“What,” interrupted Emma, “about the women?”

There was a silence.

“What about the women?” said Sophie then.

“Well, I read an article about him the other day,” said Emma. “And it seems there have been quite a lot of them.”

“Well, there probably have,” said Sophie. “He’s been around since the seventies, remember.”

“And this article was suggesting there still were,” said Emma. “There was half a page of photographs, in fact, and some of them were quite young. And there was something else I noticed about them, too.”

Sophie sighed. “What was that?” she said.

“They were blond,” said Emma. “All of them. Without exception. All the way back to Princess Diana.”

There was another silence.

“Do you want me to wear a black wig?” said Sophie. “I have one for emergency purposes.”

“No, I don’t want you to wear a black wig!” said Emma. “I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.” Then, despite herself, “What do you mean, emergency purposes?”

“Well, in case someone wants me to play dark-haired at the last minute,” said Sophie. “What do you think I mean?”

“I never know with you,” said Emma. “Anyway, watch out for yourself, okay?”

“I’m twenty-two,” said Sophie. “Not twelve. And Aunt Amy will be there, which I think should be passion killer enough for most. Do you think I look like Princess Diana?”

“No,” said Emma.

Sophie sighed again. “I didn’t think so,” she said then. “But she always said they were just friends anyway.”

When she had hung up with Emma, Sophie stood for a moment, looking a little wistfully at the telephone in her hand and wishing she could report the conversation to Jamie. It was not, she reminded herself carefully, that she had been in any sense avoiding Jamie since the conversation with her sisters during Emma’s hen weekend. She had answered the telephone each time he had called her, had met him for drinks on the couple of occasions he had suggested, and had promised, faithfully, to telephone him the following afternoon to report on the lunch with Marcus Wickham. Nevertheless, she had started to feel just a little less comfortable with him than she usually was. It was true, she admitted, now thinking about it, that she and Jamie were particularly good friends; and true, too, that they had a habit of being affectionate with each other. It was even possible, now that she thought further, that they might tend to be a little more affectionate with each other than many platonic friends, but then, Sophie reminded herself, she and Jamie were actors, and that was how actors were. Sophie had had a teacher at drama school who had a slightly florid habit of referring to non-actors as “civilians,” which many of her classmates had mocked but she herself had found secretly just a little thrilling. And the problem with Emma and Lulu, she reflected, now and not for the first time in the last couple of weeks, was that they were, after all, civilians. And the problem with civilians was that they just didn’t understand the relationships between actors.