‘I know. And I know he had no intention of leaving you and Portia, ever, for a moment. He was just playing. It was all the thrill of the moment, nothing was substantial or real.’

Then again Molly was silent. It had been something more than that and she didn’t want to say so.

As Pauline had discovered at the time, Molly and Anthony had actually shared digs in the end: going to rehearsal together in the morning, learning lines together, coming home late after the evening’s performance together, clinging together on his narrow bed because hers squeaked horribly, in a house in suburban Birmingham. And discovering a sexual compatibility that both thrilled and alarmed them, that somehow became part of the way they worked together on stage.

It was that that had held them.

It was that that had flared up that moment at the reunion when he’d brushed his hand against her breast.

How could a flat in Vauxhall and a wife and a young baby one day a week seem real when such heightened life was being lived the other six? How could they possibly have recognised reality, if it only appeared on Sundays? On most Sundays Anthony had gone home to his other life. And Molly, not wanting ever to go home to Manchester where her mother still lived her bitter, drawn-out days, stayed in Birmingham, her digs her only home. For Molly Sundays were long, exhausted, blue-tinged days doing their washing, learning lines, wandering the streets of Birmingham. Once the landlady had taken something that looked like a beanbag out of a drawer in the dining-room dresser, showed it to Molly, put it in her hand. I have cancer, she had said, this is my false breast.

Molly shivered in the hot afternoon by the river, tried to push it all away.

‘We had to get married,’ said Pauline, staring at the old oak tree that grew beside the house, ‘I suppose you knew that?’

‘Of course I did,’ said Molly.

‘Doesn’t it sound fatuous and old-fashioned now, “had to get married”. My mother cried in a most unlikely manner considering that she was pregnant by someone else when she got married. And all we could think of was hiding it from my stepfather. And I always remember overhearing my uncle say – because of course everybody found out in the end – “the girl got herself pregnant”, as if I did it all by myself.’ She laughed shortly. ‘However we had a white wedding.’

‘I was there,’ protested Molly. ‘That was when I knew you Pauly.’