Juliet’s hand had reached up to undo her bra, froze suddenly. She stared back at the director. ‘And you’re going to watch?’

Bud Martin leant forward patiently. ‘I am going to watch,’ he said. ‘I am going to watch you very carefully, I am going to watch what happens to your face, what sort of sounds you make, how your legs move.’

She stared at him in disgust and almost at once something more than disgust: horror; she held her shirt around her, began to get off the bed. ‘I don’t want to do this Bud,’ she said. ‘Please don’t make me, I couldn’t possibly do this with you watching. It’s – it’s not this that is the matter with me.’ She sat in an ungainly way, very unlike how she usually looked, half on half off the bed, staring at him.

‘Your Alexander Korda said he may make actors do things against their will but never against their best interests,’ said Bud Martin. ‘This is, if you like – a rehearsal. I am going to watch, and tomorrow night we are going to film that scene again and you are going to do it as if you mean it because otherwise I am going to have to fire you and you know how that will affect the career you value so highly.’

‘I will call my agents and my lawyers,’ said Juliet tightly, ‘and I will tell them exactly what you have dared to suggest to me. Please leave my room at once.’ Even as she spoke the man was rubbing some oil very gently into her taut shoulders, leaning towards her slightly, coaxing her with his hands back on to the bed. There was something warm about the oil as he stroked her very gently, some fragrance that caught her. She sighed very slightly, turned her head as if to catch the scent, like a memory there.

‘Whatever is the matter with you does have something to do with sex,’ said Bud Martin, ‘I know that now. If you looked at the rushes of the work you did you would know it too. We have to help you find what it is.’ His voice seemed to come from a long way away and there was a different quality to it, more gentle, less mocking.

The man stroked her back very gently. ‘Please take off the rest of your clothes,’ he said quietly. She smelt again the fragrance of the oil. As if she were a child getting ready for bed but thinking about something else, she quite slowly put her silk shirt down on the bed, took off her skirt, undid her bra.

‘Yes,’ she said slowly, answering Bud Martin, ‘yes. A long time ago.’