Читать книгу Follies - Rosie Thomas - Страница 9

Stephen Spurring folded The Times into three, vertically, as he always did, and propped it against the coffee pot. The dining room was quiet, with thin autumn sunshine reflecting on the amusing pieces of high Victorian furniture collected by Beatrice and himself years ago, but from the kitchen came the confused babble of bickering children’s voices. Beatrice herself could be heard from time to time, refereeing in the state of constant war that seemed to exist among their children.

Stephen stirred his coffee very slowly. This moment of privacy, ‘Daddy must have some peace over breakfast, darling, because he needs to think,’ was a legacy from the early days of their marriage, and he still clung tenaciously to it. It was little enough, Stephen thought. In a very few minutes Beatrice and the children would get into one car to do the round of bus stops and school gates, and he would take the other into Oxford. The day would officially have begun.

In the meantime, there was his oasis of quiet and the newspaper. When he glanced back at it the print blurred obstinately in front of his eyes. Damn. His reading glasses were upstairs, and the thought irked him. Needing glasses at all made him feel old and creaky. Irritably, Stephen abandoned the paper, picked up his cup and went over to look out of the French windows. The gardens around the old stone rectory looked very bright, gaudy with autumn colours. As he stood watching, a grey squirrel bounced jerkily across the grass.

Thirty-nine wasn’t so old, Stephen told himself.

It was October again now. This was the time of year when everything came to life for him after the long silence of the summer, just as it had done for the last twenty years. Twenty? Had he really been in Oxford for that long? Stephen smiled wryly, reflecting that this was the last year before middle age. Well, there was still time. For what? he might have asked himself, but he chose not to.

He was surprised to find himself humming as he picked up his briefcase in the black-and-white tiled hallway. A glance in the ornate gilt hall mirror cheered him further. Stephen had never belonged to the dusty corduroys and down-at-heel shoes school of University teachers. Today he was wearing a soft grey tweed suit, and a bright blue shirt without a tie. He looked sleek, and younger than his age even with the threads of grey in his silky hair. Satisfied, Stephen went on into the kitchen to say goodbye to his wife.

Beatrice looked round at him, tucking the loose strands of dark hair behind her ears as she did so. It was a gesture that she had used ever since he had known her, and it still made her look like a schoolgirl.

‘Goodbye, darling,’ Stephen murmured. ‘Have a good day. I might be a bit late – faculty get-together.’ They kissed, automatically, not meeting each other’s eyes. Stephen reached out to touch his younger son’s shoulder as he passed, but Joe jerked his head away. Sulking about something, Stephen remembered, but couldn’t recall what. Five minutes later he was in his car, ready to drive the numbingly familiar ten miles into Oxford.

Beatrice watched him go, half regretfully. Fifteen years felt like a long, long marriage, but her husband still had the power occasionally to make her catch her breath and wish that he would stay. Even though she knew him much better than he knew himself, and that knowledge left no room for illusions, she still half loved him, half craved for him. Well, she reminded herself, the days of ducking guiltily out of whatever they were supposed to be doing and staying at home alone together were far behind them now. Beatrice reached for the tendrils of hair again, then remembered the marmalade on her fingers from Sebastian’s plate. She wiped them slowly on her apron, staring out of the gateway where Stephen had disappeared. She was still tasting, as she did every day, the odd mixture of frustration at her dependence on him and the satisfaction that, in spite of everything, they were still together.

‘Mum? My gym shirt?’ Eloise’s voice came demanding from the doorway. Gratefully, Beatrice stopped thinking and began to rehearse the daily list: clean football kit, riding lesson after school, three things beginning with J for Sebastian to take with him. Another day.

Stephen was still humming under his breath as he strolled into the packed lecture room. The sight was familiar, but it still touched him. There were the dozens of fresh faces, the clean notebooks and brand new copies of his own Commentaries. The size of the audience was gratifying. Stephen had given not a thought to his lecture, but that didn’t matter. He had delivered this introduction to his pet subject so many times that it was as familiar to him as his own name. He put his unnecessary sheaf of notes down on the desk and smiled around the room.

‘Okay,’ he said softly, as if speaking to just one of the faces turned up to him. ‘I’m going to talk to you today about love. Romantic love, sexual love, real love, as we find it in the greatest of Shakespeare’s great comedies.’

There was a ripple around the room as pens were unscrewed and eager hands began to scribble down Stephen’s words.

Chloe Campbell was the only person who didn’t move.

Instead she cupped her chin in her hands and looked intently back at Stephen. Fortyish, she thought, and not a bit like the stooped academic she had expected from reading the lecture list. This Doctor Spurring was slim, not tall, but undeniably sexy. His hair was just a little too long but it was well shaped. He wasn’t conventionally good-looking but his eyes were a startling clear blue. And his mouth, almost too full and curved, looked as soft as a girl’s. There was something in his voice that attracted her too. Under the conventional, cultivated tones there was something – someone – else. Was Stephen Spurring a Yorkshireman, Chloe wondered, or a Geordie perhaps?

After his forty-five fluent minutes, Stephen began smoothly to wind up his introductory lecture. All around her Chloe saw that there were sheets of notes with underlined headings and numbered points, now being clipped with satisfaction into new folders. Dr Spurring was an excellent teacher, she realised, but she hadn’t written down a single word of his instruction. Stephen Spurring the man interested her far too much.

When Stephen came out of the lecture, hitching his black gown familiarly over his shoulder and thinking cheerfully of coffee and the rest of The Times, he found three people waiting for him. Two of them, he saw, were Oliver Mortimore who was lounging characteristically against the wall to watch the girls streaming past, and an intent-looking Tom Hart from the Playhouse. The third was a girl. Stephen had glimpsed her mass of dark red hair in his lecture audience, and now he took in green eyes, an aura of self-possession and a direct, challenging smile. He had no idea who she was, and wished that he did.

He turned reluctantly to Oliver and Tom.

‘Still no Rosalind?’ he asked, without much interest. Stephen was the senior faculty member responsible for student drama productions, and usually he enjoyed the involvement. He liked the passionate enthusiasms of his undergraduates, and even more he like the steady trickle of pretty would-be actresses that it brought him into contact with. Yet this particular production, Tom Hart’s As You Like It, threatened to be less agreeable. To begin with, casting Oliver Mortimore as Orlando was an absurdity. The boy knew nothing about Shakespeare and seemed to care less. Stephen guessed that he had agreed to act the role simply out of amusement and curiosity. And Oliver was devoted to amusing himself, the older man thought with dislike. He stood for so many of the things that Stephen had despised Oxford for twenty years ago, and mistrusted even now – inherited privilege, too much money, the unquestioning belief that life owed to its brightest and most beautiful the leisure to eat, drink, ride horses and indulge themselves in and out of bed. Stephen, with no such privilege behind him, had little time for Oliver’s kind. Then there was Hart. He irked Stephen too, although the reasons were less clear-cut. His very presence, the suggestion of foreign, Broadway glitter which he brought with him, was a mystery. He was difficult to place, and so just a little threatening. Stephen waited without enthusiasm to hear what the two of them had to say.

