It turned out indeed to be a palmist and a very good and different part at last; Molly wore scarves and swirling skirts and had a crystal ball and tarot cards and filmed in the seaside town of Hastings, in the snow. I will not think about when I was here with Banjo, walking along the beach and weeping. They started the week before Christmas, had a few days off for the festive season; Molly stayed on in Hastings, but in another hotel so that the company would not know she had no plans, this year, for Christmas.

She kept away from where she had walked with Banjo.

She took her work: her TV scripts, her Shakespeare, and books on Romeo and Juliet. She’d had, the week before, a long meeting with the young director who was to direct her at Stratford, he’d had some interesting ideas about the Nurse. I think she’s a piece of all right, he said, that’s why I had the idea of casting you because people won’t expect it. I know it’s a famous part but I think we might find some interesting things that haven’t been done before, and she banished white-haired old ladies from her consciousness, read the play over and over, becoming familiar.

She took novels to Hastings that she’d meant to read for years. Very very warily she understood: that this might now be her life. That she was no longer young.

She read of the press conference held to announce the starring of Terence Blue and Pauline O’Brien in The Immoralists. There was huge excitement when it was also announced that Marlon Brando, who never appeared on television, was probably going to play the American lead. And into her mind, remembering Anthony’s excitement, and Pauline’s appearance at Terence’s court case, flickered a kind of understanding of what might have happened, of what her old friend Pauline might have done with the private information about Terence Molly had shared with her. Well good luck Pauly, she murmured into the cold wind along the seafront.

She kept away from where she had walked with Banjo.

She knew without doubt that because of Banjo, and because of Anthony, she and Pauline were lost to each other.

She didn’t cry so often. But she dreamt of Banjo, and sometimes he seemed to embrace her body. But waking, she would feel her mouth held tightly together; sometimes she would catch herself in a shop window and the tight clenched mouth reminded her, she knew, of her mother.

In the second hotel, the evening before Christmas Eve when she moved in, she met a computer analyst.

‘Don’t computer analysts go home for Christmas?’ she said lightly.

‘Don’t actresses?’ he said.

He had recently separated from his wife; she gave him a small bit of information about her recent life upheaval.