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  ‘Don’t worry, you’re home now.’ A woman’s voice. She had read his mind, and she looked like an angel. He fought against the blackness as he felt himself drift away. He didn’t want to lose sight of the vision. An angel, with hair so fair it formed a halo around her face. ‘You’re home,’ she said again, ‘you’re safe. We’re taking you to the Royal Victoria Hospital at Netley.’ Her voice was gentle and came from very far away. And then she smiled. He held on to the voice and the vision as they lifted him into the ambulance. His fear and uncertainty had left him now. He was saved, the angel had told him so. ‘You’re safe,’ she’d said, and he believed her.

  BOOK ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Nora – can I never be anything more than a stranger to you?’

  ‘Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would have to happen.’

  ‘Tell me what that would be!’

  ‘Both you and I would have to be so changed that … Oh, Torvald, I don’t believe any longer in wonderful things happening.’

  ‘But I will believe in it. Tell me! So changed that …?’

  ‘That our life together would be a real wedlock. Goodbye.’

  She left, and he sat, burying his head in his hands.

  ‘Nora! Nora!’ He looked around. ‘Empty. She is gone.’ Hope flashed through his mind. ‘The most wonderful thing of all …?’ Then he heard the sound of the door below as it closed.

  The final performance of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, received a standing ovation. The award-winning production had played for over a year to capacity houses for each of its 431 performances, and its success was in most part due to the young actress who had taken London’s West End by storm. 2003 was certainly Samantha Lindsay’s year.

  In the centre of the lineup, hands clasped with her fellow cast members, Samantha walked downstage to take the final of the curtain calls. There’d been twelve in all. She’d accepted the bouquet from the theatre manager, taken several solo calls and now, as the cast bowed, she glanced to the wings and gave a barely perceptible nod to the stage manager. He acknowledged her message, the lights dimmed, the cast left the stage and the audience was still loudly applauding as the house lights came up.

  Backstage, cast and crew hugged each other affectionately, some with tears in their eyes, and Deidre, who played the maid, openly cried. It had been a long run and a very happy company; they would miss each other. A celebratory supper had been arranged for the entire cast, but for now they continued to mingle in the wings, savouring the moment. Alexander embraced Samantha.

  ‘My darling doll-wife,’ he said, ‘you’ve been a glorious Nora, it’s been wonderful.’ Then, when he’d kissed her on both cheeks, he couldn’t help adding, ‘But why on earth did you call a halt? We could have taken at least another half dozen calls.’

  Sam recognised it for the genuine complaint it was. ‘Always leave them wanting more,’ she replied innocently, ‘isn’t that what they say?’

  He appeared not to hear her. ‘We took fifteen on the last night of Lady Windemere, and that only ran for a hundred performances, we could probably have stretched it to twenty tonight and created a record.’ Alexander had never approved of the fact that the cast had been directed to take their curtain calls from Samantha. The girl gave a stellar performance in the role of Nora, he agreed, but she was far too inexperienced in theatre etiquette. In West End theatre etiquette, in any event.

  ‘Oh well, too late now,’ Sam shrugged. Alexander’s litany of complaints had become water off a duck’s back to her. He was a fine actor and they’d worked well together, although she’d had to overcome his open antipathy in the early days. Alexander Wright had been unaccustomed to working opposite a virtual unknown. However, the reaction of the preview audiences and the opening night reviews had altered his opinion and, like everyone else, he’d eventually succumbed, albeit begrudgingly, to Samantha’s natural charm and lack of pretension.

  ‘She’s a dear,’ he’d say to those who asked what Samantha Lindsay was really like – and, to his secret chagrin, there were many who did. ‘Quite the little innocent really.’ He always managed to make it sound simultaneously affectionate and patronising.

  Sam was not innocent. She was unaffected certainly, but she had realised that it made things easier for everyone if she simply pandered to the actor’s ego.

  ‘I’m quite sure you’re right,’ she now added as she noticed the familiar scowl, ‘and yes it’s been wonderful.’ She hugged him genuinely. ‘I’ve loved working with you, Alexander, you’ve taught me a lot.’ She meant it. She’d learned a great deal from him and she was grateful. Besides, Alexander couldn’t help being Alexander. What was the saying? A pride of lions, a gaggle of geese and a whinge of actors. After thirty dedicated years in the theatre, Alexander Wright was a product of his profession.

