“You all right? You look a bit fazed,” said their tanned owner. gracefully wiping herself with a tissue and wriggling her dress back down over her bottom.

“Some overgrown kid with glaucoma made a sort of pass at me.”

“Oh, that’s my husband. You shouldn’t mind him. He goes over the top when he’s had a few drinks. Quite charming otherwise. Probably instantly taken by your looks.” She gave Phyllis the once-over.

“Bloody infidel. You should keep him on a leash.”

“I do, most of the time. Dirty little sod. Anyway, I apologise for him. Come on, let’s join the others. Fleur wanted to seat us before sunset, romantic thing that she is.” She gave Phyllis a peck on the cheek, but Phyllis, wary of physical contact, was aware that the softness of the other’s lips stayed in contact a moment too long.

“I’m Miranda, by the way. That’s nice perfume. Unusual.”

“Thank you.” Then Phyllis looked Miranda squarely in the eye and said, “What are you two, anyway—a team playing away?”

Fleur steered Zeno over to Flick with a “just you two boys stand close” number and, with less expertise than David Bailey, pushed them together and produced the common Polaroid. “He’s in the industry, too,” she added, loosely lining them up in the view-finder. “There,” she gasped. “A flash of stars.” Fleur was fond of the collective noun. “How many pearls on this top?” she asked, turning sideways.

Flick blinked. “You asked me before. I’ve no idea,” he said.

“Well, guess, silly.”

“Hundreds, I should think. Er . . . two hundred.”

Fleur, who had a sticky square of paper stuck on the back of the camera, took a pencil from her skirt pocket and scribbled Flick’s guess. “How about you, Zeno?”

Zeno, who had played Fleur’s game before, waited a moment and said, as though he had actually thought about it, “One hundred and twenty-seven.” He was considering Fleur’s commitment to her games when he realised that she had gone, and Flick was standing alongside him with the Polaroid smile still on his lips. Zeno breathed deeply and said, “So you’re in the industry?”

“Er, sort of.” He faltered, and swilled down the rest of the champagne in an effort to fill the silence. Zeno took the empty glass from his hand and parked it on the food trestle nearby. Flick’s hands were no sooner empty than he reached for a cigarette. “D’you mind?” he asked Zeno.

“No, used to smoke myself. Reckon it’s the hardest habit to break. More difficult than the Peruvian diet.”

“The what?”

“Cocaine.”

“Oh, is that right?”

Zeno nodded. “You were going to tell me about being in the business.”

“Was I? Oh yeah. Well, do a bit of stunt work, you know.”

“That’s great. Tough cookie, eh?”

“I’m mainly in the crowd,” confessed Flick, his voice in descent, and suddenly intrigued by how his Silk Cut was burning.

“You don’t say. I started in the crowd.”

“You didn’t.”