She had not behaved as Leni at all; instead she had played a desperate game of Leni/Luise and had so confused herself that she had ended up in tears of self-pity and provoked a juvenile argument on jealousy which shamed her.

The whole tedious little moment at ‘La Civette’ had seriously undermined her belief in who she was supposed to be, and the strain of mixing the two together was beginning to tell. She had behaved in a thoroughly bourgeois manner: neither as Leni, who would have dealt with the whole situation in a totally different way, nor as Luise, who would at least have had more dignity about it all. And in any case, whatever her behaviour, it had not prevented him from going off to the ship. And that was another source of concern. Why go? The film was sure to be cancelled after Wolf’s dreadful accident, and in any case Marcus had insisted that he would not accept such a job even if offered. So why? Curiosity? Wilfulness? Independence? Worst of all – the Film Star?

Oh Wolf! Poor Wolf lying there in his cool, antiseptic, shadowed little room. So strangely tall in the narrow bed, bandaged, mute save for grunts and sighs, brown eyes dulled with pain and fatigue, pressing her hand from time to time in gratitude for her presence. A comfort. But what had happened? An accident? When she had asked him in a whisper, he had pressed her hands twice, strongly, as if in assent. Yes: an accident.

She got up from the pool, arms wrapped around her shoulders as if to hold herself together, for she really felt that she was slowly falling to pieces, and the discovery, just a short time ago, of her passport, lying under the little false canvas bottom of the Army Surplus, had brought all these terrors and doubts to a positive head.

Marcus, busy with his toilet, had asked for a loan of her hair lacquer, and she had rummaged about in the Army Surplus to find it, and found the passport as well. The damning evidence, which she had kept securely away from him, of her identity as Luise.

‘Uncle’ Desmond was arriving in a day or two: they would all drive home together. What then would happen to the passport? It would have to be shown at Immigration, naturally. And if Marcus saw it, as he was almost certain to do, how then to explain that she was really someone quite else? The slim little book in the Army Surplus posed as great a threat to her happiness as anything which had happened so far … even the trip now to the Papageno about which she felt such unease.