it would be to see their daughter, Trixie, tomorrow. He’d missed her terribly since she’d been packed off to boarding school by Carrie, who’d been fed up with him chatting up the day-school mums.
Trixie at thirteen was alarmingly aware of her lethally emerging sex appeal. Like a principal toyboy, she had inherited her mother’s ragged dark hair and her father’s slenderness and delicate features. She was also clever. Alan often left her reading a book in the drawing room at night to find her still there finishing it in the morning.
Carrie was not domesticated. ‘My wife can’t even boil a rabbit,’ Alan was fond of saying. But despite living on hamburgers, crisps and chocolate, Trixie looked surprisingly healthy.
Occasionally the family would be rounded up for photographs for an upmarket newspaper, where Carrie would appear most unusually making marmalade or playing Scrabble with Alan and Trixie.
‘I’m a genius at juggling,’ Carrie would tell reporters.
‘Which consists of tossing Indian clubs around and bashing anyone who steps out of line,’ observed Alan.
Carrie had sent Trixie to Bagley Hall, an independent boarding school only a few miles from the barn at Willowwood. Martin and Romy, on the other hand, were delighted Willowwood was in the catchment area of an extremely good state primary, so they wouldn’t have to fork out.
6
The funeral was gratifyingly well attended. The high street was jammed by black-windowed, chauffeur-driven Astons, Mercs and Rolls-Royces. Eight helicopters landed in the field below the house. Private jets had to land at Bristol airport.
‘If Mother hadn’t been so possessive about her garden we could have had a runway here,’ grumbled Martin.
But he was delighted by the presence of Bart Alderton, whose airline had always used Bancroft engines, Kevin Coley, the pet-food billionaire, Freddie Jones, the electronic maestro, Larry Lockton, who was intending to flog a supermarket, Gareth Llewellyn, who had done property deals with Sampson, racehorse owners Lazlo Henriques and Shade Murchieson, whose horse had just won the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, plus many more who hoped to network and do business before the afternoon was out.
The church was packed. A marquee with a video link catered for the overflow, mostly local geriatrics and Sampson Bancroft employees.
‘Come to see the old bugger’s really dead,’ said Alan.
At the chancel steps a large, very handsome photograph of Sampson was lit up. His loud, commanding voice reverberated round the church, as one of his legendary speeches to the CBI was relayed on a big screen. The service sheet was adorned with a picture of him looking boyish and windswept in his first car.
Halfway up the church a row of pretty carers, who’d tended, read to and flirted with Sampson, sobbed to a counterpoint of keening from Sampson’s mistresses, led by the maîtresse-en-titre and public partner Blanche Osborne, who arrived in designer black and a David Shilling fascinator. Martin, who’d always had the hots for Blanche, found her a seat in the family pew.
‘Just spent three hours in make-up,’ grumbled Sampson’s other mistresses.
All eyes were inevitably drawn to the widow, who looked frozen, and arrived in a dowdy black coat and too summery a black straw Breton. Shopping trips to London, even taking in Chelsea Flower Show, had been ruled out once Etta had started looking after Sampson. She wore little make-up because as she dressed she had kept hearing Sampson’s voice demanding: ‘Why are you putting that muck on your eyes?’
Blanche rose to admit Etta to the family pew, pointedly kissing her rigid cheek, saying loudly: ‘Don’t reproach yourself, it could have happened to Sampy at any time.’
‘She left Daddy alone to die,’ hissed Carrie.
‘For Christ’s sake,’ muttered Alan, who’d been ringing his bookmaker, ‘Sampson left your mother enough during their marriage.’
Carrie had shocked the congregation by rolling up in a white shirt, black tie and dark grey pinstripe Savile Row suit.
‘She should have worn a hat and a skirt for her father’s funeral,’ Blanche whispered to Martin.
Dame Hermione Harefield, the great diva, a close friend of Sampson, was the next to arrive: a Scottish widow in a long black velvet cloak with the hood up. Seeing Blanche ensconced, Hermione insisted on forcing her large bottom into the family pew, so Etta was rammed even closer to Blanche. Hermione’s partner Sexton Kemp, a genial, charming film producer, and Blanche’s husband Basil sat in the row behind.
‘Why the hell did you allow Dad to shred his correspondence?’ Martin chided Etta.
The congregation was getting restless, but the church stilled as Trixie sauntered in. She was wearing a black dress