It was a crush to get through the parterre standing area. The afternoon matinee performance was always the most rammed of the day. Camille squeezed between bodies, nose scrunching at their odours mixed with dirt and cheap beer. At the lip of the stage, a line of candles flickered dangerously close to the skirts of the women above. Al moved with an assured laziness, drifting through the crowds as if he was walking down the wide tree-lined boulevard outside. On the far side of the auditorium, he stepped through a door marked Privée. Camille followed, trying to look as though she belonged.

Al took a right, ducking beneath a curtain into the maze-like backstage area. The space was sectioned by flimsy painted backboards and lengths of dusty curtain hanging from the gantries above. The dressing rooms were off to one side. Behind the backdrop partitioning the stage was a cavernous hinterland of abandoned props and crates, ladders, buckets and ropes – but what stopped Camille in her tracks was a strange, craggy shape that loomed over twice their height. For a moment, she thought stress and exhaustion must be getting to her because it looked as if there was an honest-to-god mountain backstage.

A man stepped into their path, his face shiny and red in the candlelight. His body looked stretched out in his pinstriped breeches and waistcoat. He regarded Al with distaste.

‘Alexander. How unsurprising to find you skulking round my theatre.’

Camille looked at Al, puzzled. Alexander?

‘Hallo, Citoyen Gerard. How pleasant to see you.’

‘How unfortunate that I cannot say the same.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair soon enough. Just come to give Léon letters from his fans.’ He pulled out a wedge of envelopes from his pocket and brandished them under Gerard’s nose.

‘Be that as it may, you can’t come wandering back here like you own the place, because I own the place.’

‘That you do. And a very fine place it is too,’ said Al, eyeing a sad stuffed lion that looked as if it had been badly startled. ‘The finest props in Paris.’

‘Well, hurry up. Hand over the letters and be out of here. Stop distracting Léon. He’s my star turn. If you break his heart, I’ll personally bill you for my losses.’

Al grinned. ‘Duly noted.’

Gerard was about to leave when Camille stopped him, pointing to the mountainous lumps.

‘That prop looks pretty special.’

Gerard puffed up. ‘It’s for the Festival of the Supreme Being,’ he explained. ‘Specially commissioned by Robespierre himself. It’s happening in a few days, if you’ve somehow missed the posters everywhere.’

‘But why a mountain?’ she asked, her curiosity getting the better of her as she ran her hand over a faux crag.