But they sighed, all of them, even for Viola’s chances, and Anthony’s cigarette smoke hung unmoving in the hot air. For a moment his eyes closed and his head suddenly fell on to his shoulder and then jerked up again. He looked surprised, and then looked at his watch.

‘Jesus wept, look at the time,’ he said. ‘I suppose I ought to get back to Chiswick.’ But he didn’t move.

Izzy said, ‘I’ve got a matinée at five. Only I don’t go on stage till twenty to seven.’

‘What play Izzy?’ said Harry.

‘The Jew of Malta. I play a short nun.’ The others laughed and stretched and Harry rumpled Izzy’s short hair.

Anthony stared into space, unfocused. ‘Molly looked good, didn’t she. I was surprised how – well actually how young she looked. She looks good, yeah. I hadn’t seen her for ages, she looks – good.’ And he nodded to himself.

‘She does,’ said Frances. But everybody was remembering his long, passionate affair with Molly McKenzie years and years ago, soon after he’d married Pauline.

Anthony suddenly pulled himself together. ‘There’s no wine left, none, not a single sodding drop, can’t we get some more somewhere?’

‘Maxi’s!’ cried Frances, ‘let’s go to Maxi’s,’ and Anthony cheered up greatly at the thought of the drinking club only five minutes’ walk away.

‘I’ll just come for one drink,’ he said.

‘I’ve got to go to work,’ sighed Izzy.

*

It wasn’t far really, to the National Theatre by bicycle, and Izzy Fields enjoyed the way her head was clearing as she cycled, the way she made her own small breeze in the heat. She looked ridiculous in her yellow safety helmet, she knew that, but it couldn’t be helped; she wanted to arrive at places in one piece. Almost at once she cycled past a huge poster for Diversions, Terence’s latest film. There he was, the object of her youthful passion, smiling out, just as he’d smiled at her this afternoon at the reunion. The poster gave her immense pleasure: her friends’ success gave her immense pleasure.

When she’d cycled down Shaftsbury Avenue earlier that day she had seen outside one of the theatres a wonderful huge award-winning photograph of Juliet Lyall as the actress Arkadina in The Seagull – her striking face smiling at her lover as her hand reached out behind her and caught the arm of her son. And on the buses the Royal Shakespeare Company’s posters for Othello had Anthony Bonham’s face, taut and angry, just behind the black and beautiful face of the actor playing Othello.

These were the friends of her youth: she’d known them before they were famous; she knew them, she’d studied with them and she was proud of them; they were the success stories of her profession.