“As you keep telling me.” He switched on the ignition. “Frankly, it’s getting boring.”

  “Oh, boring is it?” Sheinberg tore the studio pass from the corner of the windscreen. “Go! Drive away. By all means. You’ve jeopardised the entire release of this picture with your, your—”

  “Integrity?”

  “—Antics! God, you’re impossible! And you know what, clever dick? You’re fired! I’ll get somebody else to do the cuts. I’ll get Royston Dammers.”

  “Royston Dammers?” Marcus laughed. “That old fart? He’d make Lawrence of Arabia look like a fruit gum commercial.”

  “Well, he’ll do what I tell him, at least.”

  “And that’s the important thing, is it? People doing what you say? That’s how the Empire was won, was it? People doing what people in grey suits with big fat cigars say?”

  “Look...” Sheinberg was near boiling point. Not least because every soul working at the studio seemed to be walking past, and listening. “All I’m trying to do is make films that make money.”

  “You think I don’t know that? It oozes out of your every pore. Money. Money. You can’t fire me off the new film, anyway. You announced it a month ago in Variety.”

  “Stuff Variety. I wouldn’t touch you again with a forty-foot pole.” Sheinberg began walking away. Marcus stood up on his car seat.

  “And what makes you think I need you, in my wildest dreams? All you are is a jumped-up barrow boy milking the talent around you to line your pockets.”

  “You’re barred from the editing suite. I’ll change the locks if I have to.”

  “Oh, thanks!” Marcus yelled at the producer’s back. “Thank you for your unswerving creative support.”

  “Oh, just get out of my sight. Boy genius. Go back to the playpen.”

  “Jawohl, mein Führer!”

  Marcus dropped back into the driver’s seat, revved the engine to a lion’s roar, floored the accelerator and aimed at the gates. The security man barely had time to lift the barrier before he drove through, missing the old man by inches.

  “And I can assure you, most humbly, your suggested cuts will be implemented without fail.”

  “Thank you, Mr Sheinberg.”

  “And by way of apology, might I ask if I can take you to lunch, here at the studio, on a day of your convenience? It’s the least I can do, in view of the atrocious, er...”

  “Well, of course, we’re unable to accept any sort of payola, for obvious reasons, in any shape or form,” Geraldine said into the phone.

  “Needless to say, Miss Copper. Needless to say. But as a gesture, you see.”

  “Well. As a gesture...I shall put it to Mr Runnymede.”

  “I’d be most awfully grateful. That would be marvellous. Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you, Mr Sheinberg.”

  After she’d hung up, gently, Geraldine straightened her dress and cleared her throat. She rather thought Mr Sheinberg had been flirting with her. She normally didn’t notice that sort of thing, but this time she had. It made her feel quite good, as a matter of fact. Very much better than she’d been feeling for a while.

  “Denise, can you pop out and get a sponge cake from Lyon’s. I think we’ve got something to celebrate, don’t you?”

  That night, when she got home, even her father noticed the difference in his daughter’s mood. It was so profound he almost remarked upon it. She was grinning like a loon. Perhaps there was something wrong with her.

  “Why don’t we have a game of Monopoly?” she said excitedly. “I like Monopoly.”

  She’d never said so in the past, but they did.

  Across London, while her metal top hat hopped from square to square, buying houses and hotels, Marcus Rand lay in a bath full of bubbles, the drugs in his system denying him the good and restful sleep that Geraldine enjoyed as soon as her head hit the pillow. She’d never won Monopoly before, her father always did, but tonight he didn’t. Tonight was special. Tonight she’d won.

  Natasha got in with Marcus but the water was tepid. She did her best to soothe him but he was listless, disinterestedly picking up his “Smarties” one by one, arranged as they were in a line along the edge of the tub. She washed his face, then the rest of him. She wished he was asleep or awake, but he was neither. He stroked her cheek and she nuzzled his hand. She called him soppy. He called her sexy-pops. The second bottle of vodka was empty. The martini cocktails, Frankenstein-lab concoction, a distant memory, like the hash. He couldn’t remember who was invited and who wasn’t. He remembered, vaguely, going for a pee and seeing a girl in a bikini swaying to sitar music from the record player. Who was she? The truth was, he didn’t care.

