She sat up, perching on the edge of the bed, and decided that the only possible solution was a cup of hot chocolate followed by sleep.

Depressed to her core, she moved back into the main room and switched on the kettle.

While waiting for it to boil she noticed something on the mat.

As the post had already come and gone long ago, it must no doubt be some junk mail – a local flyer for an astrologer, pizza delivery or a vide-grenier, the French equivalent of a car boot sale, perhaps.

She turned over the sheet of A5 paper. It was an odd collage of photos, artlessly done, one photo arranged higgledy-piggledy and photocopied to make one flabby mosaic-like design. Looking closely, she realised that all the little photos were of her. Some taken recently, but most were copies from her missing album.

The make-up girls were cleaning up the wagon, wiping down the tops and stowing things away, ready for it to move off.

As Sally came up the steps, Judy smiled and held out a jar of cold cream and a box of tissues. ‘Quite a baptism of fire!’

Sally stooped to look at her face in the mirror. The lipstick was everywhere! When Eggy went in for a kiss it was like being sucked at by a wet Hoover. Sally hoped that she had looked as though she was enjoying it. The public always had the idea that these kissing scenes were likely to inspire you to run off and leave your husband or wife, it was all so exciting to look at. Little did they know about the reality.

‘Is he an old friend of yours?’

Judy said this with an implied wink. She obviously imagined that they had once previously had an affair. Well, that was acting for you!

‘I worked with him when I was starting out. We weren’t really close,’ Sally said, aware that that was a massive understatement.

During the shooting of the final scene of the day, after the kiss and the initial shock of seeing one another, Eggy had been rather subdued, she thought, and played the scene very efficiently, almost as if there was something weighing heavily on his mind. He seemed sheepish with her, although he did mumble encouraging noises. She remembered, when she was their ASM, that he had had a good side, and always had a wink and a sparkle in his eye. Over here he did seem a little bit like a fish out of water. Perhaps he was edgy because sometimes the crew spoke to one another in French. Sally was fine replying to them and obviously understood, particularly everything the script editor – or as Sally remembered in her day calling the continuity girl – said, but Eggy stood beside her looking lost, and she had ended up being the one encouraging him.

‘Sally Doyle?’ The Third Assistant was outside the trailer. ‘Your car’s ready.’