Aware that she was hot and sweaty and her hair was escaping from its towelling band, Perdita greeted them sulkily.

‘We’re going to see over Dancer’s palazzo,’ yelled Seb, ‘and swim in his pool, which is even bigger than Loch Lomond. Why don’t you come over?’

‘I haven’t got a bikini.’

‘That’s the last thing you’ll need. See you later.’

When she got back to the yard, however, Ricky had other ideas.

‘What the fuck were you doing taking out five ponies at once? I’ve just had Miss Lodsworth and the Vicar’s wife on the telephone. If you step out of line once more you’re fired. And don’t think you’re going to turn them out and slope off. I want each pony washed down and all the sweat scraped off. I’m going out to look at a pony, and don’t forget to double-lock Wayne’s door.’

The Jamboree was in full swing. Guides were marching, pow-wowing, flag-waving and singing stirring songs as Dancer showed the twins over a totally transformed Eldercombe Manor. As they progressed through the great hall, which was now a recording studio, and practice rooms and six master bedrooms, with bathrooms and jacuzzis en suite, and an intercom service so Dancer’s retinue could chatter to each other all night, the twins’ whoops of laughter and excitement grew in volume.

‘I want a mistress bedroom,’ said Seb, bouncing on one of the huge double beds.

Outside they admired a pink brick yard for twenty ponies, which looked like three sides of a Battenburg cake, and an indoor school, completely walled with bulletproof mirrors.

‘Bas said it looked like a tart’s bedroom,’ said Dancer cheerfully.

‘He’s seen enough of them,’ said Dommie. ‘How the hell did you get planning permission?’

‘Bas and I gave a little drinks party for all the local planning committee. An’ greased their palms so liberally their glasses kept sliding out of their ’ands.’

‘And there were German Shepherds abiding in the fields,’ said Seb, keeping a close hold on Decorum, his bull terrier, as Twinkie the security guard prowled past with an Alsatian. ‘But this is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.’

‘It will be when my ponies arrive next week,’ said Dancer cosily.

Soon the twins and their brunettes and various glamorous hangers-on were all stripped off round the pool. Miss Lodsworth, exhorting her guides to greater endeavour in this modern world, was having great difficulty making herself heard over the din of Dancer’s group, who were warming up in the recording studio.

Seb, standing on the top board with binoculars, was peering into Miss Lodsworth’s garden in excitement.

‘That blonde one looks very prepared to me. Lend a hand, darling,’ he shouted. ‘Isn’t that what girl guides are supposed to do?’

‘I wish someone would lend me a farm hand,’ said Dancer’s interior designer sulkily. ‘Wilhelm won’t speak to me since I chucked his Filofax in the jacuzzi. He’s nice,’ he added, as one of Dancer’s workmen went past wielding his JCB like Ben Hur.

‘Now they’re doing semaphore,’ said Seb. ‘Get me a goal flag, Dancer, then I can signal, “Do you screw?” to that blonde.’

‘She’ll tie a clove hitch in your willy if you’re not careful,’ said Dommie.

‘Then it’ll be a guided missile!’ Collapsing off the diving board with laughter at his own joke, Seb just managed to keep the binoculars above the water level.

Meanwhile over in Snow Cottage, Daisy Macleod, trying to fill up her painting jar, found there was no water in the tap. In the house above her, Philippa Mannering, who wanted to wash her hair before the dinner party to which Ricky had refused to come yet again, found not only no water in the tap but that the washing-up machine had stopped in mid-cycle. Over at Robinsgrove, finding no water to hose down the ponies, Perdita put them in their boxes and, having given them their hay nets and filled up the water buckets from the water trough, raced off to Dancer’s for a swim.

Wayne, Ricky’s favourite pony, had such a low threshold of boredom that he had a special manger hooked over the half-door so he could eat and miss nothing in the yard at the same time. The yard escapologist, he had been known to turn on taps and flood the yard and, even worse, let other ponies out of their boxes when he got bored. At matches he had to be watched like a hawk in case he wriggled out of his headcollar, and set off for the tea tent, where his doleful yellow face and black-ringed eyes could coax sandwiches and cake out of the most stony-hearted waitress. Left to his own vices, deserted even by his friend Little Chef, who’d gone with Ricky, Wayne started to fiddle with the bolt.

At the Jamboree it was time for tea. The Marmite and plum jam sandwiches were already curling on the trestle table under the walnut tree. The guides were hot and thirsty, but as Miss Lodsworth went to the kitchen tap for water to fill up the jugs of concentrated lemon squash, only a trickle came out of the tap.

