I never saw her in trousers or sweaters. She was as formal in her dress as he was casual, favoring little suits with short flared skirts and nipped waist jackets or dresses with belts and big padded shoulders. Lots of jewelry, lots of heavy makeup, her nails always painted, her mouth outlined in dark red and filled in with rose-pink to make it look even juicier and plumper. I’ve met a lot of actresses over the past few years, seeing to the electrics in their flats and houses, some of them very famous, and off-set or offstage they’ve always looked—well, like me, jeans and T-shirts, no makeup, and as if they’ve never seen the inside of a hairdresser’s. Perhaps Selina hadn’t been in the business long enough to get into actressy ways. After years spent “resting” or taking jobs not much better than an extra’s, she’d auditioned for the part of Annabel, the licensee of the Crown and Anchor in Streetwise, never expecting to get it or if she did that the serial would run and run, be still running after fourteen years, and its four stars become more famous than actors who had been on the stage for a lifetime.

He and she seemed as unsuited to each other as any couple I’ve ever known. He was dry, academic, censorious, short-tempered with anything he called ignorance, an intellectual snob; she was almost uneducated, frivolous, and flashy. She loved parties, going to them and giving them, the kind where people never sit down but stand around, talking media gossip, and no one knows anyone else better than as a party acquaintance. But in spite of the “darlings,” the word she used with everyone from Max to the man who came to mend the dishwasher, she was as cold and wary, judgmental, impatient as he.