Tom didn’t hesitate. He started talking quickly in the confident manner that annoyed Stephen. ‘We’ve got a couple of girls coming to audition for Rosalind at twelve. Can you be there?’

It was a mere courtesy that the senior member was invited to approve of the casting, at least in Tom’s view. Stephen hadn’t wanted Oliver, but that was just too bad.

Stephen frowned and glanced at his watch. The way that Tom Hart always addressed him as an absolute equal didn’t help, either. But he wasn’t going to give up and take a back seat, because that was probably exactly what Hart wanted.

‘If I must,’ he answered. ‘Just don’t keep me hanging about for too long.’

‘Of course not.’ But there was more irony than courtesy in the response. Cocky bastard, Stephen thought, and turned away deliberately to the red-haired girl who was still waiting at his elbow.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she held out her hand. ‘I’m Chloe Campbell. I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your lecture. And to ask you a couple of questions.’

Stephen saw that she had the clear, creamy skin of the true redhead, coupled strikingly with dark brows and eyelashes. She also had a wide, curving mouth which seemed made for laughter as well as for other, more intimate things.

‘Ask away,’ Stephen smiled at her. He looked round and saw with pleasure than Tom and Oliver had gone. ‘Or better still, let me buy you a cup of coffee, and then you can ask me.’

With a touch of his hand at her elbow, Stephen turned Chloe round in the direction of the senior common room.

‘In here,’ he murmured.

Chloe found herself sitting in a deep, leather-covered armchair in a sombre, quiet room. There was a log fire at one end, and at the other a long table covered with a white cloth and trays of china and silver. There was a promising smell of fresh coffee.

This is more like it, she thought.

Chloe had already admitted to herself that her first few days in Oxford had been very short on glamour of any kind. She hadn’t come up expecting immediately to dine off gold plate in ancient halls while the greatest minds in the world sparred wittily around her, but neither had she anticipated quite so many anoraks and queues, and so much junk food served and eaten cheerlessly in plastic cafeterias. And Follies House had been lonely, echoingly quiet. She had heard the third lodger, Pansy whoever-it-was, arriving with huge quantities of luggage, but she had left again immediately, apparently for a long weekend. Helen had been there and Chloe would have liked to see her, but she had vanished disconcertingly early every morning with a forbidding pile of books. Chloe’s only chance of companionship had been with fat, chuckling Rose in her witches’ kitchen. Pride was the only thing that kept Chloe from turning tail and running back to London.

But this was different. This peaceful room with its scattered figures in black gowns was more what she had expected. And here was Stephen himself, leaning over to pour coffee, his eyes even bluer at close quarters than they had looked across the lecture room.

‘Cream? Sugar?’ he asked, then handed over a deep cup with, she saw in amused satisfaction, the University crest emblazoned on the side.

‘Well?’ he asked, smiling a lopsided smile that made Chloe shift a little in her chair and forget, for a moment, the bright opening that she had planned.

‘Ummm …’ Now they were both laughing. He’s nice, Chloe thought. Nicer than anyone I’ve met for, oh, a long, long time.

‘Dr Spurring,’ she began, but Stephen leaned across at once and rested his fingertips lightly, just for an instant, on her wrist.

‘Stephen,’ he told her. ‘Even my students call me that.’

‘I am a student,’ she told him, half regretfully. ‘A mature one, as they say. That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as it happens. I’m very new to all this, you see. I haven’t read nearly enough. And I’ve been out of the way of – oh, just thinking properly, for years and years. Will you give me some advice about where to start? Tell me what to read, to begin with. Not just reading lists, but what’s really important. I feel at a disadvantage. And I’m not used to that,’ she finished, candidly. She had intended to make herself sound interesting for Stephen Spurring’s benefit, but she seemed to have blurted out something that was closer to the real truth. I’ve only made myself sound naive, Chloe thought, with irritation.

‘You? Feel at a disadvantage?’ Stephen leaned further back in his chair and grinned at her. ‘Come on … Chloe … look at yourself, and then look at those kids out there.’ He waved in the direction of the window and its view down a flight of steps crowded with people hurrying between classes. ‘Okay, apart from your obvious advantages, and you don’t need me to list those, you’re a little bit older. It can’t be by very much …’ he smiled again, into her eyes this time, ‘but you’ve had the chance to live some real life. Adult life. Which means you know yourself a whole lot better, and you understand people and their funny little motives more clearly. Isn’t that true?’

Chloe nodded slowly. ‘Yes, but …’

‘Listen. What could be more important, particularly in our field, in literature?’

Our field, Chloe thought, suddenly proud. I really am here, talking to this clever man, who’s still got the sexiest mouth I’ve ever seen. Even better, he’s not going to start the bitchy business gossip in five seconds’ time, nor is he going to try to get me to put some work his way. I’m glad I’m here. This is where I want to be.

‘… what matters is what comes from you,’ Stephen was saying. ‘Your own ideas, drawn on your own experience. That’s better than having read and being able to regurgitate every work of criticism on every set text there is. And that’s why you’re lucky. Literature is about people, after all,’ he said softly. ‘Men. Women. Their loves and their tragedies. Yes?’

Yes, Chloe thought. ‘In your lecture you said …’ but Stephen interrupted her.

‘In my lecture, in my lecture. I’m a teacher. I have to put things across in a certain way because that’s what I’m paid to do. But as a human being, as a man, I might think differently. I’m not just a don, although students tend to forget that.’

I won’t tend to, Chloe told herself, I can promise you that.

‘You know,’ Stephen’s eyes travelled over her face, from her eyes to her mouth, ‘I envy you. Having put whatever, whoever it is behind you, to come here, you’re starting afresh. Make sure you enjoy it, won’t you?’

Was he challenging her? They were looking intently at each other as Chloe whispered, ‘Yes, I will,’ and it was a long moment before either of them spoke again. In the end it was Chloe who broke the silence. She reached forward to the silver pots. ‘More coffee?’

Stephen shook himself slightly. For both of them, it was the signal to slow down just a little. Chloe always thought that the anticipation was half the fun, and she didn’t want whatever was going to happen with Stephen Spurring to unfold too quickly. She was delighted to find that Stephen’s understanding matched her perfectly.

‘Thank you. Well,’ he said, in quite a different, polite voice, ‘what does bring you here? Thirst for learning, or something more necessary?’

He was an easy audience, Chloe found. She made the edited version of why she had decided to come to Oxford sound as amusing as she could, and she gave him a quick, vivid sketch of her London advertising life. Stephen laughed with her, admiring her animated face as she talked. The morning’s good humour consolidated itself inside him. At length, he made himself look at his watch.

‘Oh God, I’m due to watch some auditions at twelve. I must go.’

