‘Aye,’ said Dixie. ‘She stopped at his place long enough.’

‘Who’s the boy with dark red hair? Pretty as a picture, never takes his eyes off her.’

‘That’s Marcus Campbell-Black,’ said the Steel Elf warmly. ‘He’s lovely looking.’

‘That explains it,’ said Dixie. ‘Must be picking up her bills.’

‘Not after this evening,’ said Viking.

The musical press, determined to refute Strauss’s unflattering portrait of critics, were falling over themselves to praise both Abby’s conducting and her newly reissued records, which they’d mostly slagged off in the past as being over-emotional and teetering on sentimentality.

Now, as they poured double cream over their chocolate roulade, they were bracketing her with Jacqueline du Pré, praising her passion, her lyricism, her wondrous lack of inhibition.

Furious to be out-cleavaged by Anthea, every valley should not be exalted, Hermione had tonight done up two buttons of her yellow Chanel suit. In her pocket, however, was a promising note from Rannaldini:


Carissima,

Our love was too important to be ruined by marriage. I needed another Kitty to run my life and free me to embrace you again.

Rannaldini was little Cosmo’s father, reflected Hermione, perhaps she should forgive him. Fortunately Abby hadn’t seen the Lynda Lee-Potter piece and, in a mood of euphoria, kissed Hermione on both cheeks, and allowed them both to be photographed arm in arm by Hello!.

This didn’t stop Hermione telling the Telegraph how much she admired the RSO for giving amateurs a chance to conduct.

‘It was the same when Edward Heath did Cockaigne with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. They were so supportive to him, and ordinary folk in the audience loved feeling they could have got up and done the same thing. Music should be brought to the people, my next open-air concert… By the way d’you happen to know the name of the First Horn?’

‘OK, darling,’ shouted Rodney, teetering on a sofa to see over Abby’s ring of admirers, ‘just off to look at the conservatory.’ Climbing down, he linked arms with a voluptuous brunette wearing a lot of fuchsia-pink lipstick.

On their way, they had to go through Lord Leatherhead’s office, where, on another sofa, Rodney noticed his Third Trumpet, pleasuring a blonde, and, patting him on his broad, bobbing Glaswegian bottom, called out: ‘Keep to the left, keep to the left, you never know who you may meet coming the other way.’ Then, bending down to ascertain the identity of the blonde, added, ‘Hallo, Anthea darling, so glad my boys are taking care of you.’

‘Patrick Leatherhead ought to put some of your brass section in his wildlife park,’ said the brunette as she and Rodney reached the conservatory.

Terrified of being interrogated about his mother’s marriage by Dame Edith, Lady Baddingham, the Press or, even worse, Hermione, Marcus lurked behind a huge bamboo plant expecting the Viet Cong to attack at any moment. Peering through the leaves, he could see Abby still surrounded by admirers, the ringed moon before bad weather again. He was agonizingly aware of his own desperate poverty and Abby’s leap back to fame. She would vanish from his life now.

‘Hallo, darling boy.’ It was Rodney, wiping off fuchsia-pink lipstick. ‘Hasn’t Abby done well?’

‘Marvellously.’

‘Been a bit like rescuing a blackbird with a broken wing,’ observed Rodney. ‘However fond you get of the thing as you nurse it back to health, you’ve got to set it free, and just hope it survives and comes back.’

Marcus gave a start. The old buffer was more perceptive than he’d thought.

‘I’m away for ten days,’ added Rodney. ‘But give me a ring when I get back and come and play for me. Must go and have a word with darling Norma Major.’

Abby was dying on her feet, drunk, because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast, running only on adrenalin. The good thing about fame was you never talked to yourself at parties, the bad thing was you tended only to talk to the people who wanted to boast they’d met you, the interesting ones were usually too shy.

Peggy Parker, a non-executive director of the RSO and chairman of Parker and Parker in the High Street, had wanted to meet Abby all evening.

‘Ay must thank ye-ou, Abigail for a most enjoyable concert. Your outfit was spot-on, very tasteful and understated as befitted the occasion.’

Clad in thousands of silver sequins, weighed down by make-up, fat-nosed, little-eyed, Mrs Parker looked like a hippo who’d spent an afternoon at Estée Lauder. Pinioning Abby against a suit of armour, similar to the corsets which somehow induced curves in her massive bulk, she launched into the offensive.

‘But next time you return to Rutminster, Abigail, I hope you will feature one of our evening ge-owns on the podium. Ay even thought of creatin’ a new colour for you, a light cerise, called Podium Pink. Ay can see you in cerise.’