  Recognising her sincerity, he replied with the dignity befitting such a compliment. ‘Thank you, my dear. I feel it’s one’s responsibility to encourage young actors.’

  He was touched by her remark, she could tell, and was about to embark upon one of his many, and interminable, stories of past productions, so she pecked him on the cheek. ‘You have, and I’m very grateful.’ She smiled. ‘And now I have to get the slap off.’ She grabbed the bouquet of flowers which the assistant stage manager was patiently holding for her and headed for her dressing room. ‘See you at supper,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’m bloody starving!’

  Alexander shook his head with exasperated fondness. She was so ridiculously Australian.

  Reginald waited ten minutes before tapping on Samantha’s dressing-room door. If it had been another of his female clients he would have waited at least half an hour, but it took Sam only ten minutes to ‘get her slap off’, as she called it. And, as she never ate before a performance, she was always ravenously hungry after the show and impatient to leave. Furthermore, she preferred to eat at one of the small cafes where the food was good, rather than somewhere one went to be seen. Reginald had found Samantha refreshing from the outset, although it had taken him some time to adjust to being called ‘Reg’. He accepted it now and they’d become close friends.

  ‘Reg!’ Sam was minus her stage makeup but still in a stocking cap and robe at her dressing-room mirror when the dapper little Englishman entered. She jumped up, wig in hand, and hugged him. ‘Take a seat,’ she said, ‘won’t be a tick.’ She sat, dumped the wig on the wig stand, pulled off the cap and brushed her fair hair, normally curly and framing her face, back into a severe ponytail. Nothing else you can do with wig hair, she always maintained. She refused to start from scratch and coax back the curls, it took too much time and after a show food was far more important. ‘We hung around backstage saying goodbyes,’ she explained, ‘God only knows why. Everyone’s coming to supper.’ She jumped up once again and started taking off her robe.

  ‘I’ll wait outside.’ Reg rose.

  ‘Don’t be silly, I’m perfectly respectable.’ She dropped the robe. ‘Look! Thermals!’

  Reg smiled but still discreetly averted his gaze. Even in a winter vest and thigh-length, cotton stretch knickers she looked sexy, lean and lithe, with the body of a healthy young animal. He found it a little confronting and he’d much rather have waited outside.

  Sam dressed quickly; she hadn’t meant to embarrass him. She’d deliberately donned the thermals before he’d arrived in order not to. What was it with the English? she wondered. Australian actors stripped openly in dressing rooms, but even the English acting fraternity seemed prudish, and her immodesty had often been frowned upon.

  ‘Did you check that the beer’s arrived?’ she asked as she zipped up her cord trousers and grabbed her jumper. She’d arranged the delivery of two cartons of beer for the stage-hands who had to strike the set and ‘bump out’ in preparation for the next production.

  ‘Yes, they’re holding it at the stage door. The doorman was most amused that it was Foster’s.’

  ‘Tho
ught I’d make a bit of a statement. All respectable, you can look now.’ She grabbed her overcoat from the peg on the door. ‘Come on, I’m starving.’

  ‘We’ll be the first there.’

  ‘Goody, we’ll grab the best table.’

  So much for making the grand late entrance, Reginald thought, and so much for dolling herself up. He cast a circumspect glance at the corduroys. They were going to the Ivy after all, the best table had been booked for the past two months, and even on closing night she was still one of the hottest things in town. ‘No need to rush,’ he said with a touch of irony, ‘Nigel’s minding the table for us.’

  For the first time Sam drew breath. ‘I didn’t know Nigel was coming.’

  ‘Sam,’ he said patiently, ‘I told you last week he needs to do this interview before you leave for Sydney.’ Nigel was the publicist Reginald employed to promote a number of his top clients and he knew Sam didn’t like the man. Which was understandable, most people didn’t, but Nigel was very good at his job. ‘He says you’ve been avoiding meeting him for the past five days.’

