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in the hard daytime light, so washed the foundation off and settled for eyeliner, mascara, lipstick and blusher, then started again without the eyeliner and lipstick. Iwore new white underwear, then changed it to black. I asked myself if it was weird to wear stockings and suspenders under jeans and was unable to see my way to a clear answer.
    After I had spent over an hour in Safeways, and returned again to Safeways to purchase a bag of frozen scampi of which I had neither need nor want, and he still did not appear, I cursed the heavens for conspiring against me. “Your behavior is insane and sick,” my friend Shirley said when I confessed all this. “If I hear the word ‘Oliver’ once more this evening I shall bite your head.”
    Oliver himself became sick. He lay, feverish, in his flat which was vast and airy with white pillars. I tended him. I washed the sheets, made him shepherd’s pie and brought it on a tray with flowers in a little square white vase. Then I changed the pie to grilled trout with watercress, and new potatoes steamed in their skins, because shepherd’s pie is too heavy if you are sick. His mother arrived. She was glamorous and rich and she was just popping by with some champagne. She didn’t have a clue about caring for him, none. He had never known true love and care. But she took to me like nobody’s business. “I’ve never seen him so happy with anyone, my darling,” she whispered to me, in her gravelly Sobranie smoker’s voice, with a conspiratorial wink.
    The meeting was scheduled for six o’clock on Wednesday. At five-thirty on the Tuesday Hermione banged down the phone particularly huffily. “Sir William wants you to go upstairs. Oliver Marchant’s up there. He was in the area, apparently, so he wants to have the meeting now instead of tomorrow.”
    It was a disaster, a complete disaster. I had set aside that whole evening to prepare for the meeting: to go to an aerobics class to clean off those extra few ounces; to have a steam bath and soak myself in scented oils; to prepare my outfits. In fact, had the meeting not been brought forward a day, I might have missed it altogether, since the toiletry preparations and outfit choices might have prevented me leaving the flat at all. As it was, I considered Oliver’s premature arrival one of the worst misfortunes which had ever befallen me. I only just had time to get my makeup on.
    As I walked into the room and saw Oliver sitting there my brain emptied completely and my mouth went dry.
    â€œAh,” said Sir William, “Oliver. This is our representative from the publicity department, ver’ ver’ good, Rosemary ah . . .”
    â€œRichardson,” finished Oliver, smiling in a fatherly way. He got up and shook my hand. At his touch, chemicals began to charge around crazily in my body shouting, “WARNING WARNING, sexual alert, all systems to pulse.”
    â€œHow are you?” said Oliver.
    â€œFine, thanks.” My voice came out unexpectedly high. We were still looking into each other’s eyes.
    â€œGlarrrh,” said Sir William, clearing his throat, “glahum, well . . .”
    â€œSo. Still not turned into a pizza?” said Oliver, which was quite cheeky considering my boss was still standing looking at us going “Glahum.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” said Sir William. “Wantin’ a pizza?”
    â€œMaybe later,” said Oliver to me, but looking back at Sir William.
    During the meeting Oliver did most of the talking and directed most of what he said to me, which went straight to my head, naturally.
    â€œIt’s a phenomenon which fascinates me,” he was saying. “Celebrities have been promoting causes since the First World War, but you watch: this will become huge. In five years’ time no cause will be complete without an accompanying star to promote it.”
    I made an odd noise.