“Yes. Yes! But Faye Dunaway in that—she’s incredible, totally fierce, totally unlikeable. And all those pictures of the forties, the ‘women’s pictures’”—she makes quote marks in the air with her fingers—“they were actually pretty great. Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn . . .”

“Autumn Sonata,” Nathan says, leaning forward.

“What’s that?”

“You don’t know it? Seriously? Liv Ullmann. Ingrid Bergman. Two incredible parts for women. Fierce doesn’t even cover it. I needed therapy after that film.”

“I’ll watch it,” she says, laughing. “Thanks.” She leans over and takes his pen, scribbles the title onto the back of her hand.

“Hey,” he says, “maybe you should invest in a notebook, for this new academic career.”

“Yeah.” She hands him back his pen. “Maybe I should.”

“How’s the acting then?”

“Oh. You know.” She shrugs. “Appalling. Humiliating. Ask me tomorrow.”

“Really? But I thought it was going OK. There was that thing . . . the Shakespeare. You were great.”

“That thing was three years ago, Nath.”

A fringe King Lear at the back of a pub in Peckham. Playing Regan for two hundred a week plus expenses. Raising her voice even louder when the racing was on in the bar.

“So how do you live? You don’t still work in pubs?”

She pushes her cup away. “I do shifts in a call center. Raising money for charities. And I do life modeling.”

“Still? Jesus, really?”

“Yeah. Well.” The look on his face stings her. “It’s not so bad. They’re good charities. And the life modeling’s fine. I work at the Slade. It could be worse.”

“Yes, but surely there’s something else. You’re so bright.”

“Thanks, but it’s not so easy to find a world-beating part-time job that lets me go to auditions at short notice.”

He nods, chastened.

“What about you, Nath?”

“What do you mean?”

“How are you doing?”

“Oh, OK. Overworked. Underpaid. Drowning in admin.”

I didn’t mean that. I meant the baby stuff. The no-baby stuff. How are you doing with that?

“But, you know, we academics love to moan.”

As they stand to say their good-byes, her phone buzzes—her agent. She gestures to Nathan, who waves his hand for her to take the call.

“Lissa?”

She can tell by the tone it’s good news. “Yes?” She tries to keep the eagerness from her voice.

“They want you. The Chekhov. You’re in.”

Cate