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rich, bored scion of a local clothing factory owner, though he showed real potential according to some of the gallery owners he had shown his work to. He was Jewish, and always at odds with his father for not attending synagogue and eschewing his heritage and studies. They didn’t square with his chosen nihilistic existence. He would tell her this from behind the easel, usually when he was struggling with his materials. It eased the tension within him. Other than his clashes with his father, she learned he was an only child like her and devoted to his mother.
    The months drifted slowly and she watched herself appear more life-like as Theo developed and honed his skills on paper and canvas. Crude charcoal outlines disappeared; shadowing and light became more subtle until he produced a piece unlike anything else he had done.
    He had captured her perfectly; Eva was lying naked on the floor, her legs together twisting away from her torso, one arm draped across her breasts, the other arm behind her, spilling lush auburn tresses. It was if she was caught in mid-leap across the sugar paper. He had fashioned a smile on her features, telling her that when she did so, which was rarely, she was a radiant. He opened a bottle of wine and, for the first time in a year, she smiled briefly and Theo was duly mesmerised.
    On an impulse, she accompanied him to his bed at the rear of the studio as he took her hand, but the dark edges still hung about her peripheral vision despite his gentle attentive efforts.
    ‘ You know, Eva,’ he said, an ashtray resting on his chest as they shared a cigarette in the tiny metal bed, ‘you should try for the movies. They have a film unit in the university. They’re always looking for actors and actresses.’
    She exhaled with one eyebrow raised and a sceptical moue. Smiling, he swept his hand around the room. Eva hadn’t looked around it much. Across every wall pictures of her were pinned up - nude, clothed, sitting, lying, posing, and head and shoulder portrait studies. In every one of them her eyes had a haunted quality, the last and most beautiful image of her at her most wistful.
    He stubbed out his cigarette and rose to dress,
    ‘ With your grace, beauty and theatrical training, Eva, it’d be academic you'd have no problems being accepted. I know some of the film students; I could introduce you.’
     
     

Chapter 3
     
    That summer she travelled to Paris with Theo and Dariusz Spzilman, a film student that he shared digs with. 1930s Paris was a Mecca for Theo, the epitome of art and beauty, for Dariusz, the centre of film.
    Theo’s French was rudimentary and Dariusz’s non-existent. They needed a translator and Eva agreed to accompany them. They took a two-bed cold water apartment in La Pigalle, Eva with a room to herself, the men sharing a room with two single beds. Her room was more of a corner garret, cramped and warm, the bed a recovered hospital cot, robust and basic. The wardrobe contained a few new dresses and her prized blue raincoat Henk and Aga had bought for her before her departure. All three would swim in the nearby public pool every day to perform their ablutions. Theo, armed with his notebooks and charcoals, managed to persuade most of the men to allow him to sketch them while drying themselves, some taking the sketch in exchange for a cigarette, but never for cash, at his insistence.
    One late summer afternoon, Theo and Dariusz posed theatrically at the top of the Eiffel Tower as they pointed out landmarks over the shimmering roofs of Paris, the wind catching their hats. Eva, snatching Dariusz’s precious camera, squeezed off a shot of the men. It developed perfectly and she pinned it to the cracked and faded mirror on her battered dresser in her room. The other pictures, now creased and faded, were of Henk and Aga, and of her deceased parents, Maria and Pytoir, with Eva as a grim-faced toddler. Below them was a picture of a smiling Jonas. Every morning when applying her