And then the studios started folding. Telly and Bingo came in along with bitterness, disillusion and finally panic. The ‘Uncles’ listened to her endless cries of distress uncomfortably, the drinks got stronger and longer; after the drinks the Seconal, to sleep. And then the big, slow slide down. Jeremy still capering away in cheap farces which never made the West End but had them in fits from Bournemouth to Bradford. The dolls’ house at Hurlingham went first, then the prep school at Virginia Water, the Tunnicliffes, the Regency chairs, the satin loveseat and finally the hasty move to a dank cottage outside Dorking. That was the final crash. The end of the line. The buffers.

‘It’ll be all lovely, you’ll see,’ she had said distractedly. ‘Healthier, lots of fresh vegetables, our own eggs perhaps. And a dog. Wouldn’t you just adore a dog?’ I didn’t give a sod about a dog. I didn’t give a sod about anything. I didn’t know who, or where, I was. Dorking would do. And if she wanted Dorking, she’d have it. So there we were. But the ‘Uncles’ grew fewer in time, and with the thinning out, there were less ‘goodies’; bottles of vodka, sides of smoked salmon, hit records for the player. And then Jeremy met an ‘Auntie’ who wrote poetry, read it aloud, played a tambourine and shivered in her sari in the rising damp of the Surrey Hills, was called ‘Bangladesh’ by Decca, who hated her and caused constant scenes, so that finally she cleared off back to her flat in Muswell Hill. Taking Jeremy with her. For good. A divorce. The dream crumbled away with the end of the Sixties. Fade out.

He crushed his cigarette into a small shell, pulled his T-shirt over his head, crossed to the open windows, the night air warm on his naked chest. Through the trees a half moon turned the sea to steel. Along the coast road the rear lights of motor cars glimmered silently like trailing embers round the dark bulk of Mont Boron. It was still. The only sound, the sibilant, rustling swirl of the sea in the dark, caressing and nuzzling among the tumbled rocks far below like a blind thing.

Where were they all now, he wondered. Where on earth? Last of Jeremy, months ago, was a postcard from Cape Town to say that he was the hit of the season in yet another revival of ‘Private Lives’ and ‘why not come on out and get a super tan?’

How? By swimming?