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herself.
    We became friends when she caught me standing in the wings, rooted to the spot, as I watched Brian the baritone bowling around the stage in
The Magic Flute
with a moustache somehow attached to the crotch of his cream trousers. It was the funniest and most dreadful merkin in history, and it was my fault.
    ‘Excellent,’ Bea remarked crisply, watching Brian. ‘I have been wondering where that moustache had gone. Did you pin it to his crotch on purpose?’
    I was aghast. ‘Of course not! I don’t know how it got there. But I do know that this is a disaster.’
    Bea let off a sharp bark of laughter. An assistant stage manager waved at her to be quiet and she ignored him. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
    ‘Sally,’ I replied. ‘Sally the merkin girl. Perhaps you should offer me a job in the wigs department.’
    Bea laughed again and clapped a strong, scented arm around my shoulders. ‘Welcome to the world of the stage,’ she said. ‘This happens all the time. And when it does, it is priceless. Come up to the wigs room after the show. You need a drink.’
    I walked in an hour later and gasped. It was up in the eaves of the opera house and had a stunning view across the West End and right down to the far reaches of south London. The Crystal Palace radio mast blinked at me as I wandered through a bewildering sea of wig and makeup paraphernalia. Kirby-grips, prosthetic disfigurements, hairdryers, glues, brushes. Half-completed beards, makeupcharts, magnifying glasses, scissors and hairspray. A treasure chest of disguises.
    ‘Sit,’ Bea said, opening a mini fridge under one of the tables. I looked round and eventually sat on a stool, rubbing my hands together. They were always cold. ‘Oh, put your hands in an oven,’ she said breezily, gesturing at a little room full of metal stationery cupboards.
    I frowned. ‘Oven?’
    ‘
Sì
. Those are wig ovens. We set the wigs in there overnight. Useful at this time of year,’ she added, pulling what looked like an incredibly expensive cashmere shawl around herself. She showed me an oven full of wigs on head blocks and then propped open the doors of another, which was empty. She pulled up two chairs next to it and handed me an impressive vodka and tonic, which even contained ice and lime wedges. We sat with our backs to the warm oven and looked out over London.
    ‘Sally the merkin girl,’ she said, chinking my glass. ‘
Eccellente
.’
    I chuckled. ‘They’ll probably sack me.’
    Bea snorted. ‘Darling, they’ll probably promote you.’
    ‘Hear hear!’ said a man’s voice. Brian Hurst, the lovely dad-like baritone, had just arrived in the wigs room with the errant moustache in his hand. ‘This is yours, I believe,’ he said pleasantly, handing the moustache to Bea. ‘Great work, Sally,’ he added.
    ‘You two both have very strange accents,’ Bea announced.
    Brian laughed. ‘Ghetto kids, Sally and I. We keep it real.’ He smiled, then left.
    Bea looked delighted. ‘Oh,
favoloso
!’ she exclaimed. ‘A ghetto child! Where are you from?’
    ‘Um, Stourbridge?’
    She looked blank. Of course. Why would a rich Italian woman know where Stourbridge was?
    ‘It’s in the Midlands, near-ish to Birmingham,’ I explained. ‘Southernmost tip of the Black Country?’
    Bea nodded vaguely. ‘Your accent is precious, darling.’ She smiled. ‘I like you.’
    And with that I was taken on.
    We saw each other almost every day for years. Right up until that fateful night in New York after which she disappeared to Glyndebourne and Fi refused to come home.

Scene Four
June, 2011
    ‘But … but you’re a BALLET DANCER!’ I exploded. Fiona glared guiltily at me and then at the line of cocaine that was racked up neatly in front of her. It was so large that it had a nasty, grainy shadow under the bare light bulbs round the mirror.
    I was twenty-eight. I’d been working at the Royal Opera House for seven years and had become deputy wardrobe mistress; the second