‘I’m not eating this crap,’ said Cosmo, when offered carrot cake and cauliflower quiche for tea.

Bob refused more politely. ‘Honestly, Rachel darling, I never eat tea.’ No wonder he kept that lean taut body.

Bob had also chucked away his cup of tea, flavoured with goats’ milk, when she wasn’t looking, and instead encouraged her to stretch out on the dusty bank with a cold bottle of Sancerre. After the second glass, seeing her children engrossed in their dam, Rachel had tried, over the appalling din of Cosmo’s speedboat to discuss the far more appalling behaviour of Rannaldini and Hermione.

But Bob had deflected her. ‘Not on such a lovely day. I truly don’t want to talk about it.’

‘But you must feel so humiliated. They’re so odiously public. You ought to have some outlet. You can’t dam the libido up for ever.’ Rachel started to cry. ‘I know I can’t. I’ve been celibate for seven months now. Come over to supper after the kids have gone to bed.’

As if they had a separate life of their own, her pale slim fingers walked across the burnt grass and crept into Bob’s.

‘Daddee,’ it was little Cosmo’s screech. ‘The boat’s stuck.’

‘Well, for Christ’s sake, unstick it,’ screeched back Rachel. But Bob’s fingers, which had not returned the pressure, were gently withdrawn as he got up to help.

Wandering home along the river, when their eyes weren’t meeting, Bob had said, ‘Sweet of you, Rachel dear, but I’ve got to go back to London.’ Then, smiling slightly to soften the snub, ‘Let’s take an acid-rain check on this one.’

And the hot flush of mortification had kept sweeping over Rachel ever since.

Even Rannaldini, who’d been so disgustingly suggestive at the tennis, hadn’t been in touch so that she could reject him.

Hoards of men used to run after me, thought Rachel despairingly as she sunk her sweating, aching fingers once more into the keys, banging out the doomed, infinitely sorrowful opening theme.

‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel. No-one will ever chase me again except married lechers who get a buzz out of deceiving their wives.

If only she could transmit the depth of her sadness to her playing, but she was hampered by the colossal technical demands of the piece, the explosions of notes which must be perfect.

Boris had warned her of the viciousness of Rannaldini’s criticism. Horrible man. Rachel had a vision of his face, heartless, cold, yet the black eyes blazing with lust and sensuality. Despite the punishing airless heat, Rachel shivered.

The church clock striking three brought her back to earth. She must collect the children at four. Lysander had given her a litre of gin some time ago, which she’d never drunk because she loathed the stuff, but had been intending to turn into sloe gin. Walking over to the tennis tournament at Valhalla, she’d noticed a bumper crop of sloes still green along the footpath which Rannaldini had closed to the public. They should be ripe now. Rannaldini was away. If she were quick she could make a detour on her way to school.

She had been concentrating so hard. Only when she went outside did she realize that it had been raining, a brief violent shower, which flattened the bleached grass and drenched the trees, but made as much impact on the rock-hard ground as spitting on an iron. As she ran up the forbidden footpath, Rannaldini’s woods lay ahead pulsating and boiling like a jungle, incubating insects, dark greeny-grey beneath a white-hot sun which had already dried the tops of the trees.

‘Dum, da-di-da, da-di-da, da,’ sang Rachel, breathing in the rank stench of drying nettles, which had grown so tall they concealed the first PRIVATE — KEEP OUT notice. Blackberry fronds clawed her bare ankles and arms like importuning creditors. She could hear a rattle of distant thunder. Her head ached from gazing at little black notes all day.

Traveller’s joy draped acid green leaves and lemon-yellow flowers over the NO FOOTPATH: TRESPASSERS PROSECUTED sign. Nature doesn’t care about trespassers, thought Rachel. As she waded through waist-high grass, her shoes filled with water. Gretel had taken the children to school this morning, so Rachel had gone straight to the piano without bothering to wash. She supposed this was as good a bath as any.

To her joy, the blackthorn copse was groaning with sloes, shiny and dark like Rannaldini’s eyes, but softened by the palest powdery-blue bloom. Holding her shopping bag underneath to catch the loot, she systematically stripped each branch, swearing as the sharp thorns plunged into her fingers. She glanced at her watch, she must go in ten minutes. She only need fill half the bottle. The recipe said white sugar, but she’d get unrefined brown from The Apple Tree instead. Just as she was reaching up to a high branch, she heard voices and started violently, shrieking as a particularly sharp thorn stabbed her arm.

‘What was that?’ said Rannaldini’s voice sharply.

