‘I shall miss him very much,’ continued Mrs Beale. Then she added, ‘We don’t necessarily make much of funerals here as you can imagine, especially if there is no family, and in this particular home there so often isn’t.’ She had often pondered on this: old actors soldiering on, with no one but one another. ‘But there’ll be a short service at our local church tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. Perhaps you and Mr Donaldson would like to attend.’

‘He’s away,’ said Pauline automatically. ‘But yes – thank you, I – I’ll be there, thank you for letting me know.’ She put the receiver down.

I would think it all a dream, she thought, if Harry hadn’t been there with me.

She looked out over the Chiswick garden in the night, over the dark river.

*

Next morning she drove to Copperfield Hall, left the Mercedes in the driveway, walked the short distance to the church in the still, warm sunshine. At the church gate she caught up with an old lady who was slowly walking along and had just dropped a long brightly coloured scarf. Pauline picked it up for her.

‘This is my funeral scarf,’ said the old lady. ‘You notice it is very bright colours. I don’t know why you are wearing black. Roger wouldn’t have liked that.’

‘Would he not?’ said Pauline.

‘He agreed with me,’ said the old lady. ‘We should add colour to the gathering as we have done all our lives. I of course am an actress. Are you?’ She stared up at Pauline.

‘Yes. Yes I am.’ I am, thought Pauline. They walked slowly up towards the church porch.

‘You notice how they try to call us “actors” these days.’ The old lady stopped, faced Pauline. ‘What rubbish. We didn’t even get on the stage until hundreds of years after the men, they played our parts for years, didn’t want us really.’ Her voice was very loud and resonant, as if she was on a stage, not in a churchyard. ‘It’s always been so much more difficult for us, much more of a battle for us to work, fewer parts, we’ve had to fight so hard just to exist. And now they want to lump us all together and call us “actors” as if we were the same, as if we didn’t have our own, and different, history. Nonsense.’

Organ music wafted out into the sunlight. The tune was ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’.

‘Perhaps we should go in,’ Pauline suggested.

‘Wait.’ The old lady settled the long bright scarf carefully, around her shoulder and over her arms. Then she said, ‘Would you be so kind as to give me your arm? I just find those three steps up a little difficult.’