All the good and quirky things about the man she had loved most in her life came into her mind: how he once, when they first met, bought her a big plastic rubbish bin for her birthday because he saw she needed one and inside the rubbish bin were dozens and dozens of flowers, smiling up at her. She remembered him again, kissing the carpet. She remembered him stopping the fight between Anthony and Benedict at the garden party. She remembered how he’d waited for her to come home from filming very late one Valentine’s Day and had, when he saw her get out of a taxi, begun to play on his saxophone in the darkness, something he’d written for her. He’d lit candles on the stairs and she walked up in the flickering light, towards the beautiful sound, and his love. She could not even bear to think of her mother’s death and how he had guided her through that labyrinth of anguish and guilt and regret. And the most simple pain of all: she missed his comforting, comfortable, so well-known body next to her in the bed.

The following week, filming over, she dared not go out, do anything, in case people should see such pain and ugliness and age. She thought over and over again of the young girl, whoever she was: Banjo’s new love, who was young. And one morning, quite early, she thought of Pauline O’Brien, her friend. Was this the kind of pain she had inflicted on the friend of her youth? But Anthony hadn’t left, was there still. But the idea that it was this, this pain and heartbreak that she had inflicted on Pauline who had been her best friend so appalled her that in a kind of madness she picked up the telephone and dialled the number.

‘Hello?’

At the sound of another human voice Molly pulled herself together.

‘Viola, that’s you isn’t it? Hello darling, it’s Molly.’

There was absolute silence on the other end of the phone. As if it hadn’t been answered after all.

‘Viola?’ said Molly, puzzled.

‘Oh – sorry Auntie Moll.’ Auntie Moll. What Viola used to call her when she was a little girl. ‘Sorry, it was – Benedict, he – dropped a frying pan.’

‘Good heavens is he all right?’

‘Yes,’ said Viola vaguely.

‘Darling is your mum there?’ Why am I doing this, whatever can I say?

‘No, no,’ said Viola and Molly felt relieved at once. ‘No, she’s not here, she’s busy on something, the shop I expect, I’m on my own, Dad’s filming, I should be at class.’

‘Never mind darling, I’ll phone again, look after yourself.’ And Molly put down the phone.

Vaguely she wondered how Viola could be on her own if Benedict was dropping frying pans, hoped she was all right. She loved Viola.

She sat alone in the kitchen, in her dressing gown.

*