She stumbled along the road. The mist was closing in, filling her lungs with its viscosity.
She pulled at his sweater as she ran, tugging it over her head, hurling it into the fuchsia bushes, until she was just in the long-sleeved vest she’d worn to stop it scratching. She’d left everything behind. Her purse. Nearly all her clothes.
She stopped at the crossroads, a crooked signpost giving her a choice.
A car drew up. It was the make-up girl.
‘Get in, sweetheart.’ Juno just hugged herself tighter. ‘Come on! You’re miles from anywhere and you’ll catch your death. I’ll take you back to my place.’
The girl made her retrieve the sweater from the bushes, then went to fetch Juno’s things from her digs. She put Juno to sleep on her sofa with a spare blanket. Juno didn’t sleep, but got up early to catch a bus to the airport where she got the first flight back to London so she didn’t have to travel with the rest of them. She hid in her flat for days, until Milton came to dig her out. He’d got the whole sorry story from someone else on the shoot. She was mortified, humiliated and swore she would never leave the flat again.
She was gaunt and had lost her sparkle. She couldn’t get the chill out of her bones from getting soaked when she ran away and she feared she would never feel warm again. Her fingers had chilblains, but the pain of them was nothing compared to the empty gnawing inside her.
She’d been living off the money from The Silver Moon. She’d been frugal but now there was nothing left. For a moment, panic overruled pain. But actually, she decided, she didn’t care. She would starve to death in her flat. At least then the horrible feeling would go.
‘Do you want my advice?’ asked Milton. ‘Go and do a secretarial course. Everyone needs a good typist. Even me. Actually, especially me. Go and learn typing and shorthand and I’ll give you a job.’
She stared at him. She supposed he was being kind, but did he know what he was suggesting? One moment she was on a trajectory to stardom and had found love. Now she had come crashing down and her agent wanted her to be his typist?
She had no fight left in her to tell him what she thought. She should be screaming at him to get her back in the loop, to get her some auditions. But she could see her reflection in the mirror on the wall. Gone was the luminous bombshell with the glowing skin and the eyes filled with promise. In her place was a bag of bones, with lacklustre hair and a blank gaze. Who would employ her looking like this?
‘And for heaven’s sake,’ added Milton. ‘Eat something. In fact, come for lunch with me.’
He took her to a tiny Italian on the corner and filled her up with pasta and bread and creamy pudding.
She felt a little stronger when she finished. Starving was a miserable business. So miserable that she did as Milton suggested and signed up for a secretarial course. She was guaranteed employment at the end of six weeks, as long as she attended every lesson and practised every night. And she went back to being plain June Agnew.
She’d done all right for herself. She had gone back to work for Milton. She’d become his right-hand girl, and then realised that there were many Miltons who needed a right hand in the office to organise their lives, so she left him to set up her own agency, providing top-notch administrative staff and the agency had grown and grown. She’d retired three years ago, handing the reins over to two of her sons. She had plenty of money, plenty of friends, and was as happy as anyone had the right to be.
She had unfinished business though.
She looked back down at the press release and it hadn’t changed. She could remember those eyes burning into her as if it were yesterday. She hadn’t really entertained the thought that she might ever see him again. Of course, she might have passed him on a street in London, or spied him across a crowded restaurant one day. But he’d fallen right into her lap. She wouldn’t sleep between then and now.
For heaven’s sake, she told herself. You’re not a skinny little wannabe actress any more, and he’s an old man. Get over yourself.
Fourteen
It had taken Andrea a few weeks to plough through all the paperwork and get a clearer picture of the kind of shape Nightingale Books was in financially. Several more worms had crawled out of the can.
Emilia had unearthed a pile of pro-forma invoices that didn’t seem to have been paid. They were from some of their main suppliers. She wouldn’t be able to order any more books until she’d paid them.
Then a credit card bill had arrived with the morning post. She opened it and was horrified by the balance. There were no purchases for that month, of course, but neither had any minimum payments been made, because Emilia hadn’t been aware of the card’s existence. It hadn’t been in Julius’s wallet.