Score!

‘Hear, hear,’ shouted Lucy. ‘But where is he?’

The Best Actor Award went to Anthony Hopkins, which was an excuse for another glass of wine, and at last it was Best Director. Tristan was competing with Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg. Lucy’s nightgown was drenched in sweat, she couldn’t stop shaking. ‘Please make him win,’ she prayed, ‘so that at least I see him.’

As more clips were shown of Claudine in The Lily in the Valley, Lucy hurled a cushion at the television set, narrowly missing her fast-emptying bottle. Julie Christie, just as beautiful as Claudine, was slowly opening the envelope, tantalizing, taking her time.

‘And the best director is Tristan de Montigny for The Lily in the Valley.’

Lucy’s scream of excitement was lost in the roar of applause as the whole audience rose to their feet to pay tribute to the courage with which Tristan had faced his terrible problems in the past year. But Lucy’s tears of joy turned into wails of despair as, after a roll of drums, the spotlight once more tracked bloody Claudine coming back through the tables up onto the stage.

And her make-up’s been redone, thought Lucy savagely.

Claudine wasn’t looking very sunny, however, particularly when there were groans of disappointment and a flurry of booing and shouts of ‘Where’s Tristan?’

‘I am afraid Treestan de Monteegny ees eendisposed,’ said Claudine defensively, ‘and cannot accept this award. But I know he would thank you all for this wonderful honour. I am so ’appy to accept it on his behalf because he is most wonderful director I ever worked with and the one with the most integrity.’

‘Which is more than can be said for you,’ shouted a drunken Ogborne.

Poleaxed with disappointment, Lucy switched off the television and threw herself on her bed. The pain was unendurable. Hearing his name, seeing the others in the crew had brought everything back. How could she exist for another second without him? She was crying so hysterically, at first she didn’t hear banging on the door.

‘Linda, Linda, Linda,’ shouted Bella, the senior kennelmaid, ‘what in hell’s the matter? Please open the door.’

‘Go away,’ sobbed Lucy. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Gee, I’m sorry to bother you, but you know about lurchers and some guy’s brought one in. I told him to come back tomorrow, but he seems desperate. I said you’d take the dog’s particulars and settle it in.’

‘We don’t want any more dogs,’ wept Lucy. ‘It’ll mean another one put down to make room for him.’

Wiping her face on the counterpane, seizing a handful of tissues to blow her nose, mumbling that she simply wasn’t up to it, Lucy stumbled downstairs into the freezing cold night to discover it had been snowing. The dog pens on either side of the rough track leading up to the check-in office were empty of dogs but blanketed in snow. Snow lay on the roofs of the kennels behind, where she hoped the dogs were sleeping and wouldn’t wake up when she installed the lurcher. Newcomers were often traumatized by the din.

Snow, already freezing on the wire fencing and the dogs’ nameplates on each pen, reminded her unaccountably of Valhalla. And then she saw him tiptoeing tentatively out of the office, a big grey shaggy dog, and her eyes were full of tears once more because in the moonlight he looked like the ghost of James. He was a little rickety on his legs, but as she drew nearer he suddenly noticed her, stiffened and his tail began sweeping back and forth, almost touching his ears as he broke into a lovely loping canter.

He must be a ghost, he must! But as she ran forward, and he bounded towards her, swifter than eagles, she could see his dark paw prints stretching out behind him in the snow. Then he sank down on his ancient legs, squeaking and pirouetting four times in the moonlight, and, sneezing in excitement, he collapsed at her feet.

Totally immobile for a few seconds, Lucy fell to her knees, hugging him, wailing as she felt the razor sharpness of his ribs and backbone, but all the time his tail beat frenziedly as his long tongue shot out to lick away the waterfall of tears.

‘Oh, James darling, how come you’re in America?’

Wiping her eyes on his fur, Lucy raced up the snowy path in her bare feet with James bounding beside her.

‘It’s a miracle,’ she screamed, ‘someone’s brought in my James. Tell me I’m not dreaming.’

Then she heard a voice, the most heartbreakingly husky voice in the world, saying indignantly, ‘No, I didn’t make myself clear. I want to keep the dog. It is your kennelmaid that I want to rehome.’

‘Tristan,’ croaked Lucy. ‘Oh, Tristan.’

In the doorway to the waiting room her knees gave way, with James’s shaggy body the only thing propping her up. As Tristan came through the other door from the general office, she gave a gasp because snow was melting in his hair as it had been on the first day of filming, and because he was even thinner than James and, under the fluorescent lighting, looked greyer and more ghostly than James had in the moonlight.