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She took a couple of steps backwards, so she could see most of her body reflected in the mirror, too. She liked what she saw, but then she’d known she would. Her breasts were well formed and firm. Her waist was slender. Her legs were sensational.

  On top of all that, she was smart, she thought – so smart that she was at least a day ahead of the other Buds. And that wasn’t because she’d had any unfair advantages over them. All the information that had been available to her had also been available to them – but they simply hadn’t known how to use it.

  It had started with an article in the Buds’ newsletter which, strictly speaking, she should never even have seen.

  ‘The Good Buds put me at the top of their banned list,’ she told her reflection in the mirror. ‘As if that would stop me – as if they thought I wouldn’t find a way round it.’

  Anyway, she’d seen this article in which several writers – several so-called experts on the subject – had been speculating about what Mark would do now that he’d finished filming the latest series of DCI Prince. One of them thought he’d probably take a nice holiday somewhere. Another had suggested he was doing charity work under a false name.

  Fools! Mark was too ambitious to rest. And as for doing charity work, the only charity Mark Cotton cared about was Mark Cotton.

  She’d sat down and thought about what he might be really doing.

  And then it had come to her!

  She was almost sure she was right, but she had to check through her files to be absolutely sure.

  There it was – in a Radio Times interview from 1967.

  ‘Even though I’m now doing a lot of work in television, I’m still very committed to theatre, which is where all good acting springs from,’ Mark told me.

  ‘All successful actors feel they have to say that, but they’re really doing no more than paying lip service to the idea, aren’t they?’ I challenged him.

  He seemed stung by the remark.

  ‘That’s certainly not true in my case,’ he said.

  ‘Then can you tell me when you’ll be going back into live theatre?’

  ‘I can’t tell you exactly when it will be, no. But I can give you a time and place when I definitely will be back on the stage – March 1977, in Whitebridge.’

  And then he told me a story which was too cute to have been made up, about how, in 1957, he and some other young actors had been working in provincial rep and …

  Yes, this was where he’d be – right here in Whitebridge. They hadn’t announced it yet, because the moment they did announce it, the place would be flooded with those crazy Buds. But the fact that the old theatre was being done up was all the proof that was necessary.

  Maggie left the toilet, and looked up and down Whitebridge High Street. There was no sign of Mark’s security people – they probably weren’t even in the town yet – but you could never be too careful.

  She opened her travelling bag and checked in the side pocket to see how much cash she had. Enough for a day or two, but then she would have to go to the bank.

  She wondered how much money she actually still had in her account. She’d got quite a good price for her father’s house – though not as much as she would have done if she hadn’t insisted on a quick sale – but that had been a while ago, and following Mark Cotton was an expensive business. Still, if things worked out as she planned, she wouldn’t be needing money.

  She walked down the High Street, passing the theatre on the other side of the road. It was flanked on either side by a bank.

  That was bad luck, she thought. Banks were hard to break into – for obvious reasons.

  The front of the theatre didn’t look too promising, either. It had a canopy, projecting out over the pavement, which was held up by four slim pillars, and under that were two sets of double doors. Maggie guessed that on the night of a performance only one door in each set would be open, and that both doors would be manned by Mark’s security people, so sneaking in would be almost impossible.

  It had to be the back of the theatre, then.

  She turned down a side alley.

  When she reached the road paralleling the High Street, she saw that she was right. The back of the theatre was a good five yards from the road, and between that and the pavement there was a yard, protected by no more than a chain-link fence. It was being used, for the moment, as a store for the builders’ materials. No doubt once the work was finished, they’d erect a wall, but walls could be scaled if you were determined enough.

  And she was.

  She checked quickly up and down the street to make sure that no one was watching, then walked over to the gate in the fence. It was padlocked, but the padlock was not a thick one, and presented no problems for a woman who always carried a small pair of bolt cutters with her.

  She checked around once more, then snipped through the lock and pushed the gate open. Bricks were stacked high close to the road, which was good, because once she was on the other side of them, she had some cover.

  She examined the back of the theatre with a practised eye. The door – or rather, the gap in which the door would be set – was in the dead centre of the wall. There were windows, but they were much higher up – above the level of the door – and even if there were no bars on them, entering that way would be difficult. Or maybe it wouldn’t … not if …

  ‘Can I ask you exactly what you’re doing there, madam,’ asked a voice behind her.

  She swung round to find herself facing a man in a donkey jacket.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m Bob Green, the site manager,’ the man said. ‘But more to the point, who are you?’

  ‘Jill Thomas,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m from Moreton Village. I’m just in Whitebridge for the day, doing a bit of shopping.’ She looked down at her travel bag. ‘That’s why I’ve got this thing with me.’

  Oh, cunning Maggie, she congratulated herself.

  Would any of those stupid Buds have thought to find out the name of a local village in case they were challenged?

  Would they have thought of a way of explaining the travel bag?

  No, they would not.

  ‘So would you mind telling me, Miss Thomas … it is Miss Thomas, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  ‘Would you mind telling what you’re doing in this yard?’

