The Plus One: escape with the hottest, laugh-out-loud debut of summer 2018!

It didn’t seem very fair, a load of people hollering in a forest, trying to make the pheasants fly towards a line of armed men standing on a hill. Beside me, Bovril yawned and lay down. I fished in my pocket for my phone, my hands already numb from the cold. ‘Beaters people who chase birds,’ I tapped into my notes with stiff fingers. ‘Jasper has dog called Bovril. Duchess mad, stuffs all family pets.’

A sudden, loud bang to the right made me jump so I slid my phone back into my pocket and looked up in the air to see a pheasant whirling in small circles towards the ground. It hit the grass with a thud. Bovril looked at it, then looked up at me, then whined.

I jumped again as Jasper’s gun went off. The smell of gunpowder floated through the air and there was another thud behind us as that pheasant tumbled to the ground.

‘Let Bovril off his lead, will you?’ instructed Jasper, eyes still on the sky as if scanning for the Luftwaffe.

Bovril, pleased to be free, bounded towards the dead pheasant, picked it up by the neck, and trotted obediently back, dropping it on my boot. I looked down at it and inched my foot away, uncertain of Jimmy Choo’s policy on accepting back boots which had pheasant blood on them. Frowned upon, probably.

The sound of gunshots rang out. Suddenly, dozens of birds were flying out from the wood. I clapped my hands over my ears and looked up into the sky. Pheasants poured overhead as the shooting continued, some tumbling from the sky like stones, some flying straight on over the hedge behind them. I’d keep flying if I were you, I willed them, keep going until you get to somewhere nice and warm, like Africa.

Jasper muttered the odd ‘fuck’ and a small pile of empty red cartridges piled up behind him. Bovril, meanwhile, galloped back and forth, fetching pheasants and proudly creating a pile at my feet. Some were still twitching, which made me grimace. Urgh, what was I doing standing in this cold field? All I wanted was to sit down with Jasper and get the interview done.

A whistle blew and Jasper put down his gun. ‘Well, that wasn’t too bad, was it? Must have been sixty or so birds that came out of there.’

Poor things, I wanted to say. ‘Hmm,’ I said instead. ‘How long have you been doing it?’

‘Since I was six.’

‘Six? I was still learning to tell the time when I was six.’

‘Dad started me pretty early. Right, come on. Another drive, then it’s elevenses.’

‘Drive? In a car?’ I was hopeful about warming up.

‘No, no, you appalling townie. That’s what we’re on now. A “drive” is this, standing around in a field waiting for birds to be driven towards us. So, we’ve got one more, then elevenses, then probably another couple, then lunch, then maybe two more drives after that depending on the light.’

The day stretched before me. My fingers had gone white from the cold and my feet were presumably the same colour despite being wrapped in scratchy woollen socks. It would serve Peregrine right if I succumbed to frostbite while shooting in Yorkshire.

Lunch was back in the castle, in a room with the heads of dead animals looking down at us. Stag heads staring glassily out in front of them, snarling fox heads, a zebra head, a warthog head, the head of something else that looked like a deer but had curling horns. I stared at them. You never saw zebra heads on 60 Minute Makeover.

‘We killed the last journalist who came to stay with us,’ said a voice behind me. I turned around. It was the Duke. ‘Only joking,’ he said, before I had the chance to reply.

‘Now, come on, everybody sit,’ he ordered.

I was sitting between a man who was wearing bright yellow socks with his tweed outfit, called Barny, and another guest called Max. Barny, I learned, was actually called Barnaby and he was fifty-first in line to the throne. He didn’t have a job, but lived at the family estate in Gloucestershire and spent his time shooting. When he wasn’t shooting, he told me, he was fishing or horse racing.

‘Oh,’ I said, starting to run out of small talk. He seemed obsessed with killing things. ‘So do you travel much?’

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘going abroad is ghastly. Apart from the Alps. I go skiing three or four times a year. I’d like to go hunting tigers in India, but they’re making it very tricky to do that these days.’

‘Barny, you can’t say that sort of thing,’ said Max, joining the conversation. ‘Polly, I’m so sorry. Barny is completely appalling, but we’ve all been friends since school and we can’t seem to shake him off.’

‘How rude,’ said Barny. ‘No shooting invitation for you this year, Maximillian.’

‘You see, Polly? Barny blackmails us into being friends with him. Tragic.’

I looked along to Jasper, positioned at the head of the table, with two blondes sitting either side and smiling at him in an adoring fashion. His ideal habitat, I suspected. He’d loosened the collar around his neck and was leaning forwards on the table, telling them some story. He reached for a bottle in front of him and topped up both their glasses while still talking, then put the bottle back and looked down the table at me. He caught my eye and winked. Please, I thought, I’m not that easy.

I turned to Max, sensing if not an ally then at least someone I might be able to hold a conversation with, and asked him about the others. ‘Max,’ I began, ‘who is everyone else here? I mean, obviously, I know about Jasper and his family. But I’m not sure about anyone else. Do you know them all?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, folding his napkin and putting it on the table.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, just poor you. Having to come to this. Do we all seem totally absurd?’ Max asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘No,’ I said after a pause. ‘I’m just trying to gauge who everybody is.’

‘OK, let me talk you through them all. So, next to Jasper’s father is Willy Naseby-Dawson, she’s…’

I looked at the blonde girl again. ‘Why’s she called Willy if she’s a girl?’

‘Short for Wilhelmina. She’s from a German family, she’s Barny’s wife. Poor thing. And then on her other side is Archie Spiffington, who’s married to the girl Barny’s talking to now, Jessica. They got married last year because she was pregnant – her father was very upset at that and insisted on them getting hitched. Her family’s disgustingly rich. Her great-great-grandfather invented the railway or something. Anyway, big wedding in London, then six months later along comes their son Ludo, who’s now about seven months, I think. I’m the godfather.’

‘Oh, sweet, where’s Ludo?’

‘No idea, with the nanny in London probably. And then, on Jessica’s other side is Seb – Sebastian, Lord Ullswater. He’s a fairly dubious character who used to be in the Army and now sells weapons to anyone who’ll buy them. And he’s married to that girl on the other side of Jasper, the girl on my right, who’s called Muffy.’

‘And what about you?’ I asked him.

‘What do you mean, what about me?’

‘Are you married?’

Max threw his head back and laughed. ‘I’m gay, my darling. Can you not tell because I’m wearing such manly trousers?’

‘Oh, right,’ I said, blushing. ‘Although, you could still get married.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ he said, nodding.

‘Have you got a boyfriend?’

‘No. Not terribly good with boyfriends.’

‘Max,’ said Barny, from my other side. ‘None of us want to hear about your love life over pudding.’

‘I wish there was one, Barny, old boy. But it’s been slow-going of late.’

‘You should meet my flatmate, Joe,’ I said to Max. ‘You’re just his type.’

‘Oh really? What’s his type?’

‘Well, actually, quite wide ranging, I’d say. But dark, handsome and funny. And you’re all of those.’

‘Right,’ bellowed the Duke from the other end of the room, slamming his fists down on the table. ‘Finish up your pudding and let’s get going.’

‘Come on then,’ Max said to me. Then he called down the table, ‘Jasper, I’m stealing Polly to stand with me this afternoon. Violet, why don’t you go with your brother? I need to talk to Polly about her flatmate.’