  “Go and fetch me some fags, would you, there’s a love?” He tucked a curl of blonde hair behind one of Natasha’s ears. “Good girl.”

  Natasha pulled on her fur coat over her nudity, pillaged some coins from his wallet, took the keys, went across the road to the pub opposite, and got twenty Benson & Hedges from the cigarette machine. She had a feeling one of the men at the bar recognised her, probably from that chocolate bar commercial that seemed to turn everyone on. She smiled at him and skipped back to the front door, which she’d wedged open with a Mr Punch doorstop. She let it close with a dull buzz as she climbed the stairs. The girl in the bikini didn’t notice her come back in. She was still dancing, alone, and her eyes were closed. She only opened them when she heard Natasha’s cry from the bathroom, and was the second person to see Marcus Rand lying dead in the bath, his director’s eyes fixed, glazed, and unblinking.

  “Barbiturate overdose, apparently,” said George Runnymede. “Not clear if it was accidental or deliberate.” He took Geraldine’s lack of reaction as shock, which it might well have been. She didn’t really know. He handed her a glass of water. “Here.”

  She took it. Not immediately sure what to do with it.

  “You were only doing your job, buttercup.” He seemed almost fatherly in his concern. Not that her own father seemed to get concerned about anything. She looked down at the meniscus of the liquid in the glass. The word meniscus always interested her, but she never had cause to use it. Ever. It was peculiar, that. To know a word that...What was her boss saying, now? Why was she sitting there in his office? “We’d...Well, we’d perfectly understand, if you want to take the rest of the day off...I mean, clearly, under the...”

  She straightened her spine, and looked at him, blinking like a startled bird.

  “Why would I want to do that?”

  She watched a comedy that afternoon at a private screening in Leicester Square, one of those Carry On type films full of toilet humour and “tittie” jokes—tired and unfunny, but the sort she was told the British public adored. Personally she never found them in the slightest bit entertaining, with the same tribe of gurning, hammy actors and dim, busty women who seemed to like being chased by sex-crazed midgets. The whole painful genre struck her as a Mother Goose pantomime version of Hieronymus Bosch, whilst being significantly less interesting than either. With this addition to the series she remained even more stony-faced than usual.

  When the rubber-faced loon inevitably hid with his paramour under a bed, which Geraldine could confidently predict within minutes would sag under the weight of his dragon-like wife, she began to feel not only nauseous with boredom but unaccountably prickly with unease. The feeling didn’t abate during the chase with the artificial insemination instructor’s wearisome (and unconvincing) robotic bull. But strangely, as the film progressed, even though she knew the auditorium had been perfectly empty when she’d arrived, she had the unshakable sensation that someone was sitting in the seat directly behind her.

  She told herself this was absurd. However, the innuendo and pratfalls on screen did nothing to make her feel less tense. In fact, soon she felt as physically threatened as if there was a knife at her throat. Unbidden, the knife idea made her think of Mortal Sins—the blade sinking deep into the undertaker’s arm as he hung onto the horse-drawn hearse. The fountain of blood she’d demanded be cut. Cut. The sound of it seared through her brain even now. She felt a sense of panic rising, and wanted to get out. Then felt very distinctly a breath on the back of her neck, as if a man directly behind her were leaning closer, to whisper something.

  To whisper—what?

  Geraldine sprang to her feet and spun round to confront...

  Nobody.

  Her neck hair prickled. She realised, to her intense relief, that she was—as she had always been, it was obvious now—an audience of one.

  She broke out into sunlight. The air had been stuffy indoors, and she’d been close to passing out. That was the reason, of course. The air. The pokiness. The claustrophobia. The lack of windows. It had been like a dungeon. Never mind. What had she written in her notepad? Only the letter A and question mark.

