Back to America ... Val and Lew were arranging to bring a typical Palladium variety show to Las Vegas for a month.  Just before the show opened, Val and I made the eight hour drive across the Nevada Desert from Hollywood, and booked into the Desert Inn where the show was appearing.

 

Lew joined us and the usual arrangements had been made with Val and Lew in their suite, and a separate suite for me along the corridor. 

 

Just before Pat Kirkwood, Richard Hearne and the rest of the British cast arrived, I had to move out to the Rancho Village Hotel for the whole period the British contingent were appearing in Las Vegas and Val only saw me surreptitiously from time to time.  None of the British actors had any inkling I was in Las Vegas. 

 

Our cloak and dagger game in the Nevada Desert gave me lots of laughs - a case of the Desert Song gone wrong.  But these capers had gone on for too many years for me to be surprised at anything Val did.  If that was the only way he was prepared to continue seeing me, then I was just as prepared to accept it.

 

I returned to New York where Val's letters continued to arrive and he mentioned casually that he'd met a very charming girl singer, Aileen Cochran, and her husband Frank.  I didn't pay much attention to his remark and waited in eager anticipation for his next visit. 

 

By now, Val, Lew and their associates had won their commercial TV franchise and Val was busying himself buying up American TV shows for the British screen.  Then the bombshell dropped.  He arrived in New York on one of his business trips and came along in the evening to my sudio flat at the Hotel Schuyler.

 

I'd expected to be taken out to dinner and had bought a new dress, had a hair-do, drenched myself in my favourite perfume which Val had bought me in Paris, and taken extra care with my make-up.  I needn't have bothered.  There was no greeting kiss.

 

My darling Pussy just sat down and said:  "It's all over Baby, I'm sorry.  I've fallen in love with someone else."

 

He carried on talking but it was as if the voice came from another world.  To this day I've no idea what he was saying.  I was numbed.  Everything around me became a total haze.  I just kept hearing those first few wrods,  "It's all over, Baby," going round and round in my head like a long-playing record. 

 

I stared at him; stunned, confused, in utter disbelief.  I was completely shattered.  But I had to face it.  If he didn't want me in his life any more there was no use shouting or screaming.  That would have got me nowhere.  Much better to walk away from the whole situation.

 

"Well, that's that," I said. 

"I'm afraid it is," he replied.

 

I remained very calm - how, I don't know.  He stayed a little longer and then left.  When he'd gone I fell to pieces.  The next few days were a nightmare of sorrow.  I looked ghastly and felt even worse.  But I had two very good friends in Eddie Elkort and his wife Lillian.

 

Eddie was the Grades' representative in New York and had looked after me from the day I arrived.  They packed my clothes and arranged their despatch by sea. 

 

I did what every girl does under the same circumstances.  I went home to mother.