Score!

‘Cold fish, corroded with moral outrage against the Campbell-Blacks. He’ll never forgive Tab. Sooner she’s out of this marriage the better.’

Tristan was pacing the room, clearly desperate to be left alone with Tab. Leggy and effortlessly elegant, despite his dusty espadrilles and dirty frayed white shorts, he reminded James of a heart-throb admired by his own generation: Gérard Philippe.

‘I know it’s none of my business,’ he drained his brandy, ‘but she’s very vulnerable.’

Having let the doctor out, Tristan noticed a framed photograph on the desk of Isa smugly riding in the winner of last year’s Gold Cup. Parking his green chewing-gum on his rival’s face, he belted back upstairs.

‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’

‘Hot sweet tea!’ mocked Tab. ‘I’d rather have hot sweet Montigny. Please don’t leave me.’

‘I won’t.’

He was touched to see Schiller’s Don Carlos beside Dick Francis on the bedside table.

‘I’m trying to educate myself,’ she muttered.

‘Are you sure you’re not hungry?’

Tab shook her head. ‘Sharon probably is.’

‘I feed her. I give her sheep chops I find in fridge.’

Tab giggled. ‘Flora and Baby call Griselda: Lady Caroline Sheep. I’m sorry I’m holding up your film, but it was so cool you telling Bernard and Rannaldini to fuck off, and leaving three hundred and fifty extras and Dim Hermione all cooling their heels because of me.’

Tristan lay on the bed beside her.

‘Am I squashing you?’

‘Not enough,’ mumbled Tab.

Tristan could feel the faint down of her leg against his. He thought she’d fallen asleep, then her hand crept into his.

‘Are your poor burnt hands agony?’

‘Not when you hold them.’

The smell of wild mint and meadowsweet was drifting in through the window. Outside, wild roses cascaded over dark green trees like a William Morris wallpaper. As Tristan lay up on his side he thought he had been caught up in some time warp. Without her lashes and eyebrows and with her extreme pallor and her hairline temporarily singed back an inch, Tab had become a sixteenth-century beauty, Elisabetta, or even Eboli. Her forehead was as white as the moon, her lashless lids like magnolia petals.

James Benson’s painkillers had begun to kick in. Bending back his hand as though he were drying his nails, because his palm was still very sore, Tristan ran the inside of his wrist up the red chiffon dress, feeling the concave belly, the soft swell of breast, only to be halted by a rock-hard nipple.

As he bent over and kissed her, Tab gave a gasp and kissed him back in ecstasy, breathing in a faint tang of Eau Sauvage, and the mint of his chewing-gum, burying her fingers in his thick silky hair, feeling his big bumpy head, so different from Isa’s, which was as narrow as a weasel’s.

‘I have longed for you,’ murmured Tristan, laying his cheek against hers, ‘ever since I saw you at the traffic-lights in Rutminster drinking vodka, Sharon across your thighs instead of a safety-belt. Straight away I want to be safety-belt that protect you,’ he smiled down at the malevolent little eyes and great gnashing teeth on the pillowcase beside her, ‘even from dinosaurs.’

‘The first time I saw you I thought, Jesus! Although it was probably “Jeshush” because I was so pissed. I asked Lucy as she made me up if she’d seen that fantastically gorgeous man downstairs and she laughed and said yes, but I’d have to give all that up now I was getting married.’

‘Did you marry Isa because you were pregnant?’

‘No,’ confessed Tab, gently pulling fragments of singed hair from his chest. ‘I never do anything because I ought to, so I put you on hold until I galloped round the corner and saw you all ogling that naked bitch Chloe. God, I was cross, but ever since then I’ve looked forward more and more to seeing you on the set. It’s as though you’ve got a halo. You’re the only person I notice.’

‘What about Wolfie?’

‘Sweet, but too straight and he doesn’t have a halo.’

Even though Tristan’s hand was stroking its way very slowly down her body, setting her completely adrift, she had to know.

‘Everyone on the unit spends their time speculating about your sex life,’ she said falteringly. ‘A celibate Frenchman is a contradiction in terms. There must be someone.’

Outside a blackbird was singing, a dog barked in the valley. Sharon barked back.

‘Not any more,’ said Tristan, as his hand now crept up slender thighs, honed by years in the saddle.

‘Please wait!’ begged Tab. ‘There isn’t someone like Isa’s girlfriend in Australia, waiting to rear her hideous head in a month or two? I couldn’t handle it.’

‘Hush.’ As he shut her mouth with his, Tristan’s fingers edged under her knicker elastic into the tightest, stickiest hollow. ‘Oh, ma petite.’

Wriggling out of his arms, Tab leapt out of bed. Like a poppy shedding petals, her red dress slithered to the floor.

Tristan had lost enough weight for her to tug off his shorts without unzipping them. Next moment she was on top of him.

‘Venez inside moi, toute sweet.’