Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress of the Game. Tilly Bagshawe

didn’t get dead. Can we go to McDonald’s for lunch?’

      The child psychologists were all in agreement.

      Lexi was highly intelligent and highly sensitive. Her behavioral problems all stemmed from the loss of her mother.

      Peter asked: ‘But what about this vengeful streak? Her lack of moral boundaries?’

      The answer was always the same.

      She’ll grow out of it.

      ‘Don’t let me hear your excuses! You have poisoned the queen. You will have your head chopped off straight now.’

      Lexi grappled with her limited edition Little Mermaid Barbie doll.

      ‘That’ll teach you, you fishy-tailed crin-i-mal.’ She grinned triumphantly as the head came free. ‘Now you are absolutely DEAD!’

      ‘Lexi!’

      Mrs Grainger, the new nanny, walked into the bedroom. A sea of decapitated dolls littered the floor. She sighed.

       Again? Whatever happened to tea parties and teddy bears’ picnics?

      Eight-year-old girls had sure changed since her day.

      In her mid fifties, widowed, with no children of her own, Mrs Grainger had been hired as a replacement to the infamous Mrs Carter. (The Templetons’ former housekeeper had made the most of her blood money, divorcing her grumpy husband, Mike, and running off to Hawaii. She was last seen on a beach in Mauii having coconut oil massaged into her ample backside by a half naked twenty-year-old called Keanu. Mrs Grainger was allergic to coconut oil.)

      Mrs Grainger was fond of Lexi, but she was no pushover. Those Barbie dolls cost money. She’d scolded Lexi more times than she could remember about taking better care of them.

      ‘What’s going on?’

      Lexi’s mind began to whirr: Mrs Grainger was mad. What would stop her being mad? What did she want to hear?

      ‘Don’t worry Mrs G. I was just playing a game. I can easily fix them again. Look.’

      Retrieving Ariel’s head from the far side of the room, Lexi struggled vainly to re-attach it to the body. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. The stump of the neck was too fat for the hole above the shoulders that seemed to have magically shrunk since she ripped the head off. Strands of red nylon hair kept getting tangled around Lexi’s fingers. Sweat began to bead on her forehead.

      ‘Honestly, I can do it. I’ve done it before.’

      ‘That’s not the point, Lexi. You shouldn’t have pulled her head off in the first place. This carpet looks like the Night of the Living Dead.’

      ‘It’s not my fault. Ariel was trying to kill the queen.’

      Lexi gestured towards one of the few Barbie dolls still sporting a full complement of limbs. Dressed in regal red velvet, with a string of tinsel wrapped around her head, the blond effigy lay prostrate on the extortionately over-priced ‘Barbie’s Four Poster’ that Robbie had bought his sister last week.

      Just what Lexi needed. More toys.

      ‘She’s been poisoned. See? That’s why she’s gone a funny color.’

      With a groan, Mrs Grainger noticed that the doll’s cheeks had been defaced in what could only be described as a frenzied attack with a green felt-tip pen. She prayed Lexi hadn’t gotten green ink all over her clothes and bedding as well. That stuff was murder to get out.

      Lexi said solemnly: ‘If you poison someone, you do get your head chopped off. That is a real, true fact Mrs G. I learned it in history.’

      Her expression was so adorably earnest, it was a struggle not to laugh.

      ‘Yes, well. I’d prefer it if history didn’t repeat itself quite so often all over the bedroom floor.’

      The nanny’s tone was stern. But Lexi knew she had won. There was mad, and there was pretend-mad, and she was smart enough to tell the difference.

      Raised adult voices drifted up from downstairs. Lexi’s face clouded with anxiety.

      ‘Daddy’s shouting. D’you think Robbie’s in trouble again?’

      ‘I have no idea.’ Mrs Grainger shut the bedroom door firmly. ‘If he is, it’s nothing for you to worry about. Your brother’s big and ugly enough to take care of himself.’

      Lexi looked furious. ‘Robbie isn’t ugly. He’s the handsomest brother in the entire universe in space. Everyone says so.’

      Mrs Grainger sighed. She wished Lexi wouldn’t take everything quite so literally. She also wished Mr Templeton would learn to keep his voice down. He had no idea how sensitive his daughter was, or how bright. Lexi was like a tiny satellite receiver, picking up all the tension in the house and translating it into a view of the world that was becoming increasingly skewed.

      Today she was chopping the heads off her dollies.

      But what about tomorrow?

      

      Pervert! … preying on innocent children … Sickos like him should be castrated.

      Peter Templeton tried to focus on his breathing. He must keep calm. He must not lose his temper with the dreadful woman standing in his drawing room, screaming obscenities at him like a crack whore.

      Ludo and I could go to the police, you know.

      The woman might sound like a crack whore. In fact, her name was Angelica Dellal, wife of prominent J.P. Morgan banker Ludo Dellal and mother of sixteen-year-old Dominic Dellal: football star, head boy at Andover, and (if Peter had interpreted her potty-mouthed ranting correctly) his son Robert’s homosexual lover.

       Homo! Freak!

      The abuse washed in and out of Peter’s consciousness like a toxic tide of effluence spewing from a sewer.

      In her early forties, with handsome, aristocratic features and the sort of immaculately blow-dried, highlighted hair that immediately stamped her a rich man’s wife, Angelica Dellal must once have been a great beauty. But any sex appeal she might once have possessed had long since been groomed to death, buffed and manicured and Botoxed into oblivion. At this moment she looked positively ugly, mouth stretched wide, face contorted with rage, diamond encrusted hands flailing wildly.

      ‘… so?’

      With a jolt, Peter realized that she had finally exhausted herself.

      ‘I’m sorry. What was the question?’

      Angelica Dellal looked as if she might spontaneously combust with indignation.

      ‘The question is what are you going to do to ensure your disgusting, perverted son stays the hell away from my boy?’

      ‘I’ll talk to Robert.’

      ‘Talk? Is that it? My husband caught them in the back of a car together, OK? Your kid was sucking my kid’s dick. Are you hearing this? Am I getting through?’

      She jabbed a French-manicured talon at Peter. He instinctively stepped back, clutching the couch for support. Had Robbie really? He shuddered. It didn’t bear thinking about.

      ‘Perhaps your husband was mistaken.’

      His voice was a whisper. Peter knew Ludo Dellal had not been mistaken. And yet he couldn’t admit it, not even to himself.

      Despite three decades of psychiatric training and practice, Peter Templeton could not accept that his son was gay. How many closet homosexuals had he counseled over the years? Scores, probably. With those poor desperate men, those tortured strangers, compassion had come easily. But with his own son, it was a different matter. He wanted, desperately, to believe that it was this horrible woman’s son who had led Robert astray, and not the other way around. That it was