When I had had my coffee and found my tin of oil, which I could not get delivered, I set back over the bridge to the theatre. I was near enough, but the tin banged against my knees as I walked. When I arrived at the stage door, there was no sign of David, or of anyone else, so I started to read the notices on the noticeboard, assuming that the company had not yet broken for lunch. I read the cast lists, and who was understudying whom, and notices about not parking cars in the public car park; then I started to arrange all the spare drawing pins in a neat circle. As I was doing this, someone arrived behind me. I did not turn, but became increasingly aware that whoever it was, was not moving. After a minute or so the person said:

“Do you think I might disarrange your nice little pattern and have a couple of pins?” and I turned round and saw that it was Wyndham Farrar with a piece of paper that he wanted to pin up.

“I suppose so,” I said, unpicking two and offering them to him. “They are hardly mine to withhold.”

“No, I didn’t think they would be,” he said, taking the pins, but not doing anything more about it. “I didn’t think you would have anything to do with these drawing pins. Though what you have got anything to do with I can’t imagine. You’re not in my company, are you? I can hardly have engaged an actress looking like you without having noticed it.”

“I am not an actress!” I said irritably. In London nobody ever mistakes me for an actress, but I could see what my fate in this place was to be.

“I didn’t think you could be,” he said. “If you had been, I would have met you before.”

“You have met me before, as a matter of fact,” I said. “But clearly you don’t remember.”

“I’m quite sure you’re mistaken,” he said. “I’m quite sure I’ve never met you anywhere.”

I wondered how far he would go if I allowed him. I felt that it might be quite a long way, I felt it my duty to end the walking misrepresentation which is myself.

“Oh, I remember the occasion quite well,” I said. “It was all most unfortunate, in my opinion. It was at a party of Danny Owen’s. I was there with my husband.”

“Your husband?”

“David Evans, my husband.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh yes. Really. David Evans. I didn’t know he was married. He doesn’t seem to be particularly married. Was I introduced to you? Come to think of it, I did know about David; he told me some long story about having a wife and a lot of kids to support when the subject of salary came up. But I didn’t know he was married to anyone like you.”

“How should you have known? It would hardly have been relevant, would it?”