sofa.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she said in a low voice. “I guess they had a celebration dinner for you when you won your bronze.”

“Hey, wait a minute. You’ve got very protective about Jake Lovell lately, haven’t you? Embracing him when he came out of the ring, sticking up for him this evening. What’s going on?”

Helen took a deep breath, aware that she was pushing a huge boulder towards the edge of a cliff and that any minute it might roll over, crushing innocent people in its path.

“What’s going on?” repeated Rupert.

One of Helen’s combs had fallen out of her hair, which flopped forward over her face. Looking at the golden tanned face and the shimmering gold body and the mass of shining hair, Rupert suddenly thought she had never looked so desirable — almost wanton — despite her terror.

“You’re looking very good. As I said earlier, you’re looking much too good. Don’t tell me you’ve got yourself a man at last?”

“Yes, I have,” said Helen, goaded.

“Who is it?”

“Jake,” whispered Helen, “Jake Lovell.”

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

“Jake Lovell!” Rupert began to laugh, totally without mirth. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve been having it off with that pathetic little cripple?”

“Don’t you dare call him that!”

“A cripple,” Rupert went on, “a warped gypsy cripple. Doing our bit for the disabled, are we? It figures, I suppose it made you feel good. A pound in the collection box on Sunday, a day a month for the NSPCC, hawking a slit tin up and down the high street once a year for the Distressed Gentlefolk, and leaping into bed with a cripple. Mrs. Campbell-Black does so much for charity. You bet she does!”

“You’re revolting,” screamed Helen. “Pulling everything down to your own disgusting level.”

“It appears to be you who’ve done the pulling.”

“Even at a time like this, all you can do is to make jokes.”

“Oh, believe me, baby, I don’t think this is funny.”

“I love him,” sobbed Helen, putting her face in her hands, “and he loves me.”

Rupert filled up his glass. Then in an almost calm voice that made Helen’s blood run cold, he said: “How long has this been going on?”

“Since February, when Marcus was hospitalized. I was worried stiff. Jake came in to see the consultant about his leg. He was very caring and supportive. I sure needed it after the Kenya trip.” She looked up at him. He stared back, as though daring her to go further. Helen dropped her eyes first.

“So that’s why you’ve been hanging around the circuit like a bitch on heat. How extraordinary. I was barking up quite the wrong tree, thinking you’d be turned on by Janey, wasn’t I? Never guessed your particular buzz would be a crippled dwarf.”

“Jake is not a dwarf,” screamed Helen. “He’s five foot seven.”

“You’ve measured him, have you — all over?”

For a few seconds he paced up and down the room, trying to calm the rage that kept boiling up inside him.

“And you had to pick the one man who’s always been out to get me. Remember when he tried to kill me before the World Championship? He doesn’t give a stuff about you. He just wants to score off me.”

“He doesn’t. He wants to marry me.”

The boulder was over the cliff now, crashing down, gathering force.

“Marry you?” said Rupert, genuinely amazed. “How?”

“As soon as he can get a divorce.”

“And he’s going to leave that fat, rich cow for you?”

“Yes,” sobbed Helen. If she said it, it must be true.

“And presumably that night when I came back from Dinard and he was there jawing about healing breaches and team solidarity, he’d merely come to fuck you — I beg your pardon — make love with you?”

Helen lost her temper. “Yes, he had. What about you and Podge, and Dizzy and Marion, and Samantha Freebody, and the one that gave me clap, not to mention all the others? You’ve never been faithful to me for one minute.”

“Oh, yes, I was,” said Rupert, “until you got involved with that sniveling child and refused to come abroad with me. He doesn’t give a stuff about you,” he went on. “Why did he nearly kill me at Disneyland for saying Tory was fat? Why was he on the telephone to her the moment he won that medal? You’re not going to break up that marriage. Anyway, what’s so special about him?”

“He’s a better rider,” screamed Helen, leaping to her feet, “and he’s much better in bed.”

The next moment Rupert had hit her across the room. Then he picked her up and hit her again, so that she collapsed sobbing across the glass table, spilling Rupert’s whisky over the white sofa.

“And what the fuck are you going to live on? He’s got no money. He can’t give you anything but Lovell, baby.”

“He’s got the Boyson sponsorship,” croaked Helen.

“He had,” said Rupert, gathering up his car keys. “That was on the condition he kept his nose clean. It’s pretty murky now.”

“Where are you going?” whispered Helen through lips which were already beginning to swell up.

“To find your lover and beat him up till he sees stars and stripes. Then I’m going to string him from the Hollywood sign by his precious medal ribbon.”

“No!” screamed Helen, “No, please!”

But Rupert had gone. Next moment she heard the crunch of his car roaring off towards Los Angeles.

Trembling like a palsied dog she ran to the telephone, and after several false starts managed to get through to the Olympic village. One of the security guards answered. No, they couldn’t possibly wake Jake in the middle of the night. He’d gone to bed and he was sharing a room with two weight lifters, both of whom had a competition tomorrow and needed their sleep. There was a “Do not disturb” sign on the door.