Shelley and Jane both burst into laughter at the incongruity of it.

A plump, frazzled woman in her sixties pushed through them and approached Maisie. "Nurse! Nurse! That girl with the awful spots! What did she have?"

“Just chicken pox, Olive. Nothing to worry about.

I've sent her home. Miss Harwell has had chicken pox, hasn't she?”

The older woman sighed with relief. "Yes. When she was only four and a half, poor darling. She was terribly sick. Can you only get it once?"

“Yes, only once."

“Well, that's good. Thank you. I'll just take Miss Harwell some nice herb tea and tell her not to be concerned.”

They waited until the woman was out of earshot, busily fussing around the craft service table, before Jane whispered to Maisie, "Who in the world is that?"

“That is Miss Olive Longabach, Lynette Harwell's lifelong keeper. Apparently she was some kind of governess or nanny when Harwell was a kid and just stayed on with her. She's listed on the tech list as Harwell's 'dresser,' but she's dresser, keeper, social secretary, and all-round mother tiger. Poor old thing has no life of her own at all."

“I need an Olive Longabach of my own," Jane mused. "Where do you think I might pick one up."

“Just get yourself born into wealth in your next life," Shelley said, then after a pause added, "or be born a man and get married.”

Since filming had apparently been suspended for the moment, Jane got up and edged close to the nearest fake building. There was, as she had hoped, a bit of a setback to one of the flats and she was able to peer out between them and see a slice of the field.

She'd looked at this abandoned area, withoutreally seeing it, for nearly twenty years, but it was virtually unrecognizable now. It was literally crammed with people and equipment. Not merely actors and cameras — she would have expected those — but dozens of people in grubby modern dress, all appearing extremely busy, and enough lights and stands to illuminate a baseball stadium. There were twelve-foot-square screens on frames set here and there and the hulking condor with the floodlights was being moved, chugging along snaillike as young men slapped sheets of plywood in front of its treads so it wouldn't sink into the ground.