Score!

James spat out the white truffle.

‘Bloody chippies,’ exploded Lucy.

Meredith’s carpenters, building a cathedral for the auto da fe and banging away all morning, had given her a blinding headache.

She was so cross she gave Hermione a parsnip yellow complexion, ageing grey shading, hideous violet eye shadow and a wonky lip-line. Hermione was so busy reading about her health in the Daily Mail that she didn’t notice.

Tristan did, however, and remonstrated sharply with Lucy.

‘Well, if she was about to give Carlos the push and she loved him to bits, she would look grotty,’ shouted back Lucy.

‘Ma petite.’ Tristan looked at her in amazement. ‘This is first time I see you angry. You are so sweet,’ and he ruffled her hair.

‘Patronizing bastard,’ muttered Lucy.

She was so fed up that she knocked back nearly a bottle of white at lunchtime, and stuck Colin Milton’s bald wig on back to front. Colin was so taken by the sight of himself with a youthful fringe of grey curls nestling on his eyebrows that he would happily have let it stay. Tristan, however, went ballistic, and yelled at Lucy to stop taking the piss.

31

The auto da fe, which means Act of Faith, is one of the most terrifying scenes in all opera. Heretics in dunces’ caps are paraded through the streets by their executioners and followed by sinister black-cowled monks who, with the courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, take up their seats round the funeral pyre.

A newly crowned Philip comes out of the cathedral and repeats his coronation oath to defend the faith. The scene ends with his dreadful words, ‘And now on with the festivities!’ The masses are then entertained not by fireworks but by the heretics being burnt at the stake.

Lasting twenty minutes in the opera, even Tristan’s pared-down version took eight gruelling days to shoot. The harrowing nature of the subject exacerbated Rannaldini’s sadism. Meredith and his chippies had only just completed their ravishing cathedral façade, looking on to the east courtyard, when Rannaldini swept in on the first day of shooting and pronounced it utterly suburban: ‘Just like a Weybridge hacienda. Are we going to have chiming doorbells, celebrating the burning of the heretics?’

Meredith promptly burst into tears. It took all Tristan’s tact to stop him resigning. Lucy had visions of being asked to streak Meredith’s hair for yet another dinner at the Heavenly Host. Fortunately Sexton rocked up and told Meredith he thought the cathedral was just beautiful.

‘And he ought to know,’ whispered Hermione reverently. ‘Sexton did go to Eton.’

Hermione was also delighted that, after weeks of work, Griselda and Rozzy had finally sewn the last seed pearl on her ivory satin dress. Her first appearance wearing it that afternoon caused gasps of wonder and genuine applause from the crew.

A second later Rannaldini had erupted on to the set, and everyone glanced at the sky in excitement. Then, to their horror, they realized that what they had imagined as the patter of rain was the scattering of thousands of pearls, as Rannaldini ripped off the dress, and stamped it into the dust with his suede boots. Hermione, in her petticoat, screamed and screamed. Oscar crossed himself. It was like seeing a Velazquez slashed in the Prado. Tristan grabbed Rannaldini in white-hot fury.

‘What the fuck are you doing? That was the most beautiful dress I ever see.’

‘Elisabetta must wear scarlet,’ yelled back Rannaldini.

‘At her husband’s coronation?’

‘To symbolize in Philip’s crazy mind she has been unfaithful.’

‘All those pearls, all those pearls,’ whispered Rozzy, who’d done nearly all the work.

A devastated, hysterically sobbing Griselda had to be carried off the set by a buckling Lucy and Simone. Everyone was outraged. They loved Griselda: indefatigable, gossipy old trout. They knew she was good. The crew would have walked out if Rannaldini hadn’t built massive penalty clauses into all their contracts. Instead they went slow, with Oscar waking up to relight every ten minutes.

All the crew were putting in impossibly long hours, but no-one more so than Wolfie. Once again, his greatest headache was stopping Pushy Galore appearing in everything. Having waved a flag as a member of the hoi-polloi and simpered as a lady-in-waiting, Pushy was determined to star as a heretic, and was utterly incensed when Tristan chucked her out.

‘You wait till Ay tell Sir Roberto.’

Fortunately Rannaldini had flown off to Vienna and was not expected back until the evening. Pushy was even crosser when Tristan chose Tab instead. She would look so touching, a dunce’s cap on her blonde head, her deadpan face smudged. Tab was terribly excited; Wolfie less so. Supervising the filling of petrol cans with water, he couldn’t bear the thought of her beautiful body being torched.