‘That doesn’t involve your personal emotions’. Edie let a small silence fall, and then she said witheringly, ‘How little you know. And you an actors’ agent’. Russell took a step towards her. He looked down at her. He said, ‘This is fruitless’.

‘If I can’t even offer a lodger more toast without getting jumped on, it probably is’.

He put his hands on her shoulders.

He said, ‘I had just hoped that we could move on from what we’d been doing for close on thirty years to something we’ve never had a chance to do’. He took his hands away. ‘I suppose I was hoping to be married. Pure and simple. Just married’.

Edie reached out and straightened his jacket collar.

She said, ‘Maybe we have different ideas about what being married means’.

‘Not always—’

She looked up at him.

‘But this is now,’ she said. ‘We’re not dealing with always, we’re dealing with now. Which means me going downstairs now, and seeing what else I can stuff into that boy’.

Russell made a huge effort.

‘Well, he’s certainly appreciative—’

‘Yes,’ Edie said with emphasis, ‘he is,’ and then she left the room and went down to the kitchen where she found Lazlo putting plates in the dishwasher and Arsie on the table regarding the butter.

Lazlo straightened up as she came in. He was smiling.

‘That was so great,’ he said. ‘I never eat breakfast. I never thought about it’.

Now, looking at him across the stage, whether it was breakfast that was responsible or not, Edie could see that something had turned a corner in Lazlo. When he made his entrance, in five minutes or so, and stood by the table, fingering the books on it, and saying, ‘“Everything’ll burn, till there’s nothing left to remind me of my father. Here I am, burning up too,”‘ they would all know, Freddie Cass included, that the whole production had moved into another gear.


Sitting on the grass in the park in her lunch hour, Rosa texted her brothers.

‘Mum’s 1st night. All go together?’

She was not quite sure what these texts would produce. Matthew would probably say they should leave it to Russell to organise, and Ben would probably say he was tied up, which meant that if he came he would want to bring Naomi, and he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about exposing Naomi to his family. Whatever their response, however, Rosa had felt a powerful need to contact them over the opening of the play, a need to be included, or rather, in order not to look as if she wanted to be included to be the first to organise something in a way that looked responsible and concerned for family.

It was odd, but for the last week or ten days, Rosa had felt uncomfortably preoccupied by family. She had said carelessly to Kate that it was weird the way her family were all living at present, but her real feelings, she discovered, were far from careless, especially now that Vivien was distracted by her rekindled romance with Max. She was holding him off, she told Rosa, there was no question of him getting what he was asking for right now, but it had introduced an even stronger note of impermanence into Rosa’s situation, a note that now resounded steadily in Rosa’s head, like a drum beat. The thought of Matthew back in his bedroom and Lazlo now ensconced in hers was not exactly uncomfortable, but it did serve to remind her, in a way she didn’t care for, that she too had reverted to a dependency that was hardly something to be proud of. And even if she had a job now and was proving competent at it – what she would have felt like if she hadn’t been able to demonstrate that competency didn’t even bear thinking about – and had made the first, tiny inroad upon her indebtedness, she still had the glum sensation of doing no more than bumping along the bottom. She could produce small bursts of fierce gaiety for Kate, or for Vivien, but she had no faith in them. Any more, really, than she had in the prospect of her family turning to her with relief and delight as the organiser of a happy, conventional family party to see their mother’s first night.

She turned her phone off with a sigh, and dropped it back into her bag. It was better, she had learned in the last few months, not to be distracted by waiting for messages that never came. She could also tell herself, unconvincingly, that she was obeying office rules. She got to her feet. Rather to her manager’s surprise, she would also perhaps obey another rule, and return to work ten minutes before the end of her lunch break, rather than five minutes after it. And she would apply herself to invoicing all afternoon and, at the end of it, if she hadn’t heard from her brothers, she would ring them and establish herself as the prime mover in the suggestion that could only be applauded.


‘Is this a bad moment?’ Vivien said, into the telephone.

There was silence the other end.

Then Edie said, ‘When have you ever considered such a thing?’

‘Well, I thought you might have been rehearsing—’

‘I have’.

‘And be tired—’

‘I am’.

‘Well,’ Vivien said, ‘maybe I could ring a bit later’. ‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at home,’ Vivien said, ‘in my hall, speaking on my landline telephone, sitting on the chair next to my telephone table’.