Rachel dropped to the ground, burying her face in the soaking grass, heart pounding, praying he’d go away. She cringed as a brown slug, big as a rat, edged towards her. How ghastly if Rannaldini caught her. Instead the sinister Clive jumped over a small wall just beyond the blackthorn clump and trained his rifle on her.

‘Don’t shoot,’ screamed Rachel.

Rannaldini followed at a more leisurely pace.

‘I might have guessed,’ he said softly. ‘Bugger off,’ he added to Clive. ‘I’ll handle this.’

Lying flat on her face, Rachel was aware of sloes scattered all round her.

‘Get up,’ ordered Rannaldini.

Leaping down like a great cat, he still made sure he was on higher ground, when she scrambled, raging with embarrassment, to her feet.

‘Can’t you read? This is private property, you stupid bitch. You’re trespassing as well as stealing.’ The words came out like rifle shots.

‘This is a public footpath.’

‘Was,’ snapped Rannaldini. ‘And the wall was always mine. I didn’t know you were a thief.’

Deliberately he stamped on half a dozen sloes, then, removing his shiny brown ankle boot, showed their wounded crimson flesh.

Rachel winced. ‘You bastard!’

Looking down, she was appalled to see how transparent the wet grass had made her muslin shift and her cheap white rose-patterned trousers. She could see the moulded line of her breasts and sticking-out nipples, the pink flesh of her legs, and the dark GIVE WAY sign of her pubic hair. Rannaldini, however, had no intention of giving way.

‘Today I not bastard. I forgeeve them who trespass.’

Rachel’s heart pounded even more painfully, but she couldn’t move as he reached out, testing the pudgy warmth of her breast through the drenched muslin.

‘Bra-less in Gaza,’ he mocked. ‘You certainly advertise your wares.’

He couldn’t tell if her thin face was wet with tears or rain, as his hand strayed downwards. ‘No knickers either.’

‘I got up first thing to practise,’ stammered Rachel, ‘then rushed out in a hurry. I didn’t want to be late picking up the children.’

‘You left plenty of time to steal my sloes.’ Rannaldini clenched and unclenched his fingers.

With his other hand he drew her to him, kissing first her forehead, then both her unplucked eyebrows, then her mouth.

‘No!’ Suddenly aware she hadn’t cleaned her teeth, and loathing herself for minding, Rachel clamped her lips shut.

‘No?’ Rannaldini moved away slightly. ‘Do you have any choice?’

His hand slipped inside her sleeve, caressing its way up her arm, pulling at her long, silky armpit hair, before curling round to caress her breasts.

Rachel gave a moan, trying to duck her head away, as Rannaldini ruffled the slight down on her upper lip with his tongue.

‘Leetle wild thing, eet will be like making love to an animal. A goat perhaps.’

‘I hate you.’

‘No, no, you ’ate yourself for wanting me so much, Mrs Levitsky.’

Rannaldini relished calling women by the names of the husbands he was cuckolding.

‘I’m not Levitsky any more, I’m back to Grant now. Someone’s coming,’ gasped Rachel, hearing a snatch of ‘For All The Saints’ sung in a loud baritone.

Rannaldini pushed her back on to the ground, crouching beside her, holding his hand, which smelt faintly of Maestro, over her mouth, until the vicar had gone.

Then, when she tried to leap to her feet, mouth open in protest, Rannaldini plunged his tongue inside, until she forgot her uncleaned teeth and kissed him back. Rannaldini wanted to take her now, but the vicar might surprise them on his return.

‘The kids! I must pick them up!’ said Rachel, fighting to get free.

Back in his tower, it was Rannaldini who got the number of the school by ringing Kitty. Then he rang the school.

‘Mrs Levitsky is stuck in traffic jam, and will be three-quarters of an hour late. She ask me to ring, she is very, very sorry. But she is not,’ he added, switching off the telephone. ‘You ought to get out of those wet things,’ he said softly, then, sliding his hand down inside her trousers, ‘and this is the wettest thing that I should eenstantly get into.’

‘Let me undress myself, for fuck’s sake,’ snarled Rachel.

But so overjoyed was Rannaldini by the early conquest of something he thought would take him weeks, perhaps months, that his face assumed a quite uncharacteristic delight and tenderness. He also had a water diviner’s skill in testing the depth of women’s loneliness. He knew when to be kind.

‘You have been so sad and lonely,’ he crooned, drawing her into his arms and stroking her hair. ‘You deserve some happiness. This time it will be queek, because of your children, but the next time… it will be ecstatic.’