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  ‘Darling, I’m terribly sorry, but I just couldn’t help it,’ she would say, usually with a hand on one of Pippa’s. ‘It was your face. I just had to go on because I love that expression of yours. Of bewildered innocence. You have such an incredible honesty. It simply shines out of you, darling. And I do wish I had it! You must forgive me, it’s the awful, dreadful actress in me, I dare say. Always studying. And sometimes I just can’t help being the tiniest bit naughty with you, just to see that look.’

  She would then laugh it off, and it would be forgotten. Elizabeth would ensure that it was forgotten by immediately getting an attack of B.B., as her mischief had been initialled, bewildering some poor unsuspecting soul who was dancing attendance on them at that moment with a stream of incomprehensible double talk.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she would say at speed, ‘but is your lartage percental? Or does it inclase the usual surmentation? I’m afraid I’m absolurate hopelack when it comes to accruing paravids.’

  Jerome was delighted with the newly found friendship. It was cheering Pippa up considerably, and Elizabeth’s consistently outlandish behaviour seemed to be pushing the memory of Pippa’s mother’s death further and further into the back of Pippa’s mind. In fact everything seemed to be slipping gradually back into place, as it all had been a short time ago, except in some ways, providing the healing process continued, everything promised to be even better. Jerome’s career had taken off, he was earning a great deal of money, they had a wonderful new home in which Pippa now seemed to be as happy as Jerome, but best of all, as far as their relationship went, he and Pippa were back as they were on honeymoon.

  But the person who was most delighted with the new-found friendship was Elizabeth. She had been wondering many things about Pippa, but most predominantly how the two of them could become intimate. She knew the suggestion could never come from Jerome, just as she knew she could not start a relationship with Pippa by simply dropping in at Park Lane. The Park Lane apartment was Jerome’s and Pippa’s home, not a place to watch and learn, Elizabeth guessed, because it would not be a place where she would be constantly welcomed. Elizabeth had done her homework. She had learned from Jerome how much Pippa resented the now constant invasion of their privacy, and that one more regular caller was the very last thing the Bumpkin would want.

  So how to get near to her? Because Elizabeth knew for the next and most telling part of her strategy to work, she had to get near to the Bumpkin, gain her confidence, and observe her at close quarters, observe her closely, that is, without the Bumpkin suspecting for one short moment that she was a subject under close investigation.

  When the idea first came to her, Elizabeth had not foreseen this difficulty. Somehow she had imagined that what she knew of Jerome’s wife might be sufficient, and that she wouldn’t have to bother herself to detail the Bumpkin further. But then the more she considered the piece, the more she realized how little she really knew about her model, and in order to convince, she would therefore have to get in very much closer.

  But the gods were still smiling on her, as they had done, Elizabeth remembered fondly, since the fateful day she had picked up that copy of The Times. They smiled on her then as now, at the moment she learned from Jerome on the telephone that he had rented a studio for the Bumpkin very near to where Elizabeth and Sebastian lived in Chelsea.

  ‘How sweet, Jerome,’ Elizabeth had murmured. ‘You’re so thoughtful. I didn’t know the – that Pippa painted.’

  ‘I don’t know that she does, Bethy,’ Jerome had replied. ‘I just know she needs something. On top of everything else, she hasn’t taken to the move at all.’

  The spoilt, selfish, little cow, Elizabeth thought, examining her half-naked body for any trace of fatty tissue.

  ‘Poor darling,’ she said out loud into the receiver. ‘She’s very lucky to have you.’

  ‘On the contrary, Bethy,’ Jerome had replied. ‘I’m the one who’s lucky.’

  Elizabeth had stuck her tongue out at Jerome down the telephone, sickened by what she considered his smug reply, before blowing him a kissy-kissy and hanging up. And before realizing what a windfall had just dropped in her lap.

  Pippa working all alone in a studio nearby? What could be more opportune? Elizabeth thought, as she slipped out of her pink silk knickers and bra and padded catlike into the bathroom. A captive audience, she thought, and there was nothing Elizabeth liked more than a captive audience. Particularly when the Bumpkin was the one who was going to be her captive.

