‘Helen Brown,’ she told him, and to forestall a repeat of her interview with Fiona and Flora she added, ‘I don’t know Oliver from London, or from Gloucestershire either. I’m not a friend of Annabel, whoever she is, nor of any of these people.’ Helen’s small, firm chin jerked towards the chattering roomful and Tom grinned at her again. ‘I met Oliver once, at Follies House, which is where I live, and he asked me to tea. God knows why, now I come to be here.’

She lifted her glass to Tom and took a gulp of the cold white wine.

‘Quite,’ said Tom equably. ‘But I think that one might as well make the best of Oliver’s excellent Alsace, now that one is here. Noll!’ he shouted, and Oliver drifted over to refill their glasses.

‘Take good care of her,’ he told Tom smoothly when he saw Helen behind her half of curtain. ‘I shall be needing her as soon as all the rabble has gone.’

Tom ignored him. ‘Follies?’ he asked her. ‘Where Frances was going to live?’

Helen nodded, and Tom’s face set harder for a moment. ‘I miss her,’ he said. ‘She’s very unlucky, and very helpless.’

Helen knew from that moment that she and Tom would be friends.

‘Mmmmm.’ Tom was looking harder at Helen now. ‘D’you act at all?’ He turned her face to the light and stared a little too deeply into the grey eyes.

‘Act?’ Helen blinked and caught herself blushing. ‘No, not at all. I couldn’t. Far too inhibited.’

‘Pity. I’m directing the OUDS major next term. As You Like It, you know. I thought you might like to audition for me.’

‘No, thanks.’ Helen shuddered at the idea. ‘But I’ll come along and see it. Will that do?’

Her turn had come, she thought, to ask questions. ‘You’re American, aren’t you? Are you studying here?’

Tom Hart laughed at the idea. ‘Hell, no. Well, not in the conventional way. I’m a theatre director, and I’m spending a year or so at the Playhouse here. Purely in an assistant capacity, you understand, as they keep reminding me. My old man’s in the theatre in New York. Management.’ Something flickered in Tom’s face, as if a disagreeable memory had bothered him for a moment, before he went on. ‘I needed some time away from home, before deciding what to do for real, so here I am. One of my projects now is this students’ Shakespeare. As a matter of fact, in a brilliant piece of innovative casting, Oliver is to be my Orlando.’ Tom confidently waved away Helen’s start of surprise. ‘You’d be amazed. He moves beautifully, and he has a real unaffected feel for the verse. You may think he’s a mere aristocratic thicko, with a flair for nothing more taxing than horses and dogs, but you’d be wrong.’