‘Why ever are you here in London, Iona?’ said Anthony, bringing champagne and orange juice, settling Iona under the oak tree. ‘Not that it isn’t lovely to see you,’ he added hurriedly. Viola hung behind, tongue-tied for once in the presence of a film star; Mrs O’Brien was also speechless and Benedict had only just moved from the staircase, his mouth still open in a kind of O of admiration as he walked automatically towards the CD player.

Iona shrugged, accepting the drink. ‘One of the Sunday papers paid for me to fly over, I had lunch with the editor as soon as I arrived yesterday, they wanted me to spill the Terence Blue Beans, you can read it all today if you want to, paid me loadsa money. Of course you know that Cosmetic Executive has talked to the American newspapers but that can’t be printed here so they need people like me to tell my story.’ She gave a little smile, waved her hand vaguely in the air.

Pauline looked shocked. Iona had been a model, an eighteen-year-old not very well-known model, when she married the very very famous Terence Blue, after he’d left (been pushed darling, said Elvira) fifty-year-old Elvira Pugh. Now Iona Spring was a film star in Hollywood.

Pauline knew very well that the acting profession was littered with women whose careers had sky-rocketed when they married, or had a child by, or at least had a well-publicised affair with, a man whose power in the profession could give them work. Several actresses working in the big London companies would be here this afternoon whose careers had flourished due to these well-timed personal moves. It didn’t mean they couldn’t act: often they were very good actresses which is how they came to the attention of the men in power in the first place; but there were plenty of good actresses. These ones simply leapfrogged ahead in the game. Viola would, at least in the beginning, leapfrog over her classmates because her father was Anthony Bonham, a leading English actor, and her mother had been very well-known in her time. Pauline felt grateful that Viola at least had that start, knowing many people in the business. Iona Spring’s rise in Hollywood had been spectacular because she wasn’t an actress at all when she married Terence; the least she could have done in gratitude, Pauline thought now, was keep her mouth shut.

Last night, when Anthony had come home, she hadn’t mentioned Molly’s visit earlier in the week and their talk of Terence. But she suddenly wondered what Iona had actually said to the Sunday papers, hoped it wasn’t to do with Terence’s sexual prowess

‘Why ever would you want to talk to the press about him when he’s in such trouble?’ she said to Iona, more angrily than she meant to.