Score!

After Friday’s débâcle Mikhail had also decided he loathed Chloe, and rolled up at the tennis tournament swigging vodka out of a two-litre Smirnoff bottle.

‘“ ’Appy birthday, Don Carlos, ’appy birthday to you,”’ sang Mikhail, ‘And I hop’ he had better bloody birthday than I ’ave on Friday.’

‘Today’, boomed Griselda, resplendent in a vast white tent dress, ‘is also the birthday of Rozzy’s husband, Glyn, probably an even greater shit than the original Carlos, so horoscopes do work.’

‘And it is my aunt Hortense’s birthday,’ piped up Simone. ‘She is terrible tart too.’

‘I think you mean “tartar”, sweetie,’ said Griselda fondly.

‘Uncle Tristan is probably still at her birthday party now,’ said Simone, glancing at her watch. ‘She’ll be very angry I rattled at the last moment.’

‘You couldn’t miss a chance of having Wolfie as your partner,’ mocked Chloe, swiping at a passing wasp with her racquet.

Seeing poor Simone — who was unaware that her crush on Wolfie was common knowledge — going absolutely crimson, Griselda said quickly, ‘Rozzy’s been cooking chicken breasts to be wrapped in smoked salmon, sea trout and raspberry Pavlova for that bastard Glyn all weekend.’

Paid for by me, thought Lucy bitterly.

‘Oh, look,’ said Meredith, as a black helicopter approached from the south-east and landed on the lawn of River House. ‘Hermione has returned from Milan. She’s clearly not too mortified to make use of Maestro’s chopper.’

Meredith was partnering Flora, neither serious players, particularly Meredith, whose Christopher Robin sunhat fell off if he ran too fast. To everyone’s amazement, they took out Mikhail and Chloe, because Mikhail smote every ball into the dark midgy canopy of Hangman’s Wood.

‘I hop’ I break every window of his bloody vatchtower,’ he growled.

‘Why don’t you take up golf?’ snarled Chloe, as they walked off the court.

Afterwards they could be heard yelling at each other in the maze, in which they would be filming next week.

‘No doubt rehearsing the bit when Posa pulls a knife on Eboli,’ said Flora, collapsing on the burnt, scratchy grass to watch Bernard and Jessica, Sexton’s beautiful secretary, pounding balls at Lucy and Ogborne, who was still keeping the midges at bay with Hermione’s wine-stained sunhat.

Flora was coming apart at the seams, in floods one minute, screaming with laughter the next. Now she was crying because she could hear Tabloid, the Rottweiler, howling and stuck in baking solitary confinement beneath Rannaldini’s watch-tower.

‘Why doesn’t bloody Clive take him for a walk?’

Then, as the hunting horns from the rushes echoed through Hangman’s Wood again, ‘If I hear that overture once more, I’ll scream.’

The horror of the photos Rannaldini had shown her had now kicked in. She hadn’t come on yet. What happened if she was pregnant and produced a little HIV baby? If George saw those pictures, he’d never take her back. Every time a mobile rang, she leapt three feet in the air.

Granny, who was partnering Griselda, was equally suicidal. How could he have let himself go in Rutminster yesterday? Every time a car came up the drive, he expected blue lights and sirens. Even more cruelly, an indignant Howie had just confirmed that Serena Westwood was on the cruise ship with Giuseppe. Rannaldini’s evil matchmaking had worked a treat. Granny’s dreams were now as shredded as his patchwork quilt. But, being Granny, he refused to spoil everyone else’s fun, and plucked his tennis racquet like a banjo.

‘“He said that he loved her but, oh, how he lied,”’ sang Granny. ‘“Oh, how he lied, oh, how he lied.”’

‘“And then they were married and somehow she died. Somehow she di-hi-hi-ed,”’ joined in Flora.

On three glasses of white, and no food since Friday, Granny was also in a fuck-it mood. His sneaky underarm service was soon whistling over the net. Griselda, galumphing around in her white tent, turned out to have a murderous backhand. To everyone’s noisily cheering surprise, they routed the number-one seeds, Alpheus and Pushy.

‘Pushy’s gone white with rage to match her tennis kit,’ muttered Ogborne to Lucy. ‘I reckon Alpheus threw that game.’

As Pushy came off the court, Meredith was reading out a Sunday Times piece claiming that the coveted part of Delilah had not gone to Chloe or even Pushy, but to Rannaldini’s ex, Cecilia. With a frantic jangling of bracelets and earrings, Pushy burst into tears.

‘Sir Roberto promised me that part, and he promised Ay could be the next Lady Rannaldini,’ she sobbed.

‘We’ve all been promised that,’ said a mocking voice. ‘It comes after being told we’ve got the most beautiful voice in the world.’

Abandoning Mikhail, who’d passed out under a weeping ash, Chloe had returned to the court.

‘Oh, God,’ her smile disappeared, ‘here comes Helen and that ugly cow Eulalia Harrison. I gather she had luncheon at River House.’

Pushy’s sobs subsided. She longed for an in-depth interview with the Sentinel.