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and call. And what do I have? Just the dregs.’
    There was nothing Rocco could say to this. It was true. But he knew he couldn’t afford to make waves. He had the lifestyle he had always craved, the cars, the apartments, everything. He summered in the Hamptons, wintered in Aspen, lived a life of ease and plenty. And that was all thanks to his marriage to Cara Barolli. If he tried for separation, or – God forbid – divorce , then all that would be over.
    And he had no wish to make so powerful an enemy as the Don. Would Constantine Barolli just accept his daughter being dumped like so much excess baggage? Rocco didn’t think so. Already, Rocco was aware that he had been tested and found wanting by the Don. He wasn’t a made man, he wasn’t even a capo in his father-in-law’s organization yet, and he resented that. But he knew he had a lot still to prove.
    And what about his own father, Enrico? He would be exceedingly angry if Rocco made waves. Constantine and Enrico Mancini went way back. There would be hell to pay.
    ‘My darling,’ said Rocco, ‘you know it’s you I love.’
    ‘But you’re with her.’
    Rocco stood up. They’d had this same conversation many times; it never got them anywhere. ‘I’ll see you here on Friday. We’ll take the boat out on the Sound, how’s that?’ he said hopefully.
    His companion was hard-eyed for a moment. ‘What, and you’ll screw me again in the cabin, where no one can see?’ Then the look faded to a faint smile, remembering . . . ‘Ah, all right. You got me, you know you have.’
    Smiling, Rocco moved out of the booth. He looked around and then dropped a quick kiss onto Frances Ducane’s almost effeminately smooth cheek.
    ‘It’s you I love,’ Rocco repeated, against Frances’s skin. ‘Goodbye, my darling.’
    And then he was gone, leaving the young man sitting alone at the table, wondering why he always, always had to play second fiddle in life. Now it was to his lover’s wife, but before that he had lived in the long shadow cast by his father, Rick Ducane.

Chapter 6
     
    1938
    Before Rick Ducane became a big Hollywood star and household name, he’d been Lionel Driver, a struggling British actor. Frances had inherited his russet hair; he had the identical penetrating grey eyes. Lionel had looked like an aristocrat. He had his own father to thank for that, a good-looking chancer who had married and then cheerfully abandoned his mother with her bad nerves and her whining little voice.
    Lionel’s voice was the first obstacle of many he had to overcome. Born within the sound of Bow bells, he had a pronounced Cockney accent, and it was a bugger to lose. But lose it he did, practising his vowel sounds hour upon hour in the stone-cold and stinking privy in the backyard behind their tenement building.
    ‘Fuckin’ toff ,’ his schoolmates snarled at him.
    They’d shoved him against a wall, kicked him, then stolen his meagre pocket money.
    Lionel didn’t care.
    He had plans.
    He worked in a series of dead-end jobs until his twenties, then, without regret, he left his mum and the slums of the East End to go to Stratford-upon-Avon and start trying his luck in auditions. He worked hard, even if it was mostly unrewarded, painting backgrounds, helping with props. But then he got a small break, and started treading the boards in walk-on parts, and was approached by an agent.
    On the advice of his new agent, he then abandoned the stage and went to try to make his name in Hollywood. Once or twice he even hung out hopefully around the constellation of bright stars that haunted every party. Lana Turner, Spencer Tracey, Clark Gable – they were all there, and all far too high-powered to acknowledge the existence of a handsome starstruck stranger from quaint little England.
    ‘What we need here is an angle,’ said his agent.
    Or for you to get me some fucking work , thought Lionel. But he asked, ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, you’ve been a Shakespearean actor. A real