Later she had an egg in front of the television set, sitting next to the large white bookcase that held almost every play in the English language.

Later, in bed, lying under the white crocheted bedcover her mother had made for her when she first left home, she finally reached for the bag in one of the drawers. And the little bottle. First she put in the batteries. Then she opened the bottle and opened her legs, smoothing herself with the oil. Then she turned on the motor and pushed the long object inside her; pushing it, feeling it vibrate against her, she moved with it almost immediately.

‘Yes,’ she whispered alone in her small flat in Finsbury Park, ‘yes, yes.’

6

Guests do not, of course, do their own laundry at the Dorchester Hotel in London, turning on the big chrome taps, leaning across the marble tiles and filling the huge bath to the top with water, but the smell of the sheets and the stains on them made her vomit and she kept thinking she could smell garlic, somewhere there, in the room, mixed with the smell of spilt whisky.

The maid, summoned late on Sunday afternoon, had been surprised to discover the sheets from the huge four-poster bed in the bath where Simone Taylor had thrown them after she had bathed and bathed herself, trying to wash away fear and pain and thoughts, scrubbing hopelessly at the violent bruises on her breasts that looked like red and purple burns. That she was also washing away evidence in the bath did not occur to her, perhaps.

The maid took away the sheets, made up the bed with fresh crisp ones. Then she saw something odd. A beautiful purple dress was protruding from the waste-paper bin, partly lying across the marble floor. The maid hesitated. Perhaps it had fallen there by mistake. She would look again tomorrow. She closed the door quietly.

*

Terence Blue smelt of Dior and Calvin Klein. And the whisky of course.

Simone Taylor knew about smells, and scents, and fragrances: that was her job. She travelled for her company all over the world. But, like Bianca Jagger who had left the glamorous world of pop music and become a roving troubleshooter in South America, Simone Taylor carried her past around in her passport. It was not a famous surname that Simone Taylor still kept, but the old, old words that reminded her of her lost dreams: Occupation – Actress.

There, in the room, beside the potted orchids and the lacquered cupboards and the dark mahogany wood panelling – holding herself, her arms around herself – she tried to stop shaking, but the shaking came from her stomach and she could not.

This could not have happened.

This was not how it was meant to end, her dream. And fear clutched at her: he had warned her she must never tell.