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fill it.
    â€˜Was supper all right?’
    â€˜Delicious.’
    He watched her. She hadn’t taken off her narrow, dark-blue overcoat and her pale hair – the twins’ hair – hung down the back of it, its edge cut as levelly as a curtain’s.
    â€˜It was such a revolting night. I had to stand under an umbrella and I’m sure my nose was red. They’ve decided to call the series Night Life . Next week, it’s a travelling soup kitchen in Oxford.’
    â€˜Better tell Kate. Derelicts are her speciality, she’d know where to find them.’
    â€˜I think,’ Julia said quietly, plugging in the kettle, ‘I’d rather find my own. Tea?’
    â€˜No thanks.’
    She looked at him.
    â€˜What’s the matter?’
    â€˜Maurice rang,’ Hugh said.
    Julia took off her coat and folded it over the back of one of the wooden armchairs. She wore a polo-necked jersey and a short skirt and her admirable legs were clad in narrow suede boots. She came over to Hugh and put her arms round him.
    â€˜Oh Hugh. It’s Kevin McKinley, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Not really.’
    Julia said nothing. After a while, Hugh said against her shoulder, ‘My contract’s up for renewal again in the summer.’
    â€˜I know.’
    â€˜Kettle’s boiling—’
    â€˜It’ll switch itself off.’
    â€˜Maurice is a good friend,’ Hugh said, a little heavily.
    â€˜He’s as weak as water,’ Julia said. ‘Only serving time now until retirement.’
    â€˜Still Chairman, sweetie—’
    Julia let go of Hugh, and went over to the kettle. She unhooked, as she passed it, a blue-and-white mug from the dresser and dropped into it a sachet of camomile tea.
    â€˜Maurice won’t let me down,’ Hugh said.
    Julia poured boiling water into her mug.
    â€˜Know something?’ Hugh said. He had straightened on his bar stool and now took a confident swallow of wine.
    â€˜Tell me,’ Julia said, her mind winding itself lovingly about the memory of her evening, about the director’s praise . . .
    â€˜The Kevin McKinleys of this world,’ Hugh said, looking straight at Julia with that directness of gaze so effective on camera, ‘come, and go. Mostly go, having no bottom. But you can be sure of one thing, absolutely sure. And that is that the tide in the affairs of television is swinging back my way.’
    Long after Hugh had fallen asleep, Julia was still wakeful. When she heard the long case-clock in the hall strike two, she realized that it was a serious wakefulness, and slid quietly out of bed and went down to the kitchen.
    The kitchen was warm, even at two in the morning, because of the Aga, the dark-blue Aga which Julia had chosen with such grave care. Hugh had teased her about it; Hugh was one of the few people in her life who had ever teased her, and she had stopped feeling shy about it, had grown even to like it. ‘Miss Immaculate Conception,’ he called her. ‘Miss Perfect Understatement. Miss Shiny Shoes.’ He could still, with light-hearted physical suggestiveness, make her blush.
    She had blushed that evening, out of pure pleasure.
    â€˜Great,’ the director had said to her, when they had finished. ‘I’ve hardly a complaint. What it is to work with someone who uses their intelligence.’ Later still he said, ‘You’ll be going places, Julia.’
    â€˜No,’ she said. ‘No, this is just an experiment. I’m really a mother of two.’
    They had both laughed. He’d said, ‘You mean mothers aren’t people?’ and then he said, ‘See you next week. I’ll look forward to it.’
    Julia sat down in one of the Windsor armchairs and put her slippered feet against one of the Aga’s heavy hot doors. She had not, she reflected, been quite truthful when she told the director that she was experimenting. She was not, by nature, an