“Mrs. Bainbridge,” he said, raising it to his lips.

“Mr. Danielli,” she returned.

“So good of you to come,” he said, leading her inside. “Be careful, it’s somewhat crowded tonight.”

“Somewhat?” she said as he parted a path for her through the mingled assembly.

The parlour was filled with folding chairs, and what furniture had originally been there had been shoved against the walls or, in the case of some low tables, stacked to make more room.

The guests were mostly men in their twenties or thirties, some still in uniform. A dozen conversations were already in progress, as was the smoking, evenly divided between cigarettes and pipes. The windows were fully open, which did nothing to cool down the room.

There was a long, threadbare, overstuffed green sofa at the far end of the room, and it was towards this that Sally guided her.

“Make way,” he proclaimed. “Make way, good people. Our leading lady has arrived.”

“I thought I was your leading lady,” said Iris, who was already on the sofa, her legs curled up under her.

“In your universe, always,” said Sally. “But tonight, you are in mine, and I determine who is who.”

“I don’t believe in a deterministic universe,” declared Iris. “I believe in chaos.”

Then she sneezed abruptly, clutching her handkerchief to her face.

“Oh dear,” said Gwen sympathetically as she sat gracefully next to Iris. “Ran into some dust somewhere, I gather.”

“When you put a curse on someone, you mean business,” muttered Iris, wiping her nose.

“Right,” called Sally. “Places, please.”

A man sat in the space remaining on the sofa next to Gwen and offered his hand.

“George Weatherby,” he said. “Looks like we’re in for it now.”

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” said Gwen as she shook it. “Gwendolyn Bainbridge. This is—”

“Oh, I know her, don’t I, Sparks?” he said, grinning. “We climbed the wall after curfew more than once.”

“Behave, George,” Iris admonished him.

Sally stood in front of them, as a man and a woman pulled chairs up on either side.

“Good evening, and thank you for coming tonight,” he said. “This is the first reading of my play, The Margate Affair. That’s a working title, by the way.”

“What works about it?” called a man sitting in the back.

“Save the comments for after,” said Sally. “Let me introduce the cast. That’s George on the sofa, playing Bill. Next to him is Gwen, playing Lydia, and rounding out the central cast, which is why I, in a brilliant directorial touch put them in the center, is the one and only Iris Sparks as Muriel. Loretta, in the chair on the right, will be playing all the secondary female roles, and Alec, on the left, will be playing all the male ones.”

“I wanted to play the women, but you are so damned conventional,” said Alec dolefully.

“Alec’s a ringer, by the way,” said Sally. “He’s going to be in the new Priestley play this autumn, so keep on the lookout for that.”