‘Is there anything more bizarre than me becoming the most famous I’ve been in my whole life because Terence Blue raped or did not rape Simone Taylor!’ she said. ‘What an extraordinary profession we belong to. We shall have the biggest Christmas tree and the biggest Harrods turkey and the biggest Harrods Christmas pudding and the biggest Tesco’s mince pies because they’re the best, and the most expensive Christmas crackers from the Victoria and Albert Museum Shop that you have ever seen, and I’ll get the champagne from Harvey Nicks. After all these years, who would’ve believed it!’

Emmy Lou’s muted voice on the other end of the telephone, trying (Frances knew) to be enthusiastic pierced her heart.

‘Em, dear dear Em, there’ll be other things. Fuck the National, Fuck Pamela Angel.’

‘Of course,’ said Emmy Lou.

*

Pauline Bonham was hardly seen, in her house or in her shop; nobody seemed to know where she went.

Viola Bonham needed advice, longed to talk to her mother. But after all those years of almost always being there, suddenly Pauline wasn’t. And when, occasionally, she was there – standing at the stove or talking on the telephone or making some coffee – the glittery look in Pauline’s eyes was still there as if her mother had become, Viola suddenly thought, an ice-maiden version of herself, fitting in with the cold weather, with the frost on the trees and on the river, so early this year after all that sunshine. And she had taken, Viola noted, to regularly wearing bright red lipstick. She looks as if she’s part of ‘lesbian chic’ thought Viola crossly. Whatever is she thinking of? I only meant her to wear it occasionally like if she was going to a party, not at breakfast time. Her father was so busy he hardly noticed anything that was going on in the house at all: he was playing at Stratford most nights and filming a TV series in Devon about the Second World War most days. They were also preparing at Stratford to make a film version of their Othello production, so successful had it been, and some weekends now he didn’t come home. And now, sometimes, nor did her mother. So Viola, struggling with the difficulties of her own that she found herself in, watched the cold mist drift across the river in the early mornings and thought about the meaning of love.

Viola Bonham had always told herself she would never fall in love. When she was young she thought she lived in A Happy Family; by the time she was sixteen and doing her O levels she understood. It was hard to love and despise and admire her father all at the same time. She saw what marriage did to people, and in particular to actresses. And she told herself she would never fall in love.