  In fact the studio was most conveniently placed, immediately south of Onslow Square, almost back to back with a house which for the past six months had been one of Elizabeth’s regular ports of call. Diana Shaw had started her going there when Elizabeth was making Lady Anne. The actress had played Elizabeth’s mother, and while they were filming the two women had become good friends. At one point Elizabeth had complimented the older actress on the trimness of her figure, to which Diana Shaw smiled secretively, and tapping her flat stomach had whispered Elizabeth a name, the name of a Miss Page who practised in Onslow Square, an absolute genius who looked after simply everybody.

  ‘What?’ Elizabeth had asked. ‘You mean your diet?’

  ‘No, darling,’ Diana Shaw had replied gaily. ‘I mean the inner you. Your curly-whirlies. Your bools.’

  At first the thought of going to such a person to be cleansed, as Diana Shaw put it, appalled someone as fastidious as Elizabeth, and she put it out of her mind, preferring rather to watch her weight by careful dieting and the drinking of plenty of fresh water. But then in private she later brought the subject up with her friend Lalla who was, of course, also working on the film, expecting Lalla to be as shocked as she had been. Instead Lalla had just laughed in her usual breezy manner and told Elizabeth that Diana Shaw was absolutely right, and that everyone went to Miss Page, or at least to someone exactly like her.

  ‘It makes sense, Lizzie darling,’ she had said. ‘After all when you think about it, we give everything else a jolly good old wash, don’t we? So why not our insides. I go twice a week, and you know me. I eat like a horse!’

  The more Elizabeth thought about it and talked about it the more convinced she became that it could in fact only be to her good, so she too joined the ever-growing list of Miss Page’s clientele, and just as forecast, Elizabeth found that anybody who was anybody did indeed go there. Whenever she visited someone famous had always either preceded her, or was the next in-waiting.

  And it was terribly convenient to the studio, to the Bumpkin’s bolt-hole, which meant that Elizabeth, once she had gained her entrée there, could happily while away any time she had deliberately set aside in the studio studying before going on to Miss Page’s. There was no question of it being the other way round, of course, because after her treatment, like all of Miss Page’s other patients, all Elizabeth wanted to do was go home immediately and rest until her strength returned. Besides, Elizabeth thought with no little satisfaction, even if she had felt strong enough to pay her visit after her treatment, this reverse order would have been far less satisfactory. Much better the way it was – visit the Bumpkin first and do with her what she must, and then visit Miss Page and be purged.

  It had all worked out so neatly, it had dovetailed so perfectly that Elizabeth could hardly believe her luck. But surely the greatest inspiration had been hers, the revelation that had come to her after only her first few and fleeting visits to the studio.

  ‘Darling,’ she whispered down the telephone, as if by keeping her voice down she would disturb him less. ‘I know how you hate being rung at this hour, but I have just had this incredible thought. This has nothing to do with my feelings about the work, because you know I love it to death. But how about and please at least consider it, just suppose, my darling, that you made this divine creation of yours whom I love as if I was giving birth to her, just suppose you made him a painter, and her – what if you made her an art student?’

  Oscar kicked it around. In fact he kicked it
around as hard as he could, trying to kick the life out of it, because he hated other people superimposing their ideas on his ideas, and most particularly he hated anyone, particularly an actress, imposing her ideas on this particular idea. In his head Tatty Gray had always been a university student, the reason being because that is how he first saw her, and the reason being not a good enough reason he now realized, the more he kicked Elizabeth’s idea backwards and forwards and up and down. Everything about the play was right, and everything about what happened to the characters was right, and yet he knew it, he knew it at the back of his mind and he wouldn’t face up to it, he knew that everything about the play was wrong, as was everything about the characters.

  They simply didn’t work, and neither did the play.

  And until Elizabeth’s telephone call, Oscar had just been papering over the cracks. He knew the atmosphere of the Oxford college was too rarefied, and that so were the two leading characters. They weren’t enough feet-on-the-ground, as Oscar liked to think of it. In other words they weren’t sufficiently rooted in reality for anyone to identify with them. Sure, painting still wasn’t exactly like selling insurance, but at least by removing them from the groves of Academe, his characters could talk recognizable stuff, they could be more in touch with reality, which was vital to the success of the play, as Oscar knew. He knew it, but he hadn’t been able to focus on it, because he had trapped himself inside his own original conception because he had fallen in love with it because he had fallen in love with his inspiration.

