Now, in the lazy early evening, when day was slipping into dusk and outside men were lighting the street lamps, women scurrying home ready to prepare their families’ teas, he was kingpin, top dog, the man. At this point the words he’d chosen, the characters he’d formed – placed in jeopardy and then either rescued or damned – were all. The actors would invite him into their dressing rooms, ask him exactly what he meant by a particular line, check he agreed with their intonation. They looked to him for nurturing, advice and inspiration. He, the playwright, had them in his possession, the popular faces that appeared on billboards and in the newspapers, the men women screamed for, the women men bankrupted themselves for. Whilst he was aware that the actors’ and actresses’ interest in him was largely fuelled by their insecurity and desperate need for attention, combined with the fact that they dared not bother the actor-manager, Mr Warrington, still he wallowed in their notice and respect.

Sometimes he thought it incredible to imagine that people read and believed what he had written, and yet every fibre of every bone knew it was the case and that it was as it should be. He was a writer, a fact as plain and simple as him being a man. He had an instinctive, intrinsic need to write; to express himself, to create, to think, to be heard. He wrote because it helped him make sense of the world he lived in and also allowed him to escape from that world. He’d long since known that he could not do the normal work other people did. He could not paint signs, or work as a clerk, or build ships or mine coal. He knew these jobs were real and honourable; he admired the men who did them, but he knew that all he could do – and live – was write. He didn’t often try to explain to people why he wrote. They would misinterpret what he had to say, think him arrogant or distant. He was neither. He loved mankind and felt closest to them when he wrote about them.

Howard was amused by the actors (some womanisers, some queer, all his friends), but he enjoyed sitting in the actresses’ dressing room best. Not least because they walked around in their underwear, teasingly sat on his knee, mussed his hair, dropped light kisses on his eyelids, his cheeks, his lips as they chatted to him. The actresses were a brave breed. They laughed in the face of what society thought was respectable. They had their own rules and made their own way. Rigid and rosy at once. There was always a decanter of whisky or sherry for him to help himself to, and cigarettes in pretty lacquered boxes for him to smoke. He loved the colours, the warmth and the sensual creativity that oozed from every object, every nook and cranny; the general sense that all was right with the world.