‘With Benny?’

‘Uh-huh. Shall I expect you then? We’ll talk when we meet shall we?’

How crisp his daughter was. Like his wife at her worst.

‘Have you seen Viola?’ he asked plaintively.

‘She’s living with her musician.’

‘Living with him?’

‘See you at four then Daddy, bye.’

Anthony rang Molly’s number but there was no answer, not even her answering machine.

He sat sprawled on the sofa with all the Sunday newspapers, at least she hadn’t fucking cancelled them. His wife’s photograph and Terence’s were in every paper; he found himself getting angrier and angrier, several of the cheap papers questioned Pauline’s involvement in the trial. They all mentioned she was married to one of the country’s leading Shakespearian actors. The Sunday Express even had Anthony’s photograph: an old one, of him as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Not bad actually, he thought, considering it.

But he hadn’t yet got the full measure of his wife’s revenge.

*

It wasn’t until the following day that a huge press conference was held at the Savoy, and there in a suite called Patience overlooking the river Thames it was announced that Terence Blue, at the moment one of the most famous men in the world, and Pauline O’Brien, who had appeared as a witness at his notorious trial, would be starring together in a mega international television project called The Immoralists, the biggest, most expensive, most ambitious television serial ever made.

38

It snowed again on Christmas Day all over Britain, it had been snowing off and on for weeks. People had built snowmen in their gardens or on suburban pavements or outside tube stations, used carrots or parsnips for noses and tea cosies for hats with sprigs of holly sticking out.

*

Frances Kitson and Harry Donaldson met on Christmas morning at Frances’ flat. She had a Christmas tree and all the promised champagne and mince pies and turkey and crackers. But Emmy Lou their friend, the third of The Three Stooges, wasn’t there.

‘My mother’ll be here at one o’clock as usual, I ordered a car for her, no point in doing anything different, I hope she’ll remember about Em though, she’s inclined to forget things.’

‘This year I bought her a mock fur stole,’ said Harry, ‘look,’ and he pulled it out of his bag to wrap in Christmas paper.

‘Oh Harry it’s lovely.’ Frances rubbed her hands over it. ‘I hope it wasn’t too expensive darling, you know she’ll probably put it round her hot water bottle.’ She watched Harry folding the stole into the brightly coloured paper. ‘If Em was here she’d make us go for a healthy walk now, wouldn’t she, before Mum arrives, she was the one who made us look after our bodies because they are the tools of our trade.’

‘Yes,’ said Harry. But they didn’t go.