When they’d eaten Lydia turned on the television and found the soap opera they all watched because Juliet was in it. Christine rarely saw Juliet in person these days, now there was no need for contact over Sandy; she couldn’t come to the funeral because she was away filming somewhere in Europe. Christine and Lydia kept up with her religiously on the telly though, taking a huge interest in her character, a harassed middle-aged doctor in a country practice. Lydia said she was beginning to forget which bits were the real Juliet and which belonged to the part she played. What about the dodgy accent? Wasn’t that fake? But perhaps if you were a bad enough actor even your own voice sounded as if you were putting it on. She was still slight and energetic, but it was difficult to recognise the gypsy looks of the young Juliet behind the doctor with her stony features and pragmatic short haircut, her repertoire of exasperated expressions, through fraught to grimly resentful. Apparently she had a following of younger fans, because of Sandy.

The living area was arranged over two levels. In the dusky light later, looking for the telephone – she ought to call her mother, and Alex’s mother too, who didn’t come to funerals because of her feet – Christine climbed the steps into the mezzanine, which was lined with bookshelves. One volume caught her eye, pulled out slightly from the shelf or pushed back incompletely, gleaming white in the dimness, claiming her, familiar. More than familiar: it was the collection of Alex’s poems, published long ago, before they were together. The edges of its pages were yellowed and the book had lost its freshness; the cover, whose plainness had been austerely striking at the time, seemed of its period now, its curly purple lettering dated. She felt towards Alex’s book a complex reflex of protective tenderness mixed with faint derision. Because she had just been watching her on the television, she remembered that there were poems about Juliet in this book – not exactly love poems, although some of them were sexual. Hesitating, Christine almost pulled it out to look inside it, as she hadn’t done for years; then she pushed it back into its place instead. All that was over with, she felt impatiently. She got on better with Alex these days because so much was smoothed off between them, the surfaces of their lives sliding fairly effortlessly together. Anyway, there wasn’t enough light for reading, and she was reluctant to turn on any lamps. The dimness was restful.