Lysander thought the whole thing hilarious and promptly picked up the telephone.

‘Ferdie, Ferdie, you’ll never guess. Rachel, my eye-gel friend has emerged in Paradise, and all the husbands are mad about her. They’re all putting up shelves for her health foods and stalling their mowers with unleaded petrol. First they rolled up with trays of tomatoes for chutney, last week it was two-legged carrots, this week it’s apples. Her cottage looks like Harvest Festival, and Rachel chucks out most of it because it’s not organic enough, so Arthur and Tiny are doing terribly well.’

‘Who’s after her?’ asked Ferdie beadily.

‘Well, Rannaldini, Guy, Larry, Bob and the vicar for starters.’

‘Larry and Guy bloody shouldn’t be,’ snapped Ferdie, thinking of Marigold’s retainer and Georgie’s fat monthly cheque. ‘Your only justification for being down there is to keep them keen on their wives. You’d better come back to London and earn some serious money. I’ve got a terrific job for you in Kenya, beautiful rich wife, shit-of-a-parasite husband, stacks of polo and racing.’

‘I’m happy in Paradise,’ bleated Lysander in a panic at the thought of leaving Georgie. ‘None of them is serious about Rachel. They just don’t want each other to get her. Rachel’s a crosspatch, but seriously good-looking. I wouldn’t mind giving her one myself.’

‘If you stopped at one, I wouldn’t mind,’ said Ferdie disapprovingly. ‘I had to cope with your father yesterday, rolled up in a strop because you hadn’t written. He’s left you a letter.’

‘I won’t read it. It’ll be just another lecture about getting a proper job. I’ve been working Rannaldini’s horses,’ said Lysander by way of mitigation. ‘He wants me to race ride for him in the winter.’

‘That won’t keep you in fags.’

‘Fags want to keep me; the vicar’s asked me to go to the Holy Land.’

‘Don’t be fatuous. How’s Natasha?’ asked Ferdie. Even her name still caused him pain.

‘Gone back to school. But she and Flora are home on Sunday for Rannaldini’s famous tennis tournament. Do you want to play?’

‘OK. I’ll come down for the weekend.’ It would be an excuse to see Natasha and protect his investment.

Poor Kitty, meanwhile, had been having a dreadful summer. Increasingly desperate for a baby, she had spent nearly all the running-away money she had saved in case things became too awful, hawking herself from one gynaecologist to another, putting up with the embarrassment of endless tests and internal probings. But even when her tubes were blown, no-one could find anything wrong.

‘And it’s not my husband, he’s got loads of kids already,’ Kitty kept telling the doctors.

Rannaldini, who bitterly resented any time Kitty took off, felt she should have been satisfied with her seven stepchildren — eight including little Cosmo.

‘Concentrate on being a mother to them, and a secretary to me.’

But I’m almost the same age as your older children, thought Kitty, and the young ones, although very cute, made her feel guilty about longing so much for one of her own.

Her chances seemed less and less likely as Rannaldini slept with her so seldom. She had put up with Rannaldini and Flora all summer, and she had been upset and had to fend off the Press over the eye-blacking furore, but it had given her a faint hope that with Hermione and Cecilia out of favour, and Flora back at Bagley Hall, Rannaldini might have more time for her.

But immediately Cecilia, whom Rannaldini had to forgive because she was starring in Fidelio, turned up to use Valhalla as a base for the duration of filming, Hermione, who was still excluded from Maestro’s presence, became even more histrionic.

Cecilia was easier than Hermione because she was less stupid and patronizing, and at least had a sense of humour. But she was just as demanding and narcissistic and there was also her total assumption that Rannaldini was still in love with her.

‘I cannot understand, Keety, why he is so obsessively jealous of all my admirers. He ripped out the telephone when I was talking to Carlo the other day, and I daren’t tell him Luigi wants to take me to Thailand.’

Every time Cecilia went out she invited Kitty to her room pretending to ask her advice on what to wear, but really to show off how wonderful she looked in clothes. Often, to Kitty’s embarrassment, she would greet her in the nude, taunting her with a body that was full-breasted but wonderfully slender elsewhere, and magnificent for someone well over forty. How could Rannaldini ever notice Kitty with that around?

It was the eve of Valhalla tennis tournament. Cecilia had mercifully disappeared to Paris in a ravishing pink shorts suit and Rannaldini’s helicopter. Rannaldini, who was at home for once, had retreated to look at rushes of Fidelio in his tower. Kitty had hoped for peace to make cakes and sandwich fillings for tomorrow and to give herself a perm, but alas Rachel turned up trailing two fretful children who found making fortresses out of egg boxes insufficiently amusing during a hot summer afternoon.

