‘You know the clinch we have in the fourth act?’ said Rosie, pinning on snakey black ringlets to the back of her hair. ‘Well, last night he absolutely crushed me to death, and all through the scene he couldn’t keep his hands off me.’

‘He’s not meant to keep them off,’ said Bella. ‘I expect Roger told him to act more sexily.’

Rosie looked smug. ‘That’s all you know. Look, you’ve got more flowers from Master Henriques,’ she added, pointing to a huge bunch of lilies of the valley arranged in a jam jar on Bella’s dressing table.

‘Oh, how lovely,’ cried Bella, noticing them for the first time. ‘I wonder what he’s on about tonight.’

‘Aren’t you going to read his letter?’ said Rosie.

Bella pencilled in her eyebrow. ‘You can — since you’re so nosey,’ she said.

Rosie took the card out of its blue envelope.

‘“Dear Bella,”’ she read. ‘That’s a bit familiar. It was “Dear Miss Parkinson” last time. “Good Luck for tonight. I shall be watching you. Yours, Rupert Henriques.” He must be crazy about you. That’s the eighth time he’s seen the play, isn’t it?’

‘Ninth,’ said Bella.

‘Must be getting sick of it by now,’ said Rosie. ‘Perhaps he’s doing it for “O” levels.’

‘Do you think he’s that young?’

‘Expect so — or a dirty old man. Nobody decent ever runs after actresses. They’ve usually got plenty of girls of their own.’

Bella fished a fly out of her bottle of foundation and had another look at the card. ‘He’s got nice writing though,’ she said. ‘And Chichester Terrace is quite an OK address.’

There was a knock on the door. It was Queenie, their dresser, come to help them on with their costumes. A dyed-in-the-wool cockney with orange hair and a cigarette permanently drooping from her scarlet lips, she chattered all the time about the ‘great actresses’ she’d dressed in the past. Bella, who was sick with nerves by this stage, was quite happy to let her ramble on.