At Clarence Keep, Phyllis Chandler was applying one last coat of lipstick as she prepared to leave. She was standing in her bedroom, which was part of the servants’ quarters she shared with her son. The entire east wing was their domain, separated from the rest of the house by thick walls and solid doors. A service staircase led up from behind the kitchen to an area with two bedrooms, a shared bathroom, a living room with a sofa and a television set and a second, small kitchen. It was separated from the main house by an archway with a heavy velvet curtain drawn across when Miss James was in residence. Her bedroom was immediately on the left, allowing Phyllis easy access when it was time to change the linen or to clean. In fact, the whole arrangement was perfectly satisfactory. The Chandlers had plenty of space and comfort. But they were tucked away out of sound, out of sight.

She was worried that she was going to be late. She had told her sister, Betty, that she would be with her at seven o’clock but it was almost six now and of course they couldn’t leave until Miss James got back. They needed the car. Eric was in the living room, where he had been watching The Appleyards on television. It was a programme for children, really, but of course it was his favourite. Outside, she heard the sound of a car slowing down. That might be her! Phyllis made sure her hat was in place and went out to see.

A narrow corridor ran all the way from the back of the house to the front with a window at each end. It was lined with pictures, photographs of Tawleigh: the lighthouse, the beach, the hotel. Phyllis was heading for the front window, which gave a good view of the drive, but even as she came out of the bedroom, something caught her eye. She had noticed it before. She had always prided herself on a strict attention to detail, whether it was the crimps in a pie crust or the way a towel hung on a rail.

Something was wrong.

Frowning, puzzled, she edged towards it, unaware that the living-room door was open and, on the other side, Eric was watching her every move.

*

Francis Pendleton had also heard the car. He looked out of the window for the eleventh or twelfth time but saw nothing. Where was Melissa? She had said she would only be thirty minutes with the Gardners, but surely she had left more than an hour ago? She should have been back by now. He glanced at his watch, a Rolex Oyster Elegante that she had bought him on their first anniversary. It was five fifty-five. If he waited too much longer, he might be late for the performance of The Marriage of Figaro in Barnstaple. But that didn’t bother him. He wasn’t in the mood for opera. He needed to see Melissa.

He went into the living room and took a cigarette out of a silver box that had been given to her by the studio executives at MGM. The studio’s logo was engraved on the lid, along with its famous motto: Ars Gratia Artis. Clarence Keep was littered with movie memorabilia, awards and gifts. Even the cigarette lighter that he now flicked open had been used by Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

As Francis smoked, his eyes were drawn to the cluster of framed black-and-white photographs on the piano. Melissa in Los Angeles. Melissa with Walt Disney. Melissa on the set of Hostage to Fortune. This last picture reminded him of the first time they had met. She had been the star. He had taken the job as her assistant, not because he needed the money but because he thought it would be fun to see how a film was made.

When Melissa had walked into the room, he had been transfixed. He knew her face, of course, like everyone in the country, but he was utterly unprepared for the beauty and serenity that she radiated in real life. It wasn’t just the perfect skin, the dazzling blue eyes, the playful smile. It wasn’t even the self-confidence that came from being admired across the world. She was, quite simply, adorable and he had known immediately that despite the inequality of their respective positions and the ten-year age gap between them, he would not rest until he had made her his own.

He had quickly learned what she did and did not like. Floris orange blossom soap in the bathroom, roses but never carnations, du Maurier cigarettes, no unauthorised photographers, an umbrella to be held for her when it was raining. Rationing had still been in full force in 1946, but with help from her American agents and from the studio, he had been able to find anything she wanted. All she had to do was mention it. And Melissa had quickly learned that she could ring him at any time of the day or night. He would always be there for her.

Their relationship had changed when Melissa had realised that her enthusiastic young assistant was much more than she had suspected. He was actually a member of the British aristocracy, the second son in a family that could trace its roots back to the Middle Ages. Francis hadn’t told her this himself but he had made sure that she found out. He remembered coming with her to Clarence Keep after she had seen it advertised. The two of them had been shown around together and all the time he had dreamed that it would be a home not just for her but for both of them.

Francis tapped his cigarette against a crystal ashtray that had been a birthday from the director of The Moonflower. Not his birthday, of course. It was remarkable how little there was in the house that belonged to him. Looking around the room at the piano she had bought for a fortune but which she only occasionally played, the books she read but never finished, the photographs in which only she appeared, he could almost have been a stranger here. By marrying her, he had got everything he wanted. But it had come at a price. He had become, to all intents and purposes, invisible.

It didn’t trouble him. Francis Pendleton understood that if you choose to stand too close to the sun you can’t complain when you become nothing more than a silhouette. Even his surname had been taken from him. She was always Melissa James and his family had given up on him. ‘You’re marrying an actress!’ It should have been impossible to put so much scorn into four simple words but his father, Lord Pendleton, had easily managed it. He hadn’t been surprised by that either. His father was a self-opinionated snob who had never gone to the cinema and who wouldn’t have dreamed of letting a television set into the ancestral pile he called home. Faded, leather-bound copies of Dickens and Smollett were more his style. Culture, not entertainment. The words could have been part of the family crest. He had made it very clear that Francis would never inherit anything from him. His future was entirely in Melissa’s hands.

And then, over the last year, everything had gone wrong. The financial worries had crept in like a flood tide in the full moon, silent and relentless. The cost of restoring Clarence Keep had been close to ruinous. The hotel was losing money. Melissa spent much too much time with her so-called financial adviser, Algernon Marsh, and none of his investment schemes had so far returned a penny. Worse than all this, her own market value seemed to have shrunk. Nobody wanted to cast her. She wasn’t meeting Alfred Hitchcock. He was auditioning her. There was a distinct difference and it would never have happened five years ago.

Francis ground out the cigarette. On an impulse he got up and went over to a bureau that stood against the far wall. He opened the bottom drawer, which was filled with old bills and invoices that Melissa never looked at – which was why he had hidden the letter there. He took it out now, a single sheet of paper that had been crumpled into a ball and then smoothed out. It was written in the navy blue ink that Melissa always used, her handwriting immediately recognisable. Francis had read it so many times that he knew every word by heart, but still he forced himself to read it again.

13th February

My darling darling,

I can’t go on living this lie any more. I simply can’t. We have to be brave and tell the world our destiny and what we mean to each other, even though we recognise the hurt it will cause to those who are closest to us. Francis knows that it’s over between him and me. I want to go back to America, back to my career and it’s a journey that I want to make with you. I know how you feel but

She had crossed out the last sentence, her nib leaving a series of blots as it scratched across the paper, and then she had decided to stop altogether, crumpling up the page and throwing it into the bedroom waste-paper basket, which was where Francis had found it. Why hadn’t she torn it up? Perhaps it had always been her hope, subconscious or otherwise, that he would read it and discover the truth. Melissa often behaved as if she were living in one of those cheap dramas she had made when she was starting her career. Even the language of the letter, the mention of destiny and that repeated ‘darling’ had the flavour of melodrama.

Holding the letter, Francis found himself almost struggling to breathe. He still hadn’t told her he had found it. There were so many moments when he had been tempted, but he was afraid of the consequences. He wanted to know who she had written it to, but at the same time it seemed completely unimportant. It was the thought of losing her that consumed him, the emptiness of a life without her.

He knew, though, that he couldn’t put it off any longer. He had to confront her. Even now, he thought it might not be too late. He would do anything to keep hold of her.

Anything.

*

Seven thirty in the evening.