Ginia was finishing the washing-up and Severino was shaving. He offered her a cigarette and lit it for her with his wet fingers and all three of them had a good laugh about the street-lamp business. Severino had to go off but not before telling Ginia not to stay up all night. Amelia had an amused expression on her face as she watched him go out.

‘Don’t you ever go to a different dance-hall?’ she asked Ginia. ‘Our boys are all right but they hold you too tight for my liking. Like your girl friends’.

They both went down to the town-centre without hats, choosing the shady part of the streets. They had an ice to start with and as they licked it, they watched the passers-by and joked about them. Everything came easily to Amelia; she gave herself up to having a good time as if nothing else mattered and that evening the most wonderful things might happen. Ginia knew she was safe with Amelia, who was twenty and strolled along as if she owned the place. Amelia had not even put on stockings because of the heat, and when they came to a dance-saloon, the sort that has a muffled orchestra and lamp-shades on the tables, Ginia got into a panic at the thought of having to go in with her. But her fear proved groundless and she breathed again. Then Amelia said, ‘Don’t you feel a desire to go in there?’ ‘It’s too hot and we aren’t dressed for it’, said Ginia, ‘let’s go on; it’s much nicer’. ‘I quite agree’, said Amelia, ‘but what shall we do? Don’t you ever want to stand at a street-corner and laugh at the passers-by?’

‘What would you like to do?’

‘If we weren’t women, we should have a car and by this time we would be having a bathe in the lakes’.

‘Let’s have a walk and a chat’, suggested Ginia.

‘We could go to the hills and have a drink and sing, maybe. Do you like wine?’

Ginia said she didn’t and Amelia looked at the entrance to the dance-saloon. ‘We’ll have a drink, though. Come along! People who are bored have only themselves to blame’. They had a drink at the first café they came to, and once they had got outside again, Ginia felt a coolness in the air she had not felt before and thought how nice it was to cool your blood with drinks in the summer heat. Meanwhile Amelia began some rigmarole about how the people who did nothing all day had at least the right to relax in the evening, but there were moments when you got frightened as you saw the time slipping by and you began to be doubtful whether it was worth while doing so much gadding about. ‘Don’t you feel the same?’

‘The only gadding about I do is going to work’, said Ginia, ‘I can’t get much fun when I haven’t even time to think about it’. ‘You’re only a kid’, said Amelia, ‘but I can’t keep still even when I’m working’.

‘You have to when you’re posing’, remarked Ginia as they walked on.

Amelia began to laugh. ‘You’ve not got a clue. The cleverest models are the ones who drive the artists frantic. If you don’t move every now and again, they forget you’re a model and treat you as if you were a servant. Behave like a sheep and the wolf will eat you’.

Ginia merely smiled by way of reply, but something was on the tip of her tongue that burnt it like brandy. Then she asked Amelia why they didn’t go and sit down in the open air and have another drink. ‘But of course’, said Amelia. They had it at the bar because it was cheaper that way.

By this time Ginia was beginning to feel warmed up and on their way out found no difficulty in saying to Amelia, ‘This is what I’ve been wanting to ask. I’d like to see you pose’.

They discussed the question for a short part of the walk and Amelia laughed because, dressed or undressed, a model can only be of interest to men and hardly to another girl. The model merely stands there; what is there to see? Ginia said she wanted to see the artist paint her; she had never seen anyone handling colours and it must be nice to watch. ‘I don’t mean today or tomorrow’, she said, ‘I know you’re out of work at present.