‘Was he?’ said Frances, looking at them both in surprise.

‘He wasn’t, Harry,’ said Emmy Lou, ‘he was kind.’

‘Yes but – he was a little odd,’ said Harry.

‘Well he was – in a way,’ said Emmy Lou, ‘the longing way he looked at you, I saw him at dinner that night, staring at your bouncing bosom. But that’s not odd, it’s natural.’

Frances began to laugh again, then looked down for a moment at her body with a kind of puzzlement. ‘Why should they affect people so much?’ she said. ‘Oh God – oh it was so – so instant, oh poor man, I should’ve said something comforting but I went to change my ripped dress and he disappeared – my yellow dress too,’ she finished plaintively.

‘Saw the commercial last night,’ said Harry, ‘you’ll be able to buy ten yellow dresses soon. You made me laugh, you’re outrageous talking about your Wise Insurance “assets”, no wonder poor Milton was orgasmic!’

‘Oh good, it’s started has it? That means the money’ll start coming in. D’you think it’ll become a favourite and be shown lots of times and I’ll get frightfully rich and become a Media Person and be able to leave British Telecom for good?’

‘Certainly,’ said Harry. ‘Along with Emmy who will be the star of the National Theatre. ‘ And the two women looked at each other with a kind of suppressed delight, it could be true, it could be true.

‘But I did like Milton,’ said Emmy, ‘all the same. He was awfully kind, he made my first night so – memorable. And he really did like you Fran.’

‘Did he,’ said Frances wistfully. ‘Do you think he did? I thought he did. But perhaps it was only my bosom.’

‘And what happened to the Triumph Telephone advert?’ asked Harry, wanting to change the subject.

‘Oh they’ve postponed it, but they said they’d let my agent know if it came up again. Oh listen Em I completely forgot to say, I heard two chaps talking in the audience tonight, about Lives and how much it would cost to be put on at the National, I just caught the end of the conversation but they were talking hundreds of thousands!’

‘I don’t care about hundreds of thousands,’ said Emmy Lou simply. ‘I just want the chance to be paid for doing it. Oh God, imagine getting off the dole, what a pleasure to sign off at last, it’s been seven months this year, I’ve had interviews in booths, and lectures about Restart courses. They said I’d have to retrain for something after six months, you know, and I said I only know how to be an actress, it’s what I trained for, it’s what I’ve been doing for over thirty years I said and they said well you could work in a shop so I asked to go on a Chinese course.’