‘Do you find politics as satisfying as show-jumping?’

‘Of course not, but it has its compensations.’

‘What are they?’

‘The Olympic Fund has just passed four million and we’ve still got eighteen months to go. Soccer violence is down by seventy per cent. Comprehensive schools are gradually upping competitive sport and’ — Rupert grinned nastily — ‘England trounced Ireland at rugger last Saturday.’

Gerald, sipping Perrier in the board room, winced. That was a cheap point. Rupert shouldn’t have made it.

‘The Government makes two hundred million pounds a year from tax on football pools,’ accused Declan, ‘and yet you’re asking the clubs to spend two million this year tightening up their security to reduce football violence. Why don’t you give them some help?’

‘With footballers earning one hundred thousand pounds a year and stars like Garry Lineker changing hands for over a million I think the football clubs can put their own houses in order.’

‘Some people feel you’re taking a strong line on soccer violence because it’s electorally attractive.’

‘Do they?’ said Rupert politely.

Shit, thought Declan, I walked right into that one.

Rupert relented: ‘Just because something is electorally attractive, doesn’t make it wrong. I want to clean up the terraces and make them safe places for fathers to take their families again — or the game’ll be drained of its support and future talent.’

Declan changed tack: ‘I see from the evening paper that you’re backing the British Lions tour of South Africa, thereby giving your blessing to a corrupt and evil regime.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Rupert, wondering if the PM was listening. ‘Sport’s outside politics. Athletes are so briefly at their peak, they should be allowed to compete where and against whom they like. It’s bloody easy to have principles when you’re not making the sacrifices.’

And so the programme went on, with nice bitchy repartee flashing back and forth, but on the whole Rupert deflected Declan’s needling easily.

Then Declan said: ‘You’ve been described as the Prime Minister’s blue-eyed boy.’

‘Boy’s pushing it. I’m thirty-seven,’ said Rupert, ‘but as I’ve got blue eyes, I don’t see how I could be anything else.’

‘She seems to prefer good-looking men.’

‘She’d need her head examined if she didn’t,’ said Rupert coldly. ‘Do you prefer dogs yourself?’

‘You’ve always got on well with women,’ said Declan. ‘Wasn’t it Amanda Hamilton — ’ a large glamorous picture of the Foreign Secretary’s wife appeared on the screen — ‘who drew you into politics?’

‘And her husband Rollo,’ said Rupert quickly. ‘They both encouraged me.’

Despite repeated probing from Declan, Rupert refused to give an inch on the subject of Amanda Hamilton.

‘It was Mrs Hamilton,’ said Declan pointedly, ‘who drove you down to your first meeting with your constituency. Do you find a conflict between your ministerial and constituency duties?’

‘Of course,’ snapped Rupert. ‘I don’t have enough time to devote to my constituency. They come first; they’re the people who voted me in. I’ve lived in the area all my life, and I don’t want a bloody great motorway half a mile from Penscombe any more than they do.’

Gerald put his head in his hands.

Tony, purring with pleasure, was pacing up and down the board-room carpet. ‘Rupert is beginning to lose his temper,’ he said softly.

I can’t help it, thought Sarah, I still love him.

‘Was it merely lust for power that drove you into politics?’ asked Declan dismissively.

‘It certainly wasn’t the money, or the free time,’ snapped Rupert. ‘Most ministers are hopelessly overworked. The civil service want control and pile work on to keep us quiet. Sometimes you get home at three in the morning after a session in the House, then still have to go through your box. That’s when the trouble starts. You’re so zonked you OK a nuclear power station in your constituency and six months later you realize to your horror what you’ve done. I’m very lucky. I have an exceptional private secretary in Gerald Middleton. He does all my donkey work, and wraps my knuckles if I go too far. I’m also lucky,’ went on Rupert, yawning ostentatiously, ‘because on the circuit I learnt to grab sleep at any time.’

‘With anyone?’ said Declan. He was taunting Rupert now.

‘No,’ drawled Rupert. ‘I’ve always been selective.’

‘That’s not what your press cuttings say.’

A still of Samantha Freebody, the starlet who’d told all about sleeping with Rupert while he was married, appeared on the screen, followed by a succession of beauties including Amanda Hamilton’s daughter, Georgina, Beattie Johnson and Nathalie Perrault.

‘Coming to 2. We must catch Rupert’s reaction after this lot,’ said Cameron. ‘Take 2.’