‘With the young Apollo and his business manager?’

Stephen laughed. ‘Exactly. I’d forgotten you were there.’

‘Who are they?’

‘The tall fair one is Lord Oliver Mortimore.’

Chloe saw again the aquiline good looks and the unmistakable hauteur in Oliver’s bearing as he stood back to watch the world go by. Just as if it was there for his benefit alone, she thought, and her heart sank for Helen’s sake. Helen’s eyes had been just too bright when she talked about him, and her bewildered eagerness had been just too obvious. Chloe sighed. A mismatch, she thought, if ever there was one, and the only person likely to be damaged by that was Helen herself. Well, perhaps it would come to nothing anyway.

‘Do you know him, then?’ Stephen was asking.

‘No. It’s just that a friend of mine does. And who was the other, the business manager?’

‘You’re quite close to the truth, as it happens. Tom Hart, son of Greg Hart and heir to just about the entire New York theatre business.’

‘What can he be doing here?’ Chloe asked, interested. Hart was a famous name.

‘God knows. Nothing to do with the University. He’s got an assistant directorship at the Playhouse, so I suppose he’s dabbling in front of the scenery instead of behind it. He seems to have a dramatically clear idea of who he wants to know over here, anyway. He attached himself to young Mortimore within days of arriving in Oxford, and now he’s cast him as Orlando. Not that they make a bad pair – they’re both as self-satisfied as each other. I’m responsible for seeing that they don’t make a travesty of the production …’ Stephen made a quick, boyish face, ‘… and so I try to sit in on things from time to time.

‘Look, why don’t you come along too, if you’re not doing anything else? It might interest you; they’re looking for Hart’s idea of the perfect Rosalind.’

‘Yes, why not?’ Chloe wanted to see if her first impression of Oliver had been the right one, and she was more than happy to spend another hour in Stephen’s company.

Once more she felt the light touch of Stephen’s guiding hand at her elbow, and they walked down the steps together and out into the wintry sunshine. As they turned in the direction of the theatre, Stephen peeled off his gown and bundled it under his arm. Chloe tucked her hands deep into her pockets and let herself enjoy the cold air in her face and the play of the light on the stonework around them. They were crossing the inner quadrangle of the great library, the Bodleian, and unconsciously Chloe’s step slowed as she looked up at the ancient façades.

‘Mmm, yes,’ Stephen said beside her. ‘I must have walked through here a million times, and it can still stop me dead in my tracks. On the right day, and in the right company, of course.’

They paused for an instant in silence, and as Chloe’s gaze travelled downwards she caught sight of a familiar, slight figure. Helen was standing under the great arch that led through into Broad Street, silhouetted against the intricate tracery of the wrought-iron gates. She was carrying a stack of books that looked too heavy for her thin arms, and was struggling to hoist a heavy bag over her shoulder.

Chloe waved at once, and called out, ‘Helen! Over here!’

Helen stopped at once and they caught up with her a moment later. It was Chloe, she saw, with Stephen Spurring. She couldn’t prevent a smile from escaping. It was so perfectly in character that Chloe should already have secured for herself a tête-à-tête with the heart-throb of the faculty. Helen herself suspected that Stephen was more two-dimensional than the image he projected, but she was well aware that he cut a wide and successful swathe through the hordes of women surrounding him.

‘I was just going to lunch,’ she told them quickly, not wanting to interrupt whatever it was they were doing together. ‘If you go early it doesn’t take so long, and I want to get back to work …’

‘Hello, Helen,’ said Stephen easily. ‘I haven’t seen you since last term, have I? Good Vac?’

Helen bit her lip, but it wasn’t a question that needed to be answered. Stephen had cocked his head to one side to read the titles of the books under her arm.

‘Mmm, mmm, good. Oh, don’t bother with that one,’ he pointed. He was effortlessly back in the role of teacher again.

Impulsively, Chloe took Helen’s arm. ‘Look, we’re going to the Playhouse to hear some girls audition for your friend Oliver’s play. Come with us. That’ll be all right, Stephen, won’t it?’

‘I should think so,’ Stephen said without enthusiasm. He would have preferred to keep this effervescent, glowing girl to himself rather than have half the students in town accompanying them.

‘Really?’ Helen’s face lit with a wash of colour that spread over her pale cheeks. ‘I’d love to come along and watch. You know, Tom Hart even asked me to have a go, so I’d be intrigued to see what people have to do.’

It was something else that had brought the blush to her cheeks. Oliver had asked her, too, one morning during the breathless week that had just passed.

He had come strolling into the library where she was working and she heard the rustle of people turning to stare before she looked up herself. Oliver leaned over and took the pen out of her fingers before kissing the knuckles. The girl next to Helen gasped audibly.

‘Come and be my Rosalind,’ he said. He made no attempt to whisper and she heard his voice carrying to the far corners of the room. But no-one tried to say hush to Oliver.

‘I can’t act,’ she murmured.

Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. ‘A good thing too. Don’t ever try to act with me, because I’ll know.’ He kissed her, a gentle experimental kiss as if they were alone in the world. Even here, Helen felt herself tremble in response. ‘No,’ he said meditatively. ‘You don’t pretend anything.’

Helen left her papers in a drift on the desk and stumbled out of the library.

Oliver followed her, bestowing his dazzling smile on the rows of readers.

‘Oliver,’ she gasped, shaking with laughter, ‘don’t do this. What must all those people think, in there?’

There was a narrow stone window beside them, with a dizzy view down to an oval of lawn set like a green jewel in an ancient ring. He drew her into the window embrasure and held her there against the smooth stone.

‘It doesn’t matter to us,’ he told her, ‘what anyone thinks. Does it?’

Helen looked up into his tanned face and saw his tongue against his even teeth. ‘No,’ she said, almost believing him. ‘Not one bit.’

Oliver reached out to her and undid one button at her throat.

‘Cold, and then hotter than fire,’ he murmured. ‘You know, I came to ask if you would sit in at a rehearsal for us. Read Rosalind’s lines and help me to concentrate. But now I don’t feel like rehearsing at all. Come back to the House with me. Now.’

‘I can’t …’

‘Oh yes, Helen, you can.’

They laughed at each other, and she repeated, delighted at how easy it was, ‘Oh yes, I can.’

He took her hand and they ran down the spiral stairs, along a cobbled lane and across a little square, and out into the brightness of Canterbury Quad. Oliver banged his oak behind them and locked the inner door.

‘You see?’ he asked. ‘It’s easy.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said. His closeness chased everything else out of her head. She was shaken by her own urgency, and she looked down unbelievingly at her own hands between them.

‘Never say you can’t,’ he said, with his mouth at her throat and then moving so that his tongue traced a slow circle around her breast. ‘There isn’t much time.’

Helen felt a beat of cold anxiety. She looked down sharply but his face was hidden from her.

