Ignoring Taggie and Caitlin, she went straight up to Maud and hugged her. ‘Ireland was terrific, but we sure missed you. If you’d been playing Maud Gonne, we’d get an Emmy. Esther McDermott was just awful. But Declan was such an inspiration. His sarcasm can bruise, but, wow, it makes you grow.’

‘Really,’ said Maud, not altogether enthusiastically.

Taggie, unable to take any more, went out to the car, where she had no difficulty in picking out her father’s battered roped-together leather case from Cameron’s Louis Vuitton. On the second journey she picked up a couple of carrier bags.

‘No,’ said Cameron sharply, appearing in the doorway. ‘Those are gifts for Rupert and the kids. I must show you what I got Tabitha, Maud.’

She produced a little leather pony, with a girl rider, and bridles and saddles that came off.

‘Isn’t it neat?’

‘Lovely,’ said Maud without interest.

Cameron had bought a beautifully illustrated book of Irish legends for Marcus, and a pair of gold cuff links for Rupert, which she insisted on showing to Taggie.

‘I’ll get his crest put on later,’ she said. Taggie stared at her dumbly.

‘Very nice, I’m sure,’ said Caitlin tartly. Then, looking at Cameron’s jodhpurs, ‘Are you going for a ride?’

‘I sure am,’ said Cameron with a sudden lascivious smile. ‘After three weeks away I need one, and not on the back of a horse. I’m off, Declan,’ she yelled into the house, ‘I’ll call you as soon as I know when we can see the rushes.’

‘Bitch,’ screamed Caitlin at the departing Lotus. Taggie shook her head. Cameron was the one who Rupert belonged to.

Taking a bottle of duty-free whisky, Declan and Maud went up to bed. Taggie also went up to her room, and, with trembling hands, tried to hold Caitlin’s binoculars still as she looked across the valley to Penscombe Court. Enough leaves had come off the trees now for her to see lights on downstairs in the kitchen and the drawing-room. Then, like a firefly lighting up the almost leafless chestnut avenue, she saw Cameron’s Lotus storming up Rupert’s drive. In an unbearably short time another light went on, which Taggie knew from Tabitha’s guided tour of the house yesterday was Rupert’s bedroom. No one bothered to draw the curtains.

Taggie collapsed on the bed. What was that expression her father was always quoting? ‘The heart transfixed upon the huddled spears.’ She knew what it meant now. Two minutes later there was a bang on her door.

‘Go away,’ she groaned.

Caitlin walked in with the dogs, who leapt on to the bed, frantically trying to lick away Taggie’s tears.

‘You got over Ralphie; you’ll get over Rupert,’ said Caitlin. ‘Anyway you may not have to. He’s got to keep that bitch sweet until after the franchise.’

‘Bugger the franchise,’ sobbed Taggie. ‘What would you do if you saw Archie and some woman in bed?’

‘I’d light a cigarette, have a drink and go and stuff my face,’ said Caitlin. ‘Look, I hate intruding on your grief, but the tomato chutney smells even more disgusting burning, and as those carnal beasts won’t emerge from their bedroom before morning, I’m afraid you’ll have to take me back to Uplift House.’

‘There’s a pauper just behind me and he’s treading on my tail,’ groaned Declan the following morning as, reeling from hangover and too much sex, he went through the pile of final reminders and endless requests from charity organizations for his time, his money or ‘one of his very personal things’.

‘Why don’t you send them all a lock of your hair?’ suggested Ursula.

‘I’d be bald in a week.’

‘It’s only because you’re a household name that people mistakenly assume you’re rolling,’ said Ursula soothingly.

‘I’ll be a poorhouse-hold name at this rate.’ Declan winced as he bent down to retrieve an unopened letter that had fallen under the table among the débris of biros and pencils chewed up by Claudius. ‘This looks more interesting.’

The letter was from the IBA telling Venturer that their interview would be at ten o’clock on 29th November at the IBA headquarters at 80 Brompton Road.

Declan immediately swung into action and called a Venturer meeting the following week. The room over the nightclub in Cheltenham was considered too risky, so a suite was booked in an obscure Bloomsbury Hotel. For security’s sake, a large board in the lobby announced in white plastic letters that the O’Hara, Black & Jones Drainage Co. Sales Conference was being held in the Virginia Woolf Suite on the fourth floor. The whole of Venturer turned up except Dame Enid, who had a concert in New York, Janey Lloyd-Foxe, whose baby had gastric flu, and Bas who had ostensibly been caught up in some crisis at the Bar Sinister.

