Tranquil scene with them both in the flat at Noel Road – where the collage has begun to spread further round the walls and the book Orton has stolen lies open with an illustration cut out. Working and listening to music on the record player. The collage spreads round the room as Peggy speaks.

PEGGY   (voice-over) And so ten years passed.

LAHR   (voice-over) Not like that?

PEGGY   (voice-over) No, silly. Though quite like that. Nothing happened. Looking back on it I suppose it was some kind of preparation.

LAHR   (voice-over) An education maybe.

PEGGY   (voice-over) Well, if it seemed like that to Joe, it can’t have done to Ken.

LAHR   (voice-over) No.

PEGGY   (voice-over) His hair was falling out.

LAHR   (voice-over) Oh God! I know the feeling.

PEGGY   (voice-over) And whereas he had stopped writing, Joe had started. But still they were both failures, so it didn’t matter.

LAHR   (voice-over) It didn’t matter yet.

PEGGY   (voice-over) Quite.

INT. ORTON AND HALLIWELL’S FLAT. DAY/DUSK. 1962.

The walls are three-quarters covered in collage. Halliwell cuts a picture out of a library book and tries to find a place for it on the wall. Orton is reading. Halliwell goes into the kitchen, the camera staying with Orton, placidly reading.

HALLIWELL   (out of shot) Do you want rice pudding with the sardines or separate?

ORTON   With.

HALLIWELL   (out of shot) Jam?
Halliwell is in the kitchen, poised with jam.

ORTON   (voice-over) No.
Halliwell puts jam on his own plate of sardines and rice pudding, but not on Orton’s. He carries the food in. Orton eats his while reading. Halliwell sits on the bed eating his.
Orton stops and looks out of the window.
Mozart was dead by the time he was my age. I’m not even young any more.

HALLIWELL   What about me?

ORTON   You never were.
He carefully sticks a piece of paper on the dust-cover of a library book.
I can’t see how we’re ever going to make our mark defacing library books.
He props up the library book on his desk. It is a biography of Sybil Thorndyke, now adorned with a picture of a Stone Age woman with large tits.

INT. ISLINGTON PUBLIC LIBRARY. DAY. 1962.

Cut to a library date stamp coming down hard in a book. Orton and Halliwell have just had their books stamped and are going out. The assistant, Miss Battersby, looks after them suspiciously, as does Mr Cunliffe, the librarian.

CUNLIFFE   You didn’t tell me one of them was a nancy.

MISS BATTERSBY   I’m sorry, Mr Cunliffe?

CUNLIFFE   The bald one, Miss Battersby. A homosexual. A shirt-lifter.

MISS BATTERSBY   battersby In Islington?

CUNLIFFE   Haven’t you noticed? Large areas of the borough are being restored and painted Thames Green.
Cunliffe is looking at their address on the library tickets.
Noel Road. This calls for a little detective work, Miss Battersby.

EXT. NOEL ROAD. DAY. 1962.