‘Why?’ she asked, feeling that she was stupidly not understanding something. ‘Surely there’s all the time we need?’

She wanted to look into his eyes, but his head was still bent. She thought that there was something stiff about his shoulders.

‘There’s only ever now, this moment,’ he said. ‘Try to understand that. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You won’t,’ she reassured him.

But even as he reached to unleash the floodwater dammed up inside her, she was sure that he would hurt her. At that moment she knew too that she didn’t care.

‘I love you,’ she said afterwards, so softly that she was sure it was inaudible. But Oliver stirred and opened his eyes. He stared at her before his quick smile came back.

‘That’s very reckless of you,’ he told her, and she couldn’t gauge his seriousness from his voice. ‘Shall we go out to lunch? We definitely need to be fortified after expending all that energy. I think oysters and Guinness, don’t you?’

The moment was past and she let Oliver take her hands and draw her to her feet. He watched her dressing so appreciatively that she forgot her embarrassment, and she felt herself growing more comfortable with him.

Outside, the black Jaguar was parked in a space marked ‘Reserved for the Dean’. When Helen was settled in the low seat, Oliver bent so that their eyes were level.

‘I like you. And I enjoy your company,’ he said. Then, as if the admission surprised him, he vaulted into his seat and the car shot forward into the cold air.

If this is all, Helen thought, it will just have to be enough. It’s more, much more, than I’ve ever had before.

Helen stared unseeingly at Chloe and Stephen, deep in conversation just ahead of her. In just a few minutes she would see Oliver again. A blurry kind of happiness mixed with apprehension gripped her, and for a panicky moment she thought that her knees might give way beneath her. Then as they reached the door of the Playhouse, she saw Chloe and Stephen pause for her to catch up, and she hurried blindly forward.

The unflattering house lights were on inside the theatre, revealing the worn red plush seats and the threadbare patches in the crimson carpet between them. Three or four people were sprawling in the front stalls, with Tom Hart’s dark head prominent among them. Helen took all this in in a second, and then she saw Oliver. He was sitting centre stage with his legs dangling over the edge, intent on a paperback copy of the play.

Stephen strode down the centre aisle towards them.

‘Right,’ he said crisply. ‘Let’s not waste time.’ He settled himself in the third row, and Chloe and then Helen slid in beside him.

Oliver looked up. There was a flicker of surprise when he saw Helen, then a cheerful wave of greeting. He held up his play text with a grimace, then went back to studying it.

Helen was oblivious to everything else. She missed Tom Hart’s brief nod of greeting, and the frisson of irritation which vibrated between Tom and Stephen.

‘You won’t mind my bringing a little audience to keep you on your toes,’ Stephen said easily.

‘Not particularly,’ Tom answered. ‘Okay, everybody. We’re reading Act Three, Scene Two, Rosalind and Orlando. Ready?’

Chloe watched the director with interest. With his quick, economical movements and his authoritative manner, he looked a natural leader. His dark, sardonic, goods looks interested her without attracting her. An arrogant young man, she thought, as she watched him positioning Oliver and the plump girl who was to read Rosalind. But clever, too.

Tom had settled himself at the back of the stalls.

‘When you’re ready,’ he called, and the scene began.

‘I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him …’

‘Speak up, Anne. We hope that the audience will fill more than just the front row.’ Tom’s voice was cool, businesslike. The scene started up again.

Helen watched spellbound. It was Rosalind’s scene, but this Orlando was more than equal to it. Tom Hart’s right, she thought. Oliver does have a feel for it. All the self-confident grace of Oliver’s natural movements stayed with him on the stage. And the loose, half-ironical lightness of his manner spoke subtly for Orlando. The girl opposite him had a sweet, melodious voice but her body looked wooden beside his.

Chloe leaned across to Helen. ‘If they’re going to play it in doublet and hose,’ she whispered, ‘that girl’s legs are too fat.’

‘Thank you,’ Tom called. ‘Can we try it again with Belinda now?’

Another hopeful Rosalind climbed on to the stage. This girl was taller and slimmer and she moved well. But as the to and fro of the elegant, sparring speeches began again, it was still Oliver who drew all the attention. He looked gilded on the stage, as if he were already spotlit instead of quenched by the dull house lights like everyone else.

Stephen fidgeted in his seat and peered impatiently at his watch. ‘So much for the perfect Rosalind,’ he murmured.

There was a shade less confidence in Tom Hart’s manner as he retraced his steps to the stage.

‘Thanks,’ he said briefly. ‘Stephen, could we talk about …’

From the back of the auditorium a clear voice cut across the ripple of talk.

‘Is this the right place for the audition?’

They turned to stare at the newcomer.

Helen heard the soft hiss of indrawn breath before she turned round too.

A girl was standing against the red velvet curtaining that hung over the exit doors. In the second before she spoke again, she looked almost too pretty to be real, like an exquisite statue without warmth of flesh and blood. But as soon as she moved, smiled her question again, animation came flooding back and lit her face up.

‘The As You like It audition?’

Still no-one answered. The girl came down the aisle towards the stage. She had silver-blond hair, cut fashionably short and feathery to show the oval perfection of her face. Her wide-set dark blue eyes flicked from one to another of them and she smiled again, teasingly, and with a little challenge now. Although she was young, no more than nineteen, the newcomer was evidently used to the effect of her appearance.

‘Who is this vision?’ Chloe breathed to Stephen.

‘No idea. But I’m not going without finding out.’ He winked at her, and Chloe had the pleasurable sensation that there was already an understanding between them.

Tom collected himself first. ‘Yes, we’re auditioning now. You’d like to read for us?’

The girl turned her dazzling face to him.

‘May I? I don’t want to butt in. Let me explain first – my name’s Pansy Warren, and I’ve just come to live at Follies House. The landlady, Rose Pole, told me that you were looking for a Rosalind. I’d love just to have a try. I’ve acted a little bit, at school and in Switzerland, but …’ Pansy shrugged, self-deprecating.

‘Okay,’ Tom’s voice was crisp again. He handed his copy of the text to Pansy and helped her up on to the stage. Oliver bent to take her hand, and between them they led Pansy into her scene as if she were a piece of priceless china.

Helen sank lower in her inconspicuous seat. I could never, she thought, ever have walked in here as she did, unknown and unexpected, and asked to be auditioned. But then I don’t look like that.

There was a faint shadow on her face as she watched the players begin on the familiar lines again.

Pansy was wearing a loose roll-collared sweater that masked her slim, small-breasted figure, jeans, and soft suede ankle boots. With her cap of tousled hair she looked completely the girl-dressed-as-a-boy which the scene demanded.

‘Love is merely a madness,’ read Pansy, ‘and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house, and a whip, as madmen do.’

Her voice was soft, but surprisingly resonant.

There was no need for Tom to tell her to speak up.

She’s good too, Helen told herself. Good in the same way that Oliver is. She doesn’t care who is looking at her, or what they think. She can just be herself because she’s sure of being right. Like Oliver, she doesn’t have to try.

