My leading man. Doubt and panic rose, silencing me. I could only smile faintly as David beckoned to Maria, who greeted me cheerfully. She was a gaunt woman of about forty, with a calm demeanour and a knowledgeable air. She had, I was immediately convinced, the measure of me and everyone else. “Will you come with me, Miss Hope?” she asked pleasantly.

“Oh please, do call me—”

“To Maria, and Jeanette, and Dennis, and the rest of the film crew,” David interrupted, “you are Miss Hope.”

He said it kindly, but as I followed Maria through a maze of corridors I felt a fool. I was a fool to think I could do any of the things these people expected me to do. Nausea gripped me suddenly. I quickened my pace. “Please, where is the ladies’ room?” I asked Maria urgently. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

Maria waited, ready to help but not fussing, while I retched. But there was nothing in my stomach. “You’d better eat something,” she said. “Come and sit down, and take some deep breaths. You’ll soon be all right.”

Someone brought me a cup of tea and some toast, and then Maria and other members of the costume and make-up team worked on me for a long time, until David was satisfied that they had transformed me into an eighteenth-century French servant. I gazed in astonishment at my reflection. My eyes were enlarged by make-up, my hair thickened by false curls, and my figure was unrecognizably enhanced by a corset under flowing sleeves and a lace apron.

When I walked onto the film set I no longer felt sick. I was Clara Hope in the guise of Eloise. I did not quail at the thought of Mam and Da and Frank, and Mary and Flo, and everyone else in Haverth seeing me on the screen. They would not see me. They would see an actress.

“Clara, you look divine!” exclaimed David. “Aidan, where are you? Here is your Eloise!”

A man in eighteenth-century jacket, breeches and stockings picked his way through the tangle of wires on the studio floor. He was shorter than David, though slim and well-made, with an actor’s expressive eyes. Incongruously, the head that appeared from the collar of his lace-trimmed shirt sported short, twentieth-century hair and a tweed driving cap. “Got a cigarette?” he asked.

In Haverth, only men smoked. “No, I’m afraid not,” I told him.

“So…” He scrutinized me as attentively as if I were a horse he was considering buying. His expression was sombre; under the peak of the cap he was frowning deeply. “You are Clara Hope and I am Aidan Tobias. I’m really Allan Turbin. Who are you?”