  She cut through Chinatown and crossed Shaftesbury Avenue, turning left into Old Compton Street. She thought perhaps she needed a sandwich since she was still rather faint, and looked at a menu in the window of an Italian café. To her sudden alarm she found herself looking straight at Natasha Selkirk, who was sitting alone with an espresso in front of her. Geraldine turned away before the other woman could see her, but knew instantly she already had. Geraldine crossed the road hurriedly, narrowly avoiding a black cab that honked its horn, and reached the pavement opposite without looking back—though in the reflection in the window of a cigar shop she could see Natasha had come out into the street and was watching her.

  Geraldine decided to keep walking. If Natasha followed her and confronted her, she could just say she hadn’t recognised her. How did Natasha know what she looked like, in any case? She couldn’t. Geraldine was a perfect stranger, staring through the window of a café at her. That was all. What would the woman say, anyhow? You! You killed him! It’s your fault! I hope you can sleep easy at night! I hope you never get another night’s sleep in your life!

  Finding herself breaking into a run, she turned the corner into Wardour Street, letting out a shriek as she walked slap-bang into Marcus Rand.

  Soho was a village. You were always tripping over people you knew. Dave didn’t even look like Marcus. Not one bit. His skin was a different colour, for a start! She was hepped up, that was all. Being silly. Though she wasn’t a silly person. She hated being called that, being called anything girlish and weak. Dave said he didn’t have anything till three, and they could “bunk off” if she liked, and she said she would like, yes. They went to the Lexington, over near Piccadilly Circus, away from the watering holes where film people drowned their sorrows. Geraldine discovered that she wasn’t as nervous about being spotted by her boss as she thought she might be. She asked Dave to get her a packet of crisps, and he did. She opened the little blue sachet of salt, sprinkled it in the bag, and shook it.

  “He was a bit of a weird character, by all accounts—into drugs, mysticism, all that.” Dave was answering her question about what he knew about Marcus. “Peace and love. Flower power. Maharishi this or that. Spent time all over the world ‘finding himself’ on all that money he inherited. Not short of a bob or two, by all accounts. Reputation for giving good parties. If you remembered them the next day you were doing well type of thing. ‘Far out trips,’ man.”

  Geraldine took a gulp of gin. It was hitting the spot. She was beginning to feel normal again. Relaxed, anyway. Dave always had his ear to the ground as far as the film industry was concerned.

  “Hard task master, mind—even when it was a load of old rubbish like a Pitchfork film. The candlesticks had to be the right period. The magical rituals had to be authentic. They say he always did his homework. Don’t know how he had enough hours in the day, burning the candle at both ends like that. And he wasn’t exactly a monk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dave shrugged.

  “You must mean something.”

  He plucked a crisp from her packet with his finger and thumb. “They say he got a kick from, well...watching. There’s a rumour going round that on that last film, the actors really did, you know...”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. Oh. Or even...oh, oh, oh, oh!” Dave thought he was being funny. She wished he wouldn’t do that. It unsettled her. And now she felt heady again.

  “I think I’d better go back to the office.” She stood up. He did too. Ever the gentleman.

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “Walk me where?”

  “The office.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “It’s no bother. I’m going that way anyway.”

  “There’s no need. You stay here and finish your drink.” He tried to, after she’d left, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  Geraldine thought about that comment of his all the way home on the bus.

  “Oh, oh, oh, oh!”

  Why did he have to say that, and spoil everything? She even lay thinking about it as she tried to go off to sleep. She didn’t know why it preyed on her mind. Was it because she didn’t like that kind of comic smuttiness when it came to sex? She didn’t like any discussion of sex at all, come to think of it. It just made her embarrassed. Did that make her a prude? Did she stand out in the street as if she had a big Puritan hat on, whilst everyone flowed past her in psychedelic colours, free and easy, full of the joys of liberation now that it was the “swinging sixties”? Well, she wasn’t. She wasn’t free, and she certainly wasn’t easy. She felt more like a nun than those rail-thin girls showing off themselves in clothes the size of a handkerchief. Was that the attraction, then, of the kind of odious film Marcus Rand made? Showing men what nuns wore underneath their habits? Showing how easy it was to get those habits off?

