She woke in the night, over and over; several times not thinking of Banjo but of her mother, slumped in the car in the garage. She tossed and turned, cried out, unbelieving, at the pain of it. An expression – a poem? – came again and again into her mind: if you love something let it go, if you love something let it go, over and over and over As the first light shone dully behind the curtains in the bedroom something jumped into her mind: their last holiday in Greece, when he had taken the saxophone and played to her on the verandah of their villa in the warm fragrant night. But had also turned away from her several times in the night as if, as if – she forced the thought to come into her mind where she could see it properly – as if he had seen something, as if, almost, something disgusted him. As if he saw her growing old. The sound of the saxophone had soared out over the sea, from the verandah of their villa.

She got up and switched on the light. There was a full-length mirror in the hall. She took off her green nightdress and stared at herself. Not bad, they always said, for her age. But she looked carefully. There were flabby bits on her legs, her breasts drooped slightly, she had a slightly protruding stomach. She always felt as if she were a young person, she had the energy of a young person; her hair was blonde, her teeth very cleverly capped; HRT suited her, enhanced her. But as she stood there that November morning and stared and stared at herself she saw, for the first time in her life, staring at her face and at her body (and it was as unbelievable to her as if someone had suddenly said she was a man not a woman, or that she was adopted or had been born on another planet): she was old.

*

She went on with her life in a daze. She still had two more days filming to do with the A-Little-Tired-Fun director; Waylon Jones had turned his attentions to one of the young bridesmaids who disappeared into his caravan in the lunch hours. Molly wandered about the hotel where they were filming, in the cherry red jacket and the short skirt and the chunky jewellery, chattering brightly. She came home and wept, knowing too that next week there would not only be no Banjo, there would be no work.

He had said he didn’t want a life like hers. What did he mean?

He left kind, loving messages on her answering machine: how are you Molly darling... just phoning to see how you are... I’m thinking of you darling, of course. When the phone rang she never answered, in the end never even listened to the messages, sat in her dressing gown staring at nothing in Clapham.