Score!

Aware she had a French crew, Maria the caterer, a pretty, pregnant Italian, was on her mettle and had produced baked red snapper with aromatic Chinese sauce, steak and kidney pie, sautéed garlic potatoes, a vegetable stir-fry for Lucy, followed by rhubarb crumble or treacle pudding.

Everyone piled up their plates and charged the dining bus, where Tristan, because of the cold and it being the first day, had ordered bottles of wine for every table.

‘How the hell are you going to put up with Hermione?’ asked Oscar, as he tied his napkin round his neck to protect his purple scarf.

‘Divas are not fully balanced human beings,’ said Tristan dropping three Disprins into a glass of Perrier. ‘If they were they wouldn’t be great.’

After lunch the rows escalated.

‘What is my motivation for this scene?’ Hermione asked Tristan for the thousandth time.

‘You are cold, exhausted and lost in a huge forest,’ said Tristan, through gritted teeth. ‘Suddenly Carlos steps out from behind that tree and offers you his protection.’

‘If I’ve just come off a plane, surely I’d offer her a slug of duty-free,’ said Baby helpfully.

‘Will you stop taking the pees?’ Tristan’s voice rose. ‘As I was saying, Hermione, you’re lost in a wood.’

‘“Just a little lamb who’s lost in a wood,”’ sang Hermione, fortissimo, then went into peals of laughter as everyone jumped out of their skins.

‘Don’t you wish that pistol was loaded?’ murmured Baby to Flora.

‘I feel like Agent Scully. At least we’ve got the same-coloured hair,’ whispered back Flora, who was very excited by her gun, which was a Heckler-Koch ‘toy’, as used by the SAS.

She was feeling spooked, however, because Rannaldini had nastily insisted she take off not just her regard ring but also her sapphire engagement ring.

‘It ees almost beeger than the evening star, and much too camp for a detective,’ he sneered. ‘Why not lend it to Baby?’

‘Look mean, Flora, chérie,’ shouted Tristan, ‘and when you see Carlos, shield Hermione and point your gun straight into camera.’

‘Stand by to shoot, please,’ bellowed Bernard.

Everyone moved out of shot.

‘Here we go, let’s turn over.’

And poor Flora was into a rat race. If she sang loud enough to have the right facial movements, the sound was too loud for her to hear the playback and she got out of synch. Alas, the promised voice coach had been sacked even before he’d started. Instead, to help her sing in time, and come in at the right moment, the video of Rannaldini conducting the score was now being relayed on a huge monitor behind the crew. This made her even more nervous.

She kept fluffing her lines, let alone remembering to look mean and shoot into the camera. Nor was she helped by planes going over, Griselda charging up to smooth her riding coat over the bulge of her gun, Lucy racing in to tone down her red nose with green face powder, Simone telling her to do up her top button, or Rannaldini continually shouting.

‘I don’t like hecklers, even if they do have cocks,’ she muttered dolefully. Then, just as she got things right, her mobile rang.

‘Oh, George,’ Flora burst into tears, ‘I’m a lousy actress, but I can’t talk now. I’ll ring you back. I’m sorry, everyone.’

Rannaldini went berserk. ‘Are you going to take this thing seriously?’ he yelled, grabbing her mobile. ‘Because eef not Gloria knows Tebaldo’s words and is only too ’appy to take over.’

‘Leave her alone,’ shouted Baby, who’d been crunching clove after clove of garlic in anticipation of his clinch with Dame Hermione.

There was a red glow on the horizon. The third lot of snow needed topping up, the day was running away. Blown like a dry leaf by everyone’s arguments, Flora leant against a tree, got lichen on her breeches and bollocked by Griselda.

‘Everyone hates me,’ she muttered miserably.

‘I don’t,’ said Sylvestre, who could hear her through the mike.

‘I don’t,’ said Rozzy Pringle, the former singer of Flora’s part, whose voice had broken down in the recording, and who’d just arrived to help in Wardrobe. Putting a little stone hot-water bottle into one of Flora’s blue frozen hands and a mug of hot Ribena into the other, she whispered, ‘You look chilled to the marrow, poor little duck.’

‘Oh, Rozzy, how lovely to see you.’

‘And you. Don’t cry, darling, your make-up will run.’

‘Ooh, that looks nice,’ called Hermione. ‘I’d like some hot Ribena too. Go and fetch me some, Wolfgang.’

Which made Wolfie hate Flora more than ever, particularly when he met Helen panting up the hill going the other way. ‘George Hungerford’s just called the house. He can’t get through. Can you tell Flora to switch on her mobile? He says it’s urgent.’

‘I’m not having any of those thoogs bullying you,’ were George’s first words, as Flora rang him on Bernard’s mobile.

‘Flora,’ snarled Wolfie, ‘are you going to hold us up all night?’

He wants to kill me, thought Flora. Even with a hundred people milling around, he terrified her.