So Molly washed her now short blonde hair, discarded several outfits before settling on the right one and arrived at the producer’s office on time, as she always did. The producers may be late, but the class of fifty-nine had been well-trained.

‘This is Waylon Jones, the director,’ the young and very English producer said to Molly, after she’d waited almost half an hour, and a grey-haired balding man nodded to her without speaking.

‘The reason we’ve asked to see you,’ continued the producer, ‘is that we’re doing a film about that young Scottish bride who was killed on her wedding day in the eighties by her husband’s brother who was also in love with her and had wanted to marry her – I expect you remember the case – and we’re interested in you playing the young bride’s aunt.’ Molly waited politely, put an interested look on her face.

‘We want her to be a very attractive aunt,’ said the producer. ‘In fact, we’re making the parts of the parents and the aunt very attractive. Someone like you,’ he added somewhat, Molly thought, oleaginously, but she smiled at him, dutifully accepting the compliment.

The balding director took a cigar out of his pocket, lit it slowly, puffing and huffing, looking at her. ‘Are you interested?’ he said, and she heard he was an American. ‘I’ve seen you somewhere.’

The casting director, also a middle-aged woman, who sat on the other side of the desk with the men, looked embarrassed. ‘Molly’s a very well-known actress,’ she said hurriedly, ‘she’s worked in the biggest theatre companies, she’s played leads in many TV series,’ but the director silenced her with his hand, not looking at her.

‘We want the aunt to be attractive,’ he reiterated, as if aunts were, on the whole, not; as if the word itself – aunt – had a fusty, musty quality to it, in this room.

‘Have you got photographs of the aunt, of the parents?’ asked Molly. ‘What did they look like?’

‘Oh God that’s immaterial,’ said the director, ‘we just wanna make them attractive.’ He stared at her in silence. The smoke from the cigar filled the small room, the casting director coughed quietly.

‘I’m so sorry we couldn’t send you a script,’ said the producer, ‘but we explained to all the agents, it’s still being written; we hope to have copies here from America next week.’ Molly wondered, but not aloud, why it was being written in America if it happened in Scotland.

‘But anyway,’ continued the producer, ‘the bride was killed while she was changing into her going-away outfit with her bridesmaid. The brother – the murderer – came in and kissed her and then stuck a carving knife in her, saying if he couldn’t have her nobody would – very dramatic stuff. ‘