Terence Blue. She owed more than anybody knew to Terence Blue. First she and Terence had kissed at student parties; he was the first person to put his tongue in her mouth, the first person to put his hand on her breast and then, one night, long, long ago in her room in a boarding house in Hammersmith (when the landlady had gone to see her sick sister in Derby), Terence Blue had, as the saying goes, taken her virginity; carefully, with a condom from his pocket so that she wouldn’t get pregnant. Not for a moment did either of them think it was True Love but Molly felt extremely grateful for the gentle and unfumbling experience on the floor by the gas heater, for the genuine enthusiasm Terence obviously felt for her body so that sex seemed after all a good thing, not something to be ashamed of. Not the ugly thing from her childhood: the visiting men, the sounds from her mother’s bedroom. I thought it was dirty, she had said wonderingly to Terence, I thought it was something horrible. I didn’t know it was like this, and in front of the gas heater she told Terence things she had never told anybody else about her life when she was young. There was something almost simple about Terence Blue. She couldn’t possibly have thought herself in love with him, but he had held her hand and listened to her, and the experience with him had allowed her to know that sex could be a good thing not a bad thing and so had changed her life. He had become a huge star now and their lives didn’t cross so often but – and she stared again at the stark, unpleasant newspaper headlines – she owed him friendship.

She wondered if Anthony would remember what she’d said at the reunion. She stood undecided for a moment and then, almost not considering what she was doing, picked up the phone.

*

Not only had Pauline Bonham become stylish.

She also knew perfectly well of her husband’s infidelities; in particular she knew very well indeed about his first and passionate affair with Molly McKenzie.

Molly McKenzie who had once been her best friend.

Molly McKenzie who had shared her tights and her books and her bone voice prop and her practice skirt and her dreams and her secrets, in the class of ’59.

On their very first day at the Academy Molly, newly arrived from Manchester, and Pauline, who had just found out that her real father was in the circus, sat next to each other while the stern patrician principal warned them what a difficult profession they had chosen.