Clouds among the Stars. Victoria Clayton

apparently in agony, rolled her eyes at the constable on duty.

      ‘Ha, I see!’ My father smiled and for a moment looked almost his old self. I blessed Cordelia for coming with me. ‘But what shall I do when I’ve filed through the bars? My cell’s on the first floor. I’d be human jam if I jumped. You’d better make another cake with a rope inside. Though what Loveday will say when he sees his precious tools smothered in icing and currants, I wouldn’t like to say.’

      ‘You aren’t taking it seriously.’ Cordelia was cross. ‘But I saw this film called Heaven is where the Heart is, where this man was in gaol though he hadn’t done the murder – he’d been stitched up by his best friend – and his childhood sweetheart was dying and they wouldn’t let him go and see her and he made a file in the prison workshop –’

      ‘I’ve brought your post,’ I said as Cordelia paused to draw breath.

      My father looked through the envelopes. ‘Half these are bills.’ His momentary good humour evaporated. ‘And there’ll be your mother’s chin to pay for. They’ve cancelled the play. Had to, of course, without me and Basil.’ He swore a decorative Elizabethan oath. ‘Here’s a letter from the bank. My God, they’re quick on the draw when it comes to calling in the dibs! This fellow,’ he glanced to the bottom of the letter, ‘Potter, he calls himself, says he wants to know what I’m going to do about reducing my overdraft.’ He threw the letter down. ‘Well, he can take what steps he likes. They can’t do anything to me while I’m in here.’

      He set his face mutinously. I picked up the letter and put it in my bag. While my father and Cordelia played the farewell scene from Romeo and Juliet, I went to find Sergeant Tweeter.

      We arrived home to find our neighbours mingling with the reporters who had reappeared with the cessation of rain, like flowers blooming in the desert.

      ‘Someone ought to ring the RSPCA.’ Mrs Newbiggin from next door, whom I had never liked, had a penetrating voice but even she was almost drowned out by the howling that was coming from inside the house. Seeing me, she pointed a finger. ‘That’s one of the girls. This used to be a respectable neighbourhood. What’s going on? I’d like to know. Is some poor animal being tortured in there?’

      ‘Sorry. It’s only our dog.’ I squeezed past the cameras and rang the bell. The howling changed to barking over three octaves, from a high-pitched whine to a deep Baskerville bay. I pushed open the letter box to call out to Maria-Alba and a large pink tongue laved my hand affectionately.

      ‘Grazie al cielo.’ Maria-Alba brandished her ladle threateningly as she let us in. Under the other arm she held two cushions. ‘Now I understand the cruelty to animals.’

      ‘What are the cushions for?’ asked Cordelia.

      Maria-Alba held them over her ears in demonstration. ‘He has not stop since you go out.’

      ‘But look how pleased he is to see us.’ I patted Derek, who was jumping up in an attempt to get his front paws on to my shoulders. ‘It’s really very touching. He’s going to be an excellent watchdog.’

      ‘Perhaps he’s going to perform deeds of heroism.’ Cordelia was willing to join me in a little dog-worshipping. ‘He might rescue me from a raging torrent or you from an axe-murderer. He’d be famous then, like Greyfriars Bobby. They might put up a statue of him in the street. Wouldn’t that be lovely?’

      ‘I’m not entirely sold on the idea, since you ask. There don’t seem to be quite so many reporters as usual. I wonder if they’re getting fed up? There can’t be a worse job in the world than working for a newspaper. Out at all hours in all weathers, making an absolute nuisance of oneself and being loathed and reviled, just to get a story that’s identical to everyone else’s. Making up sordid lies about other people’s sadness to get something exclusive. I should hate it.’

      ‘I’m going to have to get used to the paparazzi, though,’ said Cordelia. ‘When I’m a famous film star I shall never know a moment’s peace.’

      ‘It may not be that easy.’ I did not want to be discouraging but I knew acting was a cruelly disappointing occupation for most people.

      ‘It will be for me.’ Cordelia said with confidence. Looking at the calm smile on her ravishing little face, I thought she might be right. Cordelia had my father’s ability to draw your eye and hold your attention. She had Ophelia’s beauty with the added charm of warmth, and Portia’s spontaneity, with – so far anyway – less reckless self-destructiveness in her nature. ‘I shall have a white Pekinese like Marina Marlow,’ she went on, ‘that I can carry around under my arm. I shall call it Yum-Yum after the girl in The Mikado. You needn’t look so snooty. At least I haven’t got a dog called Derek.’

      ‘A palpable hit,’ I acknowledged.

      ‘I’ve just had a brainwave!’ Cordelia looked pleased. ‘You remember the film of A Tale of Two Cities? They’ve got the same gorgeous doggy brown eyes. Derek and Sydney Carton, I mean’

      ‘Isn’t it rather a mouthful? Imagine calling, “Come here, Sydney Carton!” across the park. Beside sounding a little pretentious –’

      ‘No, you ass! You can call him Dirk – after Dirk Bogarde. It’ll sound just the same to a dog but it’s got bags more style than Derek.’

      This was undeniable, but I was still not enthusiastic. Dirk sounded assertively masculine; it lacked poetry. Cordelia pointed out that it was a sort of Highland dagger, which was romantic enough for anyone, even a loopy poetess. It made her think of wild, wet mountains, bottomless lochs, ruined castles, skirling bagpipes. When I begged her, perhaps unkindly, to stop sounding like The Highlands and Islands Tourist Board, she lost her temper and hard words were exchanged. I think we were both tired and under a strain. Anyway, Cordelia got her way as she always did and, by a process of attrition, Dirk he became.

       EIGHT

      ‘So! The worm has turned.’ Ophelia flung down a letter among the toast crumbs on the breakfast table.

      ‘What worm?’ Cordelia was interested as, indeed, was I.

      ‘Which worm, you dunce.’ Ophelia’s lips were curved with a smile of satisfaction. ‘That soft squirming thing called Crispin Mallilieu. He’s written to ask me to marry him.’

      ‘Can I wear white with a pink sash and a wreath of pink rosebuds?’ said Cordelia instantly. ‘That’s what Janice Thatcher wore when her sister got married and Janice has hair as straight as stair rods and tiny, tiny eyes like ink blots.’

      ‘I’m so pleased!’ I said mendaciously, for the idea of Crispin as a brother-in-law was not one to gladden the heart. ‘How wrong we were to accuse him of cowardice.’

      ‘Actually, what about yellow sashes? And yellow rosebuds? We’ll all have to look the same and Harriet looks foul in pink.’

      ‘Do I?’ I remembered that we were discussing an event of great moment. ‘I suppose you’ll have to wait a bit, though – till Pa can give you away.’

      ‘Of course I’m not going to marry him.’ The light in Ophelia’s eye became scorching. ‘He says his mother’s begged him not to throw himself away but he can’t give me up, whatever the world may say. Pah! I don’t imagine the world ever gives Crispin a second’s thought. He’s much too dull and stupid. He suggests a quiet ceremony in a register office followed by a short honeymoon in a little pension he knows in the Pyrenees. The very idea of spending a weekend in a second-rate hotel with Crispin makes me want to kill myself. He thinks his mother will come round when it’s a fait accompli. He’s worse than a worm. I believe worms have guts.’

      ‘Oh, yes,’ said Cordelia. ‘I saw this nature programme on the telly and it said that worms are just muscle and intestine, jesting and execrating,