Anyway. I didn’t. I never boasted about these three paintings. In fact, I didn’t mention them to anyone at all. Except to Dorian. He’s the middle sibling and only a year older than me, and we’ve always been thick as thieves. We look alike too; pale and skinny, both with a dark sweep of fringe hiding our blue eyes. Dorian was eight when Mama died. I was seven and I used to cry myself to sleep every night until Papa decided that the two of us should share a room. Dorian moved into the bunk bed above mine and he would sing to me and tell me stories until I slept again.

Anyway, it was to Dorian that I turned to solve my problem with the Paris School. My brother has quite the honest face so he seemed perfect for the trick I had in mind. Together, he and I wrapped the three canvases in soft muslin to protect them, and then Dorian tucked them under his arm and with me trailing behind him we went to the apartments of the Paris School.

Being an artist is in the Bonifait blood. My papa and his father before him both attended the Paris School. So when Dorian went up to the front desk and introduced himself as a Bonifait and asked for an audience with the Directeur, the head of college admissions, Master Demarchelier, was more than willing.

Master Demarchelier didn’t so much as glance at me waiting there in my chair as he ushered Dorian into his office. That was fine by me. I sat there outside his rooms in the corridor and while I couldn’t hear what was being said behind the closed door, I knew it was going well as they were in there a long while. Eventually my brother emerged, the Directeur with his arm around his shoulder looking most pleased with himself and burbling on about his delight in finding such a gifted pupil just at the eleventh hour when new enrolments for this school year were about to close. He was about to shake hands with Dorian to seal the deal when I leapt forward and pressed my own hand into his in my brother’s stead.

“My name is Rose Bonifait,” I told him, “and I am the artist who painted these works, not my brother Dorian. So it is I, not Dorian, who will be attending your school.”

It was a scandal of course. People are so easily scandalised. That a twelve-year-old girl should be admitted to the Paris School! The master was not best pleased at being tricked. Yet even in his annoyance he had to admit my work was so good he would overlook the naughty ruse and let me in. And so, I became the first-ever girl to attend his college.