The filming went on. When it was sunny, scenes were done outside on one of the “stages”, as they were called, though they were not stages at all. They were huge areas of empty ground pretending to be somewhere in France. Sometimes it would be a hayfield, for which hay was brought from somewhere, and sometimes a Paris square, with tricolours draped on the flimsy balconies and wooden cobbles underfoot. One of the stages even pretended to be the English Channel, with an enormous pool of water over which was rigged up the front part of an eighteenth-century sailing ship. A wind machine blew the sail, but it also blew my hair across my face, prompting an infuriated “Get it right or get off my picture, you fool!” from David in the direction of poor Alfie and the need to redo the whole scene.

During those days, everyone spoke to me except the one person whose company I desired. My mood veered from desperation when David turned away from me to excitement when he looked at me, from isolation within my own bleak thoughts to loud conversation and laughter in a group of people vying for my attention, all trying to outdo one another to entertain me. I was the star, the centre of attention; I was someone new, someone ignorant of film-making; someone they could impress.

Simona Vincenza, however, resented me. She was only a little older than I was, and her Italian professional name disguised an Irishwoman from Liverpool, but the airs she gave herself were astonishing. My friends back in Haverth would have been merciless. One evening, Godfrey, the Scot, took everyone out to a nightclub in London to celebrate his birthday, and Simona and I found ourselves in the same car.

“So you’re from Wales, I understand?” she said in her languid way. Everything about her was slow: the way she dipped and raised her head or her eyelids; the way she spoke; the way she drifted about the studios, trailing a wrap or a fur coat if she considered it too cold, though it was only September.

“Yes, from a place called Haverth.”

Her look was questioning.

“Near Aberaeron.”

Her eyes closed and opened again, slowly. They remained questioning.

“Which is quite near Aberystwyth.”

“All these Abers!” She began to smile a little. She always lipsticked a bow shape onto her real lips, and when she smiled her mouth looked to me like the fleshy open mouth of a chimpanzee.

“I wonder you don’t get mixed up!”

“Oh, we manage.”

“And what does your father do?”

I was tempted to ask her why she could possibly wish to know this, but prudence stopped me. This woman and I had to work together for the foreseeable future. If she could not be civil to me, I must at all costs remain civil to her. “He is a farmer,” I said. “We have cows, and we also grow grain and vegetables.”

The chimpanzee smile widened. “Leeks, I suppose?”

I did not grace this with an answer but turned to look out of the car window. After a short silence, Simona began again. “My ancestors were farmers too, in Ireland. Though of course that was long ago. My grandfather sailed to England and became a very successful businessman, and my father runs the business now.”

“Fancy,” was all I said. I had no wish to play her game of “my family’s better than yours, so why are you the star and not me?”. She could resent me all she wished, it would not reverse our roles. Jealousy, I had learned by now, was as great a part of an actor’s existence as learning lines or having their face powdered. And how delicious it felt to be the object of it, instead of the victim!