‘You sound really peculiar’.

Vivien craned up so that she could see herself in the mirror on the opposite wall. She touched the back of her hair.

‘I don’t look it’.

‘Oh good. I look like the wrath of God. These last rehearsals are always completely exhausting. One minute you think you’ve got the play and the next minute you think you’ve lost it’.

‘That,’ Vivien said, ‘was really why I was ringing’.

‘My play?’

‘Yes. I was thinking of coming for the first night’. There was another silence. Then Edie said, ‘What’s brought this on?’ ‘What on—’

‘You’ve never been remotely interested in me and the theatre. If I was more into victim-speak, I’d say you’ve never supported what I do. I suppose it’s having Rosa there that makes you feel you’ve got to show willing’.

Vivien said carefully, ‘Not exactly’.

‘What then?’

‘I wondered,’ Vivien said, recrossing her legs and turning one foot to appreciate how her instep looked in a higher heel, ‘I wondered if I could bring Max. I thought Max and I might come together, and maybe bring Rosa’.

‘You’re joking’.

Vivien decided to keep her nerve. ‘No, not at all. I’d like to come and so would he and we’d like to come together’. ‘But why?’ Edie demanded.

‘Why?’

‘Max doesn’t know a play from a puppet show and this, Vivi, is Ibsen’. Vivien leaned forward. ‘This is different’.

‘What is?’

‘Max. Max and me. It’s all going to be different’.

‘Oh God,’ Edie said in a resigned voice.

‘I want to reintroduce Max to everyone. I want you to stop sniping at him and give him a chance, and I want to remind him that I have a very interesting family’. There was a snort from Edie’s end of the telephone.

‘Russell, at least, has always been very civil to him’.

‘Civil,’ Edie said. ‘What kind of word is that?’

‘I don’t know why you’re being so dismissive. We’re not divorced, you know. He’s still my husband. You’ve known him for twenty-five years’.

‘Exactly’.

‘All I want,’ Vivien said, threading a pencil into the coil of the telephone cable, ‘is to be able to bring my husband to watch my sister as a leading lady next Tuesday in the company of my brother-in-law and my niece and nephews’.

‘Oh, all right,’ Edie said, ‘play happy families if you want to’.

‘You are so ungracious—’

‘Not ungracious,’ Edie said, ‘just realistic’. ‘Edie,’ Vivien said, ‘this feels very real to me’. There was a further pause, and then Edie said, in an altered tone, ‘Are you sure?’

‘About Max?’ ‘Yes’.

‘Yes,’ Vivien said, ‘I’m quite sure. He’s never talked to me the way he’s talked recently. He wants to do things my way, he wants to join my life, if I’ll let him, rather than try to make me join his, the way he used to’.

‘So no more girls and flash cars and daring you to do things you don’t want to do?’

‘No,’ Vivien said.

Edie said, more thoughtfully, ‘D’you think anyone can change that much?’

‘Oh yes,’ Vivien said, ‘I’ve changed, after all. I’m much stronger than I used to be’.

‘Um’.

‘I’ve told Max, Edie. I’ve told him he can only come back if there really is a change, if certain things just never happen again’.

‘Come back?’ Edie said.

‘Yes. He’s asked to come back. I’ve made him wait, of course, but I’m going to say yes’.

‘Vivi,’ Edie said, her voice sharpening, ‘is Max suggesting coming back to the cottage?’

‘I told you. I said he wanted to join my life, not the other way round, and I don’t want to leave the cottage. I like it, and I like Richmond’.

‘So Max is moving back into your virgin bower—’

‘My bedroom. Yes’.

‘And what happens to Rosa, may I ask?’

Vivien slid the pencil out of the telephone cable and began to draw a huge eye on her telephone pad, in profile, with absurdly lavish lashes.

‘Actually, that’s a bit difficult—’

‘She can’t stay there if Max is there!’

‘No’.

‘So you’re throwing her out—’

‘Well,’ Vivien said, adding lower lashes to her eye, ‘I’m going to ask her to find somewhere else. I’m cooking a special supper for her tonight and I’ll tell her then. I’m sure she’ll understand’.

‘You are amazing—’

‘I mean, she’s seen it coming. She’s been so sweet, waiting up for me and being so interested’.