Score!

To forget the horrors of prison and to blot out the even more nightmarish prospect of the Mail outing him and Claudine tomorrow, Tristan, as was his custom, plunged into work. But as he hurtled the Aston towards George’s house, his dreams of using a polo match under a burning sun as a ritualized symbol of conflict were shattered. After a night of torrential rain, George’s polo field was as full of lakes and as green as Ireland. His only compensation was driving through a huge puddle and drenching the paparazzi hanging around outside George’s massive electric gates.

Inside, it was difficult to distinguish the massive police and press presence from George’s heavies and the fleet of extras who’d been bussed in to act as policemen, paparazzi and Philip’s bodyguards.

Behind the house, which crouched ox-blood red and elephantine on a hill, a stretch of park had been levelled into a polo field surrounded by huge bell-shaped trees now dark and swollen with rain. Overhead, like a flotilla of battleships, hung charcoal-grey clouds.

On the edge of the field, outside a yellow and white striped tent, whose roof was buckling under the downpour, a small band in red uniforms was dispiritedly wringing out their instruments. Seeing his arrival, the commentator stopped telling the shivering extras in their flowery dresses and pale suits that the gallant Marquis of Posa had just scored a goal, and welcomed back ‘our director’, Tristan de Montigny.

Tristan was in no mood for pleasantries. Ignoring the ripple of applause and the large ‘Bienvenu, Tristan’ banner, he drove over to the unit, where the place was under water and in uproar, because neither Lucy nor Wolfie had turned up. Tristan was appalled. It was like coming home on a bleak winter night to find the pipes frozen and the central heating kaput. No-one had seen them since Saturday morning.

‘I know they’ll be found face down in a field,’ sobbed Simone.

‘Don’t be fatuous,’ snapped Tristan, who’d gone cold at the same thought.

All around him singers, who’d been soothed and flattered by Lucy for the past three months, were having tantrums and making fearful fusses about catching cold. A fleet of make-up artists had been bussed in anyway to handle all the extras. The most experienced, hijacked to look after the stars, must have graduated from the set of the Hammer House of Horror.

Granny looked about as menacing as a Brylcreemed Barbara Cartland. Tab, Pushy and Chloe had vermilion lips and black-ringed eyes like Brides of Dracula. Mikhail’s drink-reddened face clashed horribly with his crimson polo shirt.

‘Why isn’t Lucy here to sort out my bags and my double chin?’ grumbled Baby, who, having played polo until the stars came out with Rupert’s cronies then pigged out on Taggie’s sea trout, three helpings of loganberry torte and copious glasses of wine, was now trying to alleviate his hangover with a massive gin and tonic.

Alpheus was so furious that Griselda had hidden his noble brow and chestnut locks under a straw hat with a Blues and Royals ribbon that he’d surreptitiously fed the offending headgear to Sharon and Trevor, who’d rushed on to the field noisily tearing it to shreds.

Nemesis had struck swiftly. The new make-up artist didn’t have Lucy’s blow-drying and colouring skills, and Alpheus ended up with corkscrew curls the colour of mango chutney and looked like Paddy Ashdown in a Shirley Temple wig.

Simone was in hysterics that any continuity had been shot to pieces. ‘How could Lucy do this to us?’ she stormed.

‘Manage without her,’ snapped Tristan.

Nor had Tristan dreamt, as the day progressed, how much he would miss Wolfie to field telephone calls, to keep track of his belongings, and control the extras. Rupert had high-handedly sent over a couple of his grooms with all his dogs, and all his polo-playing friends’ dogs because they all wanted their dogs in the film and because one always sees lots of dogs at polo. The dogs proceeded to fight and bark and mount each other. Rupert, meanwhile, had buggered off to a race meeting at Ayr.

‘I vish his bloody daughter had gone too,’ grumbled Mikhail.

One of the first sounds Tristan heard and ignored was Tab, yelling her head off in true Campbell-Black fashion. She was desperately nervous about making her polo film début playing against world-class players, even if she had known them since she was a child. She had wanted to look ravishing for Tristan’s return, and been turned into the Town Tart by this ghastly make-up. It was all Lucy’s fault. And where was utterly bloody Wolfie to hold her hand, find her whip and absorb abuse like a punch bag?

Even worse, as Mistress of the Horse, she felt it her duty to see the singers played properly. Baby was good, but Mikhail had an unnerving habit of dropping his reins and swinging his stick round with both hands like a Tartar warlord as he thundered down the field.