Juliet smiled slightly, put down her coffee cup and lit a cigarette, one of the four she allowed herself each day, half listening to Horton confirming the arrangements. Everyone had known Bud Martin was casting but he’d said he wanted an American woman. Juliet had decided to try and persuade him otherwise; there were too few leads in movies for women in their fifties. It was Horton who had set up the filming: employed a director, a make-up artist and a crew, and couriered the video to Bud Martin’s home in Hollywood, getting his American partner on to the job. But it was Juliet’s idea when she had heard Bud Martin had been in the audience last week, Juliet’s insistence that they make a tape of her looking completely different from the part in The Seagull. Juliet wanted to be a bigger star than she was already. Juliet always had energy, plans, ambition.

The script that had arrived from Los Angeles last night came back into her mind and she frowned. Of course she could do it. She was an actress after all.

‘Terence Blue?’ said Horton, on the telephone. ‘God I suppose it’s all round Hollywood, I mean rape of all the stupid things, what a clown, better to be caught with your pants down in Sunset Boulevard any day... yeah yeah Hugh Grant’s now a waxwork in Madame Tussauds!... Terence Blue?... no no no, bail... God knows what the fuck this will do to his career... Diversions is on here now... wonderfully...yeah... mmmm, mmmmmmmm, well you know better than me how all that new right-wing Christian politics is working there... in the studio? hhhmmmm... well he’s not my client thank God... yeah... next thing I suppose they’ll make a film of his life – plenty of stuff there I should think if they nose around, yeah someone’s probably snapped up the rights already, hah! Michael Jackson probably!... hmmmmmmmm...’ The conversation went on but Horton was somewhat surprised to see that Juliet Lyall had got up abruptly from the cream sofa under the photograph of Vivien Leigh and left the office.

‘Darling?’ he called, but she was gone.

9

Harry Donaldson decided to do everything on Wednesday, to settle things before he went to Morocco, quite aware of the irony of making these two particular arrangements on the same day: one cancelled out the other, so to speak.

He didn’t tell Frances or Emmy Lou, his friends. He dressed in a good grey suit, put on what was for him a respectable tie even though it was hot again. In his newsagent Good morning Mr Donaldson, started your new series yet... no not yet Ravi, another few weeks before I start he avoided the headlines on the tabloids about Terence Blue, he actually averted his eyes from the photographs and the headlines about Terence’s court appearance which were on the front page for the third day running.