Lovely, thought Georgie with pleasure. Not unlike me twenty years ago, I must go on a diet.

‘Panda, this is Julia Armstrong,’ said Guy, ‘and this,’ he added even more warmly, ‘is Ben.’

Ben in computers was bald with protruding eyes, full red lips emphasized by a straggling black beard, and a little frill of black hair flowing over his white collar like a draught extractor. Seeing Guy in a shirt, he promptly removed his jacket to show off a small waist and hips as wide as his shoulders. He then proceeded to explain, in his nasal, very common voice, that they were late because he’d been kept at the office on extremely important business.

‘What a lovely spot, Guy,’ he went on, accepting a drink. ‘How did you find it?’

‘With great difficulty if you had Georgie’s directions,’ boomed Sabine Bottomley, who was gazing in admiration at Julia.

It is sod’s law, thought Georgie irritably, as Julia clapped her hands in joy as she saw her paintings on the walls, that such an enchanting girl should be on Guy’s left and I should be landed with her gh-a-a-stly husband.

But next moment the balance was redressed by the arrival of Rannaldini, who’d been kept on even more important business, some multi-billion Yen record deal with the Japs, and who was livid not to be the last to arrive. Heart-stopping in a dark blue velvet smoking-jacket, he was followed by poor Kitty looking unbelievably plain in burgundy polyester, with just the wrong gathers over the hips for her bean-bag figure.

As Ben was nearest the door and shamefully because they were the two most unattractive people in the room, Georgie introduced him to Kitty.

‘Do you play an instrument?’ asked Ben.

‘She plays the word processor,’ called out Rannaldini bitchily. ‘Don’t give her any other ideas.’

Introduced to Julia, who, in her nervousness, Georgie called Juliet, Rannaldini was all-purring amiability, but grew less so on learning that Flora had pushed off upstairs.

‘Go and get your daughter,’ Guy hissed at Georgie.

Always my daughter, when she’s acting up, thought Georgie, applying another layer of Clinique, and a squirt of Giorgio before banging on Flora’s door.

‘Darling, please come out and be nice. Rannaldini’s bought you tickets for the St Matthew Passion.’

‘I don’t care,’ sobbed Flora who’d drunk nearly a whole bottle of Barsac. ‘The only passion I have is for Boris Levitsky and he’s buggered off with that slag Chloe. My life is over.’

Charging downstairs, Georgie found Guy pointing out the merits of one of Julia’s enmeshed couples to Rannaldini, Bob and Meredith, the Ideal Homo.

‘They’re very strong,’ Guy said warmly. ‘I’m certain Armstrong is going to be very big.’

Meredith, who inveigled vast fees out of his clients with the innocence of a schoolboy touting for pocket money, raised his little grey flannel leg three inches off the ground in imitation of the Pin-stripe Lover.

‘I couldn’t get myself into that position in a thousand years,’ he giggled. ‘He must be awfully fit.’

Irritated he wasn’t taking the painting seriously enough, Guy turned on Georgie. ‘Annabel Hardman has just rung and bottled out,’ he whispered furiously. ‘Valentine’s stuck in London.’

‘And in some blonde, oh, poor Annabel,’ said Georgie.

‘Says she can’t face it on her own,’ snarled Guy. ‘And where’s your friend Marigold? The quails will be totally ruined.’

Next moment a disgusting smell of burnt rubber drifted in from the kitchen.

‘Oh God, I forgot the broccoli,’ wailed Georgie.

Guy’s face tightened. Even worse, Dinsdale, fed up with being tripped over, had hoisted himself on to the big dark gold corduroy sofa in front of the fire and angrily refused to be evicted when Hermione wanted to sit down.

‘No, I won’t have any more champagne. I’m looking forward to a glass of wine at dinner.’ Hermione looked at her Cartier watch pointedly.

She was fed up with fascinating Miss Bottomley who had even more beard than Julia’s husband, with whom Kitty was making very heavy weather.

‘I’m starving,’ muttered Meredith to Georgie. ‘I had lunch with Bob and Hermione, and the old bat just served up stale bread and mousetrap, which would have been turned down by any self-respecting rat. “Hermione,” I told her, “this mousetrap’s been in your larder longer than Dame Agatha’s play.” She wasn’t amused.’

In panic, feeling as if all her guests were set in gelatine, Georgie had another drink. It was plain from the bored expression on Rannaldini’s face that he wasn’t remotely interested in her, and if Marigold didn’t show they’d need speaking trumpets to hear each other at dinner. Her heart lifted as lights came up the drive, but they went round to the back of the house. It was Mrs Piggott, Georgie’s cleaner, whom Flora had nicknamed Mother Courage, because she drank so much beer and who had already arrived to wash up.

