Frances excused herself to the secretary who was boredly taking Polaroid photographs of each middle-aged actress who arrived. She found a toilet down a corridor, locked the door. Out of her handbag she took the padded bra: she was fairly sure from long, long experience that she knew how their minds worked when they talked about assets, and imposing edifices towering upwards. Quickly and expertly she took off the bra she was wearing and put on the stuffed one. With the right wriggles and lifts her large bosom expanded considerably. She looked in the small dirty mirror, adjusted her low-cut dress, quickly combed her auburn hair that she always hoped people would describe as flaming red, and returned to the office. Back in her corner she learnt the three lines quickly. All around her she heard the voices... darling such rubbish... I don’t do advertisements usually of course... what about Terence Blue...and the ubiquitous, anxious, casually posed question... are you working?

When she was called into the small studio she was confronted by a woman casting director, a male director dressed in a purple silk shirt, and a male video technician with a camera. A TV screen was disconcertingly placed so that she couldn’t help seeing half of herself.

The casting director, plumper even than Frances, was looking feverishly at some papers on her knee, didn’t seem to notice Frances’ arrival, so she was not introduced.

‘Look at the camera,’ said the director without any greeting or polite preliminaries, ‘give your name and your agent’s name.’

Frances complied.

‘Turn your right profile towards the camera.’

Frances complied.

‘Turn your left profile towards the camera.’

Frances complied.

‘Read the lines of the fat one in the script, read straight to camera.’

Frances complied, the casting director looked up from her papers, smiled, harassed, at Frances, read the thin part.

‘Thank you.’ The director dismissed her.

‘Just a minute.’ A disembodied voice from the darkness behind her where she knew the clients’ representatives would be sitting looking at a TV screen. Quite clearly she heard in slightly accented English ‘...the right kind of figure. Tell her to breathe.’

The director came back. ‘Look at the camera straight on,’ he said, ‘and breathe in and out a few times.’

Frances complied: she leant forward for a moment and then, pointing her enlarged bosom straight towards the camera like a weapon, she breathed and said, ‘My name is Frances Kitson and I am – an actress.’ She smiled very slightly.

‘Thank you,’ said the voice with the accent from the back.

Frances left the room.

She waited for Emmy Lou at Pritzi’s, bought the early edition of the Evening Standard. BLUE RAPE LATEST screamed the headline. He had been remanded on bail on his own surety of £50,000 providing he surrendered his passport.