Yet there were many more failures than successes; some people there today hadn’t worked as actors for years. One man she’d spoken to, and not remembered, said he bred Alsatians for the Police Force.

But, and Izzy sighed as she pedalled, it was Emmy Lou Brown’s bitter, turned-down mouth that bothered her most of all. Izzy had been in the repertory company in Salisbury with Emmy Lou in the sixties, shared digs with her, knew what a good actress she was, how hard she worked. Yet somehow success, or even security, had eluded Emmy, as if she’d wanted it too much to the exclusion of everything else: love, family, any other kind of joy. And yet it shouldn’t have eluded her: Emmy was a better actress than many other much more successful ones. Izzy thought of Emmy Lou as a casualty of their profession, the cruel profession with the insecurities and terrors and dreams that nobody except actors had any idea about, this well-kept secret of despair.

She suddenly felt so depressed she got off her bike and went into a phone box, pulling a phone card out of her pocket. Her youngest son, Lysander, whom they hadn’t planned but who brought them great pleasure, answered, his voice just breaking.

‘Hello my love,’ she said, ‘all right?’

‘Yep.’

‘Daddy there?’

‘Yep.’ She heard him shouting ‘DAD it’s MUM.’

Peter came to the phone. ‘Hello Izzy,’ he said, ‘how was it?’

‘It was nice, yes, it was really interesting, seeing everybody again. But I just suddenly felt terribly glad you’re a schoolteacher.’

‘I’m not very glad at the moment,’ he said. ‘I’m marking exam papers and I’ve got toothache in two teeth.’

‘Put cloves on them,’ she said.

‘Wouldn’t go down well with the Education Board,’ he said.

‘Ha ha,’ said Izzy. ‘See you tonight.’

‘Is that all?’

‘Yep.’

‘OK – bye.’

‘Bye.’ She put down the receiver and got on her bike again. Not quite like being married to Terence Blue. She cycled on but Emmy Lou was still on her mind.

There had been a boy at Salisbury Izzy remembered, in stage management, a handsome dark-haired boy with long eyelashes who had been very very keen on Emmy Lou, used to watch her different performances from the wings, fascinated. In those days the young actors in the companies were contracted for months and played different parts every fortnight. Emmy Lou had played first Hedda Gabler, then Viola, then made the audience laugh when she played Mae West, then terrified them when she played in a thriller: fortnight after fortnight of good, true, lead performances, learning her trade, practising her craft.

Izzy had learnt her trade too. What she had learnt was that she would never be an actress like Emmy Lou, she wasn’t good enough.