We should never have moved to the country and got embroiled in such grandiose entertaining, thought Georgie. But just as they were seated round the kitchen table, and Ben, to his horror, found himself next to dowdy Kitty yet again, the curtain less windows were filled with flashing lights and a helicopter landed on the lawn spewing out Larry and Marigold who was looking stunning in a scarlet satin suit. Clasping hands, they ran across the lawn, nearly tripping over a molehill.

‘Fraightfully sorry we’re late,’ said Marigold as Georgie hastily wrote Larry’s name on a place card instead of Lysander’s. ‘Larry was closing a deal.’

‘Anyone we know?’ asked Bob Harefield.

After some coaxing, Larry admitted that he’d just bought 28 per cent of a vast Japanese record company.

‘He also found taime to make love to me on the office carpet,’ whispered Marigold to Georgie.


19



The dinner party perked up a bit after this as Larry and Marigold affected everyone with their high spirits. Idly flipping over the piece of paper on which Georgie had worked out the placement, Rannaldini found his cv, which Georgie had had faxed down from the London Met Press Office, so she would be able to talk knowledgeably about his career at dinner. Rannaldini smirked. If Georgie had the hots for him, he’d gain access to her house and Flora more easily. A gaze-hound who hunted by sight rather than scent, having once seen Flora, he wouldn’t rest until he caught her, however long the chase.

On the other hand, Georgie wasn’t unattractive. She looked much better today. It would be an added frisson to play off mother and daughter.

So he turned the charm on Georgie, praising Flora’s looks and blazing talent which could only come from her mother. He then told Georgie about his guest-conducting and filming commitments all over the world, and Georgie didn’t take in a word he said, because, from the way he was looking at her, she felt he’d already taken a degree in the geography of her body without removing a single garment. And that voice, husky, slow, reverberating like the molten depths of a volcano pondering whether to wipe out a nearby town just for the hell of it, made his tritest utterance sound significant.

‘We are both on treadmill, my dear Georgie,’ he was saying now, softly, ‘I in my Lear Jet, you in your leetie study, both making music, but we will meet from time to time in Paradise.’

‘Oh yes.’ Georgie’s heart seemed to be beating between her legs.

Hermione, who detested Rannaldini chatting up anyone else, led the shrieks of praise for Guy’s lobster mousseline, followed by quails en croute in ginger and yoghurt.

With great difficulty, Georgie wrenched her attention away from Rannaldini to talk to the horrific Ben.

‘You have a very beautiful and talented wife,’ she said.

‘Julia is also a caring mother,’ said Ben complacently.

At the end of the table, against the sooty black of the uncurtained window, Julia, her pale skin glowing like pearl, was listening to Guy’s plans for the house.

‘I’ll knock this wall through into a conservatory, leading to an indoor pool,’ he was saying. ‘I mean, when does one get a chance to swim outside in Rutshire?’

And who the hell’s going to pay for it? Only if I write another smash hit, which they’re all so dismissive of, with their fucking classical music, thought Georgie.

Julia was telling Hermione how wonderfully she had sung in Der Rosenkavalier.

Having found out from Marigold the details of the Japanese record company Larry had bought into, Rannaldini was now discussing the sacked soloists across her with Bob. Georgie was dying to gossip to Marigold. How lovely if I had Rannaldini on the side, she thought dreamily, like Marigold had had Lysander.

As there was no broccoli, the salad was now being circulated. Alas, Hermione found half a slug in the lettuce; Georgie hadn’t bothered to wash because it was Iceberg.

‘I’m just worried that some poor person might get the other half,’ Hermione was stage-whispering to Guy.

After that no-one wanted any salad, and conversation moved on to universities, which Kitty took no part in having left school at sixteen. Sitting between Ben and Meredith, who had both turned their backs on her, Kitty wished she was sitting next to Bob — goodness, he looked tired — or to Guy who’d read the lesson so beautifully in church on Sunday and who was being so sweet to that lovely painter. Kitty noticed that Rannaldini, as the Guest of Honour, had been put on Georgie’s right, but did not feel slighted that she as his wife hadn’t been put next to Guy. That privilege was naturally accorded to Hermione, the maîtresse en titre. Every night Kitty prayed not to hate Hermione, and to forgive those who trespassed against her. Georgie plainly had a crush on Rannaldini, too, but her demands on him, Kitty hoped, would be more rollicking, like a red setter wanting a long walk down the valley from time to time.