service just arrived. The good news is my agent’s just emailed me that there’s big interest in you playing Gwendolyn.’
‘Gwendolyn Framlingham – over my dead body,’ shrieked Bonny, remembering Cindy’s dismissive remarks about her boobs. ‘I wouldn’t work with those two.’
‘Wilde’s Gwendolyn, dumb-dumb, for the BBC. They want me to play Jack Worthing and, wait for it, they’re going to offer Corinna Lady Bracknell. See you.’
Etta lay on her bed giggling hysterically.
‘Our revels now are ended,’ she read on the wall above, ‘These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air.’
So no one had got off with anyone.
Room service then arrived with an enormous breakfast of bacon, sausages, tomatoes, fried bread, two fried eggs, mushrooms, orange juice, croissants and apricot jam.
Etta rang Miss Painswick.
‘Joyce, I’ve been sent a huge breakfast by mistake, please come and share it with me and have a post mortem.’
‘Mr Pocock rang and asked if I’d like a nightcap,’ said Miss Painswick smugly as she accepted another mushroom. ‘Must have been tiddly but I said no because I’d got my curlers in. Who d’you think got off with who?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Etta, spreading marmalade on a piece of fried bread, ‘but the Vicar, Seth, Alan and the Major (yes) rang me and begged me to confirm that they’d spent half the night drinking in my room, which they certainly had not.’
Flattering in a way, she mused, that they’d turned to her, yet rather unflattering was the assumption that if they had been with her, their other halves would assume nothing could possibly have occurred.
‘Shall we take the sausages back to Priceless,’ she said, ‘and the rest of the croissants for Pavarobin and the bird table?’
95
Amber hurtled down to Throstledown in a red mist – road rage, Rogue rage. Why was she so devastated? Was it because underneath she believed, despite Rogue’s scores of women, that a special spark flickered between them that, if allowed, would flare into a conflagration? Or was it, more shamingly, jealousy? Bonny was stunning and made no secret of her dislike of Amber. Rogue had always said how silly Bonny was, but silliness, when allied to beauty, never deterred men. And why wasn’t she jealous of poor victimized Trixie?
Pink aeroplane trails were playing noughts and crosses with the departing stars and a rosy glow in the east echoed her red mist as she stormed up Marius’s drive.
In the yard Mrs Wilkinson was banging her food bowl against the wall – winners deserve breakfast. Chisolm, hooves up on the stable door, bleated hello. From Sir Cuthbert’s box she could hear singing.
‘Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar,
When he was hast’ning home from the war.’
Rafiq often sang the Crusader’s song with which she had first taunted him. As he emerged, she noticed the black smudges beneath his bloodshot eyes and how drawn he looked, having done all the hard work last night while she partied. Them and us. But his face lit up when he saw her.
‘Singing from Stratford hither I come,
Rafiq Khan, Rafiq Khan, welcome me home,’
sang Amber.
This is reality, she thought, the way Rafiq trembled as he kissed her, so tentatively and then so passionately.
An equally exhausted Tommy, looking rough and pug-like as she came out of History Painting’s box, shot back in again, burying her face in his big, dark brown shoulder while he nudged her sympathetically and repeatedly. He was such a kind horse. They both jumped as Amber’s voice said, ‘Wake up, you two. Can you walk him up to see if he’s sound? You’ll never guess what: Marius says I can ride him at Wincanton next week.’
Amber schooled History Painting several times in the following days, impressed by how beautifully and carefully he jumped for a big horse. Concentrating on the race ahead, she tried to forget Rogue. But when she rang up Marius to confirm the ride, he denied all knowledge of giving it to her.
‘D’you honestly think I’d put you up on my best horse? Rogue’s riding him.’
‘But you promised at Stratford, you promised.’
‘You must have heard wrong.’
‘I did not. You must have been too bloody drunk to remember.’
‘If you don’t learn some bloody manners, you won’t even ride Mrs Wilkinson again, so shut up,’ howled Marius and hung up on her.
Such was her rage, though aware she was treating with the enemy, Amber texted Shade Murchieson. She hoped Olivia wasn’t peering over his shoulder, remembering that the last time they’d met he’d offered her a ride for a