‘It requires such – intangible qualities. I haven’t been able to find what I’m looking for and I sure have spent many hours looking. It has to be somebody who – an actress who understands.’

‘Yes.’

‘You know what all those scenes with the young guy are about?’

‘Of course.’

Bud Martin stared out into the smoky sunshine. Avocado trees grew there, just outside the window. ‘Age and desire,’ he said slowly. And then he turned back to her, looked at her carefully. ‘Age and desire,’ he repeated softly.

And Juliet Lyall smiled at him, that elusive, enigmatic smile.

*

Lonely people are always early.

Emmy Lou Brown often got to people’s houses for dinner at exactly the time she was invited. If she was embarrassingly early she went for a little walk, looked inside other people’s houses, studied other people’s lives.

Emmy Lou did voice exercises and a fitness routine every morning. Every morning without fail, every morning since she had left drama school over thirty years ago. She saw herself as a craftsman: her body, she said, was the only equipment she had. Other actors had started keenly in the same way but mostly they’d given up, got lazy, were heard to say that voice exercises were for students; Emmy Lou’s keenness rather embarrassed them. Emmy Lou was a member of the Performers’ Club where classes and workshops were held. At first many people thought the club a good idea: classes to keep actors honing their craft. But gradually it became clear that often people went there hoping to do a workshop for a director who would notice them, hoping that they might perhaps catch somebody useful’s eye, that something might happen that might lead to work. So that instead of a training centre it was like everything else in the business: a place where someone might see you. She knew in her heart who frequented the place: the green room was a sad place, mostly full of out-of-work actors. It was a vicious circle: it was only in the big companies that actors could train, when they were working already. Anthony Bonham could have gone, but didn’t, to a voice class with one of the best teachers in the country every day of his life.

But in spite of its reputation Emmy Lou went to the Performers’ Club three times a week at least: took voice classes, used the gym, attended workshops. It made her feel, in the long periods that she was out of work, that she was still an actress. It was all she had.