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had to force myself to move, to take a sip of the wine. Still, it was there between us. Not just the memory. The wanting. Again.
    ‘Business,’ he said, putting his glass down, as if he was talking to himself. ‘Business.’
    I smiled brightly in response. ‘You obviously know the studio has offered me another contract.’
    ‘And you’ve already told me you’re not eager to accept.’
    ‘No. It’s not that. I—it’s a really good deal.’
    ‘To do more of the same. You and Randolph Farrell. The dream couple, on- and off-screen. Is that written into your contract?’
    ‘No, of course not. It’s just—you know, the publicity machine. Actually, it suits me. Us. We both need a cover. Randolph because he’s in love with a married woman. Me because everyone expects me to love someone.’
    ‘What happens when you really do fall for someone?’
    ‘I won’t.’
    ‘One of your rules?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes.’
    He smiled. Sort of. ‘One of mine, too, as it happens, only I don’t fake it.’
    ‘You don’t have to,’ I said indignantly. ‘You’re a man, and you’re the kind of man who has women falling at his feet, I’ll bet. People expect a man like you to play around. It’s different for me. You said it yourself, they expect me to live my life the way I make my living, and I won’t, so I fake it.’
    ‘What makes you so sure you won’t?’
    ‘I just won’t,’ I said. He looked at me then, waiting. It was none of his business. I could have told him so, but I didn’t. I didn’t think about why I didn’t, not then. ‘It screws you up,’ I said, ‘okay? You meet someone, life’s a peach, you get used to life being a peach, and it changes you, it makes you all soft and you think that’s a good thing, but then you lose them and because you’ve let yourself get all soft, losing them destroys you. You can’t go back to what you were, so you have to make do with what’s left, and if that means huddling inside your empty, wrinkled peach skin all alone, with no room for the other people that love you…’
    I stopped, digging my knuckles into my smarting eyes. I’d said far too much. He’d seen much more than I’d said. I got up, mumbling something about the chicken, even though I knew perfectly well I’d switched the stove off. When I came back, I had myself under control. Thought I had.
    ‘Was it the war?’ Lewis asked.
    ‘Of course it was the war. Everything was the war. But it wasn’t me I’m talking about, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was my sister. Her husband was killed.’
    ‘It was a real bastard, that war,’ he said.
    I’d been waiting, holding my breath, readying myself for the questions, already preparing to tell him what I should have said at the start, that it was none of his business. ‘Yes, it was.’
    I waited again, still tense. Lewis was frowning. What was he thinking? I had no idea. When he spoke again, I got the impression he’d been going to say something else, but I didn’t know him well enough to be sure. ‘We have a lot in common, Poppy Edwards,’ he said with a strange little smile. ‘We’re more alike than you think. But you don’t need a patsy. Let Randolph sort his own mess out.’
    ‘It is a mess, and I doubt it will ever be sorted out. That woman makes him so happy when she’s not making him miserable.’
    ‘And she’s married. And she’s probably going to stay married as long as he lets her string him along.’
    Which was something I’d tried to say to Randolph myself, though not quite so bluntly. ‘Right now it suits us, and it’s none of your business.’
    ‘It will be, if you sign with me. I’m not interested in signing Farrell. And I know, because of last night, that you’re not interested in him, either.’
    And just like that it was back again, that thing between us. Bodies. We were bodies as well as minds. Bodies with desires very different from what our minds wanted. ‘I thought we agreed to forget last night.’
    ‘I