He was allowed to get no further.

‘It’s not,’ Miss Bellamy said, ‘what you’ve done, both of you, but the revolting way you’ve done it. If you’d come to me in the first instance and said …’ Then followed an exposition of what they should have said and of the generous response they would have enjoyed if they’d said it. For a moment it looked as if the row was going to degenerate into an aimless and repetitive wrangle. It would probably have done so if Pinky had not said abruptly:

‘Now, look here, Mary! It’s about time you faced up to yourself. You know jolly well that anything you’ve done for either of us has been paid back with interest. I know you’ve had a lot to do with my getting on The Management’s short list and I’m grateful, but I also know that it’s suited you very well to have me there. I’m a good foil to you. I know all your gimmicks. How you like to be fed lines. And when you dry, as nowadays you very often do, I can fill in like nobody’s business. In the gentle art of letting myself be upstaged, cheated out of points and fiddled into nonentity I’ve done you proud and you’ll find I’m damn’ hard to replace.’

‘My God! My God! That I should have to listen to this!’

‘As for Bertie …’

‘Never mind, Pinky,’ he said quickly.

‘I do mind. It’s true you gave Bertie his start, but what hasn’t he done for you? Your decor! Your clothes! Face it, Mary, without the Saracen Concealed Curve you’d be the Grand Old Lady of the Hip Parade.’

Bertie gave a hysterical hoot of laughter and looked terrified.

‘The truth is,’ Pinky said, ‘you want it both ways, Mary. You want to boss everybody and use everybody for your own ends and at the same time you want us all to wallow in your wake saying how noble and generous and wonderful you are. You’re a cannibal, Mary, and it’s high time somebody had the guts to tell you so.’

A dead silence followed this unexampled speech.

Miss Bellamy walked to the door and turned. It was a movement with which they were familiar.

‘After this,’ she said very slowly, dead-panning her voice to a tortured monotone, ‘there is only one thing for me to do and much as it hurts me, I shall do it. I shall see The Management. Tomorrow.’

She opened the door. They had a brief glimpse of Charles, Warrender and Richard, irresolute in the hall, before she swept out and shut the door behind her.

The room seemed very quiet after she had gone.

‘Bertie,’ Pinky said at last, ‘if I’ve done you any harm I’m desperately sorry. I was high. I’ll never, never forgive myself.’

‘That’s all right, dear.’