The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp. Sarra Manning

awful,’ Dobbin conceded. Amelia eyes filled with tears at the thought of anything being quite awful and he hurriedly corrected himself: ‘But it wasn’t so bad. The Big Brother house looked a jolly sight worse.’

      Dobbin had never seen anyone blush so prettily as Amelia Sedley when she covered her hands with her face. ‘Oh, Dobbin, you didn’t watch it, did you?’

      ‘I did and I’m looking into having that Gav fellow court-martialled,’ he said and he wasn’t joking – he barely knew how to – but Amelia giggled and his heart melted.

      ‘I’m pretty sure that you can’t have somebody court-martialled if they’ve already left the forces,’ she gulped, tears forgotten.

      ‘If he was ever in the forces. If that’s the calibre of soldier the Marines are taking on, then God help us if there’s a war,’ Dobbin declared to more giggles from Amelia until the saccharine display was interrupted by George, deftly threading his way through the throng to break up their little tête-à-tête.

      ‘Sorry, Emmy,’ he said. ‘Is this oik bothering you?’

      ‘Never!’ Emmy said with another giggle that made Becky grind down on her back molars.

      ‘Shall we order some champagne?’ she asked Jos as she sat down. Amelia appeared to have no plans to introduce her to Dobbin the talking horse and anyway, what was the point of being introduced to him?

      ‘Is it table service, do you know?’ Jos asked, peering about the room.

      For someone so rich, Jos was absolutely lacking in panache and suaveness and all the other qualities that Becky imagined they gave out on the first day at Eton, along with those funny top hats and tailcoats.

      ‘I’m parched,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t want any … Look! It is table service. There’s a waiter! Oh, he doesn’t seem to have noticed you.’

      ‘I’ll run after him,’ Jos promised and he was gone, his shoulders looking especially wide in his white dinner jacket. Unfortunately, the wait staff were also in white jackets which meant that on his way to the bar Jos was stopped by three different groups of people who tried to order drinks from him.

      Becky settled back in her chair to watch the rich and entitled at play. Amelia was caught between George and Dobbin and over the chatter of the party and the DJ dropping slow beats, she could still be heard giggling in the same inane fashion.

      Jos was at the bar now and when he turned round he was bearing aloft a huge bottle of champagne with a sparkler stuck in it so that on his journey through the club, he was given a wide berth. It was a very romantic gesture but when Jos reached their table and proudly placed the bottle in front of Becky, she heard George murmur to Dobbin, ‘God, how common.’

      Becky was sure that she was meant to have heard because when she gave George a reproachful look – the faintest puckering of her forehead, a little pout – he raised his glass in what could only have been a mocking salute.

      Well, Amelia was welcome to him, for all the good it would do to love a man who thought he was superior to everyone around him. No wonder he had political ambitions. Becky turned starry eyes to Jos.

      ‘This is the loveliest thing that anyone has ever done for me,’ she informed Jos with the adoring gaze that always made him put a finger in his shirt collar like it was suddenly choking him. ‘I know you don’t drink, but could you have one glass of champagne? For me?’

      ‘No carbs plus alcohol are a dreadful combination,’ Jos protested. ‘And anyway, this stuff is pure sugar.’

      ‘I think it’s mostly bubbles,’ Becky said as she hefted up the bottle, tilted one of the empty glass flutes on the table and expertly poured. ‘Anyway, aren’t we celebrating?’

      ‘Are we? What are we celebrating?’ Jos asked, as dense as the pads he strapped on when he and Becky were boxercising in the park.

      ‘Well, we’ve known each other three weeks,’ Becky said with a heavy-lidded glance that made Jos adjust himself when he thought she wasn’t looking.

      ‘Th … three weeks,’ he gulped. ‘Only three weeks? It seems longer.’

      ‘Doesn’t it?’ Becky agreed, holding out a glass. ‘It feels like I’ve known you all my life. Here, have just one drink so we can toast our … friendship. Though I suppose all good things come to an end.’

      ‘It’s coming to an end?’ Jos echoed, his brow furrowing as he took the glass in his meaty paw and manoeuvred it with some difficulty to his lips. He didn’t really have the right build for drinking from delicate champagne flutes.

      ‘Yes, that’s why we’re here, silly!’ Amelia said, sitting down next to them and leaning across Becky to help herself to a glass. ‘To celebrate the end of summer. I expect you’ll be going back to LA soon, Jos.’

      No one had ever treated Becky with as much kindness and sweetness and without any kind of expectation, but in that moment, Becky could quite happily have throttled Amelia Sedley. She wouldn’t even have bothered to make it look like an accident.

      ‘I suppose,’ Jos sighed, as if the thought of going back to a place where it was sunny all the time and he had a beautiful, architect-designed house in Malibu with three different kinds of pool in its landscaped grounds, was about as appealing as a fortnight in Scunthorpe.

      ‘Becky’s never been to LA, have you?’ Amelia said, nudging Becky’s arm. ‘You’d love it.’

      Maybe she wouldn’t kill Amelia. Not just yet. After all, Amelia was the only person who wanted Jos to make an honest woman of her as much as Becky did.

      ‘I’ve always wanted to go to LA,’ she said wistfully. ‘Do you know lots of famous people, Jos? I bet you do.’

      Jos gulped down the rest of his champagne and puffed out his chest. ‘Well, I’m very good friends with Ryan Gosling’s personal trainer.’ He didn’t even notice when Becky refilled his glass. ‘We sent him some protein balls and apparently he loved them.’

      ‘Wow! Ryan Gosling,’ Amelia gasped. ‘Who else?’

      More stars than there were in the heavens. An Oscar-winning actress next door who was always having loud parties with no consideration for the fact that Jos got up at five to do his first workout of the day. A legendary film director lived up the hill who was obsessed with shooting coyotes and had accidentally killed two of his own bichon frises. And all manner of rap artists, hotly tipped young actors and even a couple of Real Housewives’ husbands, who all worked out at Jos’s gym.

      Jos polished off most of the bottle of champagne as he got into his stride; namedropping all the celebrities he’d seen as he queued for his collagen berry lattes or hiked in the Hollywood hills.

      ‘You’re so well connected. I suppose you have lots of friends. Lots of very glamorous, very beautiful friends who are girls. Girlfriends,’ Becky said, with just a hint of a quiver of her bottom lip. ‘No wonder you can’t wait to go back to LA. We must seem so dull by comparison.’

      ‘Never. You’re the most beautiful of them all,’ Jos declared rashly and loudly so that George Wylie, who was still hanging around like a bad smell, smiled thinly. ‘They’re all stuffed full of silicon and Botox and actually they’re not friends at all because they’re very unfriendly.’

      ‘They sound awful,’ Amelia said but then her attention was caught by one of the M’s and with a coy flutter of her lashes at Becky, she slipped out from between them. ‘Must go and say hello to Muffin.’

      ‘It sounds to me as if you don’t like LA as much as everyone thinks you do,’ Becky commented. Although this was said gently, she was the daughter of Frank Sharp, con artist, hustler and trickster, so there was something hardwired into her DNA that gave her the ability to sniff out a person’s weaknesses. Once she’d identified what made them tick – the dark, secret heart of them – then of course she was going