But as the taxi inched through summer Saturday shoppers in ridiculous shorts and flimsy tops, spilling with their parcels on to the streets, she could not control her thoughts. After over thirty years why would she have come back to the Academy? What did she want? And her heart, that depository of so many emotions both public and private, gave another lurch of anxiety. They passed a huge poster for Terence Blue’s latest film, Diversions, with Terence smiling out, and Juliet turned away sharply.

At the theatre she stared briefly at the huge famous photograph of herself outside, smiled at the stage doorman, collected her mail, went quickly to her dressing room, the Number One dressing room. She locked the door, turned on the fan, took off her dress, lay on the floor as she always did, her feet on a wooden chair, a book under her head. She breathed slowly in and out, filling her lungs, her rib-cage, her abdomen and, as she had been taught, her groin. In and out in and out in and out she felt the air in her body, around her body. She calmed her heart; she had to calm her heart. She prepared herself.

Under the shower she sang sounds that actors sing: MAHNAHLAH MAYNAYLAY BIDIGA PITIKA BIDIGA PITIKA. Out of the shower she sang on, using her voice carefully, knowing how much to use, how much to extend. She tried always to be early at the theatre so she could have this preparation time and was often already made up as younger actors ran up the stairs almost late for the half-hour call. Soon her dresser would knock at the door and the wig dresser would bring in the wig, and actors would pop their heads politely round the door and say good afternoon. In their own dressing rooms they would moan about the heat, exchange gossip and news, glad it was Saturday, off tomorrow.

In front of her make-up mirror, Juliet breathed in deeply again. She always went over the first lines of the play, of any play she was in, as she put on her make-up. It always calmed her, put her into the mood of the play. She put cream on her face, removing the make-up from the day, removing the day. Some of her first lines as the actress Arkadina were from Hamlet:

‘O Hamlet, speak no more,

Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul;

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.’