Back on the set Frances ate her eighth extra-large spoonful of ice cream and cream and raspberry jam and chocolate twinklies, her ninth, her seventeenth. The director and the cameraman talked angles and lighting. At one point the director’s mobile phone rang in his jeans; he spoke quite loudly for a few moments about Bold washing powder. Finally they were ready for a take: the camera turned, the sound man said sound running, someone clapped the clapperboard, the director called action, Frances ate her raspberry sundae with relish, Davinia Fook said, ‘How do you protect yours?’

‘We’ll do that again,’ called the director wearily, ‘that was rubbish.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Frances. She got as far as the room being used for wardrobe, vomited quite quietly into the hand basin, and then returned to her work. ‘I would like my make-up checked,’ she said firmly. She saw the director raise his eyes heavenwards.

At lunchtime, while they were being provided with lamb stew or lentil salad from a catering van parked in the yard, a man in a suit came quietly out of a viewing room and walked up to Frances.

‘Miss Kitson,’ he said, ‘I’d like to congratulate you.’ He had a slight accent, Frances couldn’t quite place it. ‘Inexperienced directors don’t know how to treat actresses,’ he said, ‘I thought your stoicism magnificent.’

Frances smiled at him a little wanly. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘I represent the client.’

‘Ah,’ said Frances, ‘the client.’ Absurdly, or so it seemed to her, he picked up her hand and kissed it and then he was gone. Frances and Davinia Fook exchanged glances; Frances toyed with a little bit of lettuce.

That day’s shoot finished at 11 pm: Frances had finally refused to eat the ice-cream sundae unless they were doing a take. The director called her a jumped-up little thespian. Frances called him a fucking wanker.

‘There’re taxis outside,’ said the first assistant at last to Frances and Davinia, and gave them their calls for the next morning in the City where they were to stand looking upwards at the powerful thrusting headquarters of Wise Insurance.

The foreign man suddenly appeared again.

‘I’ll take Miss Kitson,’ he said, ‘I go her way.’

As she climbed wearily into a chauffeur-driven limousine Frances realised by his voice that he was the one at the interview who had asked for her to breathe in front of the camera; promised herself if he touched her she’d vomit over him and punch him in the balls. He was, however, the soul of politeness: asked her about her career, told her his name was Milton Werner and that he lived in Switzerland much of the year, knew where she lived, dropped her off without laying a finger on her.

‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully, as she got to her door.

‘Goodnight, Miss Kitson,’ he said, ‘and thank you. I apologise again for the manners of the director.’