‘Please, Miss Lodsworth,’ said a pink-faced Pack Leader, ‘the upstairs toilet isn’t flushing.’

‘Nor’s the downstairs,’ said her friend.

Looking out across Dancer’s emerging polo fields, Miss Lodsworth first thought how beautiful as a huge fountain of water gushed a hundred feet into the air, throwing up rainbow lights in the sunshine against the yellowing trees.

Picking up the telephone, she was on to Dancer in a trice.

‘D’you realize,’ she spluttered, ‘that your bulldozers have gone slap through the chief water main? The whole village will be cut off, and my guides have nothing to drink.’ She couldn’t mention the question of lavatories to Dancer.

Round the pool they were all having hysterics as Dancer tried to calm her down.

‘I’ll get on to the emergency services immediately. Of course they work on a Saturday. An’ if it gets too bad, your little girls can come and drink out of the swimming-pool. And we’ve got plenty of Bourbon if you’re pushed.’

He had to hold the telephone away from his ear.

An hour later Perdita sidled into the yard with wet hair to be confronted by Frances quivering with ecstatic disapproval.

‘Why the hell didn’t you bother to dry off the ponies?’

‘I just nipped over to Dancer’s for a swim.’

‘Can’t keep away from the boys, can you? Did you turn Wayne out?’

‘No. Yes, I must have done.’ Perdita always blinked when she was lying. ‘Oh Christ, he must be in one of the paddocks or the garden.’

‘He isn’t, I’ve looked,’ sneered Frances. ‘Thank God Ricky’ll come to his senses and sack you now.’

‘Oh, please don’t tell him,’ pleaded Perdita. She hadn’t realized quite how much Frances detested her.

‘You stay here.’ Frances handed her Hermia’s lead rope. ‘I’ll take my car and go and look for him.’

‘I’ll go,’ sobbed Perdita, and, leaping on to Hermia’s back, she clattered off down the drive.

Perdita couldn’t get any sense out of the gaudy retinue round Dancer’s pool. They were all drunk or stoned.

‘Wayne’s gone missing,’ she screamed. ‘Please someone come and help me look for him.’

‘Probably gone to the Jamboree,’ said Dommie, looking up from his brunette. ‘Miss Lodsworth’ll be teaching him how to untie clove hitches.’

‘Don’t be so fucking flip.’

Pulling on a pair of Garfield boxer shorts, grumbling Dommie tiptoed barefoot across the gravel out to his Lotus.

‘You go west, I’ll go north.’

‘Have you seen a yellow pony with a white face? Have you seen a yellow pony with a white face?’ Getting more and more desperate, Perdita stopped at every house and scoured every field. Ricky would go apeshit if anything happened to Wayne. Then, as she entered Eldercombe Village, she saw a pile of droppings in the middle of the road.

‘Looking for a pony?’ said an old man. ‘He went into that garden.’

Perdita went as green as the guides’ unconsumed lemon squash. For there in the gateway, framed in an arch of clematis as purple as her face, stood Miss Lodsworth. She’d had to buy all her guides Coca Cola from guiding funds, and send them home early in a hired bus in case they electrocuted themselves storming the gates of Eldercombe Manor in search of Dancer. She would be eating Marmite sandwiches and rock buns for months.

‘Dancer Maitland has wrecked my Jamboree,’ roared Miss Lodsworth. ‘Your pony has wrecked my garden. He’s trampled on my alstroemerias and my dahlias, kicked out my cucumber frame and broken down the fence into the orchard.’

‘I’m terribly sorry. I’ll pay,’ begged Perdita. ‘Please don’t ring Ricky.’

‘I’m going to ring my solicitor.’

Wayne was enchanted to see Hermia and Perdita, and gave the appearance of having been searching for them all day. As she only had one lead rope, Perdita had to walk both ponies the mile and a half back to Robinsgrove. At the bottom of the drive, Wayne started to totter, and his yellow belly gave such a thunderous rumble, he started looking round at it in surprise and reproach.

Oh God, colic, thought Perdita; perhaps he’s eaten something he shouldn’t, I must get him home.

Halfway up the drive, Wayne started pawing his belly and rolling the whites of his eyes. Soon he was cannoning off lime trees and, as they passed the second gates, crashed into the left-hand gatepost. By the time he had staggered into the yard he could hardly stand up, hitting the ancient, mossy mounting block and tripping over one of the green tubs filled with white geraniums, as Little Chef came bounding out to lick him on the nose.

Perdita had never known Ricky so angry. Taking one look at the swaying Wayne, he yelled at Frances to ring Phil Bagley, the vet.