  ‘I’ve had to move out of the flat, for God’s sake,’ she protested, ‘I’ve been organising the furniture removal, I haven’t had time!’

  ‘Then you should have made time.’ Sam could be infuriating on occasions. ‘You’ve won the Olivier Award, for God’s sake! You have to be fair dinkum about this.’ It was a term she’d taught him as a joke, laughing at the way he said it in his pukka English accent, but it usually proved most effective. ‘You can’t just disappear from London. We need to keep you hot. We need to make the industry aware that you’re about to star in a Hollywood movie.’

  ‘I know, I know. But it’s the last night!’

  It appeared for once that ‘fair dinkum’ wasn’t going to work. ‘Fine,’ Reg snapped, ‘I’ll tell him to come to Fareham then, shall I?’ She glared back at him, and her hazel eyes held a glint of defiance, but Reginald was fully prepared to stand his ground. ‘He’ll be happy to make the trip, I’m sure.’

  ‘All right, you bastard, you win.’ She gave a resigned shrug and he knew that she wasn’t really angry, just as he knew that the language was not intentionally insulting. Sam’s voice held no nasal twang and was not particularly Australian, but her behaviour certainly was and Reg had grown to love her for it. She tossed her scarf around her neck. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Lippy,’ he reminded her. Then, whilst she slashed the lipstick across her mouth, he added, ‘And a touch of eyes.’ She glared at him once again in the mirror. ‘Well, at least some mascara,’ he said. ‘It’s the Ivy, Sam, and there’s bound to be press photographers sniffing around.’

  ‘I don’t know why we’re not going to Zorba’s,’ she grizzled, ‘the food’s much better.’

  ‘Because the others want to go to the Ivy, that’s why. Stop being such a prima donna.’

  It was a biting night, unusually cold for so early in September, and as they walked up the broad Haymarket towards Piccadilly Circus, Sam turned to look back at the theatre, at the stateliness of the Corinthian columns with their gold embossed motif and the arches and stonework, all perfectly floodlit. A glorious building, its interior was of equal magnificence, with molded ceilings, crystal chandeliers, polished marble, and layer upon layer of English gold leaf. What a privilege it had been to work there.

  She remembered the first time she’d been to ‘the Haymarket’, as the actors fondly referred to the Theatre Royal. It had been December 1994 and she’d caught the train up from Fareham during the two days she’d had free of rehearsals. So many firsts, she remembered. Her first trip to England, her first visit to London, and her first experience of West End Theatre. She’d seen the new Tom Stoppard play, Arcadia, and the Theatre Royal had just that year undergone major restoration. She’d been eighteen years old and it had been the most magical experience of her life. And now, nine years later, she’d worked there. She’d played a leading role at ‘the Haymarket’, the most elegant theatre in London. During the eight performances a week for over a year, she had never once taken the experience for granted. And now it was over.

  ‘It’s been a good run, hasn’t it?’ Reginald had been standing silently beside her for a full minute or so. He knew what she was thinking.

  ‘Ever master of the understatement, Reggie,’ she grinned. It was their secret language. He drew the line at ‘Reggie’ and she only ever used the term in private.

  He took her hand and smiled. ‘Onward and upward, Sam. Onward and upward.’

  ‘I hope so.’ The forthcoming film role was potentially the biggest step yet in her career, but movies were risky business, as they both knew. And she would miss the theatre.

  ‘Torpedo Junction. It’s a rather old-fashioned title, don’t you think?’ Nigel sat, pen poised over his notepad, gin and tonic untouched. He’d graciously waited until Sam had finished her supper, a huge steak – God knew where the girl put it, she was built like a whippet – and then he’d insisted the three of them retire from the main arena of the restaurant to one of the more private leather booths.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ Reg had urged, recognising that she was loath to leave the others. ‘They’ll be partying for ages, you can join them later.’ Then, when she’d looked a little rebellious, he’d muttered, ‘You promised you’d be fair dinkum.’

  ‘Okay,’ she’d said meekly enough.

  ‘Old-fashioned in what way?’ she now asked a little archly. She couldn’t help herself: she found Nigel such a supercilious bastard.

