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touching distance, a finger-tip away. The feeling would go as quickly as it had appeared, but while it was there she felt his presence as a guardian angel.
    Eva began to pin her photographs around the apartment using them to cover damp patches or unsightly stains. Both Dariusz and Theo agreed she had a good eye for a picture. Her favourite image was of a mature Madame who ran a local bordello, Yvette.
    Eva had struck up a conversation with her one night in a caf é in Montmartre. She had an iron frailty about her that drew Eva. Yvette was buxom, with lush black hair pinned up as best as the pins could do, and modestly attired in tasteful shades of purple and black. Her eyes were green and knowing. She warmed to Eva immediately and agreed to be photographed. The photograph showed Yvette sitting at a table in a caf é looking out onto the street, a cigarette in an ashtray and a half empty coffee cup before her. Somehow Eva had caught the vibrant light in her green eyes as she smiled.
    She introduced Eva to absinthe. Sometimes when alone with the photograph of Jonas, Eva drank it to numb herself when the memories of his death overwhelmed her.
    Sometimes Madame Yvette would join the discussion group as they smoked and drank, open about her profession and taking Eva under her wing. She watched Eva and the almost chemical effect she had on men. The raucous debates that took place were mostly about their simply trying to impress her. Yvette wondered why Eva wasn’t harnessing this power and using it to her ends,
    ‘ In this life, Eva, our youth, beauty and intelligence are sometimes all we have. In this world, men may make all the decisions, yet we have to bend them to our will. We only have so long before our bloom begins to fade and their attention starts to wander,’
    Eva would learn in time to take this advice on board. Yvette had a rare quality. She genuinely liked and understood men and loved being a woman. She had a lover, a married man, and she was content to exist in the shadows. She was also discreet; her lover was a high ranking official in the government and was inclined to talk about what he did just to impress her. It was a useful power to have, she told Eva,
    ‘ Men! Their flies and their mouths they never keep closed in the presence of beauty. Use it Eva, and if they get too rough . . .’ Yvette produced a small wicked mother-of-pearl handle stiletto from her boot, ‘cut them.’
    Theo, Eva, Dariusz and the students immersed themselves in the Paris film scene, spending long stretches in the cinemas sipping from hidden flasks of brandy and whiskey. This was followed by meals, wine and debates into the early hours. Eva and Yvette began to appear in Dariusz’s projects. Devising the scene, he would produce a measuring tape and measure out the distance between the camera and subject. He would spend hours adjusting the lights borrowed from a small amateur theatre nearby to create the mood required. Returning each time to his camera perched on its tripod and peering into the viewfinder, he would grunt or laugh depending on his mood. Everything about Dariusz was measured, carefully thought out and purposely executed. In some instances a three-minute short would take three days to film at eight hour stretches.
    During these long spells, Yvette would tell Eva about her life and her adventures, occasionally returning to her bordello to ensure everything was running like clockwork. Once Dariusz was satisfied with everything required for the scene, he would shout ‘Action!’ and Eva and Yvette would perform his carefully composed script. Then he would shoot footage of other things - animals, cars, trains, close-ups of a facial feature, random objects - and splice the various reels together, disappearing for days in his darkroom. In the student cinemas around the city, he would run his final pieces and then the whole ensemble would discuss their merits or flaws.
    Theo and Dariusz took French lovers, drawing and filming