Jonathan belonged to the last group. His apartment on the fifth floor had been his combined office and home for the past thirty years, during which time business and leisure had lived in easy symbiosis. It would have been impossible to imagine any other arrangement, as the elderly theatrical agent was attuned to receiving lengthy telephone calls near the midnight hour. At this time he would calm his nervous charges, soothe their fears of thespian inadequacy, listen to their analytical appraisals of the night’s performance, always reassuring, calming and cajoling. He wouldn’t be doing that for Peter tonight. Peter had let him down again.

‘So, you finally made it.’ Jonathan pursed his lips and stepped back in the doorway, allowing him to enter, a balloon-shaped figure balancing on tiny feet. The passage was lined with posters for shows misbegotten and forgotten, the disco Ibsen, the reggae Strindberg, a musical version of Bleak House called ‘Jarndyce!’ starring Noelle Gordon, fading signatures from faded stars. Jonathan’s fat right fist contained a tumbler filled with gin and irregular chunks of ice, and there were telephones trilling in the distance. Peter was always comforted by the changeless disarray of the flat. This was a place where actors were cushioned and cosseted, heard out and then fed with alcohol. Jonathan puffed past, rings glittering in the dim hall, ready to make Peter a drink even though – ‘Even though I’m terribly, terribly angry with you.’ He entered the kitchen, chipped off an ice-chunk and dropped it into a tumbler, pausing to push his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose. Jonathan was constantly in a sweat. It leaked from beneath the auburn wig that fooled no one, and trickled beneath his bulging eyes so that his clients were misdirected into believing that news of their backstage woes had moved him to tears. ‘One should always be grateful of an audition, Peter, bitterly grateful, and you do yourself no favours by acting otherwise.’