To Laura

with love

I have always wanted to write a novel about an actress and I started writing BELLA in 1969. However, at that time I wrote it as a novella, called it COLLISION and it was serialized in 19. Only now am I able to fulfil my original wish and present the story as a full-length novel — BELLA.

Bella read faster and faster until she came to the final page then, giving a howl of irritation, hurled the book across the room. Narrowly missing a row of bottles, it fell with a crash into the waste-paper basket.

‘Best place for it!’ she said furiously. ‘How corny can you get?’

She escaped completely into every book she read, identifying closely with the characters. This time she was incensed because the heroine had slunk dutifully home to her boring husband instead of following her dashing lover up the Amazon.

She shivered and toyed with the idea of letting the water out and running more hot in, but she had done this four times already. Her hands were wrinkled and red from the dye of the book, and the sky that filled the bathroom window had deepened since she’d been in the bath from pale Wedgwood to deep indigo, so she knew it must be late.

She splashed cold water over her body, heaved herself out of the bath and stood, feeling dizzy, on the bath-mat. The bath was ringed with black like a football sweater, but the char would fix that in the morning.

Taking her wireless, she stepped over the debris of her clothes, picked up the second post which was lying in the hall, and wandered into the bedroom.

She turned up the music, danced and sang a few bars, then caught sight of herself in the mirror, hair hidden in a mauve bath-cap, body glowing red as a lobster.