‘I didn’t know where to find you’. ‘Where do you expect? At the café all day long’. ‘You’d never told me’.

Next day Ginia went to find her at the café. It was a new café under the porticoes and Ginia searched round to find her. It was Amelia finally who hailed her in a loud voice as if she were in her own house, and Ginia saw that she was wearing a smart grey coat and a hat with a veil which made her almost unrecognisable. She was sitting with her legs crossed, resting her chin on one fist as if she were posing. ‘Did you really want to come?’ she smiled.

‘Are you expecting somebody?’ enquired Ginia.

‘I always am’, said Amelia, making room for her next to her.

‘It’s my job. You’ve got to queue up for the privilege of stripping in front of an artist’.

Amelia had a newspaper on the table and a packet of cigarettes. She was evidently earning. ‘I like your hat but it makes you look old’, said Ginia, looking her in the eyes. ‘I am old’, said Amelia, ‘any objections?’

Amelia was leaning back against the mirror as if she was on a sofa. She was looking in front of her at the mirror opposite in which Ginia could also see herself, lower down. They might have been mother and daughter. ‘Are you always here?’ she asked. ‘Do artists come?’

‘They come when they feel inclined. There hasn’t been one today’.

The chandelier was illuminated and lots of people were passing by the window. Although there was plenty of cigarette smoke round about them, it was so quiet that the buzz of conversation and other sounds seemed to reach them from a long way off. Ginia noticed two girls in a corner holding court and talking to the waiter. ‘Are they models?’ she said.

‘I don’t know’, replied Amelia. ‘Will you take coffee or an apéritif?’

Ginia had always thought one should go into cafés with a male escort and she was surprised that Amelia should spend her afternoons there alone, but she found it so pleasant to get away from the shop, stroll round the arcades and have somewhere to go, that she betook herself there again the next day. If she could have been sure that Amelia liked seeing her, she would have really enjoyed it. This time Amelia caught sight of her through the café window and made a sign that she was coming outside. They took a tram together.

Amelia did not say much that evening. ‘They’re a lot of louts’, was about all she said. ‘Were you waiting for someone?’ asked Ginia.

In the course of their parting remarks, they planned for the following day and Ginia felt convinced that Amelia liked seeing her and that if something had gone wrong, it had been for other reasons, possibly something to do with the ‘uncouth louts’.

‘How does it work? Does an artist come along and ask you if you are willing to sit?’ she asked, laughing.

‘There are some, too, who don’t say anything’, explained Amelia. ‘They don’t need models’.

‘What do they paint then?’

‘Do you know what! There’s one artist who says that he applies paint as we apply lipstick! “What do you paint when you’re putting on lipstick? Well, I paint the same way”, he says’.

‘But you paint your lips with lipstick’.

‘And he paints his canvas. Bye-bye, Ginia’.

When Amelia talked in this mocking way with a straight face Ginia was afraid something was afoot and felt uneasy and lonely as she went home. Luckily for her, once there, she had to hurry and knock up a supper of pasta for Severino. When supper was over, it was different because night was approaching and the time for going out by herself or with Rosa. Sometimes she thought, ‘What sort of life am I leading? I’m always on the hop’.