In his room that afternoon Julian – short on sleep – lies down and he dreams he is riding his pony. The pony is speaking to him, but he can’t make out what she is saying. Maybe the pony has taken her cue from his father.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

When she was very young, Fleur believed that she liked older men. She liked the fact that they were besotted with her youth – her girlishness – and she knew that as a result there was very little risk of being deserted. Both her husbands offered something she needed at the time, although she rejects the demeaning idea that women are pathologically needy. Nor was it, as some have suggested, because her father left them when she was twelve. She wanted to break out of suburbia and the stifling intensity of her mother’s ambition for her. It was, of course, wholly vicarious. With Artair she was attracted by his access to the theatre and with Harry it was the prospect of a more civilised and elegant world. The money was not the thing itself. She long ago realised that everyone has in the mind an ideal world which they think is their due. At the Shirley Simms Stage School there was a lot of talk about living the dream.

At first she was drawn to theatre with its fading rehearsal rooms and chummy dilapidation and she loved actors. They were heroic, an alien tribe, i zingari, living among the host nation. What they were doing was alchemy, able to create with a few tattered curtains and poorly painted flats a world which was more real and maybe more significant than the one surrounding them. Actors could be drinking cheap whisky or warm beer in the dingiest theatre bar in Manchester, but they hoarded the knowledge that for a few hours each day they were absolute masters of a universe they had created. Sadly, the truth emerged that she wasn’t much of an actress. She could be earnest, dance competently, sing a little, and she could be tragic; above all she could be passionate, but somehow she couldn’t connect with the audience. They just didn’t believe her, however hard she tried. In fact the harder she tried, the less believable she became. When Harry came along he was certain that money and promotion could turn her into a star, but he was wrong. When she married him and gave up acting she felt a great relief.