‘Oh my God.’ Josephine looked at Marta, who had picked up the discarded Times. ‘No wonder Archie was so smug. Just look at this.’ She passed the newspaper back, open at the article that had caught her interest. ‘Christmas with Marlene. That really is a coup. Why on earth didn’t I pack something more daring?’

Josephine laughed. ‘I love the idea that we could even begin to compete.’ She scanned the news story in disbelief, feeling both excited and intimidated at the prospect of meeting one of the most famous women in the world. The headline – ‘Hollywood’s “Angel” lives up to her name’ – sat next to a familiar photograph, a still from the film Morocco in which Dietrich wore a man’s tuxedo and top hat, brazenly modelling the androgynous image that had made her so popular with men and women alike. There was a cigarette poised provocatively at her lips, her eyes a mixture of defiance and devilish charm; Josephine looked admiringly at the high cheekbones, sculpted so carefully by the light, and wondered what it would be like to sit across from that face at the dinner table.

Marta seemed to share her thoughts. ‘It’s silly, isn’t it? You and I know lots of actors and actresses. We’re both familiar with that world and really shouldn’t be star-struck, but I’m already panicking about what I might find to say to her.’

‘At least we can be honest about her last film,’ Josephine said wryly. ‘It was the first time she seemed human.’ 60

‘And it’s given The Times a good headline.’ Marta took the paper up again, but it was impossible now to settle to the rest of the news. ‘I bet Archie will have some tales to tell by the time he gets to Cornwall,’ she said. ‘I can’t wait to get him on his own.’

61

2

The church was quiet in the early morning, although the wind was rising again outside, finding a rhythm with the waves on the rocks below until it was difficult to separate one sound from another. Nora Pendean hesitated by the north entrance, taking in the familiar stillness, the faint smell of incense and polish, and the soft rattle of the organ loft door as the draught from the terrace caught it. She had known this church all her life, through good times and bad. People had worshipped here for eight hundred years, and – despite the hand of a more modern restorer – these old stone walls still carried echoes of the monks for whom they had originally been built. Sometimes, if she was here at night, she imagined she could hear their prayers in the wind that came off the sea, their footsteps climbing the narrow staircase to the top of the tower, lighting the beacon to guide fishing boats home under a star-bright sky. Here, the past was never far away.

She closed the door behind her and walked down the central aisle, where a shaft of light through the east rose window threw a kaleidoscope of colour onto the flagstones to dance in patterns at her feet. The winter sun was grudging, but still it reached the statue of the saint who gave St Michael’s Mount its name, bringing out the fire in the bronze and giving the winged figure a dramatic intensity, appropriate to the struggle of good over evil. The combination of zeal and mercy on the saint’s face never failed to move her, although 62she couldn’t help but feel that it was she who was judged these days, and not the figure of Lucifer who lay at his feet. She shivered as the initial relief of coming in from the cold subsided, and turned to set about her work, struck by how beautiful the church was, and by how much she hated it. Its magic, once so compelling, was dead to her.