‘Oh. Shame, it was interesting. Anyway it happened after that apparently and so the reunion is splashed all over the papers. But the thing is – I don’t think it can have happened. And I said something to Anthony.’ Molly sounded muddled. ‘Oh God, look are you doing anything? Could I come over? I don’t quite know how to proceed, I need to talk to someone urgently I think, and Banjo’s not here. Maybe I should go to the police but I really need advice and I let slip something to Anthony on Saturday that he might remember.’

‘I expect he was too drunk.’

‘No, this was before, just at the beginning, when we were all arriving.’

‘He’s gone back to Stratford; ring him there if you want him.’

‘Oh.’ Molly paused, hearing the polite chill in Pauline’s voice. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said. And in a sudden very complicated mixture of motivations and desires Molly suddenly wanted to talk not to Anthony Bonham but to his wife, Pauline O’Brien Bonham, her old friend. Wanted to talk to her after all those years, wanted to talk to her so that the nonsense with Anthony at the reunion – that sudden intake of breath and memory – could be eradicated. As if it did not happen. ‘Pauly can I come?’ she said.

Pauline heard a kind of longing in Molly’s voice.

And Pauline Bonham stared at herself in the mirror, there in her own hall, at the bottom of the stairs where her husband had fallen on Saturday evening. He’d probably been drinking with Molly all afternoon. Did she care? But Terence Blue, the golden boy who had kissed them all – out of kindness sometimes – involved in a rape case?

‘Pauly?’ Molly guessed some of the thoughts at least.

‘Sure, if you think I can help, though I don’t see how. Come over after four, I’ve got to go down to the shop for a while.’

‘See you then,’ said Molly.

Pauline put down the receiver but remained motionless by the telephone. She did not like these jolts to her heart: Molly visiting, Terence Blue, the days when she was young. She caught at a memory of herself, in a corridor after a voice class, telling Terence Blue she would probably become a trapeze artist. ‘I don’t have to run away to the circus like other people Terence,’ she had said. ‘My father wants me to join him in Paris.’ Terence Blue had smiled his incredibly beautiful smile and put an arm around her shoulder.

‘Come for a drink with me Pauly,’ he had said.

Pauline Bonham quickly phoned a colleague and made a very large profit selling a Wellington chest.

*

Izzy Fields had also seen the Evening Standard. She did not believe the headline for one moment and almost wept as she cycled from Tufnell Park to the National Theatre.