Benedict served drinks as people’s glasses emptied – his job. Now and then he flicked his long floppy hair out of his eyes with a shake of his head like a nervous horse, gangling and beautiful as his mother had been. Iona Spring called to him as he passed.

Pauline watched all the networking – it was called ‘networking’ (though she knew there were other, more unkind words for it) – going on all over her garden. The young ones from Viola’s class – the boys cocky and nervous, the girls excited and shy – were the most blatant but somehow the most endearing.

‘Excuse me,’ she heard one of them, Zac, a handsome dark-haired boy, say to Anne Schwartz, a powerful casting director in film and television who swayed slightly drunkenly in the sunshine. ‘Excuse me Miss Schwartz, I’m Zachary O’Shaunessy – no it is my real name –’ as he saw her smile disbelievingly ‘– I’m a classmate at drama school with Viola, you know Anthony Bonham’s daughter, I’m playing Coriolanus at the end-of-term show, would you come?’ Pauline saw the casting director’s eyes first look appraisingly at Zac, then glaze over at the very thought of a student production of Coriolanus. But then they focused again on Zac’s very presentable exterior.

‘Hello Zachary,’ said Anne Schwartz, and she smiled into his very young face. ‘Would you mind getting me another drink?’

Pauline turned away from Zac’s progress to see a group of men huddled together in one corner of the garden, by the rose bushes: she saw the Director of the National Theatre and the Chairman of Channel Four in the group, among others. They were surrounding a slightly taller man who seemed to have engaged all their attentions and as she watched, she suddenly recognised him, my God it’s Joey. Most unusually for her, her mouth literally dropped open in surprise.

Just at that moment the taller man looked across at where she was standing. She saw him excuse himself from the group, and then come across the lawn with the long, lolloping stride she remembered. My God it’s Joey.

The most powerful television executive in Britain stopped in front of her. He didn’t kiss her, or even put out his hand.

‘Hello Pauline,’ said Joseph Wain.

‘Hello Joey,’ she said.

She hadn’t seen him for years and years. She’d known Joseph Wain in her West-End, blouse-removing days when he’d worked in the production office of the company that had put that play on.