Helen was too intent on Pansy herself to notice something else, but Chloe saw it. There was a crackle between this Orlando and Rosalind that had been completely missing from the earlier attempts. There was a new edge of seriousness in Oliver’s performance as the youth in love with love, which made his posturing credible. Before, it had only been amusing.

And Pansy’s Rosalind, although she was mocking her lovesick youth, showed the girl’s attraction to the young man too.

That was right, as well.

‘With all my heart, good youth,’ said Oliver softly.

‘Nay, you must call me Rosalind.’ The balance of humour and longing in Pansy’s exit line was perfect. They want each other already, Chloe thought. And people like those two always get what they want. She shot a quick glance at Helen’s rapt profile and sighed for her.

The spatter of involuntary applause brought Oliver and Pansy to the front of the stage, flushed and pleased.

‘Weren’t they good? Wasn’t Oliver good?’ Helen was beaming at Chloe.

‘Very good,’ she answered shortly. ‘Unless the director is as blind as a bat, Follies House has provided the world with a Rosalind. What do you think of our house-mate?’

They looked at the slim, silvery figure between Tom and Oliver on stage.

‘How exotic to be living in the same house as someone like that. But she looks nice, don’t you think?’ Helen kept her voice deliberately neutral.

‘Mmmm.’ Chloe thought that indeed she looked nice, but it wasn’t the kind of niceness that Helen would benefit from.

Clearly the auditions were over. The two disappointed Rosalinds had slipped away and now Tom was flicking off the lights. Helen stood up uncertainly, longing to go to Oliver but too shy to make the first move. Behind her, she heard Stephen Spurring murmuring to Chloe, ‘There’s still time for some lunch. Would you like to?’

Tactfully, Helen hurried to pick up her things. She didn’t want to make Chloe feel that she should be invited too. ‘See you later,’ she said firmly. Oliver and Pansy were still standing at the edge of the stage.

When they spoke, neither of them mentioned their first meeting in the mist on Folly Bridge. Instead they let the memory of it hang between them like a shared secret.

‘You read well,’ said Oliver. ‘It was a good scene.’

Pansy’s eyes looked straight back at him.

‘Thank you. You weren’t too bad either. Quite good, in fact.’ When she laughed, Pansy’s prettiness took second place to her overflowing vitality. It was an irresistible combination. ‘We should do quite well together. If your friend the director gives me the part, of course.’

‘Oh, I think he will. Unless he casts you as my Rosalind, he’ll find himself with no Orlando either.’

Oliver vaulted down from the stage and, reaching up for Pansy’s hands, swung her down beside him. At once Tom went to join them.

Helen saw that they were absorbed and oblivious to her. Don’t get in the way, she told herself. They’re busy. He’s busy. She walked away to the exit briskly enough, but then she found herself lingering bleakly in the deserted foyer. She wanted to see Oliver. The prospect of going back to her books without even a word from him seemed impossible. But how could she go back and interrupt him?

She was still hovering indecisively when the three of them came out. They saw her at once.

‘Hello again,’ Oliver said lightly, as if they had last met at a bus stop or in a cinema queue. ‘What did you think of it?’

‘It was good,’ Helen said weakly. ‘Both of you … very good.’

Is that all? Then, more sternly, she reminded herself, what else could he say? In front of … other people?

‘Are you part of the cast?’ Pansy asked warmly. At close quarters her eyes showed a dozen different shades of blue. She was wearing a scent which reminded Helen of summer gardens.

‘No. But we will be seeing each other again. I live at Follies House too.’

‘Really? That’s wonderful. Isn’t it weird? And the woman who runs it all, Rose, what d’you make of her?’

‘Be careful,’ Helen warned her, ‘she’s a relative of Oliver.’

Oliver shrugged, not interested in the turn the conversation had taken. ‘A very distant one, for whom I accept no responsibility.’

Tom was impatient too. ‘Let’s go and eat, for God’s sake. Come with us, Helen. Are you sure you can’t do something for my production? Backstage, perhaps. ASM …’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Helen told him absently. Her eyes were on Oliver, wanting him to echo Tom’s invitation, but he had said nothing. Please, she wanted to beg him, it’s me. Don’t you remember our days together? Didn’t they happen? Then the other Helen, coolly reasonable, reminded her. Don’t grovel. He’ll hate that.

But as they turned to leave, it was Pansy who took her arm. ‘Please come. Let’s get to know each other if we’re to live in the same house.’

Helen went, incapable of walking away from Oliver just yet.

The pizza parlour next door was crowded and steamy. Oliver hung back with an expression of distaste but Tom strode past the queue and secured a table.

‘No, I’m afraid it’s mine,’ he told the protesting party who had been just about to take possession of it.

‘Neat,’ said Oliver, with grudging approval as they sat down.

When the pizzas came, Oliver scowled at his. ‘Why are we eating this garbage?’

Helen remembered the splendours of the meals they had shared and smiled to herself. She stopped herself from murmuring how the other half live. Tom, completely uninterested in food except as the means of supplying himself with more energy, said briskly, ‘This isn’t a gourmet outing. We’re here to do business.’

The conversation centred on the production.

They were drinking red plonk, over which Oliver had also made a wry face, and Tom raised his glass to Pansy. ‘Here’s to you,’ he said. ‘You’re not quite the perfect Rosalind, but you’ll do.’

‘What do you mean, not perfect? I shall be a theatrical sensation, just wait and see.’

Helen sat quietly, watching and listening. Plainly Oliver and Tom had eyes for no-one but their new Rosalind. And Pansy bubbled between the two of them, laughing delightedly and turning her perfect face from one to the other. It must always be like this for her, Helen thought. She must always be the centre of attention. No wonder she can just stroll into auditions and expect to be heard. Not only to be heard, but to walk off with the part.

Helen’s gaze took in Pansy’s expensively casual haircut, her light all-year-round tan, and her tiny, jewelled wristwatch. I don’t suppose anyone ever denies her anything, she thought. Jealousy was an unusual emotion for Helen but she felt jealous of Pansy now.

Oliver was leaning negligently back in his chair, but his eyes were fixed on Pansy’s face. He had forgotten Helen, but she was no less electrically aware of him than ever. The four of them were packed close around the little table, and her skin prickled with the nearness of his long sprawled legs. The sight of his fingers curled round the wineglass brought a flush to her cheeks and the sound of his voice, not even what he was saying, obliterated the clatter of the noisy restaurant. Yesterday, just to have been close to him like this would have enough to make her happy. But the intrusion of this beautiful, assured newcomer had changed all that. Helen looked from Pansy to Oliver, whose dégagé air had completely disappeared, and felt a twist of apprehension.

