She stood up, unpleasantly aware of the sweat sliding down her back and turning her lace mini dress transparent as it stuck to her skin. Kat, her godmother, had told her it was bad taste to wear a white dress to a wedding but Lizzie hadn’t cared. The June sun was dropping towards the horizon now and the marquee cast long shadows across the lawn. Not a breath of wind stirred the sultry air. A band was playing on the terrace but no one was paying any attention. Lizzie knew the partying would carry on long into the night. Dudley seemed to have an inexhaustible capacity for drink and drugs but she was bored.

Stepping out from beneath the jaunty poolside umbrella, she was hit by the full heat of the day. She hated being too hot; it didn’t agree with her redhead’s pale, freckled skin. Suddenly the water looked very tempting. Dudley, seeing her hesitate on the edge of the pool, waved a soaking arm in her direction.

“Lizzie!” he shouted. “Come on in!” Beside him a number of girls splashed around, screaming. One was Amelia’s younger sister, Anna, who had jumped in wearing her bridesmaid’s dress. Another was Letty Knollys, the girlfriend of one of Dudley’s bandmates whom Lizzie privately thought was an even bigger groupie than Amelia.

Lizzie smiled and shook her head. Her curls would go even frizzier if she got them wet and there were bound to be paparazzi hiding in the trees to capture the wedding reception for the papers. Dudley would have made sure of that. She didn’t want to be all over the red tops with mad hair and a wet see-through dress. She was too careful of her reputation for that.

She wandered off in the direction of the luxury portaloos. Evidently the plumbing at Oakhangar Hall, the ridiculously ostentatious wedding present that Amelia’s father had bought for the bride, was not up to coping with two hundred celebrity guests. Nevertheless, the cool darkness of the entrance hall beckoned to her.

It took her eyes several seconds to adjust when she took off her sunglasses and then she almost fell over the enormous pile of wedding presents spilling across the floor. Beyond the gift mountain the flagstones stretched, smooth and highly polished, to the base of a grand staircase that curved up in two flights to a balustraded gallery. The soaring walls were panelled in dark wood and hung with tapestries. The whole effect was consciously mock-medieval and rather over the top but Lizzie could see that it suited Amelia’s Pre-Raphaelite style.

A huge black grand piano skulked in a corner beside the stair, its surface playing host to a vast display of lilies more suited to a funeral than a wedding in Lizzie’s opinion. She muffled a sneeze as the pollen tickled her nose. In contrast to the roar of the party outside, the house was sepulchrally quiet. Except... Across the wide acreage of floor came the cascading melody of a harp, the notes resonating for a couple of seconds then dying away.