There was plenty to think about. The new play. Her role: a fat part if ever she saw one. The long speech about keeping the old chin up and facing the future with a wry smile. Richard hadn’t put it quite like that and she did sometimes wish he would write more simply. Perhaps she would choose her moment and suggest to him that a few homely phrases would do the trick much more effectively than those rather involved, rather arid sentences that were so bloody difficult to memorize. What was wanted – the disreputable word ‘gimmick’ rose to the surface and was instantly slapped down – what was wanted, when all was said and done, was the cosy human touch: a vehicle for her particular genius. She believed in humanity. Perhaps this morning would be the right occasion to talk to Richard. He would, of course, be coming to wish her many happy returns. Her birthday! That had to be thought of selectively and with a certain amount of care. She must at all costs exclude that too easy little sum whose answer would provide her age. She had, quite literally and by dint of a yogi-like discipline, succeeded in forgetting it. Nobody else that mattered knew except Florence who was utterly discreet and Old Ninn who, one must face it, was getting a bit garrulous, especially when she’d taken her glass or two of port. Please God she wouldn’t forget herself this afternoon.

After all, it was how you felt and how you looked that mattered. She lifted her head from the pillows and turned it. There, across the room, she was, reflected in the tall glass above her dressing-table. Not bad, she thought, not half bad, even at that hour and with no makeup. She touched her face here and there, manipulating the skin above the temples and at the top of the jaw line. To lift or not to lift? Pinky Cavendish was all for it and said that nowadays there was no need for the stretched look. But what about her famous triangular smile? Maintaining the lift, she smiled. The effect was still triangular.