Kitty had been very kind to Rachel, listening endlessly to her problems and looking after her children when Rachel needed to practise or see lawyers. Rachel felt it was only fair, in turn, to prevent Kitty poisoning herself and the environment.

‘Why make a strawberry flan,’ she was now complaining, ‘when strawberries are out of season and there’s a glut of apples? And tuna fish — tuna fish,’ shrieked Rachel. ‘Didn’t you know tuna congregate beneath schools of dolphin, and the tuna fleets haul up dolphin at the same time? Nearly a quarter of a million dolphin die in the Pacific.’

‘Poor fings,’ muttered Kitty, appalled. ‘I’ll remember next time.’

‘Good, though, to use brown flour,’ said Rachel, feeling she’d been a bit sharp. Then, catching sight of a packet of Tampax in Kitty’s shopping bag, ‘but I wish you’d use STs. Tampons floating round in the sea take a hundred and twenty days to biodegrade.’

Shut up, Kitty wanted to scream. Normally as regular as clockwork, she was a week late and praying that at last she might be pregnant. Like taking an umbrella out on a sunny day, she had bought the Tampax.

Rachel was now glaring at a screen Kitty was secretly covering with photographs of Rannaldini and the famous for his birthday in December.

‘Christ, look at him leering at Princess Di. Your husband is such a lech, Kitty. Why d’you put up with it?’

‘I love ’im.’

‘God knows why. I wish he’d stop dropping in on Jasmine Cottage. I wish all the husbands would. One’s so defenceless being so close to the road. Everyone can see lights, or hear the radio.’

Not Rachel as well, thought Kitty hopelessly. On the dresser was a letter from her mother enclosing a postal order for three pounds and a card with a printed message wishing a wonderful daughter many happy returns tomorrow. Rannaldini was sure to forget it was her birthday.

As it was Mr Brimscombe’s day off, she’d better water the new plants. The roots of older plants were supposed to go down far enough to find water. Emptying an entire watering-can over a bluey-mauve clematis against the wall, she reflected that new plants, like new or potential mistresses, required attention. Was this why Rannaldini was giving Rachel all this work, and insisting she came to the tournament tomorrow, and making sure Gretel looked after her children?

Dear God, help me to stop grumbling, pleaded Kitty. If I’m pregnant, I’ll never, never grumble again, and at least Rannaldini hasn’t taken Hermione back.

As Rannaldini’s tournaments were so unbelievably competitive, Marigold and Georgie had arranged to play a warm-up foursome with Ferdie and Lysander the evening before. Guy had gone to Salisbury to look at a private collection. Larry wasn’t due back from London until later, so the coast was clear.

On the way over to Angel’s Reach, Lysander had to pop in to Rannaldini’s yard to pick up some worming tablets for Tiny and Arthur.

There had been no let-up in the weather. The authorities were even muttering about standpipes. Traveller’s joy fell in creamy festoons over the hedgerows, which were weighed down with haws and shining scarlet hips. Ferdie could have leant out of the Ferrari and helped himself to huge ripe blackberries if Lysander hadn’t driven so fast. A glut of crab-apples crunched beneath the wheels.

Lysander was unsettled by the tang of bonfires. In October his mother would have been dead a year. He clenched the steering-wheel to ease the pain. He must put some flowers on her grave. Perhaps he should make it up with his father.

Autumn had been daubing Rannaldini’s woods yellow and orange. The Virginia creeper smothering the grooms’ cottage had already turned crimson. Walking into the immaculate but deserted yard, Lysander heard a blood-curdling scream, like a rabbit caught in a snare. Whipping round, he was relieved to see Maggie and Jack still sitting beside Ferdie in the car.

‘No, please, please no,’ screamed a female voice.

For a horrified second Lysander thought it might be Kitty being savaged by The Prince of Darkness, but no, he was safely muzzled in his box.

There it was again. Another dreadful wail coming from the indoor school in which Rannaldini enjoyed being left alone to dominate difficult horses. His methods were very cruel, according to Janice the head groom, but, being well paid, she let well alone.

Beckoning frantically for Ferdie, Lysander loped round the corner and found the door of the indoor school locked.

‘No more, please.’ The moaning voice was too deep and throaty for Kitty’s.

‘You agreed to do everything I asked.’ It was Rannaldini, spine-chillingly cold.