Homecoming by Cathy Kelly Page A

to me, Megan thought, or I’ll cry.
    ‘No,’ she mumbled. Then added: ‘Thanks.’
    She took her coffee and sat at a window table where she could look out. It wasn’t that she wanted to see anything outside. These days, she couldn’t focus on anything for long because all she could see was the past. But at least when she was staring out, people were less likely to recognise her. After years of trying to be noticed, Megan Flynn wanted to disappear.
    Megan loved members’ clubs. The ones where you had to have money and powerful friends to get in. Money wasn’t quite enough, you had to be somebody.
    She loved being somebody. Even the tiring bits – ‘It’s Megan Bouchier! Can I have your autograph, I love all your films’ when she was coming out of the changing rooms in the Oxford Street Top Shop – were wonderful.
    Other stars in her firmament complained about it loudly, but Megan never did.
    According to Carole, her agent, it was due to lack of attention as a child. ‘All the big ones are like that, sweetie. Nobody loved them enough when they were little and, by God, they’re determined to make up for it now.’
    Megan had laughed when Carole said that. ‘Not all of them, surely?’
    ‘Yes, all of them. And stop calling me Shirley. Oh, the old jokes are the best.’
    They’d been in the Victory House Club at the time, drinking dirty mojitos – Carole’s own concoction, which used two types of rum – to celebrate Megan getting the part in The Warrior Queen. Carole’s business partner, Zara Scott, had joined them. Both in their mid-forties, tough and energetic, the two founders of Scott-Baird International worked hard to make sure their agency ranked as one of the most powerful in the business. It had been Zara who convinced the director of Warrior Queen to consider Megan for the part of the Roman princess. He hadn’t wanted her to start with, he was looking for an unknown, not the girl who’d blown the screen away in a Cockney gangster movie where she’d had to wield a sawnoff shotgun. But Zara had persevered until he gave in and screen-tested Megan, and suddenly she was cast: a part many actresses would have killed for, playing opposite the craggy heart-throb Rob Hartnell in a historical epic.
    On their third mojito, they’d moved on from sheer joy to discussing the ins and outs of Rob’s marriage to the Tony and BAFTA-award winning actress, Katharine Hartnell.
    ‘Everybody says Katharine and Rob have one of the strongest marriages in the business,’ said Carole. ‘I never really trust that type of schtick. Sounds like something made up for the papers.’
    ‘No, it’s supposed to be true,’ said Zara. ‘I have it on very good authority. Apparently Rob and Katharine are still crazy about each other. Hard to believe, isn’t it?’
    ‘Well, you wouldn’t kick him out of bed for getting crumbs in it, would you?’ Carole said. ‘He’s like a brunette Robert Redford, only sexier, if such a thing were possible. Lucky Katharine, that’s all I can say.’
    ‘She’s pretty stunning too,’ said Zara. ‘For her age,’ she added.
    ‘Yes, for her age,’ Carole agreed. ‘Why do we say that about women? Nobody ever says a man is good for his age.’
    Zara erupted into laughter. ‘If you’re going to go all soft on me, Carole, then get out of the business, will you?’
    Carole finished her drink and looked around for the bar staff. ‘Sorry, I slipped into nirvana there. Forgot that male actors are “distinguished” when they reach fifty, and female actors are finished, unless they want to play wise old grannies.’
    ‘Or do lots of theatre,’ Megan added.
    ‘Katharine Hartnell has done a lot of theatre,’ Carole went on. ‘I’ve seen her in Hedda Gabler. She was mesmerising, and very beautiful.’
    ‘Yes, she is beautiful,’ said Megan.
    ‘She’s so creamily pale with those Spanish infanta eyes,’ Zara observed. ‘She must have had some work done.’
    They all considered