‘Think of it, Mike,’ he says constantly, his hand blocking the words in the air, ‘Mel Wright’. I can’t bring myself to call him Mel, although the studio thought Mervyn was too plebeian. It was hard enough learning to call him Mervyn. I still think of him, really, as Wright.

He spends his days at Pinewood, where there is a well equipped gym frequented by several other stars-in-waiting. Occasionally a producer swoops down and plucks one of them out to do a couple of days’ stunt work on the picture of the day. Mervyn has jumped off tall buildings, fallen through plate-glass windows and plunged into freezing cold water, always hoping to be spotted and fast-tracked to stardom. Meanwhile, the script goes to and from the head office, a scriptwriter is sacked, a new director is appointed, a new title invented, and we are no nearer to a camera.

I spend my days at the Treasury, like an automaton, earning our keep. We can live in some comfort on my wages because, of course, the rent on the bachelor pad is taken care of by Edward Templeton.

One lunchtime, I came home to pick up some papers that I’d forgotten to take with me in the morning, and found Mervyn in bed with Maxine Trent. To be exact, she was bent over the bed, and he was standing behind her.

I walked out without saying a word, went back to the office, told the switchboard not to put through any calls and, when five o’clock finally rolled round, went to the nearest pub and drank myself stupid. When I got home at ten, the flat was empty, the bed made, a few of Mervyn’s belongings, including his suitcase and his best clothes, missing. No note.

He could have gone anywhere: his nan’s in Shepherd’s Bush, Maxine Trent’s (she too is kept in style by Edward Templeton), or to Templeton’s himself. Or to any of the other admirers and lovers that I suspected he has. How long has this been going on? While I was at the Treasury, and he was waiting for stardom, who else has he entertained in what I stupidly thought of as our home?

I heard nothing from him the next day, or the next week. I left an empty flat in the morning, returned to an empty flat at night, usually drunk. I tried to see Stephen, to pour out my troubles over a bottle of wine, but he never answered the door. Sometimes there was a light in the window, shadows moving across the blinds, but nobody came down.

Mervyn came home late one night, or early one morning; the birds were already singing. I heard his key in the lock, as I had so often prayed to do, and woke from my drunken sleep with a bang, my heart pounding. I saw him standing in the doorway in the dim light.

‘Wright,’ I groaned, my voice still thick with sleep. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’