‘Your precious Mam’zelle X is part of the Great French Cover-up of what went on here during the Occupation,’ she replied. ‘You do realise that, don’t you, Lili? When the real mam’zelles weren’t fucking Nazis they were denouncing Jews.’ Now Minna revealed what she had in mind for her version of ‘Mam’zelle X’. She was ditching the wartime backdrop and pretty much everything else, retaining only the idea of a woman with a double life. ‘But not that Belle de Jour, ice-maiden-does-S&M rubbish – it’s so tedious, you can tell that came from a man.’ ‘Mam’zelle X’ was to be reborn as a photo-story installation called ‘Daring Audrey’: that was me. I was to be a bored, rich woman, given to sneaking out of the house of an afternoon to pick up a life of what Minna described as ‘crime and intrigue’.

Work began the following week. Nick came up with concepts for episodes in the story: ‘The Broken Promises’, ‘Livewire’, ‘Endgame’. Minna usually rejected them and devised her own. With an enormous vase of flowers beside me, I lounged in an armchair, indolently picking at chocolates to convey bourgeois entrapment. Later, I opened the street door to Minna’s building a fraction and peered cautiously to my left. I gripped the steering wheel of the Goddess while scowling at the camera (‘Never smile’: Minna’s unbreakable rule). Once she posed me clambering out of the boot of the car, brandishing a handgun. The gun, an ancient stage prop that a friend had sent from London, came to feature prominently in my adventures. I went down on one knee to fire it or stood side-on like a Charlie’s Angel, clasping it with both hands raised.

Dressing up was required – I suspected that was the project’s real attraction for Minna. I had a negligee, satin slip and plastic pearls for the indoor phase, then a series of retro garments that Minna scouted out. The period tended to veer: there was a delicate, flowered thirties tea gown, and a New Look dress that flared from the waist. Nick was roped in for a scene or two. He wore his suit and sat at a table behind a bottle of whisky and two glasses, while I stood with one hand on his shoulder, smoking a cigar. I had a fedora and a woollen skirt-suit for that shot – I liked the suit, it was warm. I kept my tweed coat on until the last moment for the outdoor shoots. ‘Daring Audrey’s tits are frozen!’ I’d yell when Minna fiddled with her shutter speed, sucking on her crucifix, or instructed me to adjust my pose.

A great thing about this entire period was that Rinaldi wasn’t there. After our last conversation, I’d left a light bulb, still in its packaging, outside his door with a note. Then I braced for retaliation, certain that he’d feel obliged to punish me for taking away his excuse to meet. The bulb disappeared, but nothing happened. I went to Paris at Christmas, came back and Rinaldi seemed to have vanished. Muscular music no longer shouldered through his door. Lights came on obediently on the stairs.