‘But they’re wrong and they’re stupid, if they get their way they’ll blow it all by having someone absolutely useless like the appalling Iona Spring playing the part, Jesus. Anyway, I’ve been trying to persuade them that there’s a lot of publicity mileage in having a couple – I mean a real-life, married couple like you and Anthony – and Anthony’s certainly star enough to carry the English side of a project like this. The thing is Pauline,’ and Joseph’s head moved closer to hers so that they looked like all the other scheming groups on the lawn yet he spoke quite formally, ‘I think you are a star. I want you to come and have lunch with me next week and talk about this properly away from all these praying mantises. I know you can do this because I’ve never forgotten you when you were young, you had star quality then, you had that – thing – whatever it is. And I don’t believe that ever goes away.’ It was true that for a while, back in the sixties, Pauline’s performance was talked of everywhere and the world seemed to be, briefly, at her feet. Nobody could move through the West End without seeing pictures of her long, bare, and somehow vulnerable back, on the black and white show poster that had long ago become a collector’s item.

Suddenly Pauline looked at Joseph in alarm. ‘But you don’t mean I’d have to take my clothes off?’

‘Well there are some sex scenes of course.’

‘Joseph I’m too old. You know I’m fifty-six. What fifty-six-year-old woman would take off her clothes in front of a camera?’

Joseph looked at her shrewdly. ‘Actresses your age are always complaining there aren’t any real parts. This is a real part. Any self-respecting fifty-six-year-old would kill for it. And I want you to do it. She is the heroine, she saves the world.’

Something somewhere inside Pauline Bonham moved slightly, something in her heart, or her soul, some small sliver of ice cracked slightly, moved slightly as if – unbelievably at fifty-six – spring might still come.

‘Oh Joey,’ she said simply, looking not at him, not at anything, her eyes somehow hooded and focused inwards. ‘Pull this off. I’d give anything in the world for you to pull this off, anything at all, you don’t know what I’d give for one more chance.’

She turned to face him at last. ‘I mean anything,’ she said.

*

At about two o’clock Ho the Chinese cook gave a little sign to Pauline and Viola.