‘The strongest winds may blow and rack, but I’ll come burning brightly back,’ wrote Georgie. The word ‘rack’ was too obscure: she’d have to think of something else. She got down the rhyming dictionary.

She could see the great lichened curve of an angel’s wing, and if she leant out of the window she could look over a fuzz of wood as soft as rabbit’s fur to the chimneys of Valhalla and Rannaldini’s grey tower beyond. Paradise lived more and more up to its name. Like quill pens plunging into inky-green spring grass, little poplar trees lined the drive. As Guy’s mowing machine paused, Georgie could hear the rattle of a woodpecker.

After the morning’s rain, the mist was rising milky blue down the valley like a thousand smoke signals. Dreamily she imagined herself sending a message to Rannaldini: ‘Guy’s home. His lunch in Bath’s been cancelled. We can’t meet today.’

On the mantelpiece was an unsigned good luck card from Tancredi who’d been the lead guitarist in her first famous group of the sixties. Georgie and Tancredi had been the most passionate and fatal of lovers, and when the group split up, she had settled for Guy and stability, and Tancredi had kicked his cocaine habit and married a homespun middle-American girl and made good in Los Angeles. But they still telephoned each other occasionally, and met up and made love when Tancredi came over to England, agreeing that, although they were far better off with their present partners, there was still an undeniable bond between them. Tancredi was due back in May. Perhaps he could come down to Angel’s Reach when Guy was in London. There were plainly advantages to being alone in the country mid-week, particularly if Rannaldini was around.

Then Georgie looked up at the corkboard where she’d pinned cuttings from the Rock Star launch. Guy — square jawed, clear-eyed, sternly handsome — stared down at her. She must get a copy of the photograph from the Express and have it framed.

Guy was the one who mattered, but it was lovely to be fancied. Feeling dreadfully self-indulgent, she slotted in the tape of Rock Star, glorying in the smoky beauty of her own voice and picked up her pen.

Flora had only agreed to wait at the table, because Boris was coming to dinner. Now she had further enraged Guy by messing up the guest bathroom and annexing his Free Foresters’ cricket sweater. Hearing shouting from downstairs, Georgie wondered if Guy was uptight because he’d picked up the vibes between her and Rannaldini. She felt very excited as she wandered downstairs reeking of Giorgio, in a clinging velvet midi-dress, the same luminous grey as the sky on a moonlit night, which streamlined her opulent body and showed off her tousled red hair.

‘No Spring, nor Summer beauty has such grace, As I have seen in one Autumnal face.’ She could imagine Rannaldini murmuring in that wonderful throbbing basso profundo.

The house certainly looked lovely. The huge rooms, although hell to heat, were a marvellous showcase for Guy’s paintings. Rannaldini and Larry, and to a lesser extent, Bob were collectors, Guy even had hopes of Rupert Campbell-Black, who despite not knowing the difference between a Titian and a Tretchikoff, had one of the finest collections of paintings in the country.

Drifting into the drawing room, however, Georgie found that all their own paintings had been taken down and the stark white walls covered with vast oils of the same copulating couple, a rapacious naked girl coiled round a faceless man in a pin-stripe suit.

Flora, who was still wearing Guy’s cricket sweater, and looking as trampishly sexy as her mother looked voluptuous and replete, was gazing at them in horror.

‘What’s this shit?’ she demanded.

‘Don’t swear.’ Guy’s lips tightened, as he adjusted a picture light. ‘And don’t make comments on things about which you know nothing. These are original Armstrongs.’

‘You’d need strong arms to hoist up a dog like that girl. They’re absolutely gross.’

‘It’s a moving and original interpretation of the Kama Sutra.’

‘Pin-stripe suitra more like,’ drawled Flora. ‘Who’s coming to this bash anyway?’

Guy looked even more bootfaced, but was not prepared to risk a row that might leave him waitressless.

‘Well, I decided in for a penny in for a pound. There’s Julia Armstrong and her husband Ben.’ Going into the kitchen, he gave his raspberry purée, to go with the lobster mousseline, a stir.

‘Who’s she?’ asked Georgie.

Guy sighed. ‘Oh Panda, I’ve told you a hundred times. She’s having an exhibition at the gallery next month. I thought people might enjoy a preview tonight. Ben and Julia live in Islington, but they’ve rented a weekend cottage in Eldercombe. They’ve got young children. Ben’s in computers. I like him a lot. Leave those grapes alone, Flora,’ he said sharply. ‘And you were going to wash a couple of lettuces, Georgie, I’ve done the dressing. And for goodness’ sake, do the placement before everyone arrives.’

