Score!

EPILOGUE

The police had finally allowed Rannaldini to be buried in huge pomp. Unwilling to attend the funeral, Tristan came alone to Valhalla to pay his last respects. It was a bitterly cold, dark afternoon: the east wind howled and lashed the naked trees. A ‘For Sale’ sign swung dismally outside the main gates.

Tristan went straight to the graveyard. Here, amid a sea of flowers and higgledy-piggledy ivy-clad graves, soared a splendid white marble headstone, on which had already been inscribed the words: ‘Roberto Rannaldini, Maestro and Composer, 1949–1996.’

As he stood in the fading light, Tristan relived the past year, remembering Baby serenading Hermione in the snow, Tabitha screaming at the hunt, Granny silencing the rabble with such terrifying authority, Alpheus singing with such kingly anguish, and Mikhail as he lay dying reducing everyone to tears.

Tristan thought of Simone, Wolfie and Bernard working themselves to the bone, of Valentin and Oscar creating radiance even when they seemed at their most languid and inattentive, of dearest Lucy, always comforting and smiling, of Sexton giving him full rein and heroically raising the money, and the rest of the crew backing him all the way despite their grumbling.

But without Rannaldini it would never have happened. Without Rannaldini’s kindness and continual encouragement in the early days he would never have emerged from the shadow of Étienne’s disdain and become a director. And what would Rannaldini, who had never settled for less than perfection, think of his film, which was now in a little black oblong box for present and future generations to judge?

More important than winning any Oscars, Tristan hoped that, whatever form or being he was now, Rannaldini would be proud.

Strange that one narrow grave could contain so much vitality, strange that so much tragedy and passion should be contained in one small, black videotape, which Tristan now laid on Rannaldini’s grave. On top he placed a white gardenia.

But as he stood in silence, he could have sworn a pale violet light, like a torch beam or a peacock butterfly left over from summer, landed on the grave, and danced for a second before disappearing into the earth. He shook his head. It must have been a trick of the light.

Leaving the graveyard, he wandered past Meredith’s cuckoo clock lying upside down in the park. The patch of yellow grass beneath Lucy’s caravan was green once more, the love-in-a-mist in her abandoned window-box turned to seed pods. Tristan put a couple in his pocket.

Looking over the valley with the ghosts of the past swirling around him, he was overwhelmed by sorrow that Don Carlos was over and Rannaldini gone for ever. But as he walked swiftly back to the car park he felt only joy as he switched on his telephone and dialled his future:

‘May I speak to Lucy de Montigny, please?’