Croft was almost at Byres Road, a T-junction, and by some distance the busiest street in the West End. The lead she had given him was acceptable on back streets, but very risky on a bustling main drag. Making ground was strongly advisable; allowing him to gain any more seconds potentially calamitous. She had to hurry, but she couldn’t do anything conspicuous like run.

She increased her walking pace and locked her gaze on Croft, acting as though she had barely registered the group outside the café. Charlotte had only glanced at her for a moment, so there was every chance that she didn’t recognise her, or didn’t remember her out of context.

She was five yards from the table. Brisk and purposeful, come on, focused and in a hurry, mind obviously elsewhere, clearly not ignoring the brilliant but flaky, capricious and egotistical …

‘Jasmine? Jasmine Sharp?’

It felt like time stood still. Jasmine was suddenly presented, in one precipitate moment, with making a decision that could lay down a path before her for the rest of her life.

She knew she could not stop to talk. Nor did she have time to explain, even with the utmost brevity, precisely why she couldn’t stop to talk. A quick ‘oh, hi’ as she walked on by would also look unacceptably dismissive when she was being personally hailed by someone well used to having people in her thrall.

It was a stark, unavoidable choice between losing the subject, leaving Jim with nothing to give Hayden-Murray, and blanking – in front of her friends, no less – the one person who could yet offer Jasmine an acting break.

Jasmine looked deep into herself in that moment, asking not merely what she really wanted, but what she truly believed she could be.

She continued – walking still walking – saying nothing as she passed Charlotte’s table, so close she could smell the fumes from their espressos, all the time keeping her eyes on the corner. There were tears forming in them by the time she had turned right on to Byres Road. It took her a moment through the throng and the mist of tears, but she could see Croft ahead, passing the bollards at Vinicombe Street. She picked up the pace.

‘Making ground,’ she reported, swallowing. ‘Subject walking still walking towards Great Western Road.’

This job was real. It was paying a wage. She couldn’t be a little girl any more. Mum was gone. Dreams were gone.

She kept walking.

Croft was approaching the junction of Byres and Great Western Roads, where Oran Mor looked across at the Botanics; Oran Mor, where, when she could afford it, she spent lunchtime enjoying A Play, A Pie and A Pint for a tenner, telling herself that one day she’d be the one on stage.