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that Don had given her for her fortieth (which he hadn’t really been able to afford) nor the silver Cartier watch he’d given her for her fiftieth (which she knew he couldn’t really afford either) nor the beautiful tennis bracelet he’d just given her yesterday for her fifty-second.
    Nor the week at Grayshott Hall health farm that her two sons Julius and Oliver had clubbed together to buy her – fabulous indulgence but did they think she was overweight or something?
    Whatever. Hilary Dupont was beyond caring, she was walking on air, all twelve stone of her, floating out the front door, jangling Nero’s lead, proclaiming to herself, ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? A handbag?’
    Peacehaven, the suburb where Hilary lived, was part of the eastern urban sprawl of Brighton, a wide cross-hatch of residential streets stretching back from the cliff-top coastal road to the edge of the rural South Downs, densely filled with bungalows and detached houses all built since the First World War.
    A wide expanse of farmland began just one row of houses back from Hilary’s street. Any neighbour chancing to glance out of their window shortly before ten o’clock on this cloudy June morning would have seen an overweight but strikingly handsome blonde woman, dressed in a smock over a spotted leotard, her feet clad in green gumboots, talking and gesticulating to herself, being followed by a rather plump black Labrador zigzagging from lamp post to lamp post, and pissing on each one.
    Hilary turned left at the end of the street, following the road round, warily watching her dog for a moment as a double-glazing delivery van roared by, then she crossed the road, went up to a gate that led through into a field of brilliant yellow rape, and called out to Nero – who was about to do a dump in someone’s driveway – in a stentorian voice that could have silenced the whole of Wembley stadium without a microphone, ‘Nero! Don’t you dare! COME here!’
    The dog raised his head, saw the open gate, trotted joyfully towards it, then broke into a loping sprint and was off, away up the hill, and lost to her sight among the rape in seconds.
    She closed the gate behind her, then repeated yet again, ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? A handbag?’
    She was glowing, she was on fire; she’d already called Don, Sidonie, Julius, Oliver and her mother telling them the news, the incredible news, the best news ever: the phone call, just half an hour ago, from the Southern Arts Dramatic Society, telling her she had got the part of Lady Bracknell, the top role! The star!
    After twenty-five years of amateur acting, mostly for the Brighton Little Theatre Group, always hoping to be discovered, finally she had a real break! The Southern Arts Dramatic Society was semi-professional, putting on an open-air play every summer, first on the ramparts of Lewes Castle, then touring all over the UK, right down to Cornwall. It was famous; it would get reviewed in the press; she was bound to get noticed! Bound to!
    Except, oh God, the nerves were already starting to kick in. She had been in the play before, years ago, in a minor role. But she still knew chunks of it by heart.
    Striding off up the hill, around the edge of the field, thrusting with her arms as she spoke, she proclaimed, at the top of her voice, what she considered one of the most dramatic and funny lines of the play. If she could get that line right, she would have captured the character. ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? You were found in a handbag?’
    An airliner circled low overhead, positioning itself for its final approach to Gatwick, and she had to raise her voice a little to hear herself. ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? You were found in a handbag?
    ‘A handbag, Mr Worthing? You were found in a handbag?’
    She carried on walking, repeating the line over and over, each time changing the inflexions and trying to think who else she could phone and tell. Only six weeks to the opening night, not long. God, so much to learn!
    Then