But Rupert’s face was expressionless.

Declan picked up a cutting from the table: ‘One Gloucestershire peer has described you as “rather a nasty virus, that everyone’s wife caught sooner or later”.’

‘If you’d seen his wife, it’s definitely later,’ said Rupert lightly, but there was a muscle going in his cheek.

‘With the advent of AIDS, don’t you feel you should mend your ways?’

‘Sure,’ said Rupert. ‘I’m giving up casual sex for Lent.’

Tony was getting restless, and, picking up a telephone, dialled the control room:

‘Tell Declan to stop farting around and put the boot in.’

‘Tony says put the boot in, Declan,’ Cameron told Declan. ‘Get him on to cruelty.’

Declan squared his shoulders. ‘Over the past two years you’ve expressed sympathy for the football hooligans.’

Rupert stared at his shoes. ‘Most of them probably lead appallingly dull lives during the week. Many are out of work, or just turning lathes in a factory. The terraces are their stage, their chance to vent the frustrations of the week. They generally riot because they’re losing, or there’s been a bad penalty at half-time.’

‘You were a bad loser, weren’t you?’ said Declan gently.

It was the voice of Torquemada, the pale intent face of the Grand Inquisitor.

Rupert looked wary: ‘What’s the point of competing — except to win?’

‘Even to the extent of beating up your horses?’

Rupert’s eyes narrowed, but he just stared back at Declan, saying nothing.

‘Look at this picture,’ said Declan, showing a still of a horse so thin it was almost a skeleton.

‘This was one of your horses, Macaulay. You beat him up so badly he wouldn’t jump for you, so you sold him to the Middle East, where he ended up in the stone quarries.’

‘That was bad luck,’ said Rupert. ‘I sold half-a-dozen horses to the same Sheik. One of them’s at stud in America now. Two of them are still with him. The horse didn’t click with him so he sold it on.’

‘And your deadly enemy Jake Lovell nursed the horse back to health, and then entered it in the World Championship, and in the finals, when you all had to ride each other’s horses, Macaulay wasn’t very keen on having you on his back. Remember this?’

On the screen came a clip of Rupert being finally bucked off, then being chased round the ring by the maddened horse, before taking refuge in the centre of a vast jump.

‘Coming to 2, take 2,’ screamed Cameron, frantic once again to get the reaction on Rupert’s face. But once again it was completely blank. Only his long fingers clenched round the glass of water on the table betrayed any emotion.

‘He’s going to walk out,’ said Tony happily.

‘You’d beaten up that horse so badly,’ said Declan, almost in a whisper, ‘that it remembered and went for you. What d’you feel seeing that clip today?’

There was another long pause.

‘That I was in the wrong sport,’ said Rupert slowly. ‘With me running that fast, neither Seb Coe nor Ovett would have had a chance against me in the 1500 metres.’

For a second the two men glared at each other. Then Rupert grinned and Declan started to laugh.

‘Have you got any regrets you treated your horses so badly?’

‘I didn’t treat them all badly or they wouldn’t have jumped so well. Of course I regret it, but it helped me understand the football hooligans; poor sods out of work, their fathers out of work, often their grandfathers too. Out of sheer frustration at not winning, they resort to violence.’

‘You were in work.’

‘I know. There was really no excuse.’

‘You treated women very badly in the past.’

Rupert shrugged helplessly. ‘I liked winning there too.’

‘Jake Lovell,’ went on Declan remorselessly, ‘was your arch rival because you bullied him at school.’

‘Are we having oranges at half-time?’ protested Rupert, shaking his head.

Declan smiled slightly. ‘Jake Lovell finally got his revenge by running off with your wife, Helen, in the middle of the 1980 Olympics. How did you feel at the time?’

Rupert’ll kill Declan in a minute, thought Gerald in panic. No one’s ever dared ask him these questions.

‘I was principally outraged that she should distract me and Jake, when we should have been concentrating on a team gold,’ said Rupert.

‘But you still got your medal, despite dislocating your shoulder, and riding with one arm.’

‘That was just to show them that, even riding one man short and one man injured, we could beat the whole world.’

Prompted by Declan, Rupert went on to talk about the Olympics and Rocky, the horse he’d won a gold medal on, who still lived at Penscombe.

‘I’m so cruel to Rocky,’ drawled Rupert, ‘that he has the entire run of my garden, and spends his time trampling over the flower beds and peering in at the drawing-room window.’