She turned back to her unwanted food, oblivious to everything but the threat that suddenly loomed in front of her. She didn’t see a pair of her College friends gazing round-eyed across the room at the sight of quiet bookish Helen Brown in such glossy company. It would have come as a surprise to Helen to know that she was part of a striking picture, with the two bright blonde heads and two intensely dark ones bent close together.

At last Pansy looked at her tiny gold watch. ‘God, look at the time. I was supposed to be at a tutorial five minutes ago.’ She made the word sound archaic and faintly ridiculous. And she made no move to get up. Instead, she poured herself another glass of wine and beamed round at them. ‘Still, I expect he’ll wait for me. I’m not a real student anyway, I’m just doing a one-year art history course. To please Daddy, really. He wanted me to come to Oxford to meet the right people. Future kings of Broadway. And lords, that sort of thing. And brilliant women dons.’ Generously, she included Helen too, and Helen felt herself warming in response to Pansy’s friendliness. ‘I have to do something while I’m here and I don’t know anything about art or history, so it seems as good a choice as any. Daddy said doing a typing or cookery course wasn’t “suitable”, and Kim backed him up. Kim’s my stepmother. My third stepmother, actually. She’s all of twenty-seven, and acts like seven. You must all meet her, it’s a real eye-opener.’

‘Why?’ asked Tom, interestedly. ‘Does she beat you and dress you in rags, like a proper stepmother does? Even though she’s a bit young for the job?’

Pansy laughed merrily.

‘Just the opposite. I don’t care much about clothes, but Kim endlessly drags me round to shops and fittings and designer shows. And she’s too languid to mix a cocktail, let alone beat me. But if you think I’m not very bright, you should meet Kim.’

‘I suspect you’re quite bright enough,’ Tom said quietly.

‘You are a darling. And don’t worry, I’ve got enough native wit to handle Rosalind. Inherited from Daddy, no doubt. Oh Lord, he’ll be furious if I don’t even get to my first lesson. I don’t even know where the place is.’

Pansy fumbled in the soft Italian leather pouch bag that was slung over the back of her chair and brought out a list. ‘Ashmolean Museum?’

Oliver, who had been watching her with fascination, suddenly stood up. ‘I’m going over there. I’ll take you.’

Solicitously, just as he had done yesterday for Helen, he drew back her chair and helped her to her feet. Pansy put her hand on his arm, thoughtlessly accepting it as her right to be escorted and protected.

‘’Bye, then.’

‘Oliver …’ Helen had no idea what she wanted to ask him, but he half turned in response and she thought his face softened.

‘I’ll see you soon,’ he said. ‘At Follies.’

He was gone so quickly with Pansy that Helen found herself staring at the empty space where they had been.

I’ll see you soon. She would have to be content with that.

Opposite her Tom was staring blankly too. It was a moment before they faced each other and realised that they were alone.

‘Well.’ Tom was smiling crookedly. ‘Shall we finish the wine?’

Helen pushed her glass across to him. Instinctively, she liked Tom Hart and – more than that – he was Oliver’s friend. She could at least talk about him.

‘I’ve never met anyone like him before,’ she said softly.

‘Oliver? Neither have I. He’s got a lot of style, and I admire that. He doesn’t give a damn about anything either, and I don’t think that’s just because of who he is. Although that helps. Think of living in a place like Montcalm. Of coming from a family like that … holders of the highest offices in the realm for hundreds and hundreds of years.’

You’re impressed by that, Helen thought. Am I? Am I? Perhaps.

Tom was still talking. His dark eyebrows were drawn together over his high, beaked nose and his mouth, usually compressed in a sardonic line, curved wider as he looked into the distance.

‘That’s quite something, you know, to a Jewish boy like me. My family tree goes back no further than my great-grandfather. He was called Hartstein, and he arrived in New York with no more than the clothes he stood in. He scraped a kind of living for his wife and kids by doing piecework in the garment trade. The business he slaved for happened to have a sideline in theatrical costuming. My grandfather had a flair for that, took it over at the age of twenty, and ended up a celebrated costumier. And my father – well, my old man has a flair for everything. Greg Hart owns five Broadway theatres now, and a string more across the country.’

‘I think that’s more impressive than just being born a Mortimore,’ Helen told him gently.

Tom smiled at her in response, and she saw that although his face was stern and his mouth ungiving, there was real kindness behind his dark, hooded eyes.

‘Perhaps.’

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘What are you really doing in Oxford, if you’ve got all that waiting for you in America?’

Tom picked up a fragment of bread from the tablecloth and rolled it between his fingers into a grey, doughy ball.

‘I’m in disgrace, as it happens. Serving out a year’s exile in the guise of doing my apprenticeship in the British theatre. By the time I get back, my old man reckons all the fuss will be forgotten.’

Helen stared at him, intrigued. She had forgotten herself enough not to worry about being tactful. ‘What fuss?’

‘D’you really want to know?’

‘Of course. What could be bad enough to deserve being banished from home for a whole year?’

Tom laughed shortly. ‘It’s not so bad. I miss New York, that’s all. Do you remember that production of The Tempest that was so successful in the West End last year? With Sir Edward Groves and Maria Vaughn?’

Helen nodded, dimly recollecting having read about it.

‘My father brought the production over for his summer season. With the original cast, starring the theatrical knight and his new wife Miss Vaughn.’

Helen remembered that, too.

‘Well, whatever Maria had married her knight for, it had nothing to do with bed. In spite of the fact that she’s very interested in that side of things herself. Most of us are, after all. When I was offered the choice, before the run had even started, I was hardly likely to turn her down. She’s very beautiful, and disturbingly sexy. Before long we were screwing each other at every possible opportunity. At my apartment, in her hotel room, in her dressing room. And that’s where Sir Edward caught us at it. Careless of me, really. The scene that followed was high drama – threats, screams, hysterical weeping, the whole works. It culminated with Sir Edward stamping down to my father’s office and announcing that the Hart family was not to be trusted, so he and Maria were back off to London and fuck the opening night. Greg flung himself into the scene like the old trouper he is. There were more accusations of filial disloyalty, immorality, perfidy and general filthiness. Of course, Edward really had no intention of missing out on the chance to bestow his Prospero on Manhattan. They compromised by despatching me to England instead. This job was fixed up for me in about forty seconds, and here I am.’

Helen thought for a moment. ‘Isn’t that rather hard on you? Surely your father must have seen your side, just a little?’

Tom laughed again.

‘Oh, it’s much more complicated than that. You see, Greg certainly had Maria carved out for himself. He does quite a good line in leading ladies – he’s always been very successful with women. And he’s used to thinking of himself as the young phenomenon. Suddenly, there he was, seeing that his own son had cut him out. What would it be next, he must have asked himself. His theatres. His whole empire, perhaps. So, get rid of the little bastard for a convenient space of time by packing him off to Oxford, England, to produce piddling student productions of the classics.’

‘Did you have to come?’

The answer came without a trace of hesitation. ‘Oh yes. If I want to get the business in the end, I do. And I want it very much. I love the theatre.’

