For this reason she no longer went to the dance-hall with Rosa or to their local cinema, but sometimes she went out on her own and hurried to the cinema in the town-centre. Why should not she do it, if Amelia did? One evening Amelia called and as they were going out, remarked, ‘Yesterday I found a job’. Ginia was not surprised. She expected it. She quietly asked her if she was beginning straight away. ‘I started this morning’, said Amelia. ‘I’ve already done two hours’. ‘Are you pleased?’ asked Ginia.

Then she enquired what sort of picture it was going to be. ‘It’s not a picture at all. He is just making studies. He’s drawing my face. I chatter away and at intervals he dashes down a profile. It’s not anything permanent’. ‘So you’re not posing then?’ said Ginia. ‘You seem to imagine’, retorted Amelia, ‘that posing merely consists of getting undressed and standing around’. ‘Are you going back tomorrow?’ said Ginia.

Amelia in point of fact went there the next day and for several days afterwards. The following evening she referred laughingly to it and went on to talk about the artist, how he never stood still and asked her if any other painter had ever drawn her in that way before, walking up and down all the time. ‘He did a nude of me this morning. He’s one of those who know what they’re about and arrive at their goal by gradual stages. But with four drawings they’ve got you taped and put away in their portfolio and have no further use for you’. Ginia asked her what he was like. Amelia said, a little man. ‘How did you come across him?’ It had been by chance. ‘Call for me tomorrow’, said Amelia. They planned to go along together the next afternoon, Saturday.

The whole length of the street in the hot sun that afternoon, Amelia had kept her in fits of laughter. They made their way by a winding staircase into a large semi-dark room which took a little sunlight only from the back through a gap in the curtains. Ginia, her heart pounding fast, had stopped on the last stair. Amelia called out, ‘Good afternoon’, and walked as far as the middle of the room in the half-light and a man emerged from behind the curtains, plump and with a grey goatee beard, and said, making a gesture with his hand, ‘Nothing doing, girls. I’m off today’. He had donned a light-coloured overall which became a dirty yellow when he turned and drew the curtain back to let in a little light.