‘I came to your wedding party,’ said Davinia, ‘don’t you remember? You met him in Hull didn’t you when we were making that TV saga about fishermen and their wives.’

‘Good God!’ said Frances. ‘That was about twenty-five years ago, I was only married to him for a year.’

‘Oh dear, sorry! What happened?’

‘I’m surprised you don’t know,’ said Frances, ‘most people do.’

‘No.’

‘You know he was a dentist.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well...’ and despite herself, despite the pain of the time, Frances began to laugh. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s so long since – well since I’ve even thought about it. He was a drug addict.’

‘A drug addict? That dentist? Oh – he seemed so – jolly and, well, conventional!’

‘You mean he wore a suit?’

‘Well – I suppose I do, I’m not sure what I mean. I just remember thinking good old Fran, a secure future, every actress’s dream.’

And Frances laughed, but rather sadly. ‘I was brought up on two pieces of advice: You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun, and,’ (and she began to sing):

‘the girl that I marry will have to be,

as soft and as pink as a nursery,

the girl I call my own,

will wear satin and laces and smell of cologne.

‘That was me. Thinking I was going off into the sunset. Alas. We had pink curtains and pink carpet all right, but no nursery – actually, I’ve still got some of the pink carpet in my flat in London!’

‘Heroin? Cocaine?’ asked Davinia.

‘Nitrous oxide.’

‘Nitrous oxide, whatever’s that? I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Laughing gas,’ said Frances.

‘Laughing gas?’ Davinia and the make-up girls couldn’t help it, laughed at once.

‘He was a dentist. He had access to laughing gas – you know, it used to be used as a dentist’s anaesthetic, anyway that’s what it was. He used to stay after work and gas himself—’

‘What – and just – laugh!’

‘Yeah.’

‘And then come home?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well – that sounds – um – cheery.’

‘He was a depressive. He used to get very depressed. So he’d rush off to the surgery for a laugh, he’d often still be laughing when he got home.’

‘I think that sounds quite jolly,’ said Davinia giggling. ‘So how did it all – end up?’

‘The surgery –’ and now Fran was laughing again too ‘– the surgery was in an office block down a side street in Hull. A cleaner got suspicious because she’d come past night after night and hear in the silence of the office block a man laughing his head off. Regularly. Finally she called the police.’

‘What happened?’

‘He was suspended from dentistry while he had – um – psychological treatment.’

‘What did you do?’

‘By then I was out of work, I was working on the jewellery counter of a big Hull department store. Came home to this morose man every night.’