The Plus One. Sophia Money-Coutts

      ‘Hang on, hang on, can I record this?’ I pulled my phone out of my pocket and waved it at him.

      He smiled at me. ‘Ah my inquisitor. I didn’t realize I was doing an interview for Newsnight.’

      ‘You’re not. But I quite need to record it. Can I?’ I held my phone up again.

      ‘’Course. I will say lots of immensely intelligent things.’

      ‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, fiddling with my phone to make sure it was recording. ‘And what about you?’

      ‘What do you mean “What about me?”’

      ‘Are you as mad as everyone else?’

      ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’m the sanest of the lot.’ He smiled again and swept his hair out of his eyes.

      ‘What about your break-up? What about those photos?’

      ‘What photos?’

      ‘The ones in the paper.’

      He looked straight into my eyes. It was unnerving, as if he could see directly into my brain. A sort of posh Paul McKenna. ‘I don’t want to talk about Caz,’ he replied. ‘She’s a sweet girl. It just wasn’t right. Or I’m not right…’ He trailed off. ‘And those photos… All right, so occasionally I behave badly and let off a bit of steam. I go out and I behave like an idiot. But I don’t think being photographed stumbling out of a club is the worst thing in the world.’

      He leant closer, shifting in his chair, still looking into my eyes. ‘Forgive me, Polly, for I have sinned.’

      I burst out laughing. ‘Nice try. But you can’t charm your way out that easily.’

      ‘Fine.’ He sat back again, reached across the table for the wine and filled our glasses up. ‘OK, go on, ask me anything.’

      I raised an eyebrow at him. ‘I’m trying to work you out.’

      ‘That’s not a question.’

      ‘I’m just trying to work out whether the joking is a front.’

      ‘A front?’

      ‘Like a mask. Covering up something more serious. You joke a lot.’

      ‘What did you expect?’

      I frowned. ‘I’m not sure. You to be more cagey, more defensive.’

      ‘You expected me,’ he began, ‘to be a cretin in red trousers who couldn’t spell his own name?’

      ‘Well, maybe a bit. I mean, er, some of your friends at lunch, for example.’ I was thinking about Barny.

      ‘Yes. Most of them are bad, aren’t they? But…’ He shrugged. ‘They’re my friends, I’ve known them since school. And they don’t mean to be such thundering morons. They were just born like that.’

      ‘And you weren’t?’

      ‘No. I’m different.’ He grinned.

      ‘How?’

      ‘OK. I know there’s all this…’ He threw his arm out in front of him and across the room. ‘But sometimes I just want something normal. A normal family which doesn’t want to kill each other the whole time. A normal job in London. A normal girlfriend, frankly, who doesn’t look like a horse and talk about horses and want to marry me so she can live in a castle and have more horses.’

      ‘Oh, so you do want a girlfriend?’ I sensed this was the moment to push him a bit harder, to try to unpick him. ‘You want a proper relationship?’

      He looked at me again, straight-faced. ‘Who’s asking?’

      ‘I am,’ I persevered. It was tricky, this bit, quizzing someone about their most personal feelings. But Peregrine wanted quotes on Jasper’s love life, so I needed him to talk about it. I needed a bit of sensitivity from the most eligible man in the country, a chink in his manly armour.

      ‘So, OK, you’re single again,’ I pressed on, ‘and I know you don’t want to talk about Lady Caroline… Caz… but what’s the deal with all the women?’

      His wine glass froze in mid-air, before he placed it back down on the table. ‘Polly, I can’t believe it. “All the women” indeed. Who’s told you that?’

      ‘OK, so I know you dated Lala, briefly, and I know about a few others. The rumours about you and that Danish princess, last year, for example?’

      Jasper grimaced in his seat. ‘Clara. I had dinner with her once and that was it. Terrible sense of humour. She didn’t laugh at any of my jokes.’

      ‘All right, the photos of you and Lady Gwendolyn Sponge?’

      ‘Nothing to it. Our parents are old friends.’

      ‘Who was that one you went skiing with last year then?’

      He frowned at me.

      ‘You were photographed laughing on a chairlift together.’

      His face cleared. ‘Oh, Ophelia. Yes. She’s a darling. But about as bright as my friend Bovril.’

      Under the table, Bovril thumped his tail at the sound of his name.

      ‘Fine. But I imagine there have been… many more.’

      He sighed. ‘Many more. I mean honestly, who makes up this nonsense?’

      ‘So it’s rubbish? All those tales about the legendary Jasper Milton are nonsense?’

      ‘You, Little Miss Inquisitor, are teasing me. And anyway, what does my personal life really matter to you?’ He looked at me with a straight face. ‘Why are you blushing?’

      I put my hand up to my cheek. ‘I’m not. It’s all this wine.’

      ‘Oh. I thought it might be because I’m flirting with you.’

      ‘Is this you flirting? I’m amazed you get anyone into bed at all.’

      He laughed. ‘Touché.’ And then he brushed his hair to the side, out of his eyes, again. And just for a second, literally for a second, I promise, I wondered what it would be like to be in bed with him, my own fingers in his hair. But then I thought about Lala and told myself to have a sip of water. I couldn’t go around the place fantasizing about my interview subjects. Kate Adie would never do that. I tried to get back to the point.

      ‘Do you think you’ll settle down though? Find someone? Get married? Have children? Do all that?’

      He sighed again and sat back in his seat. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. How does one know? Do you know?’

      ‘This isn’t about me.’

      He laughed. ‘See? You don’t know either. It’s not that easy, is it?’

      ‘What isn’t?’

      He shrugged. ‘Relationships, life, getting older and realizing things can be more complicated than you thought.’

      ‘You feel hard done by?’

      ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That’s not what I’m saying at all. In the great lottery of life, as my father is fond of saying, I know I’ve done pretty well. But do you know what? Maybe, sometimes, I don’t want to take over this whole place. I don’t want to be told how lucky I am because I get to devote my whole life to a leaky castle and an estate that needs constant attention and I don’t want to be in the papers falling out of a club. But that doesn’t mean that I know what I do want.’

      I stayed quiet and glanced up at a portrait of the sixth Duchess of Montgomery, a fat, pale lady in a green dress looking impassively at us from the wall. I looked from the painting to Jasper, who suddenly smiled at me.

      ‘What’s funny?’ I said.

      ‘Oh,