‘Except for piddling little productions in Oxford.’

Tom shot her a quick glance, his eyebrows raised. ‘Yes. I asked for that. I didn’t mean it, except as a comparison with what I could be doing if I was back home. Of course this show is just as important in its way as the biggest musical spectacular on Broadway. That’s why I’ve taken so much care to get the casting right. And it’s why I’m so pleased with Oliver and Pansy. Particularly Pansy. I knew as soon as she walked into the theatre that she was the one I was looking for. She’s amazing, isn’t she?’

Tom’s habitual cynical expression had melted, replaced by an enthusiasm that was almost boyish.

‘Yes.’ Helen didn’t want to talk about Pansy Warren. She switched the subject again. ‘And you? Will you make a wild success of being here? It’s what happens in all the books.’

‘Not wild. There’s hardly scope. But I’ll do well enough.’

Helen knew that he would, from the determined lines etched in his dark face. Tom Hart was bound to succeed in whatever he did. It was in his blood. You’re probably quite ruthless, Helen thought. You can be kind too, but you wouldn’t let that impede you where it matters. Probably you just feel genuinely sorry as you plunge the hatchet in. I know I wouldn’t like to cross you.

Tom was looking at her now, his gaze level. ‘Why am I treating you to this self-centred recital? It must be something to do with your having such a calm, attentive face.’

I don’t want to be just a calm, attentive face. A sudden spurt of resentment took possession of Helen. I want to be beautiful, like Pansy and Chloe, the kind of woman that people look at, not talk at. I want to be rich, and confident, and amusing. It’s not fair. And then at once she felt ashamed again. You’re so lucky in so many things, she reminded herself. Think of Mum, and Graham. And Dad.

Tom turned from signalling to the waitress and saw a brightness in Helen’s eyes that might have been the start of tears. His hand touched hers.

‘What is it? Did I say something?’

She shook her head fiercely. ‘No. I just … remembered something. Look – it’s late.’

‘I know. I must go too.’ When the bill came, Helen remembered that Oliver and Pansy, unthinking, had left without paying their share.

‘Can I go halves with you?’ she ventured.

‘No. Of course not.’ Without even looking, Tom dumped a fistful of notes on the plate and stood up.

It’s just different for them, Helen told herself. It’s wrong of you to feel resentful.

Tom left her with a brief goodbye at Carfax. Helen turned to watch him for a moment as he walked off down the long, golden curve of the High. His clothes were stylish, almost flamboyant, and with his alert face and purposeful walk, he stood out in high relief from the anonymous blue denim crowds that drifted around him.

As soon as he was gone, Helen was surprised to feel the loss of his bracing company. The lunch had been uncomfortable, but for some reason her sharpest impression now was of this brisk American. He was as different from the ordinary run of University people as Oliver himself. Helen thought he was more than a little frightening, because his cleverness made him intolerant, but she remembered the kindness she had sensed in him as well as the flash of vulnerability when he had looked at Pansy Warren. She liked him, too, for the straightforward way he had told her the story of his exile to Oxford. Tom Hart would not be easy to know well, she reflected, but once he had committed himself, she guessed that he would be a valuable friend. Helen wondered if Pansy, in her glancing appraisal, had seen that too. No, she wouldn’t have. Beside Oliver’s glitter, Tom seemed saturnine and acerbic. And it was Oliver, inevitably, who had scooped Pansy up and spirited her away.

Helen sighed, stuck her hands in her duffel coat pockets and began to walk down St Aldate’s towards the river and Follies House.

As she stepped into the hallway and let the massive oak door swing to behind her, Helen knew immediately that there was something different about the old house. The dim, spidery spaces in the hall were deserted and looked just as they always did, but there was light filtering through from somewhere. And then the noise began – unbelievably loud rock music that bounced off the panelling and echoed along the stone floors. When she looked up, Helen saw that the door at the head of the stairs was open. A shaft of bright sunlight shone through it.

Pansy was home.

Helen knocked on the door jamb and, knowing that she wouldn’t be heard above the music, peered inside. Pansy was dancing alone and with her eyes shut. She was smiling a small, happy, secretive smile.

‘Hello.’ Helen had to shout. Pansy opened startled eyes.

‘Hel-lo. Sorry. D’you ever feel so happy that you just have to dance? Wait while I turn it down.’

‘That was a short tutorial,’ Helen said into the new quiet.

‘He didn’t wait, can you believe it? I wasn’t that late.’ Pansy was wide-eyed, genuinely surprised. ‘Anyway, it means I’ve got a lovely free afternoon now. Don’t go. Stay here and talk while I sort some of this junk out.’

Unlike Chloe, Pansy had made no effort to settle into her room. Suitcases and a huge trunk were all open, the tumbled contents showing that their owner had rummaged through in search of the things she needed without bothering to unpack anything. Pansy was standing in the middle of the jumble now, staring round in exasperation.

‘God, what a mess. I hate all this stuff. Wouldn’t life be easy if we were allowed to own only ten things each.’

Pansy, like Chloe, seemed to possess an unbelievable number of clothes.

‘No,’ said Helen a little sadly. ‘It’s nice to have things. I love clothes.’

Pansy glanced across at her and then scrabbled in another suitcase.

‘Do you? Would you like these? Kim bought these for me because she thought they were Oxford-y. I’ll never wear them, and they’d suit you.’

There were two Shetland jerseys, one in soft, sugared almond pinks and one in stronger blues. They had little round collars with picot edgings. She was holding out a skirt too, folds of pale grey fine wool challis.

There was a small, surprised silence.

‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Helen said stiffly. She would have loved to own such pretty things, but it was impossible. She was not so hard up that she needed to accept Pansy’s casual largesse.

‘What a pity, because I won’t wear them.’ Pansy shrugged dismissively and tossed the clothes back into the suitcase.

The silence was uncomfortable now.

Helen knew that she should go away, but it was unthinkable to leave without having mentioned Oliver. She had the impression that his name hovered in the air between them, waiting to be uttered.

‘Are you pleased about the part?’ she asked at last.

‘Oh, yes. So long as it doesn’t mean too much hard work. Still,’ Pansy was holding an evening frock up against herself, her head on one side to consider it. It was a frothy mass of Zandra Rhodes squiggles and ruffles, ‘… with two lovely men like that about, even rehearsing shouldn’t be too much of a bore.’

Now that the opening was here, Helen shied away from it.

‘Tom Hart’s rather exotic for Oxford,’ she said.

‘Mmmm. I wouldn’t choose him, though. Bit too saturnine and Jewish, if you call that exotic, for my taste.’

Of course, Helen thought, you do only have to choose. Not Oliver, please.

‘But Oliver, that’s different. Bit unfair of him to be so beautiful and a Mortimore, don’t you think? What can a girl do, confronted with that?’ And Pansy laughed, pleased with herself and with the pleasant prospect ahead of her.

