‘Not nearly as much as you fancy yourself, honey.’ Minerva finished her drink, put the long empty glass to one eye like a telescope. ‘You should be in movies: you know that one?’

‘We’ll take a photograph, shall we,’ said Leni. ‘For Mr Bender?’

‘Oh please!’ said Archie. ‘Do come along you two, it’s after midnight. I’ve got work to do still.’ He tucked the wax head under his arm and they left in a shuffle, their voices fading as they crossed the hall. A door shut on a thread of laughter.

‘Well,’ said Minerva, her voice as dry as scorched grass. ‘You do see?’

Cuckoo moved for the first time, as if awakened suddenly, and went over to the bonheur du jour to collect the Larousse. ‘Yes. Yes, I did see.’

‘Spit and image,’ said Minerva.

‘Let’s keep it a secret, shall we? Not a word.’

‘Not a word. Pas un mot shall pass my lips. There’s someone on the terrace …’

‘Tonnino. Taking in the cushions. I’m going up. Coming?’

‘Right behind you. You know, in the notes in the scripts Charles is reading there is a quote from some eye-witness who said that when he looked at the girls in the streets of Vienna “roses blossomed in their cheeks and their eyes sparkled like stars, sending out flashes of fire”. Isn’t that divine?’

‘When who did?’

‘l’Aiglon.’

‘Shop girls and milliners. Hysterical and over-romantic. Do admit?’

‘First time I knew you ever trimmed hats, Cuckoo Peverill. You could have fooled me.’

She was sitting naked, cross-legged on the bed, smoking, when he came in from the bathroom, a towel in one hand, a comb in the other.

‘Slut,’ he said and threw the towel at her. ‘Stinking up the room.’

‘Gauloises. You said you loved the smell of Gauloises.’ She blew a thin stream of smoke upwards.

‘I do. But not in here. Can’t you smell the other things? Sea, pines, roses, whatever.’

‘No. And you can’t either. It all smells of that green stuff you put in the water.’

He bent to see himself in the dressing-table mirror, slicked his damp hair into place.

‘You are so vain,’ she said.

‘Piss off.’

‘You have a white thing on your bottom, do you know?’

He half turned towards her, arms above his head. ‘What sort of white thing? Where?’

‘In the very middle. Quite small, like this …’ She sketched a shape in the air.

‘Triangle?’

‘If you say. Where your slip has been.’

‘Small slip.’

‘Most rude. Let me see your front. There too. But very small. The white part.’

‘I’m glad. The rest all right?’

‘Fantastic. Did you see her face, down there just now?’

‘Whose?’ He put the comb on the dressing-table, smoothed the back of his head.

‘Cuckoo. Cuckoo’s face, when you were in the uniform.’

‘No. Not really.’