the table and getting Poppy and Drummond supper and into their pyjamas.
‘Mummy and Daddy’s job is to make money for poor people,’ explained Poppy. ‘Your job, Granny, is to tidy up.’
Etta had great difficulty preventing Drummond eating all the toffee roulade layered with white chocolate mousse.
‘They’ll need an ox to feed Jude the Obese,’ said Trixie, who was studying the seating plan drawn up by Romy, in order to put the place names on Etta’s lovely gold-leaf dinner plates.
‘Listen to these ghastly CVs. “Seth Bainton: a most talented and fascinating actor. Bonny Richards: who could have expected someone so gifted and beautiful could be so nice? Ditto Blanche Osborne, very close friend of Sampson Bancroft.” Yuckarama, sorry, Granny. “Judy Tobias, charismatic director of Tobias Inc., married to our most successful trainer.” That is seriously repulsive.’
Trixie poured herself a large vodka and tonic.
‘Romy’s put Seth on her right, greedy bitch, and poor sweet Valent on her left and Jude on his left – she’ll need the whole side of a table – then Martin next to Blanche with toxic Bonny on his left, and even more toxic Harvey-Holden next to her and Blanche next to Harvey-Holden. What a cosy little eightsome.’
Trixie shoved her cigarette in the bin and downed her vodka as Romy swanned in wearing a red dressing gown, hot and scented from the shower, hair in rollers.
‘How many times do I have to tell you to put the dishwasher on eco setting?’ she snapped. ‘Absolutely maddening, Corinna’s decided to come after all. So you’ll have to re-lay the table, Mother. I’m not a stickler for even numbers but she might have let us know before. We’ll have to shift everyone around and put her between Harvey-Holden and Jude. If you roll up that late, you can’t expect a chap on either side. Better add “our greatest Shakespearean actress” to her place card, or she’ll act up. I don’t know how Seth puts up with her.
‘After you’ve readjusted the placement and got the kids into their pyjamas and banked up the fire, Mother, you might as well push off. Must go and get ready, Blanche will be here in a mo.’
Trixie and Etta looked at each other. Trixie poured herself another vodka.
No doubt Blanche, with her £50,000 annuity from Sampson, will have bought something sensational to wow Seth and Valent, thought Etta.
Trixie read her grandmother’s mind. ‘I’ll put arsenic in her pudding.’
‘What are you going to wear?’ asked Etta.
‘A fuck-off dress,’ said Trixie. ‘That table looks gorgeous, so do the flowers.’
Blanche, having been told by Romy that there were some fascinating men coming and wanting everyone to understand exactly why Sampson had adored her and preferred her to Etta, looked stunning. She wore crimson taffeta with transparent trumpet sleeves and a nipped-in waist to glorify a total lack of spare tyre. Sampson’s huge rubies glowed at her neck. Below her collarbone was also pinned a ruby brooch in the shape of a geranium.
Bonny, even slenderer, looked deceptively demure in a little bleak dress in ivy-green silk, high-necked, but slit to her groin to ensnare Valent, Seth, Martin and the devilish Harvey-Holden, who, like her, was accused of shacking up for money.
Romy, in a fuchsia shift worn off one polished brown shoulder to show that she had no need of a bra, was looking as voluptuous as Bonny looked fragile. She was determined to charm a massive donation out of Valent and captivate Seth, who was troubling her dreams.
Sampson’s portrait looked arrogantly down from the twenty-foot high white wall as if to say, ‘I could have the lot of them.’
It was a bitterly cold night but a huge log fire crackled and flickered, bringing colour to everyone’s cheeks. Trixie hadn’t arrived so Martin was forced to open bottles. Jude seemed to have grown even larger like a children’s story: the hippo who came to tea.
Urged by her parents, Poppy sat down at the piano and played a Beethoven minuet, irritating the hell out of Blanche and Bonny, who had to shut up. A lot of wrong notes resulted because Poppy couldn’t take her eyes off Jude.
‘Are you having twelve babies like that lady in America?’ she asked the moment she’d finished.
Drummond then rode his new bike round the room over the corns of Harvey-Holden, who for a second looked sufficiently convulsed with hatred to throttle him.
A diversion was created by Valent’s arrival. He had been to see Marius