12
Following her tryst with Lachlan, Jasmine spent the Christmas holidays struggling to keep him out of her head. Wrapped in a heavy coat, a woollen hat and a thick scarf, she prowled the banks of the Seine, sitting on the cold stone slabs while she sketched frantic, rapid drawings of the clochards, the bouquinistes and the passing barges, trying in vain to banish the memory of Lachlan’s mouth on hers.
Her focus was on composition, experimenting with how she would place the forms on the canvas when she came to start painting. She had in mind a large work, looking across the Seine from one bank to the other, the clochards huddled together against the walls of the quay to keep warm. The painting would be of night-time, with the people grey, ghostly shapes, and the surface of the river fain
