‘You’re still cross,’ Rosemary says plaintively in the taxi afterward. ‘I can tell. You haven’t forgiven me for being so frightfully late tonight.’

‘No I’m not; yes I have,’ he protests.

‘Really?’ she leans toward him, resting her spun-gold curls against his shoulder.

‘I always forgive you.’ Fred eases his arm around Rosemary; how soft and yielding she is under the folds of wool! ‘I’m in love with you,’ he says, imagining how he will soon demonstrate this.

‘Oh – love,’ she murmurs indulgently but rather dismissively, as if reminded of some childhood pastime: skipping rope, say, or hide-and-seek.

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Yes.’ She raises her head slightly. ‘I suppose I do.’

‘And? But?’

‘And I love you … But it’s not that simple, you know.’ Rosemary sighs. ‘When you’re my age – ’

Fred sighs too, though silently. That he is just twenty-nine and Rosemary thirty-seven – though she hardly looks thirty – is in his opinion unimportant – in the context of their relationship, even meaningless. Of course he knows that women, perhaps especially actresses, worry about their age; but in Rosemary’s case it’s ridiculous. She is beautiful and he loves her; it’s not as if they were planning to get married and raise a family, for Christ’s sake. ‘What difference does that make?’ he asks aloud.