Helen felt a slow, dull crimson flush creeping over her face. Her chest and throat felt tight, and her fingers itched with a sudden surge to slap Pansy’s bright face. The violence inside her astonished and frightened her. But this girl would take Oliver away, she knew that now, and in that instant she hated her. She must say something. Not let him go without a struggle.

Helen struggled to make her voice sound cool and light, but when at last it came out it shook and cracked.

‘Yes, Oliver and I …’ she faltered, not knowing how to put it.

Pansy swung round in genuine surprise.

‘You?’

Helen flinched. As she stared back at Pansy, she felt the ugly flush deepening over her face and neck. It was so humiliating, that surprise, the more so because it was completely natural. What could Oliver, it said, with his looks and his charm and his position, see in a little mouse like you?

‘Yes,’ Helen said, finding defiance in the anger that threatened to choke her. ‘Me. Why not?’

Pansy was looking defensive now, her eyebrows pulled into a frown over the chameleon blue eyes, and a trace of hurt lingering about her vulnerable, flower-like mouth.

‘I’m sorry. It’s just that … you didn’t look or behave as if you belonged together.’

Belonged together? How Oliver would hate that, Helen realised. She was giving Pansy the wrong impression, making her undefined relationship with Oliver seem too formal, but it was too late to backpedal now.

‘I don’t want to tread on anybody’s toes,’ Pansy added, with such clear sincerity that Helen’s anger faded as quickly as it had come. After all, Pansy had done nothing yet, except exist.

‘It’s all right,’ she said wearily. ‘You aren’t. Nobody belongs to anybody. Forget it.’

‘Forget what?’

Chloe had come up the stairs without either of them hearing her. Now she was standing in the open doorway, almost striking a pose. She had one hand on her hip and the other was raised to coil the dark red hair into a knot on top of her head. The stance emphasised her height and slimness and for a moment as she stood there, it was Chloe who was the beauty and not Pansy.

Pansy’s sharp stare missed nothing.

‘Hello. You were at the audition too, weren’t you?’

‘Pansy,’ said Helen, ‘this is Chloe Campbell. Rose’s third tenant.’

There was a little, wary moment as the two women looked at each other. Then, immediately after the practised appraisal of attractive women confronting one another, came the answering smiles of complicity. To Helen, watching, it was as if they belonged to a desirable club from which she would be forever excluded. She was oppressed by a sense of her own plainness and dowdiness.

‘Forget what?’ Chloe was asking Helen again.

‘We were talking about Oliver Mortimore,’ Pansy said, before Helen could frame an answer. ‘Helen was kindly warning me off.’

Helen wished she could find something as lightly dismissive to say, but nothing came. Chloe felt the tension vibrating in the room and tactfully turned her attention to dispersing it.

‘Really?’ she said vaguely, feigning lack of interest as she wandered round Pansy’s room. There were arched windows with views of the river and Christ Church, and panelling and furniture similar to her own, but here everything was fresher and there were thick new carpets. Chloe peered through the adjoining doors. One led to a bedroom with a glimpse of a bathroom beyond, another revealed a tiny, compact kitchen.

‘You’ve got a whole flat,’ she said to Pansy enviously. ‘Mine’s next door, but it’s only a room and a bit.’

‘What’s yours like?’ Pansy was asking Helen, and Helen knew that it was a peace-offering. She was being drawn into the conversation as a means of calling a truce in a skirmish that had never really started. It was generous of Pansy, she thought. More generous than she was herself – but then Pansy could afford to be.

‘My room’s a small, square cell on the floor above,’ she said, managing a smile. ‘Servants’ quarters.’

Chloe and Pansy both laughed, relieved. The tension was ebbing away.

‘How rotten. My father found this, I’ve no idea how. I suppose it is rather stylish. He’s good at things like that.’

‘Is your father Masefield Warren?’ Chloe asked.

‘That’s right.’

Of course. Pansy’s father’s name was almost synonymous with ruthless success. He was a self-made man with an iron reputation who now controlled an empire that embraced oil, newspapers, property and films. And Pansy was his only child. One day she would be very, very rich, as well as startlingly beautiful.

Poor Helen, Chloe was thinking. I can’t see her gilded Apollo resisting all that. And Helen was staring down at her clasped hands, not wanting to think at all. To shut off the dull ache of anxiety, she turned to Chloe.

‘Nice lunch?’ she asked politely.

Chloe laughed, pleased with the chance to talk about it.

‘Extremely nice. I’d almost forgotten how delicious it is, meeting someone and realising that you’re attracted to him. Then guessing that he feels the same and waiting to see how you’re both going to play it.’

She had released the knot on top of her head and her hair came tumbling around her face. It made her look much younger, and her features were alight with an excitement that was almost childish.

It had been a very satisfactory lunch. Stephen Spurring had achieved just the right inviting blend of intimacy and remoteness. Chloe hated pushy men. She wanted to know him better now, and her head was full of the way he had looked and the way his mouth had lifted, crookedly, into a smile of invitation.

When it had been time to leave, Stephen had put his hand over hers.

‘Will you dine with me one night at High Table? It might amuse you.’

‘I’d like that.’

She was responding to this quiet, subtle man in a way that she hadn’t done for years. The recollection of it made her smile again.

‘Be careful,’ Helen warned her. ‘Stephen eats girls. And … did you know that he’s married?’

‘I know he’s married because he told me,’ Chloe said coolly. For an intelligent woman, she thought, Helen could be very prissy. ‘And I think I can look after myself. In fact, Dr Spurring had better be careful that I don’t eat him. He’s quite appetising enough.’

All three of them laughed, a little uneasily, before Pansy asked, ‘Who’s this Dr Spurring?’

‘He’s an English don,’ Helen told her. ‘He was watching you audition too.’

‘Him?’ Pansy said, a little absently. ‘I thought he looked interesting.’

For a moment nobody spoke. Chloe’s voice was firm when she answered. ‘He certainly interests me.’

In the silence, a little quiver of reawakened tension whispered at them.

Helen collected herself. Now was the time to escape. From the doorway she said a muted goodbye and then climbed heavily up to the deserted box of her room.

There was nothing she could do. Pansy was here, and there was no point in making an enemy of her. All Helen could do was wait, first of all to see whether Oliver would be true to his word and come to look for her here at Follies House. Helen walked over to her window. With the height of the extra storey she could see over the rooftops to the outline of Canterbury Quad and, she imagined, even the windows of Oliver’s rooms.

Only wait. Already it felt like the beginning of a vigil. And from downstairs, only just audible, she thought she heard the murmur of conversation and a burst of laughter from Chloe and Pansy. What had once felt to Helen like the unassailable Gothic calm of Follies House, now seemed heavy with vague threats, and half-formed mysterious alliances that excluded her.

Suddenly Helen felt cold, and lonely. She shivered. She needed Oliver’s warmth and assurance badly, but he wasn’t there.