By the time we had finished the rehearsal my head ached and my feet were balls of fire.

“Maria, I think these shoes are too tight,” I ventured awkwardly.

“New shoes for Miss Hope!” called Dennis, though I had not addressed him.

“Dennis orders Maria about, not you,” whispered Aidan in my ear. “It gives him something to do.”

I thought Dennis, and everyone else who worked in the studio, had plenty to do. If I squinted, the scene before me turned into a swimming mass of colours: the dark shapes of the cameras, the huge lights above, the cables on the floor as thick as elephants’ trunks, the illuminated eighteenth-century stage where I sat and the muted twentieth-century shadows where those who were watching me lurked. Their faces looked ghostly as they worked in the gloom – talking, arguing, occasionally laughing, jotting things down, operating machines of which I had no knowledge, examining those same machines when they did not work properly, and cursing casually, not always under their breath.

However, my own job seemed clear. I had to turn up on time every morning, do as David or Dennis requested and learn, by process of trial and error, how to act in a film. Everything was so new and complicated. I was determined to be careful about what I said and to whom, and to hold my tongue unless spoken to.

Aidan Tobias, however, had no such scruples. He said whatever he liked. I wondered if he knew how lucky he was to be in films and not have to work on a farm or in a factory or an office like most young men. He did not seem to like being an actor, and I found that baffling.

The rehearsals that day were exhausting. I was glad I was not acting in the theatre, where I would have had to project my voice as well. But because the films were silent, we could say the lines as loudly or as softly, as well or badly, as we wanted. Eager to please, I stuck valiantly to the script I knew the audience would never hear. The words helped me to understand what my face and body were supposed to be showing the viewers of the film: love, fear, happiness – whatever David demanded. But Aidan was so easily bored, and so experienced, that he no longer needed such an anchor. He would sail carelessly into improvisation, jokiness and sometimes downright rudeness, in his own words instead of the scripted ones. Everyone would laugh, the scene would be ruined and we would have to do it again.