Score!

Sitting in Rannaldini’s exquisite flat overlooking Hyde Park, Tristan felt warmth creep back into his veins. He had just lunched on the fluffiest Parma ham omelette, sorrel salad, quince sorbet, black grapes, gently dissolving Camembert, excellent claret and very black coffee. It was the first food he had eaten in three days.

After the meeting, Rannaldini, Sexton and he were off to Prague to see the possible Posa: a Russian with lungs of steel called Mikhail Pezcherov.

Tristan was already mad about Sexton, who was now hoovering up black grapes with a big hand, gut spilling over his waistband, his face absolutely still, only his eyes swivelling in thought as he tried to persuade Rannaldini of the benefits of accepting laundered Russian money from the Iranians.

‘Don’t worry your pretty swollen head over that one, Ranners. The Saudis need never know.’

In preparation for meeting Declan, Tristan had whiled away last night’s insomnia speed-reading Declan’s massive biography of Yeats, which had just received ecstatic reviews. Declan had also once interviewed Étienne on one of his vastly watched, prestigious programmes. The two had clashed. Declan had accused Tristan’s father of meretriciousness and pornography.

‘That you’re a genius makes the whole thing more reprehensible.’

Étienne had stalked off the set. Tristan was ashamed how drawn he was to people who had seen through his father.

As Sexton and Rannaldini were still arguing about money, Tristan was glad there was so much to look at in Rannaldini’s sitting room. On the vermilion walls hung numerous portraits of Rannaldini. On every surface were silver-framed photographs of Rannaldini and the famous, dominated by one of him getting his knighthood, and another of him smiling at a very blonde girl. What a beauty. Tristan made a mental note to ask Rannaldini to introduce him: what wonderful things the camera could do with her face.

On a low table in the middle of the room beside a huge brass bowl of dark crimson orchids lay the score of Don Carlos with cuts and possible scenes pencilled in for discussion with Declan. As the sun appeared, casting its mellow autumnal light on the park, Tristan felt a surge of optimism.

‘Oh, look, there’s Rupert Campbell-Black in a morning suit,’ said Sexton, in excitement, ‘I wonder where ’e’s going.’

An outraged Rupert was in fact coming to Rannaldini’s flat. As a fellow director, having learnt about the ten million, he had spent half the night raging at Declan for such suicidal pledging of Venturer’s hard-earned cash. Rupert had never before questioned one of Declan’s artistic decisions, but as the last film he’d seen in the cinema had been a remake of The Incredible Journey, where he’d been outraged because the bull terrier had been changed to a more politically correct breed, and the last opera an amateur production of The Merry Widow, with Declan’s wife poncing around in the title role, he couldn’t see the point of Don Carlos at all.

‘I mean the guy’s in love with his stepmother,’ Rupert, who had loathed all his four stepmothers, had stormed at Declan.

Despite his indignation and the insensitivity that so often goes with social fearlessness, Rupert noticed Tristan’s black tie the moment he entered the room and said how sorry he was about Étienne’s death.

‘Bought a couple of oils of his twenty years ago. Bloody good painter, and bloody well rocketed in value,’ he added, even more approvingly.

As Rupert was wearing a morning coat, Rannaldini smoothly suggested a glass of champagne. Feeling he could use it, Rupert was about to accept, then noticed the photograph of his daughter, Tabitha, on the piano and curtly refused. The thought of Rannaldini having access to her drove him to madness.

‘Haven’t you grown since I last saw you?’ he drawled, then, tilting his head sideways to glance at Rannaldini’s lifts, ‘Or maybe your shoes have.’

Trouble ahead, thought Tristan, as Rannaldini’s face contorted with fury.

Étienne had always painted in a north-facing studio, claiming that the harsh light picked out every wrinkle and red vein, showing the face as it was. Rupert must be forty-six or forty-seven but, as he sat down on the window-seat looking north over the park, his beauty made Tristan gasp. The sleek, thick gold hair, untouched by grey and brushed back from the wide suntanned forehead, emphasized the lovely shape of the head. The long, heavy-lidded, rather hard lapis-lazuli blue eyes, the high cheekbones, the Greek nose, the short upper lip pulling up the curling mouth, the smooth olive complexion could all have belonged to a Latin or a statue, the face was so still. Then Rupert caught a glimpse of a portly mongrel in a tartan coat, waddling along behind an old lady, which reminded him of his wife’s dog, Gertrude. His eyes softened and his mouth lifted, and Tristan wondered how any woman ever resisted him.