And now they had rolled back the big Indian carpet and were actually dancing; I was waltzing with a tall thin girl who said she was a model. The walls had ceased to look streaky, their colour was a soft rose. At some point in the evening, the tape recorder had been switched on and we stopped dancing to listen to the playback. Everyone’s face was excited, flushed, half-ashamed; as always the machine seemed only to regurgitate malice. False, of course, it said, sponge spheroids. Ask Tony, he knows. And then there’d be a confusion of voices and an assortment of minor noises – glasses clinking, matches being struck, the central heat­ing rumbling and a girl’s voice would say very clearly: The latest? Jesus, he’s ancient. Full of whisky – no darling, no we couldn’t I’ve told you; and a different voice, the voice of the red-haired girl from RADA whom now I dimly remember talking to earlier. I’m just a working girl, and my own voice, thicker and more Yorkshire than I’d imagined it – You give me great delight. . . .

The model had left me and was chattering to Jackie, Jean’s friend. Jackie was small and dark and plump and reminded me of Eva Storr; I went over to the table to pour myself a drink, reflecting as I did so that I’d already had quite enough. I started to worry about the Tiffield order again; Mottram was bound to talk about delivery dates tomorrow. The red-haired girl from RADA was sitting on a young man’s knee; to judge from the expression on his face she was giving him great delight too. I filled up my glass again and moved over to the fireplace. There was a firescreen in front of it, impossibly big red and white satin roses covered by glass. There were logs in the fireplace festooned with red and blue crêpe paper; the logs looked as if they’d been dusted and polished. The red-haired girl from RADA pushed the young man’s hand away from her leg; he said something to her and she blushed. She lifted an arm to put a curl back into place; I saw the tuft of hair in her armpit. Suddenly I wished her dead; I wasn’t with them, I hadn’t joined the dancers, it was ten years too late. I looked at the invitation cards on the mantelpiece; there were too many for them all to be visible but somehow all those from celebrities were at the front.

Jean came into the room. She smiled at me and I went over to her. She looked over at the tape recorder. “How long has that been on?”

“Long enough,” I said. I put my glass down.

“It’s Jackie’s bright idea. Sheer sadism I call it.” Her lipstick was a little smudged and a shoulder strap had slipped.