  So why not an art student? It made much more sense. It was more real, it was sexier, it was more accessible. It made sense of the play, particularly of the reveal, when it slowly becomes apparent that Tatty Gray exists not in reality but only in the man’s mind, that she is only a fabrication of his dream.

  Oscar rang Elizabeth a week later.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, Lizzie,’ he said, doing his best to growl. ‘Because you’ll only want a joint credit, or at the very least a percentage.’

  ‘Which would be the least painful option, O.G.?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘A percentage,’ Oscar replied, with feeling. ‘But to hell, I’m going to tell you, because although to you mummers the only good writer’s a dead writer, this writer is going to be very good to you mummers from now on, and to you in particular because not only are you beautiful, Mrs Ferrers, you also have beautiful thoughts. Your idea was wonderful. And I now have a play for you, which thanks to you, is the best play I have ever written.’

  ‘Oscar darling,’ Elizabeth sighed. ‘I am so – excited.’

  ‘So am I, sweetheart,’ Oscar said, ‘and I’ll tell you for why. Not only is Tatty real now, she really exists, believe me, and, of course, you will breathe even more life into her, I know that. But because the man – because Sam isn’t a don any more, or a professor, or whatever – because he is this painter – Sam can be any age. For Chrissake Sam can be Jerome!’

  ‘Of course!’ Elizabeth exclaimed. ‘Why of course.’

  Even though she had never doubted that Jerome would not be Sam, not for one moment. Nonetheless, there was laughter still in heaven, and Elizabeth could now return to her studies with a greatly renewed sense of purpose.

  Jerome was as excited as Elizabeth, if not more so. But not about Oscar’s play. Jerome knew nothing about Oscar’s new play, and even if he had, he wouldn’t be interested, because Jerome had just heard from Cecil that Sir Fiacre O’Neill wanted him for his opening production of the new season at The Old Vic.

  ‘It’s Romeo and Juliet, isn’t it?’ he announced to Cecil before he had even taken his seat in Cecil’s office. ‘Well?’

  ‘Absolutely right, dear boy,’ Cecil agreed. ‘It’s Romeo and Juliet, not Ant and Cleo as first rumoured. And they want you for Mercutio.’

  Jerome was staggered, just as Cecil had privately predicted he would be. But if he thought that was bad news, Cecil wondered, what was he going to say when he heard who was playing Romeo?

  ‘Tony Hart!’ Jerome was out of his chair, leaning halfway across Cecil’s desk. ‘Tony Hart! He’s old enough to be Romeo’s blasted father, Cecil!’

  ‘Don’t shout at me, dear boy. I didn’t cast it. The mighty Sir Fiacre did.’

  ‘I don’t care if God almighty did, Cecil! Tony Hart? Jesus Christ, Cecil, you know perfectly well who should be playing Romeo! Didn’t the silly old windbag see Lady Anne! Didn’t he see The Eve of Night! Hasn’t he seen any of my work, Cecil?’

  ‘There’s not all that much to see, dear boy.’

  ‘Because I have been careful, Cecil! Because I have been choosy! And not let you steamroll me into every damn thing that lands on your desk marked, ‘Wanted! Tall, dark and handsome!’ I can’t play Mercutio to Tony Hart’s Romeo, Cecil! Be sensible! Come on! How’s he going to play it? With a walking stick?’

  Cecil watched as Jerome paced his office, up and down, up and down, drawing deeply on his cigarette which he held in one hand, while he ran the fingers of his other hand back through his hair, over and over again.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Oh, I think so, dear boy,’ Cecil corrected him. ‘If it was anybody else directing, I could see your point. But the mighty Sir Fiacre . . .’ Cecil paused to light himself a cigarette while he let the implication sink in. ‘If he takes a shine, you know, you can more or less name your part.’

  ‘You cannot play Mercutio against a senescent Romeo, Cecil! This fashion for older actors playing young parts is ridiculous. Romeo is a boy! I’m almost too old now – but at least I look boyish. Tony Hart looks as if he should be drawing his pension!’

