This latest play, The Blackest Night, was doing extremely well. It had enjoyed a run of nine weeks so far and, largely thanks to the stellar reviews, there was no end in sight. Howard was revelling in the attention this brought him, sucking it up while he could, always aware of the ephemeral nature of the career he had chosen. He was a sanguine sort and took the punches and the praise as they came his way, but naturally he enjoyed the times when he was appreciated rather than denigrated.

A pretty young actress sat on his knee. He wasn’t absolutely sure of her name. Ethel, or Ettie, or Beryl? She had dark curly hair piled up on her head in precarious, defiant loops; shorter, springy tresses bobbed about her ears and above her eyes with a life of their own. She was wearing only her underwear and a thin Asian-looking robe.

‘It’s a kimono,’ she stated haltingly, betraying the fact that she was unsure of the pronunciation. ‘All the way from Japan.’ A gift no doubt from an admirer.

Her cotton chemise was scooped low, presumably designed to show off a full swell of cleavage; in this case her collar and breast plate were a xylophone of bones stepping to tiny, tight breasts. He could see the outline of her nipples pointing up to him. Hopefully. She was trying to persuade him to give her a part by writing lines especially for her. Young starlets sometimes came to him in this way, keen to offer him favours in the hope he could move them out of the chorus line. Howard didn’t condemn the girls. People got what they could. His friends were generally that sort. The sort who were born with nothing and had to work hard for everything. The occasional easy something was appreciated. They thought he had influence, and so he did, sometimes.

Of course no one ever vulgarly discussed this arrangement; it was all dressed up in the relative respectability of a love affair, but the rules were understood. He always upheld his side of the bargain. If he could press or sway, he would try to do so. The girls who were prepared to make this sort of deal knew the score: sometimes he could help, other times he couldn’t. He didn’t lead them on or misrepresent his weight. In this case, he’d equitably and carefully explained that as the script had already been approved by Mr Warrington – the man who managed, produced, directed and starred; his boss, her boss, the boss – securing her any lines was unlikely.

Mr Thomas Warrington was a respected actor-manager with an ever-widening and formidable reputation. He wasn’t a rich man, because instead of putting his profits into a bank, he ploughed any revenue he made back into his theatre. His one and only ambition was to produce a more spectacular, impactful, memorable show than the last. The Warrington was not the grandest of playhouses in the West End but nor was it the smallest. More often than not the cast played to a more-or-less full house. Warrington respected Howard but he would not be persuaded to do anything he did not want to do. Howard’s hands were tied on this occasion, but the starlet did not believe him. She wanted to believe his power was infinite because she thought she had some influence over him. It was all about clout, fame and fortune for these women. Howard liked all three things but there was more to it for him.