Oh God, placement was more taxing than A level maths! There was Julia and Ben, Rannaldini and Kitty, Annabel Hardman, another friend of Georgie’s who lived in Paradise, and Valentine, her brilliant beast of a lawyer husband, who might not turn up. Boris and Rachel, Marigold and Lysander or Larry, and for Miss Bottomley Georgie had invited Meredith Whalen, an extremely expensive, gay interior designer, who was nicknamed the Ideal Homo, because he was so often asked to make up numbers at Paradise dinner parties.

‘I’ll need log tables to work out this one,’ grumbled Georgie.

‘Bottomley’d better go on your right, Mum,’ advised Flora. ‘She’ll need two chairs.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ giggled Georgie. ‘She goes on Daddy’s right and Hermione on his left.’

But Guy, who was spooning caviar on to each plate beside the lobster mousseline, was not in the mood for frivolity.

‘Put Julia Armstrong on my left. She won’t know anyone, and I’ve got to talk shop to her, and put Ben on your left.’

With alarm Georgie suddenly noticed a dozen bottles of Dom Perignon, a battalion of Nuits St George as well as the vat of caviar and four bottles of Barsac in the fridge. They were horrendously overdrawn at the moment, but she didn’t feel she could remonstrate with Guy when he’d done all the cooking and her new grey velvet dress had cost a fortune.

Following him into the drawing room she found him putting on a record. Next moment Mozart flooded the house from every speaker.

‘Oh, lovely,’ sighed Georgie, ‘Rannaldini’s Così.’

‘It’s Mozart’s Così,’ snapped Guy.

He is uptight about Rannaldini, thought Georgie.

Guy was wearing neither tie nor jacket, which was unusual. A cornflower-blue shirt which she hadn’t seen before was tucked into very dark grey cords held up with a leather belt. He looked glowingly handsome, and Georgie told him so. ‘And you’re in great shape,’ she added, putting her arms round his broad athletic back, and feeling his flat taut midriff.

‘Must be humping all that furniture.’

‘You’ve worked so hard,’ murmured Georgie, ‘particularly today. I am lucky. Love you, darling.’

‘Love you, Panda,’ said Guy. ‘Now do the placement, so you can relax and enjoy yourself.’

The evening, in fact, was far from relaxed. By nine o’clock only Miss Bottomley had arrived, roaring up on a motor bike and in a foul mood because she’d got lost.

Then at a quarter-past nine Boris rang full of tearful and mostly incomprehensible contrition. Rachel had found out that he’d been seeing his old mistress, Chloe, and issued an ultimatum. As a point of honour Boris felt he must resign from the marriage, so he couldn’t make dinner, nor understandably could Rachel, which meant a frantic resetting of the table, and a rewrite of the placement — not easy when one was three Bacardis up.

Even worse, Flora, on learning Boris wasn’t coming, retired to her bedroom with a bottle of Barsac and the cordless telephone, and flatly refused to do any waitressing. Bob then arrived with Hermione, looking radiant in an olive-green Chanel suit braided with rose pink. Bringing up the rear, was Meredith, the Ideal Homo.

‘We’re late because Rannaldini sacked two soloists this afternoon and Bob’s got to find replacements by Monday,’ said Hermione, handing her mink to Guy. ‘Gracious, it looks different since the Jennings’ day.’

She then proceeded to go into ecstasies over the dark green wallpaper in the downstairs lavatory which they hadn’t changed, and on peering into the study which had been papered in dark mulberry to set off Guy’s Victorian paintings, said: ‘What colour are you going to paint this dreadfully dark room?’

Meredith, who looked like Christopher Robin with Shirley Temple’s blond curls, and who was tiny, beautifully dressed, and a great giggler, made no comment, on the principle that any praise might do him out of a possible job.

‘I think it looks wonderful,’ said Bob Harefield, hugging a disconsolate Georgie.

By nine-thirty, they were still light on Rannaldini and Kitty, Julia and Ben Armstrong, Annabel and Valentine Hardman and Marigold and whoever. Georgie was so nervous and belted upstairs so often to check her face that Bob wondered if she was on something. Rannaldini’s Der Rosenkavalier was now surging out of the speakers, and Hermione had started to sing along.

‘You better put on the broccoli,’ muttered Guy as he opened another bottle of champagne. ‘I can’t do everything.’

Not waiting for the water to boil, Georgie was returning from the kitchen when through the door came a girl with long hair, the red of springtime copper beeches, and a lot of dark make-up round her fox-brown eyes. She was wearing a cream midi-dress, which enhanced her very pale skin, as falling snowflakes whiten the sky. Her slender neck seemed almost too delicate to support a heavy metal scorpion which hung between unexpectedly full breasts.