Cameron took special trouble with her appearance, wearing a new very waisted red silk suit with padded shoulders, a very plunging neckline and an extremely short skirt. This was because she was meeting Rupert’s best friend, Billy Lloyd-Foxe, for the first time. He’d been away making a film on rugger for the BBC for the past three months and Cameron was determined to make a good impression. She needn’t have worried. Billy came up to her straight away with that famous smile which had been described as ‘able to beam into millions of homes without the aid of satellite’.

‘Hullo, gosh, I’ve been longing to meet you,’ he said, kissing her. ‘I’m mad about “Four Men went to Mow”. Janey’s taped all the episodes for me. It’s exactly how Rupe and I used to carry on before we were married. It was just starting in Australia when I left, and being marvellously received.’

He was extremely attractive, Cameron decided. His light-brown hair had gone greyer and he’d thickened out since his show-jumping days, but he had such a young face, and his turned-down eyes were so merry you didn’t notice the broken nose or the doubling chin. He also had a sweetness and an air of life being hilarious, but at the same time a little bit too much for him that had endeared him as much to the BBC viewers as to everyone in the sporting world. Janey was mad to mess him around, thought Cameron. She wondered if that was why Bas wasn’t here today.

Rupert and he seemed to know each other so well, they slipped into familiarity like a pair of old bedroom slippers, arguing about horses, finishing each other’s sentences, howling with laughter at each other’s jokes. It was nice to see Rupert happy again, thought Cameron. His fuse had been very short since she got back. She suspected, although he denied it, that he hated being in opposition — a shadow minister of his former self.

‘When you come back to Penscombe, we’re bloody well going to start a racing stable,’ Rupert was saying in an undertone.

‘I thought we were going to run a television station,’ said Billy.

‘We are, but with the revenue coming in, we’ll have access to a hundred and twenty-five million a year. Just think what we can do with that.’

‘Good God,’ said Billy in amazement. ‘Christy may be able to go to Harrow after all. I must have a drink.’

At that moment Declan tapped a large mahogany table in the centre of the room and asked everyone to sit down on the row of chairs lined up on the opposite side.

‘Where’s the bar?’ asked Rupert.

‘No one’s having anything to drink until we’ve finished,’ Declan said firmly.

Wesley’s face fell. Billy turned pale. ‘What is this, a concentration camp?’

‘Concentration — ’ Declan smiled thinly — ‘is what we’re after tonight. If you’re all swilling booze and getting up to get each other drinks, you won’t take in what I’m saying. There’s Perrier if anyone wants it.’

‘Now I know why it’s called a dry run,’ said Billy sulkily. ‘Come and sit by me,’ he said to Cameron, patting a chair. ‘At least I can cheer myself up gazing at your legs.’

Cameron looked like a cross between Joan Collins and Donald Duck, Billy decided, frightfully glamorous but somewhat high-powered.

‘I’m frightfully hungry. Can we at least ring for some sandwiches?’ said Professor Graystock, deliberately pressing against Cameron’s breasts and having a good look as he leant over to pinch one of Billy’s cigarettes.

‘Later,’ said Declan.

Billy, Harold White, Seb Burrows, Georgie Baines and Sally Maples, the children’s editor Declan had recruited from Yorkshire Television, then jumped out of their skins when an unknown man in spectacles with a crew cut and a purposeful expression walked in.

‘It’s all right,’ said Declan soothingly. ‘This is Hardy Bissett. He used to work for the IBA and knows exactly what sort of questions they’ll ask us at the interview. He’s going to drill us over the next few weeks.’

‘Who’s that turgid old crone in the portrait over the mantelpiece?’ Billy whispered to Cameron.

‘Virginia Woolf,’ whispered Cameron.

‘I’d do anything to keep her from my door!’ said Billy. ‘What did she do for a living — belly dancing?’

‘A fine writer,’ said Professor Graystock reprovingly.

Declan found Hardy a chair beside him on the other side of the table. Then he said, ‘The IBA meeting, as you all know now, is fixed for 29th November. The good thing is that Corinium’s meeting is the afternoon before, so there won’t be any problem for those of you who have to go to both meetings.’

Everyone jumped again as a fat man waddled into the room wearing a stocking over his head, waving a blue plastic toy gun, saying, ‘This is a shoot-out.’

Then he peeled the stocking off with a broad grin and said, ‘Boo!’ It was Charles Fairburn.

‘Oh, for fock’s sake, Charles,’ exploded Declan. ‘This is serious. I was just explaining that ours and Corinium’s meetings are on different days, so you won’t bump into Tony and Ginger Johnson coming out of the IBA as you go in. But please think up excuses to be out of the office on the 29th well in advance. We want as many of you there as possible.’