‘Here’s to Terence!’ called Stu. ‘Welcome back to the world, old boy.’

‘Get as drunk as you like on your Coca-Cola tonight baby,’ said Terence’s American agent (Baby? Benedict, who had grown up with show-business inanities, nevertheless could not believe his ears. Terence had grey hair, he was an old man, people only talked like that in the movies), ‘for tomorrow your life begins again.’

The American turned to Joseph Wain. ‘I love those scripts, I was reading them every night after the trial to take my mind off it, I never thought I’d ever recommend a client of mine do a television series over a movie, not that Terence was taking any recommendations of mine – the motherfucker –’ he looked at Terence fondly ‘– he seemed to have made up his mind to do it if he got off this rape, but this stuff is dynamite, absolute fucking dynamite! It’ll work like – as if people were watching the news! And what’s this I hear about Marlon Brando? He doesn’t do television.’

‘I know,’ said Joseph Wain, ‘but it seems he might do this.’

‘Fucking dynamite,’ repeated the American. ‘Fucking unbelievable.’ He reached for more wine. ‘And you were great!’ he said to Pauline.

‘I don’t think anything will make me nervous ever again,’ said Pauline, as he filled her glass, and she suddenly began to laugh helplessly. ‘That barrister, he tried to annihilate me, it was no fun in that witness stand I can tell you!’

‘Did you see that drawing the court artist did of you?’ said Benedict. ‘Sort of standing in court waving your arm around, you looked like Portia.’

Pauline leant, laughing, across the table, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘I know,’ she said, trying to control herself, ‘sorry I think I must be a bit drunk – he means Portia, his sister, my daughter, who is a PR consultant, not The Merchant of Venice,’ she explained through her laughter to the others and she fumbled for her red lipstick.

‘No, I meant in The Merchant of Venice,’ said Benedict quite crossly which made everybody laugh again. ‘You wanted justice for Terence so you got it in a clever way, Mum stop putting that red lipstick on.’

Pauline looked comically surprised. ‘I like it,’ she said, peering into a small mirror.

‘No no, I mean I like it too,’ Benedict said, ‘but Mum you’re putting it on all crooked.’

Elvira looked at her friend Pauline, at her animated, laughing, open face. She knew it was not only justice for Terence that Pauline had wanted but justice for herself. Who would have ever thought in a million years that Pauline would leave her philandering husband and become an actress again? She never once complained, and I was one of her closest friends. She deserves good things now. And Elvira rested her eyes speculatively on Joseph Wain. No one knew anything about his private life.