One night she woke suddenly in that way that had become familiar, but she was smiling. A memory dried away from her; very gently she tried to hold it, tease it back into her mind.

And it came back. Banjo had told her one night in bed about his first erection. He had seen it, surprised, wondered what it was, and the funny feeling of it. He was getting undressed. So he hung his shirt on it. It hung there for some time, unsure and drooping a little.

I will die of this pain, cried Molly aloud, I cannot live without my love. I will die.

*

Frances and Harry arranged with each other to phone Emmy Lou every day while she was feeling so bleak. They sent her funny cards and jokey gifts, just so she’d know they were thinking of her and loved her. They had dinner with her, went to the movies. Harry was going away for three more days filming in Dorchester. ‘Why don’t you come with me Em?’

‘No thanks Harry, I’ll probably go to the recording of Franny’s chat show.’

‘It was a hoot, I knew that nun from when I was a kid, but Emmy didn’t come,’ said Frances when he got back and asked her how it had gone. They phoned Emmy again and again but there was no reply.

‘Shall we phone her agent?’

‘Oh God it’s so melodramatic. She’s fine, she must be fine.’

‘Harry let’s phone her agent.’

‘He’s probably sent her off to Scunthorpe.’ They always said Scunthorpe, having been there for a week with a play once in their final term as drama students and the theatre had been almost empty every night.

Emmy Lou’s agent hadn’t spoken to her that week.

Frances had a key, had always had a key, was Emmy’s family.

Her heart beat so horribly as she and Harry let themselves in after knocking and knocking on her door. They kept calling Emmy? Emmy? knowing they would hear her voice in a moment, or find the central heating on, or wet underclothes in the bathroom, that they would all laugh at the ludicrousness of it.

In her white bedroom, under the white crocheted bedspread that her elderly mother had made for her when she first left home, Emmy Lou lay asleep except that Frances and Harry knew at once that she was not asleep.

On the bedside table was an empty pill bottle and an envelope marked: FOR FRANNY AND HARRY. Harry put out his hand; before he picked up the envelope he touched her arm. It was cold and stiff.

Frances thought she would faint: at the silence in the lonely room, at the books on voice production by the bed, but of course really at the cold, cold body of her friend lying so still and small. She stood there, in the middle of the room.