on. ‘Well.’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Gorgeous, that’s what they are, gorgeous. Even if I say so myself. Spain is great, altogether. I have a friend, and she goes to Alicante for the whole of the winter with her husband, and it’s cheaper than being here. Miles cheaper, she says.’
Megan nodded. Nothing else was required.
‘You were walking the dogs, I saw you,’ Angeline continued. ‘I like dogs, but cats are very good company. Sir Rollo, he’s my cat, a Persian blue. Picky eater, I can tell you, but he’s so gentle. Never killed a mouse in his life!’
‘Do you prefer being called Angeline or Birdie?’ asked Megan.
‘Birdie!’
Megan sat down in one of the waiting-room chairs. There was something peaceful in listening to Birdie’s chatter.
‘Do you live around here?’
‘No,’ shrieked Birdie. ‘I wish I did. I love Golden Square. I’m on the avenue, it’s not as pretty but we have a cycle path!’
Having got used to Birdie’s chatter, Megan now dropped in every day. Birdie enjoyed discussing the soaps from the night before and, on occasion, the weather.
‘Cooler today but the real-feel is not too polar,’ Birdie might say.
On cold days, she wore two sets of thermals.
‘See! Anthracite with pink ribbons!’ She pulled a shred of thermal fabric up from her flat bosom for inspection. ‘Nice thermals are so hard to come by. I don’t like those white ones that go grey in the wash.’
‘Where did you get those?’ asked Megan.
‘The Internet. Fabulous bits and bobs online.’
Between clients, Nora came out and chatted too, but they talked more generally of the next client, how the dogs had behaved on their walk and if Megan would organise dinner.
It was clear to Megan that her aunt and Birdie didn’t talk about soaps or frillies on the internet.
She said as much to Birdie.
‘Nora’s a woman for science,’ Birdie explained. ‘She’s not like you and me. We’re girlie girls. Even though your hair is not girlie. Patsy did it for you?’
Megan reached up to touch the shorn dark locks. It was still strange to feel the nakedness of her jawline and neck.
‘I wanted something different.’
‘Very Ingrid Bergman,’ pronounced Birdie. ‘I’d try it myself, but I like the bouffant look.’
After dropping into the clinic, Megan was in the habit of walking through the pretty little square en route to Titania’s Palace. The eccentrically decorated tearooms looked like something you’d expect to find in an Austrian ski resort, complete with pine furniture, red sprigged curtains and Tiffany lamps casting an amber glow over the place. Even the pastries and buns were unusual, with lots of flaky pastry things dusted with icing sugar and the Greek honey-and-nuts dessert baklava instead of the usual scones. Everything about the place was comforting, from the comfort food inside the polished glass case to the friendly chatter going on all around.
Megan, who was used to a life of not eating, felt a pang of hunger as she looked at the cakes, but passed them by and asked for an Americano with an extra shot of espresso.
‘Of course, my dear. Anything else?’ said the woman behind the counter. She had very dark eyes and slanted eyebrows to match, almost like a person with Native American blood, Megan thought. Her face was alight with motherly warmth.
Please don’t be nice to me, Megan thought, or I’ll cry.
‘No,’ she mumbled. Then added: ‘Thanks.’
She took her coffee and sat at a window table where she could look out. It wasn’t that she wanted to see anything outside. These days, she couldn’t focus on anything for long because all she could see was the past. But at least when she was staring out, people were less likely to recognise her. After years of trying to be noticed, Megan Flynn wanted to disappear.
Megan loved members’ clubs. The ones where you had to have money and powerful friends to get in. Money wasn’t quite enough, you had to be somebody.
She loved being somebody. Even the tiring bits – ‘It’s Megan Bouchier! Can I have your autograph, I love all your films’ when she was coming out of the changing rooms in the Oxford Street Top Shop – were wonderful.
Other stars in her firmament complained about it loudly, but Megan never did.
According to Carole, her agent, it was due to lack of attention as a child. ‘All the big ones are like that, sweetie. Nobody loved them enough when they were little and, by God, they’re determined to make up for it now.’
Megan had laughed when Carole said that. ‘Not all of them, surely?’
‘Yes, all of them. And stop calling me Shirley. Oh, the old jokes are the best.’
They’d been in the Victory House Club at the time, drinking dirty mojitos – Carole’s own concoction, which used two types of rum – to celebrate Megan getting the part in The Warrior Queen. Carole’s business partner, Zara Scott, had joined them. Both in their mid-forties, tough and energetic, the two founders of Scott-Baird International worked hard to make sure their agency ranked as one of the most powerful in the business. It had been Zara who convinced the director of Warrior Queen to consider Megan for the part of the Roman princess. He hadn’t wanted her to start with, he was looking for an unknown, not the girl who’d blown the screen away in a Cockney gangster movie where she’d had to wield a sawnoff shotgun. But Zara had persevered until he gave in and screen-tested Megan, and suddenly she was cast: a part many actresses would have killed for, playing opposite the craggy heart-throb Rob Hartnell in a historical epic.
On their third mojito, they’d moved on from sheer joy to discussing the ins and outs of Rob’s marriage to the Tony and BAFTA-award winning actress, Katharine Hartnell.
‘Everybody says Katharine and Rob have one of the strongest marriages in the business,’ said Carole. ‘I never really trust that type of schtick. Sounds like something made up for the papers.’
‘No, it’s supposed to be true,’ said Zara. ‘I have it on very good authority. Apparently Rob and Katharine are still crazy about each other. Hard to believe, isn’t it?’
‘Well, you wouldn’t kick him out of bed for getting crumbs in it, would you?’ Carole said. ‘He’s like a brunette Robert Redford, only sexier, if such a thing were possible. Lucky Katharine, that’s all I can say.’
‘She’s pretty stunning too,’ said Zara. ‘For her age,’ she added.
‘Yes, for her age,’ Carole agreed. ‘Why do we say that about women? Nobody ever says a man is good for his age.’
Zara erupted into laughter. ‘If you’re going to go all soft on me, Carole, then get out of the business, will you?’
Carole