  ‘I didn’t really know myself,’ Maggie said. ‘I saw the gate was open, and I suppose I was just curious.’

  ‘It was open, you say?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Another man appeared, holding the padlock in his hand.

  ‘Do you know anything about this?’ Green asked, indicating the lock.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  Green seemed far from convinced. ‘Would you mind opening that bag of yours, and letting me have a look inside.’

  ‘I most certainly would mind.’

  ‘Then maybe we’d better call the police.’

  Maggie threw the bag at his feet.

  ‘Go on then, paw through my personal possessions, if you feel you must,’ she said.

  Green unzipped the bag. Watching him examine her sexy underwear, she felt a shudder run through her. Then he closed the bag again, and she let out a sigh of relief.

  ‘Well, did you find any bolt cutters?’ she asked.

  ‘Who said anything about bolt cutters?’ Green asked suspiciously.

  ‘Whoever cut through that lock didn’t use a pair of nail scissors, now did they?’ she countered.

  ‘I thought you said you’d come to town to do some shopping,’ Green said, ‘but this isn’t shopping – it’s what you’d pack if you were going away on your holidays.’

  ‘I don’t have to explain myself to you,’ she said, standing on her dignity.

  ‘No,’ the site manager agreed, ‘but you will have to explain yourself to the police.’

  Desperate times called for desperate measures. She favoured him with her sexiest, most radiant smile.

  ‘Look,’ she said, �
��I’ve made a mistake. I admit it. But if you just overlook it this time, I promise you I won’t bother you again.’

  Green hesitated.

  ‘Aye, all right then,’ he said finally. ‘Get yourself off quick, before I change my mind.’

  She picked up her bag and hurried towards the gate. It had been a wise move to anticipate that something might go wrong and hide the bolt cutters behind the bricks, she thought. But it had been her smile, rather than a lack of physical evidence against her, which had been her salvation. That smile had dazzled him. You could see that it had. If the other man hadn’t been there, he’d probably have begged her to go on a date with him.

  The site manager and the workman watched her as she scurried off down the street.

  ‘I’m surprised you let her off so easy, Mr Green,’ the workman said. ‘It was obvious she was up to something.’

  Green shrugged, embarrassedly. ‘Well, I felt sorry for her,’ he admitted. ‘Legs like a Shetland pony and a face like the back of a bus – she’s got enough problems already without being in trouble with the police.’

  ‘Aye, she’s no oil painting, is she?’ the workman agreed. ‘If she was hung for being beautiful, she’d die innocent.’

  Florrie Hodge had never expected to become a boarding house landlady.

  ‘Your only job in life, my girl, is to look after me,’ her husband Archie had told her, when they married in 1931.

  And it had seemed reasonable at the time. Archie earned good money as a foreman at the rope works, and – much to the envy of Florrie’s school friends – had bought (not rented!) a three-storey house a few doors down from the Whitebridge Theatre.

  And so, for twenty years, she had cooked and cleaned for Archie – washed his clothes and darned his socks – and assumed she was perfectly happy.

  Then there had been an accident at the rope works, and Archie had been killed.

  Suddenly, she was all alone, living in a very big house on a very small pension.

  She could have sold the house, but she couldn’t bear the thought of it, so she reluctantly reached the inevitable conclusion that she would have to take in lodgers. And since the house was so close to the theatre, it had seemed logical that those lodgers should be theatricals, and so – despite her friends’ warnings – she had gone to see the manager of the Whitebridge Rep.

  It took her less than a week to decide she had made the right decision. Actors, it was true, were temperamental and unpredictable. They sometimes even did things she was not quite sure she should approve of.

  But they were interesting!

  She began to insert herself quietly into small corners of their lives. She ran errands for them. She tidied their rooms without being asked. She would even – on occasion – lend them money.

  Now, looking back on her life with Archie, she began to see how boring and sterile it had been, and though she was not exactly glad that he had died, her new life certainly helped to ease the loss.

  And then the Black Day came – the thirtieth of March 1957.

  The theatre closed down. The actors moved on.

  She’d taken in new boarders to fill the gap. They were mostly commercial travellers – vacuum cleaner salesmen and purveyors of ladies’ surgical hose – and while she had nothing against them, they lacked the sparkle of the thespians who had preceded them.

  But now – now! – she had been given her old life back, if only for two weeks. She would be a theatrical landlady again – and not just that, but the landlady to exactly the same company who had lodged with her in 1957.

  She was over the moon!

  The taxi driver who dropped them off at Euston station said Sarah looked familiar, and wondered if he’d seen her on the telly.

  ‘No, it couldn’t have been me,’ Sarah said sweetly. ‘I’m a vicar’s wife, from Sidcup.’

  Ruth waited until the taxi had driven off, then said, ‘Why did you tell him that?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to waste my time talking to someone who only vaguely recognizes me,’ Sarah replied, with a slight edge of hardness to her voice. ‘If he’d been a real fan, it would have been different.’

