In some ways, it was just a performance. Dressing for dinner, applying lipstick next to Rosalind in the mirror in the en-suite, helping Posy do up the zip of another hideous dress and watching her pull a face at her own reflection … it was almost like being backstage at one of Caro’s early forays in the theatre. Shared dressing rooms, doing their own make-up, and the buzz of excitement that she only ever got from live performance.

Of course, when she’d been backstage the chatter had been about which critic was in tonight, or whether the lead actor had been drinking before curtain-up again, that sort of thing.

Tonight, it was about murder.

Or it was, until they stood back and looked at their reflections together. Caro caught Rosalind’s eye, and saw her shake her head.

‘You’re right,’ Caro said. ‘It’ll never do.’

Posy looked between them, confusion creasing her brow. ‘What?’

‘You can’t be Dahlia dressed like that,’ Rosalind explained. ‘It’s embarrassing.’

‘Especially if you’re hoping to snag the attention of your Johnnie.’ Caro pantomimed a leer at Posy in the mirror. ‘That Kit of yours is quite lovely.’ She was married to a woman, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate a good-looking man when one stopped by. And Kit’s looks hadn’t hindered his rise to stardom one bit.

‘It’s not like that with me and Kit.’

‘Doesn’t mean it couldn’t be. Theirs is a slow burn romance in the books …’

‘But it might burn out if you go down to dinner dressed like that,’ Rosalind added.

Posy looked at her dress and scowled at it. ‘Well, this is all I have, unless you want me in jeans. Anton purposefully didn’t tell me that it was a dress-up weekend so he could lumber me with these awful dresses on the train. All part of his master plan to screw up my chances of winning over the fans as Dahlia.’

‘Stupid man,’ Rosalind muttered, which Caro thought was putting it mildly. ‘Well, we’ll just have to see what we can do, won’t we?’

‘I brought a couple of tops.’ Posy grabbed some slippery fabric from the sofa. ‘I thought maybe one of them over the dress might be less awful.’

Rosalind and Caro exchanged another look. ‘Oh, I think we can do better than that, don’t you, Rosalind?’

It took a bit of trial and error, a couple of safety pins – Posy’s slender figure was a few inches smaller than either of theirs – but eventually they had something that worked. Rosalind’s skirt, Posy’s top, and Caro’s beaded vintage jacket over it, looking slightly more oversized on Posy than it did on her. It meant Caro would need to find something else to wear over her dress for dinner, but Posy’s smile as she studied her reflection made it worth the effort.