Rivals by Jilly Cooper Page B

plot, she’d spent too long washing her hair and in the bath. Then she discovered that the long low-cut black silk ball dress which she’d decided to wear was far too tight. Not even shoe horns or the disdainful tugging of Birgitta could get her into it, so she had to wear another dress, dark red velvet to match her distraught face, and calf-length so it wouldn’t conceal her ankles which had swelled up in the bath.
    Finally, because she couldn’t see out, she’d cut her fringe with the kitchen scissors, not realizing that Birgitta had just used them to cut rind off the children’s bacon, so now her fringe stuck together and reeked of bacon. She was about to wash it again when James arrived. He hadn’t been home so early in months; usually he hung around the Corinium bar mopping up adulation.
    ‘Have a bath, darling,’ shouted Lizzie, desperately trying to tone down her face with green foundation.
    ‘I had a shower at the studios,’ said James, ‘so I’ve only got to change. We ought to leave in five minutes. How did you think my programme went?’
    ‘Wonderful,’ lied Lizzie, who hadn’t watched it, starting to panic. As it was dark outside, she couldn’t even make up in the car.
    ‘I’ll read you an extra story tomorrow, darlings,’ she told the children as they clung whining to her on the landing. ‘Or perhaps, Birgitta,’ she raised her voice hopefully, ‘will read you one before you go to bed.’
    But Birgitta was watching James, who had decided on the white shirt after all, putting a pink carnation in his buttonhole. Poor Mr Vereker, she thought, looking so handsome in his dinner jacket, going out with such a frump. How much better would she, Birgitta, be in Lizzie’s place. James, however, hardly noticed his wife’s appearance. His was the one that mattered.
    ‘You look absolutely lovely, James,’ said Lizzie dutifully.
    Low sepia clouds obscured the moon. As the headlamps lit up grey stone walls, acid green tree trunks and long blonde grasses, Lizzie tried abortively to apply eye liner as James described every little triumph of the planning meeting and his programme afterwards.
    ‘Anyone interesting in our party tonight?’ asked Lizzie as he paused for breath.
    ‘Rupert Campbell-Black, Beattie Johnson his mistress, Freddie Jones.’
    ‘Who’s he?’
    ‘Don’t you ever read the papers?’ said James, appalled. ‘Mr Electronics.’
    Oh God, sighed Lizzie to herself. I daren’t ask what electronics are, and I bet I’m sitting next to him at dinner.
    ‘And Paul Stratton and his new wife.’
    ‘Oooh,’ squeaked Lizzie. ‘That’s exciting.’
    Three years ago, just after the Conservatives won the last election, Paul Stratton, the Tory MP for Cotchester and the very upright Minister for Home Affairs, with a special brief to investigate sex education in schools, had rocked his constituency and the entire nation by walking out on Winifred, his solid dependable boot of a wife, and running off with his secretary half his age.
    Not that his constituents were prudish (having Rupert Campbell-Black in the next door constituency, they were used to the erotic junketing of MPs), but as Paul Stratton had not only used his political career to feather his nest financially, but also set himself up as a pillar of respectability and uxoriousness, constantly inveighing against pornography, homosexuality, easier divorce and the general laxity of the nation’s morals, they had found it hard to stomach his hypocrisy.
    ‘Evidently, they’ve bought a place in Chalford,’ said James, ‘and Paul and Sarah, I think she’s called, are planning to spend weekends down here, re-establishing themselves with the local community.’
    ‘I suppose Tony inviting them this evening heralds the official return of the prodigal son,’ said Lizzie. ‘I wonder if she’s as beautiful as her photographs. I bet Rupert makes a pass at her. He’s always enjoyed bugging Paul.’
    ‘Don’t be fatuous, they’re only just