  ‘It sounds like a war movie from the 1940s.’

  ‘Well, it is in a way, isn’t it? Torpedo Junction was the infamous Japanese submarine hunting ground during World War II.’

  Nigel adjusted his Gucci glasses and gritted his teeth. He didn’t like Sam any more than she liked him. Little upstart. Didn’t she realise that, as a journalist with his own PR company and all of the contacts he had to hand, he could destroy her? And if she wasn’t on Reginald’s books he’d take great delight in doing so. But he couldn’t afford to lose the account of Reginald Harcourt Management, so he gave a glacial smile and continued.

  ‘So that’s what it is then? A war film?’

  ‘No.’ What a waste of time it all was, Sam thought. She hated playing these games. But it was part of the job, she told herself as she took a breath and tried to sound pleasant. ‘It’s about love really. Human love.’

  ‘Ah,’ he pounced like a hungry cat. It was exactly what he was after. ‘So it’s a similar genre to Pearl Harbor then, a war story with a love theme.’ Nigel scratched away at his notepad, delighted. At this early stage, before commencement of filming, the production house was releasing no specific details about Torpedo Junction, merely the title, the principal cast, and the fact that it was the next big-budget production from Mammoth.

  ‘No, it’s not a war story with a love theme,’ she said tightly. That wasn’t what she’d meant at all, Sam thought, cursing the man. What the hell did it matter anyway? Whatever she said he’d misquote her.

  ‘Who’d like another drink?’ Reg asked, giving Sam a warning glance as he rose from the booth. It was the way Nigel often conducted interviews. Offend the subject just enough to make them defensive. That way they gave away more of themselves or, in this case, more of the project. The subject matter of the script was under wraps, and Sam knew that.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you, Reginald,’ Nigel said, taking the mildest sip from his gin and tonic.

  ‘Another red for me, thanks,’ Sam gave Reg a nod that said she not only knew exactly where she stood, but she was more than a match for Nigel Daly.

  ‘It’s not at all like Pearl Harbor actually, Nigel,’ she said, draining the last of her glass and smiling, she hoped, sweetly.

  ‘What is it like then?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask me how I feel about working with Brett Marsdon? It’s what everyone will want to know, surely.’

  She was right of course, but he’d be able to sell another whole story on the Torp
edo Junction theme if he could get it out of her. ‘So you don’t want to discuss the script?’ He gave it one last try.

  ‘It’s about people, Nigel. One of the best scripts I’ve ever read. And it’s all about people.’

  The smug bitch, he thought. She went on to parrot the details which had been generally released. It was an American production, Mammoth’s biggest budget movie of the year, they were shooting offshore, interiors at Fox Studios in Sydney and on location somewhere in the South Pacific or far north Queensland, the specific details hadn’t been released yet. It was nothing he didn’t know already. Nigel gave up.

  ‘So tell me about Brett Marsdon,’ he said. ‘How do you feel about working with Hollywood’s hottest property?’

  Not all of the questions were trite. In true form, Nigel questioned her about the fact that she would be playing an Englishwoman. ‘Film critics are very quick to judge accents,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve been working in the English theatre for the past two years,’ she replied, a fact of which Nigel was fully aware, she thought. He’d not only seen a number of her performances, but Reg would have sent him her CV. She glanced at Reginald but he sipped his white wine and said nothing. It was not his job to field the questions.

  ‘Of course,’ Nigel replied smoothly, ‘but this is your first movie role, is it not?’

  Is it not, she thought, whoever said is it not? But, aware that he was once again needling her, she gave a cheeky smile instead of biting back. ‘Oh no, I was a prostitute in a low-budget thriller three years ago.’

  ‘Really?’ It was Nigel’s turn to glance at Reginald. ‘That wasn’t on the CV.’

  ‘I ended up on the cutting-room floor, the whole scene did. And the movie bombed anyway.’

  ‘I see.’ Well, he could hardly use that, could he? He asked her about her ties to England. After a year as the darling of London’s West End, did she anticipate coming back to Britain, or would Hollywood claim her? Surprisingly enough, she warmed to the theme.