I stared at him, too tongue-tied to even say my name. He patted me reassuringly and walked back to the monitor. Everyone fell silent and the camera began to turn. I felt myself drifting into a trance, trying to imagine this line of dialogue missing from my earlier life, which I had spent my entire career trying to define.

Followed by the camera, we moved towards the hall. Lights were shining in the driveway, reflected from the polished roofs of the cars into which we would step. Drawn up on the raked gravel were a Buick roadster of the 1930s, a high-roofed Packard like my parents’ car, a black gangster’s Chrysler with running boards and white-wall tyres, and a 1940 Lincoln Zephyr convertible. Beside them stood Chinese chauffeurs in prewar Shanghai uniforms, caps under their arms as they opened the rear doors for the departing guests.

Staring at the scene, I tried to focus my eyes on the camera and the watching crowd beyond the gates. I stepped into the rear seat of the Packard, remembering in time to remove my top hat. The actor playing my chauffeur closed the door and took his seat behind the wheel. As the cars moved across the drive between the departing guests I felt that I was being carried away from this quiet Buckinghamshire lane, across another world and another time to the Shanghai of half a century earlier, towards the lights of the Bund and the department stores of the Nanking Road, through the French Concession to the tramline terminus at the end of the Avenue Joffre, to the barbed-wire checkpoints that led to the western suburbs and the high-gabled house where a small English boy played with his German toys, surprised by the white pigeons that had taken shelter on his roof.

*   *   *

The cabin stewards cleared away the last drinks before we landed, moving nimbly through the debris of the twelve-hour flight from London. Sitting beside Cleo in the front row, the cockpit of the 747 far above us, I peered over her shoulder at the northeast suburbs of Los Angeles. Vast highways busy with cars stretched across the sun-filled landscape, covered by a yellow haze as if the sand had begun to evaporate from the desert.

“Swimming pools…” Cleo pointed below. “Thousands of them. When the rains fail these people will survive. How do you feel?”

“Fine. I’ll recover. As if I’ve taken too many amphetamines.”

“You have. Don’t worry, you’ll land in about three days, when it’s all over.”

“I hope so. It’s a long way to go to a movie.”

“But what a movie.” In fact, neither of us had seen the film. “It’s a shame you’re in fancy dress—no one will recognise you.”

“It’s hardly a major role.”

“Rubbish—it’s modest but crucial.”

“Cleo, I may have been edited out altogether.”