  They met some ‘real’ fans on the station itself – a couple of small kids who had seen Sarah as the Kindly Witch on Friday Corner, and, after grabbing her with their sticky hands, shot a number of unanswerable questions at her while their parents looked fondly on.

  ‘God, I hate kids,’ Sarah said, as they climbed on to the train. ‘I’m so glad I never had any of my own. I expect you feel the same way.’

  ‘Not really,’ Ruth said.

  As the train pulled out of the station, Sarah looked at her watch and said, ‘Twenty minutes late – as usual.’

  ‘Why are you in such a hurry to get to Whitebridge?’ Ruth asked. ‘The rest of the cast won’t be there for another two days.’

  ‘I thought it would be good to get you away from Mother’s house as soon as possible,’ Sarah told her.

  ‘That’s not it,’ Ruth said sharply. ‘If you’d just wanted to get me away, you’d have suggested that we went to the seaside for a couple of days. So what’s the real reason?’

  ‘That is the real reason,’ Sarah insisted, ‘although,’ she continued, reading the expression of disbelief on her sister’s face, ‘I will admit that I need to do some research before the rest of them arrive.’

  ‘Research? How can you possibly research The Spanish Tragedy in Whitebridge?’

  ‘It’s not for the Tragedy – it’s for that juicy job I’ve landed.’

  ‘And you still haven’t told me what that juicy job is.’

  ‘I will – when the time is right.’

  ‘You’re being enigmatic again – and it’s very annoying,’ Ruth said.

  Sarah smiled. ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘So if you won’t tell me about the research, will you answer another question that’s been bothering me?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You told me that you’re going up to Whitebridge just for the fun of it. Is that right?’

  ‘Maybe fun’s not quite the right word. Maybe what I’m expecting is on an entirely different level to mere fun, but – for the sake of convenience – let’s say that’s why I’m going there.’

  ‘So what I don’t see is how being in close proximity to Mark Cotton for two weeks could possibly be your idea of fun.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘After I chucked Mark, he started going out with you, didn’t he?’

  Sarah sniffed. ‘Thanks for reminding me that he only picked me up on the rebound. That makes me feel just wonderful.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that,’ Ruth said. ‘But you did start going out with him, didn’t you?’

  ‘You know I did.’

  ‘And when he threw you over for Lucy Cavendish, a few weeks later, you were devastated.’

  ‘I … I was a little upset.’

  ‘You were devastated,’ Ruth repeated firmly. ‘He was your first love and you were only seventeen. So don’t try to tell me you were just a little upset – because I sat up with you night after night, while you cried your eyes out. For heaven’s sake, Sarah, you even talked about leaving the company – and if the company hadn’t left us instead, I’m sure that’s exactly what you would have done.’

  ‘Perhaps I did take it badly at the time, but that’s all water under the bridge, now.’

  ‘The thing is, I don’t think that’s true,’ Ruth persisted. ‘I don’t think you ever quite got over him. So here’s my question. Why are you putting yourself through it all over again? Why are you so willing to spend two weeks with the man who broke your heart?’

  The enigmatic smile was back on Sarah’s face. ‘We’re playing in a revenge tragedy, aren’t we?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, that’s why I’m going to Whitebridge – to get my revenge.’

  Paniatowski put her mouth close to the grille and said, ‘There are times when I hat
e my baby.’

  ‘And do you think you’re the first woman to feel that?’ the priest on the other side of the grille asked. ‘Many young women suddenly realize how much freedom they’ll be giving up by having a child, and start to resent that child a little. But once your baby is born – once you hold him in your arms …’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with losing my freedom – and the feeling I get is nothing as petty as resentment,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But you already knew that, didn’t you – because this is not the first conversation we’ve had on the subject. So why do you persist in playing the same old game – trotting out the same old line?’

  ‘I’m your priest, Monika, not your suspect. And, in case you haven’t noticed, this is not an interview room – it’s a confessional.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Your baby is a gift from God,’ the priest told her.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Paniatowski exploded. ‘It’s a gift from three drunken bikers who raped me in the woods.’

  ‘A gift from God,’ the priest repeated. ‘And when he is born, you must remember that and forget the rest.’

  ‘But what if I can’t love him?’ Paniatowski sobbed.

  ‘You must never give up trying,’ the priest told her. ‘But if you can’t – and there are some parents who, however hard they try, can find no love in their hearts – then you have the consolation of knowing that God will love the child, and that will be enough.’

  ‘Will it?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘Are you sure of that?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘But how can you be so certain?’

  ‘Because God loves me,’ the priest said. ‘I have no close relatives, no wife and no children – but God loves me, and that is all I need.

  But was it? Paniatowski wondered. If the love of God was all that the priest needed to sustain him, then why could she smell his whisky-soaked breath even through the grille?

  FOUR

  18th March 1977

  The room was in a private hotel close to Euston station. Mark Cotton had booked it, and Mark Cotton had paid for it, so when he’d asked the others to meet him there, prior to travelling up to Lancashire, most of them had come.