Beryl hurriedly scrubbed off her make-up and he waited for her at the stage door, smoking a cigarette, blue plumes drifting on the night air. Neither of them minded the late hour at which they were venturing forth; thesps were nocturnal. He knew he did not have to try hard to impress her. He could take her to a pub and spend just coppers on jellied eels and stout, but he liked her well enough and so he took her to the Grill Room at the Cumberland Hotel and spent three times what he had to on lamb cutlets and red wine. He watched as the greyness left her skin, her cheeks turned pink; it was money well spent.

She was a pleasant enough dinner companion. She told him she’d been working in the theatre since she was a baby; her mother was an actress too, ‘Although she struggles for work now. She’s thirty-seven.’ The information was whispered, and Beryl looked about her as she made the revelation, aware that it was a betrayal to admit as much; she had fewer scruples about admitting that no one really knew who her father was. She declared she couldn’t imagine doing anything other, certainly not factory or domestic service, which were, after all, her only genuine alternatives.

He thought they might be friends if only she didn’t keep leaning so desperately across the table, trying to manoeuvre her small breasts into a cleavage by folding her arms. Not that he thought there was anything wrong with her breasts; he’d always believed more than a handful was a waste. He could sleep with her. Tangle his limbs up with hers for the night, get some brief warmth and luxury from her body, but was it fair? It was obvious he didn’t care about her as much as she cared about him. Women had to care more; they had more to lose. It would end in tears. It always did. He should probably try to avoid that sort of hassle and mess at work.

They came outside and drew in deep breaths. It was just before two in the morning but the blue-black night wasn’t too chilly or inhospitable. They lingered; he had one foot in the gutter, one on the pavement.

‘Shall we go back to your place?’ she asked as he’d expected her to. The warm tug of companionship, the raw promise of passion had threaded its way through her mind and body. He knew what she imagined, something rather more plush than the reality. In the dressing rooms, before the performance, he often wore a plum-coloured velvet smoking jacket; therefore those who didn’t know any better thought he was a toff. His face was chiselled and his skin luminous in a way that suggested something other than his working-class origins. It was misleading. His face was his own, true enough, but he’d been given the smoking jacket by their Mr Warrington, on loan. The savvy and ambitious actor-manager liked to cultivate a particular image with regard to his writers. He wanted people to assume that they smoked expensive cigars, slept on crisp linen, washed using the best Selfridge soap. They did not. Warrington’s wages couldn’t stretch to any of that.