And I’ll see you in hell, thought Abby, fingering her silver garlic.

She felt boarded up, like the Canterville Ghost. Behind Mrs Parker, Howie was hopping from foot to foot, desperate to whisk her off to impress someone else. She would have liked to talk to the First Flute, Peter Plumpton, who had played so exquisitely in the slow movement of the Tchaikovsky, or to have picked over the concert with Hugo. But Hugo was a political animal and having chatted up all the record producers, was now deeply engrossed with Dame Edith. Anyway Abby really only wanted to talk to Viking. She could see his blond head against the peacock-blue wallpaper, but he had been besieged as she had all evening, and she was leaving first thing in the morning. And oh hell, Hugo had shaken off Dame Edith and was moving in on the left.

Then, miraculously, as if magnetized by her longing, Viking looked round, stared for a fraction longer than was polite, and then smiled. Abby felt her exhaustion and depression vanish as her cramp had during the concert. Almost imperceptibly Viking jerked his head towards a door on the right marked ‘Private’.

‘Must go to the bathroom,’ mumbled Abby. ‘Great to meet you, Mrs Parker.’

She found Viking in a library, reading a book on fly fishing, Mr Nugent stretched out on a dark green damask sofa behind him.

‘Well done,’ he said softly. ‘That’s one concert I’d have done for nothing,’ which is the greatest compliment a musician can pay.

Abby flushed. ‘You were terrific, too.’

Viking noticed how tired she looked, but how the clinging gold body-stocking brought out the blazing yellow of her eyes, and how enticingly it clung to her breasts and flat midriff, and how his hand itched to follow it inside the black leather trousers down between her legs.

‘Nigel Dempster just told me you don’t want to be regarded as a woman,’ he said mockingly.

‘Not if it means the Press only concentrating on my sex life.’

‘Sure, sure. What happened just before the love duet?’

‘Cramp, my stick hand gave out.’

Viking picked it up idly, shooting a thousand volts through her.

‘Poor little hand, probably jealous of all the attention the left one’s been getting. I’ve got a mentally handicapped sister in Doblin. She’s otterly gorgeous, but everyone makes such a foss of her, her brothers and sisters sometimes feel very neglected.’

He picked up Abby’s other hand, subtly drawing her nearer as he examined the scar.

‘How’s this one coming on?’

‘I don’t know,’ Abby snatched both hands away. ‘I can’t talk about it.’ Although she wanted to terribly.

‘Mosst have been hell watching Hugo,’ said Viking gently.

‘Hell,’ confessed Abby. ‘His technique’s to die for and he has a beautiful sound, OK? But he lacks drama, right? I kept thinking how outrageously I’d have acted up at the beginning, and then how passionately and tenderly I’d have abdicated at the end.’

‘Abby-dicated,’ murmured Viking.

Embarrassed, close to tears, she glanced up at him, noticing the dark blur of beard on the hard, lean jaw, the big laughing lips, slightly reddened and bruised from having been pressed so long against his mouthpiece (oh lucky, lucky mouthpiece), the wide nostrils of his snub nose, the fan of dark gold eyelashes, above the long, speculative eyes that were slowly searching her face.

‘Oh yes, sweetheart,’ he said softly.

Abby jumped as Mr Nugent shot off the sofa and out of the door.

‘Where’s he gone?’

‘Must’ve heard your heart beating. Nugent’s terrified of thunder.’

‘It wasn’t!’ said Abby confused and indignant. ‘How can you assume? That’s ridiculous.’ Panic made her ungracious. ‘Anyway, they say you’re just a stud.’

‘Sure, that’s why I’m stoddying you.’

He had such an untroubled smile, so utterly confident of approval. Abby wondered if the silver locket round his neck contained a picture of Juno.

‘Bad luck getting trapped by Mrs Parker,’ said Viking. ‘She puts such a strain on her corsets. Blue and I thought of getting up a petition to Save the Whalebone.’

Abby laughed, relieved yet disappointed at the shift in subject. ‘Must be kinda fun playing for the RSO,’ she said, hearing tarzan howls coming from next door.

‘Kinda,’ Viking mimicked her. ‘You don’t earn any money. The difference is if you’re a bank manager and you’re caught holding hands with a cosstomer, you’re fired. Here, if the Second Bassoon is caught bonking a fifteen year old in the H.P. car-park-’

‘Or the instrument room,’ said Abby drily.

‘Or the instrument room indeed. Rodney will just say, “Which car? Where is she? I want part of the action.”’