Frances Kitson, red-headed and plump, lay on her sofa making fanning motions half-heartedly and totally ineffectually with her padded bra. This article of clothing, if worn, enhanced her already large bosom to mesmeric proportions. Her yellow dress lay across the back of the sofa and she was considering whether or not the padded bra, useful for auditions for fat ladies, was quite the thing for a drama school reunion. She had already put on her rings, eight of them, a way of keeping her marital status private; her rings at the moment were all she wore. She always hoped that, naked, she looked like one of those plump nudes in old paintings who lay on sofas while little cupids held mirrors for them to look into; she feared she probably looked like a beached whale. She had lowered the blinds in her sitting-room but they were rather ill-fitting and sun sneaked in, round the sides, at the top: thin shafts of sunlight angled in across her bare plump legs and on to the wall behind her where an old photograph of her father doing a comic turn on Blackpool Pier hung in its wooden frame. Oh, it is so hot again, why won’t this summer stop? If it doesn’t stop soon I will just have to kill myself and have done with it.

The telephone rang beside the potted ferns. Frances sighed, sat up, picked up the receiver, still holding the padded bra. ‘Good morning, Frances Kitson speaking.’

‘Franny, it’s me, look – I don’t think I will go today, after all.’

‘Oh Emmy we agreed, don’t be silly! You never know who you might meet who might help you get work.’ She regarded the padded bra again and added cheerfully, ‘The one great thing about our business is you just never know what’s round the corner.’ She heard Emmy Lou sigh.

‘All I want to do in the whole world is act. Get up on a stage and do my job. Why should it have anything to do with meeting the right people? Plumbers don’t have to.’

‘Oh Emmy!’ said Frances, and her tone held both exasperation and love and Emmy Lou heard it.

‘I know. I know, I slept badly that’s all, feeling nervous about meeting people after thirty-six years, my face looks all tired and horrible, I’ve been staring at it for hours.’

‘Now listen Em, since I was forty my face has looked horrible when I woke up! I no longer look at it first thing, I actually avert my eyes. I don’t allow myself, or anyone else, to look at it until I’ve had a shower, had breakfast, rubbed in some moisturiser, put on a colour that suits me. Then without putting my glasses on I look in a long mirror from middle distance. I know I’m fat but from middle distance without spectacles, do you know, I actually look voluptuous and desirable.’