LITMIR.BIZ

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pleasure to meet you,’ said Viorel, delighted by the effect he seemed to be having on her. ‘You won’t mind if I don’t shake your hand.’

      ‘Hmmm?’ said Tish again. She seemed to have developed late-onset autism. ‘The soot,’ Vio explained.

      ‘Oh!’ Tish looked down at her ape-black hands. ‘Of course. Sorry.’

      It was only at that moment that it occurred to her that she was, to all intents and purposes, naked. She blushed so violently she was surprised Viorel wasn’t scorched by the heat coming off her cheeks.

      ‘Here.’ Dorian stepped forward, wrapping his Barbour around her. ‘You must be freezing.’

      ‘Spoilsport,’ said Viorel. Dorian glared at him.

      ‘Thank you,’ said Tish gratefully. ‘My clothes are inside. Everything got so caked with coal dust, you see. I could hardly move, so I … I assumed … I didn’t think there’d be anyone up here so early.’

      ‘Please, don’t apologize on our account,’ said Viorel, who was starting to enjoy himself. It was hard to get a good look at the girl’s face through all the grime, but the combination of her gloriously displayed figure and all-too-evident embarrassment was seriously endearing. As was the fact that she’d got up at seven to pull a bird’s nest out of a chimney. Who did that?

      After a few more stammered apologies, Tish bolted down the hill to the manor, pulling Dorian’s oversized jacket around her tiny frame like a shield as she ran. Still grinning like the Cheshire Cat, Vio opened his mouth to speak, but Dorian cut him off.

      ‘No,’ he said firmly.

      ‘What do you mean “no”? I never said anything.’

      ‘I mean “no”. Not with her.’

      ‘All right,’ said Vio, amused. ‘But, just out of curiosity … why not?’

      ‘Because she’s our hostess.’

      ‘So?’

      ‘So it will cause tension on my set,’ said Dorian. ‘And because she’s a nice girl who doesn’t need your bullshit. And because I say so,’ he added stubbornly. ‘There’s a village full of eager young women on the other side of those gates. If you have to get your rocks off, go do it with one of them.’

      ‘OK, boss,’ said Vio, still smiling. ‘Whatever you say.’

      The next time Viorel saw Tish was at lunch. Mrs Drummond had laid on a welcome spread for the actors. Walking into Loxley’s impressive, wood-panelled dining room in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, her newly washed, still-damp hair tied back in a ponytail, Tish blushed scarlet when she saw Viorel standing there.

      ‘My, my,’ he teased, enjoying her discomfiture. ‘Don’t you scrub up well?’

      ‘Ignore him,’ said Dorian, introducing Tish to the rest of her temporary house guests. ‘Lunch looks spectacular, by the way. You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble.’

      The long mahogany refectory table had been set with white bone china and silverware, and a variety of estate-grown food laid out on large platters in the middle. There was a side of venison, fresh tomato and basil salad, a whole poached salmon and various vegetable dishes, including a mouthwatering stack of asparagus dripping in butter, which Mrs Drummond proudly informed everyone had been churned at Home Farm from Loxley cows.

      ‘The fish is out of this world.’ Rhys Evans, a stocky, curly haired Welshman with a reputation as a practical joker, tucked into the salmon with unconcealed delight.

      ‘It’s all delicious. Very generous of you, Miss Crewe,’ said Jamie Duggan, wiping a yellow stream of liquid butter off his chin. Jamie was better looking than Rhys, blond and regular featured, but Tish found herself thinking how utterly devoid he was of sex appeal. She tried to picture him as Edgar Linton, making love to Sabrina Leon’s Catherine Earnshaw. It wasn’t easy.

      ‘Please, call me Tish,’ she said. ‘And I’m afraid I can’t take credit for lunch. It’s entirely Mrs Drummond’s hard work.’

      Viorel watched Tish as she chatted to everyone in the room, playing the interested hostess like the well-brought-up lady of the manor that she was. She swapped Scottish reeling stories with Duggan, a dreadful, pompous bore in Vio’s opinion, smiling at all his weak jokes, and tried valiantly to engage Lizzie Bayer in conversation, not easy given that the girl had the attention span of a concussed goldfish. Vio had tried to chat Lizzie up himself in LA after the read-through. Classically pretty in a large-breasted, Scandinavian, FHM sort of way, she’d looked as if she’d be worth having a crack at. But looks could be deceiving. In fact, Lizzie Bayer had about as much spark as a decomposing kipper. All she wanted to talk about was her deathly dull TV show and its ratings.

      ‘Variety named me as one of NBC’s “faces to watch” this year,’ she had told Vio for the third time, preening vacantly in the Veyron’s rearview mirror.

      Really? thought Vio. I’d have named you one of their ‘faces to slap’. Talk about self-obsessed. In the movie, Lizzie was to play Isabella, the trophy wife who Heathcliff relentlessly abuses and humiliates. Viorel was looking forward to it already.

      Looking round the room at his cast-mates, Vio swiftly decided that Rhys was by far the best of the bunch – funny in a cheeky-chappie, naughty-glint-in-his-eye sort of way that gave Vio hope that he might become a mate. He was flirting with Tish outrageously but quite hopelessly, each elaborate compliment flying over the girl’s head like so much wasted shrapnel.

      Aware of Viorel’s eyes boring into her, Tish was starting to feel unpleasantly hot. The effort of not returning his stare was giving her a headache and making it hard to concentrate on what Rhys Evans was saying. It was relief when the phone in the hallway rang and she was summoned away to take the call.

      Two minutes later she returned to the table looking white.

      ‘Is everything all right?’ asked Dorian.

      ‘It’s my son,’ said Tish, her voice a monotone. ‘He’s had an accident at school. They’ve called the local GP. Apparently, he’s concussed.’

      ‘Oh my God. What happened?’

      ‘He fell out of a tree. He and another boy were playing Alvin and the Chipmunks or something … the doctor says he’s fine, but he’s been asking for me. I have to get down there right away.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Dorian. ‘Do you want me to drive you?’

      Tish looked at him blankly for a moment, lost in her own anxiety. She was sure she’d read somewhere that people often seemed fine after a head injury but then haemorrhaged and died hours later.

      ‘Tish?’

      ‘Hmm? Oh, no, thank you. I’m fine to drive.’

      ‘Are you sure?’ Dorian looked concerned.

      ‘Positive. Excuse me,’ she said to the room at large, running out at a jog.

      Tish was already in the car and starting the engine by the time Viorel caught up with her. He opened the driver’s door. ‘Scooch over.’

      ‘What?’ Tish looked flustered.

      ‘I’m driving.’

      ‘But—’

      ‘It wasn’t a question,’ said Vio firmly, nudging her over to the passenger side. ‘I’m driving. You need to focus on your son.’

      By the time they got to St Agnes’s primary school, Abel had got over his teary, ‘I want my mum’ stage and was thoroughly enjoying being the centre of attention.

      ‘I nearly died,’ he told Tish cheerfully, pointing proudly to the cold compress strapped to his forehead with Dennis the Menace bandages. ‘If I’d died, Michael would have had to go to prison until he was a hundred years old.’

      ‘No

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