‘I heard that one,’ Madeleine laughs. ‘And when one of the kids, Lottie I think it was, asked for a present, the client gave her his cigarettes and DB was like, let me get you some wrapping paper for those!’

‘I love DB,’ says Becky again, and she really feels it.

‘He’s rather cross with Matthew. You know that, don’t you?’

Becky hesitates as if feeling her way round the edges of a concealed and sheer drop beneath her. ‘There were a few calls before we left.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘Do you?’ Becky asks.

‘The difference between us is that it doesn’t matter to me why he’s angry. I don’t have a film with him … But you do, and Matthew’s been a rather naughty boy.’

Becky feels the heat of Madeleine’s expectant gaze on her as she struggles to link the facts in the right order: looping back to the woman on Matthew’s kitchen floor around to DB’s irritation, Antonia’s rage and where she finds herself now …

‘It’s clear you don’t know,’ says Madeleine flatly. ‘Well, it’s not fair to gossip, but I’d advise you to talk to him. If it really is your movie, you don’t want a stink around it. Not when nobody’s under contract yet. Sorry to patronize. I’m sure you don’t need advice.’

Madeleine detaches herself with a soft squeeze to Becky’s forearm before she goes. A message has been delivered, but what is it? A grim grittiness now sits in Becky’s belly. Has she done something wrong? Becky feels around those dark discomforting areas, searching for something that could give her new information, feigning distraction at something going on across the bar, trying to push back the energy emerging from a buried and ignored place deep within her, feeling it swell and grow, powered on by alcohol as if it were petrol. Soon she feels that same energy gather to a sharp, metal spade-tip point and begin its work excavating. She sips her drink and tries to think of all the reasons that DB might be angry with Matthew. Mentally she scrolls through DB’s client list. Has Matthew dumped one of his actors from a film? Riled him or her with a disrespectful deal?

She tries to remember details about the woman on the floor: her long neck and spun-gold hair. She momentarily catches hold of an image – a chignon-twist – but she can’t place exactly where she saw it. Laid out on a table somewhere as a headshot or photograph elsewhere? In a magazine? One of the stills from this week’s Radio Times television preview about that new drama? But as quickly as the image arrives, it is washed away with the alcohol and the interruption:

‘Hey, good to see you. It’s all been kicking off for you in the last twenty-four hours, hasn’t it?’