‘It’s good, isn’t it?’

‘Florrie shall put it into my spray. At once. Before Bertie can get at it. You know what he is.’

‘Is Bertie here?’ Pinky asked quickly.

‘He’s in the flower-room.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why? Have you fallen out with him?’

‘Far from it,’ Pinky said. ‘Only – well, it’s just that I’m not really meant to let my cat out of its bag as yet and Bertie’s involved. But I really am, I fear, more than a little tiddly.’

‘You! I thought you never touched a thing in the morning.’

‘Nor I do. But this is an occasion, Mary. I’ve been drinking with The Management. Only two small ones, but on an empty turn: Bingo!’

Miss Bellamy said sharply: ‘With The Management?’

‘That gives you pause, doesn’t it?’

‘And Bertie’s involved?’

Pinky laughed rather wildly and said: ‘If I don’t tell somebody I’ll spontaneously combust, so I’m going to tell you. Bertie can lump it, bless him, because why after all shouldn’t I be audibly grateful.’

Mary Bellamy looked fixedly at her friend for a moment and then said: ‘Grateful?’

‘All right. I know I’m incoherent. Here it comes. Darling: I’m to have the lead in Bongo Dillon’s new play. At the Unicorn. Opening in September. Swear you won’t breathe it but it’s true and it’s settled and the contract’s mine for the signing. My first lead, Mary. Oh, God, I’m so happy.’

A hateful and all too-familiar jolt under the diaphragm warned Miss Bellamy that she had been upset. Simultaneously she knew that somehow or another she must run up a flag of welcome, must show a responsive warmth, must override the awful, menaced, slipping feeling, the nausea of the emotions that Pinky’s announcement had churned up.

‘Sweetie-pie!’ she said. ‘How wonderful!’ It wasn’t, she reflected, much cop as an expression of delighted congratulation from an old chum, but Pinky was too excited to pay any attention. She went prancing on about the merits of her contract, the glories of the role, the nice behaviour of The Management (Miss Bellamy’s Management, as she sickeningly noted), and the feeling that at last this was going to be It. All this gave Miss Bellamy a breather. She began to make fairly appropriate responses. Presently when Pinky drew breath, she was able to say with the right touch of down-to-earth honesty:

‘Pinky, this is going to be your Great Thing.’

‘I know it! I feel it myself,’ Pinky said soberly and added: ‘Please God, I’ll have what it takes. Please God, I will.’

‘My dear, you will,’ she rejoined and for the life of her couldn’t help adding, ‘Of course, I haven’t read the play.’