‘Answer me,’ he said, but still the drawl, still the amusement.

‘I haven’t been well.’

‘All the doctors, yours and ours, gave you a clean bill of health, said you’d be fine. You said you’d be fine, that The Seagull had been strenuous, that you’d had a rest, that you were fine. We don’t pay the kind of money we pay for you not to be fine when you’ve said you’d be fine. A huge part of the success of this film depends on you. I could fire you tonight but I still believe you can do it. I just want to know what’s happened. Are you on anything, apart from the whisky?’

‘A few pills,’ said Juliet coolly, ‘nothing by the standards you’re used to.’

‘What pills?’

‘Is it your business?’

‘It most certainly is my business. How many?’

‘A few. Nothing for you to be alarmed about.’ He let that pass, in the meantime.

‘Anything else?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Dope, cocaine, crack, heroin?’

‘Don’t be silly Bud,’ she said ‘I am not a drug addict.’

‘Had any sex, since the evening with Grover?’

Juliet could not have been more shocked if he’d hit her. There was only the light from the lamp by the bedside table but she knew he could see the blush that at once spread over her face, down her neck.

‘I think that is my business,’ she said, and her English voice was like ice.

‘Do you?’ he answered. For a moment he stared at the whisky. ‘You know that scene you did a few days ago, with Clint?’

‘With your young stud. Yes.’

He looked at her angrily. ‘With the actor Clint O’Hara.’

‘I know the scene you’re talking about.’

‘The rushes are rubbish. You don’t want him, even with part of you. And that’s what the film is about for God’s sake, that – risk-taking. When you came to see me first, I told you what the film was about didn’t I?’

She did not answer.

‘Didn’t I? What did I say was the theme, the key?’

‘Yes, yes, I remember.’

‘Say it.’

‘Age and desire,’ said Juliet with distaste.