In the passageway, the cracked mirror reflected a to-ing and fro-ing of figures holding sheaves of paper and clipboards. In the tiny dressing room, the normally neatly stacked masks and black clothing had been swept aside for ashtrays and beer bottles. The fug was appalling.

‘What ideas?’ she asked Milos who had followed her in.

‘There are no ideas,’ he replied. ‘And you are not seeing anything. OK?’ He wagged a finger at her, more serious than she had ever seen him.

‘OK.’ She agreed. ‘I don’t see anything.’

She spent the next hour tidying up from a previous performance and was stowing the marionettes on their pegs when Milos reappeared. He sat down at the table and took up a sheet of black paper and scissors. ‘Stand still.’

‘Why?’ But she did as she was asked.

‘Turn your face to the door.’

The scissors scrunched into the paper and he set about making one of his silhouettes. She had observed him at it before and knew that each minute adjustment in the way he directed the scissors would result in miraculous likenesses.

His English was fluent tonight. ‘You have a good face for this.’ He made a long cut. ‘And a swan neck. And hair like a river.’

‘A river.’ Laure giggled with pleasure. ‘Thank you. How long do I have to stay like this?’ She touched the sore place on her head.

‘As long as it takes.’

It wasn’t long. Within fifteen minutes Milos presented her silhouette. It was rather good. Better than rather good. ‘Thank you.’ She scrutinized it, curious to see if the changes she was aware had taken place in her were obvious. Same nose. Same-shaped head. Hair a little longer.

‘You can’t keep it,’ he said. ‘Someone else wants it.’ He tapped his finger to his nose and Laure found herself grinning like a clown.

‘Can I have the one you’ve done of the “someone” in exchange?’

‘I’ll stick it in your rucksack. It’s one of my better ones. Take care of it.’

After a while, Laure’s curiosity got the better of her and she let herself into the area behind the stage where the puppeteers stood for performances and peered over the backdrop.

People were filtering in ones and twos into the auditorium which had become an inferno of cigarette smoke, sweat and beer fumes. Several girls with headbands onto which had been stencilled the Czech word for ‘Freedom’ were sitting on the floor. A man in dirty jeans and a white T-shirt dictated into a machine. Another strummed a guitar and sang ‘We Shall Overcome’. A heap of wilting flowers lay in one corner. Someone had tacked a poster depicting the cartoon of a large disembodied ear onto the wall.

Milos was at her elbow. ‘You’re not seeing anything at all, Laure.’