  The images came back to her, not in dreams but keeping her awake, projected on the viewing screen of her mind. The devout sisters of Saint Dominic. The votive candles. The unpainted lips parted in prayer. Blood seeping out from regions that should be covered.

  She wanted to open the window because she was burning up, but she didn’t dare get out of bed. She knew the linoleum under the soles of her feet would be cold and sticky, and if she opened the sash even a few inches, what would get in? Insects? A bird? A bat?

  Tossing in her bed, she felt both exposed and trapped, like the girls in that vile film of his. Moonlight shone between the curtains making stripes across the ceiling and walls, bright as a streetlight. Brighter. She wanted to get up to close them, but the man in the corner of the room lurking in the shadows prevented her. She could smell his Eau de Cologne. The same Eau de Cologne she’d detected when he leant towards her over George Runnymede’s desk, furious black eyes staring into her soul.

  He was there. She was certain. You knew when someone was with you in a room, even if you couldn’t see them. Even if your eyes were closed. Even if you were blind. She reached out for something to protect her, some weapon—the Mills & Boon, but it fell off the bedside cabinet onto the floor. She turned over, away from the window, lying on her side.

  She felt the air move as he crept to her bed, felt his knee press down on the side of the bed behind her back, felt his breath on her neck, felt his vampire teeth shine.

  She quickly reached out and clicked on the bedside light, panting.

  His head was down between her legs, chin burrowing, elbows jutting up like the legs of a squatting spider.

  “Geraldine?”

  She had to speak. Oh God. Oh God. Did speak.

  “Just a...bad...dream, Mum. I’m...all right. It was...just a... bad...”

  And it was, she could see now—because the room was empty.

  A dream factory, they called it, she’d read that once, this exciting other world where other worlds were created, built, and taken down by hammering technicians and chippies with pencils tucked behind their ears. Guv’nor this. Guv’nor that. It was quite prosaic the way dreams were made, when you saw it up close. Rooms made to look beautiful for the camera lens, but round the back nothing but a mess of struts and bent nails, botched and quite ugly to behold. The wife that the poor husband hadn’t seen naked until his wedding night, she thought.

  They walked side by side down the corridor of the Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary, hastily re-erected for the reshoots. “Blondes” and “redheads”—that’s what the lights were called—up on the gantry above her head, angled at the plaster walls to emulate the glow from wall-mounted torches, as yet unlit by the props master. It had been a lovely lunch and she was full. Steak and kidney pudding, green beans and new potatoes tossed in mint sauce: very exotic. She never had a large lunch, but Mr Sheinberg had insisted, introducing her to the maître d’ as his “special guest.” The Italian had bowed his head and unfolded the napkin extravagantly before it floated down onto her lap. She liked that kind of old-fashioned politeness. A lot of people her age treated good manners like smallpox.

  “Silence on set, please. We’re going for a take!” The booming voice belonged to a tall man in his forties with a large beer belly. A red light shone on the wall and a bell rang like a fire alarm. Harry Sheinberg handed her a set of headphones attached to the sound recordist’s console. She nervously put it on.

  “Turn over.”

  “Sound rolling.”

  “Camera speed.”

  “Scene forty-one. Reshoot. Take five.” The clapper boy snapped the crocodile jaws of his board and hastily exited the range of the shot.

  “Set.”

  “And...action.”

  She could only see the back of the “flat” in front of her; bare unpainted wood with nail heads and pencil marks showing. Someone had written “9”x7” / DEN”. She didn’t know who or what “den” was. Another squiggle was a question mark. She couldn’t see the scene being enacted in the set on the other side, but she soon realised which one it was, from the guttural, panting breaths. Female, then male.

  She edged to the corner, stretching the cord of the headphones to its limit. From there she could see from behind the camera, which was pointed at the back of a naked woman. No breasts on display from that angle. No blood either. And not much writhing. The writhing was definitely toned down considerably. It was hardly writhing at all.