  ‘Anthony is only thirty-two, Jerome.’

  Jerome laughed in scorn, and continued to pace the office.

  ‘In Shakespeare’s day, Cecil, people died at thirty-two! From old age! Romeo and Juliet are kids! So is Mercutio!’

  ‘Alas this is not Shakespeare’s day, dear boy, Sir Fiacre wants Anthony Hart for his Romeo, you for his Mercutio, Sally Stanway for his Juliet—’

  Jerome came to a sudden halt in front of Cecil’s desk, which he grabbed with two white-knuckled hands.

  ‘Sally – Stanway?’ he asked very quietly. ‘Did you see – her Ophelia?’

  ‘Of course,’ Cecil replied. ‘It was very moving.’

  ‘Moving?’ Jerome echoed. ‘Moving? I’ll say it was moving! The whole stage shook every time she came on! Next thing you’ll be telling me is that they want – oh, what was that frightful woman who’s just done that terrible farce called? You know, Ship Ahoy! Hilda Hill! The next thing you’ll be telling me is they want Hilda Hill for the Nurse!’

  ‘They do.’

  Jerome looked across the desk at Cecil, with his best suddenly-very-tired look, and then laughing at the absurdity of it all, he sat down in the chair opposite his agent.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tell me what else is on offer.’

  ‘Not a great deal, dear boy,’ Cecil told him, consulting some papers before him on his desk. ‘Freddy Eynsford Hill in Pygmalion, a number one tour—’

  ‘Dreadful part,’ Jerome interrupted. ‘Requires absolutely no playing whatsoever.’

  ‘The lead in a new thriller by Paul Jeremy, The Shaughnessy Bequest.’

  ‘Have you read it? I thought it was a comedy.’

  ‘Or there’s a film,’ Cecil tossed him a red-bound script. ‘Flight From Fate. It’s the lead.’

  ‘What is he?’ Jerome asked as he started to leaf through the pages.

  ‘It seems he’s a doctor, dear boy. With some rather curious habits.’

  ‘No doctors,’ Jerome slapped the script shut and chucked it back on the desk. ‘You can only play doctors two ways. As monuments of patience and understanding, or with a mad gleam in their eyes. Is that all?’

  ‘Mercutio is the best bet, dear boy. Trust me.’

  ‘Romeo is the best bet, dear boy. Trust me.’

  Pippa was alone in the house when the telephone rang. Jero
me was still not back from his meeting with Cecil, and Miss Toothe was off sick with the flu, so Pippa and Bobby had the place to themselves. In view of this unusual event, Pippa had decided not to go to her studio, but to wait in for Jerome so that they could enjoy some time in the apartment alone for once.

  It was after midday when it rang, and when Pippa answered it, she fully expected it to be Jerome to say he’d been delayed and that he was on his way home now.

  Instead a strange voice spoke in her ear, a country woman’s voice.

  ‘Mrs Didier?’

  The woman gave Pippa’s married name the English pronunciation, not the French, like so many of the people who lived round Midhurst.

  ‘Who is this?’ Pippa asked.

  ‘You don’t know me,’ the voice replied. ‘You don’t need to neither. But I knows you. And I knows who killed mother.’

  Pippa sat forward on the sofa, pulling Bobby who was sitting at her side even closer to her.

  ‘Who is this?’ she asked again, eventually.

  ‘I told you. You don’t need to know that. What matters is I knows who killed your mother.’

  ‘Very well,’ Pippa said. ‘Who did?’

  ‘You,’ the voice replied, then the line went dead.

  She was still sitting tucked up in the corner of the sofa when Jerome returned an hour later, still in a barely controlled fury.

  ‘Jerome?’ she called as Bobby barked. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Don’t speak to me,’ he said, coming into the drawing room still in his overcoat. ‘Particularly about that idiot Cecil.’

  He walked over to the large mahogany wardrobe they had converted into a drinks cupboard and poured himself a gin and tonic.

  ‘You can pour me one, too,’ Pippa said, resettling Bobby in beside her. ‘A sherry.’