Marietta Mazotti was used to working under intense scrutiny. At this very moment, she had at least forty pairs of eyes gazing at her, but that wasn’t very surprising as she worked in one of the most beautiful mask shops in Venice. Her father, Renzo Mazotti, had opened the shop in the eighties when Carnivale fever hit the city after so long a siesta, and Marietta now ran it, making many of the masks which hung on display in the two small rooms.

‘These are your children,’ her father had once told her, ‘and you must look after them well.’

She’d been only seven years old when she’d first seen her father’s work studio. It was his inner-sanctum and usually a forbidden zone. Before that magical event when he’d opened his door for the first time, she’d approach it with slipper-silented feet, pushing her ear up against the door to hear the sweet chamber music which would play continuously, as if work wasn’t to be contemplated without it.

And then, one day, he’d ushered her in. It was a wonderland for a child but it was curiously menacing too: all those unfinished, alabaster faces with gaping, unformed mouths and haunting hollows for eyes. But when he’d shown her the colours and the materials which would breathe life into them, she’d been mesmerised. Rubies and sapphires, silvers and golds, cerises and amethysts – richer than a jewellers window and far more precious. He’d let her experiment with some baby brushes and she’d made a rainbow mess on some scrap paper before he’d taken her tiny hand in his and guided it to make a fantastical scroll.

‘Feel your way,’ he’d whispered. ‘Feel, but think a little too.’

Marietta put down the harlequin butterfly she was working on now, and gazed around the brightly lit interior of the shop. She loved it, and every single mask too, from the beautifully feminine feline masks decorated in rich damasks and studded with sequins and pearls, to the tubular-nosed plague doctors which stared down eerily from their home below the great black beam. Each one seemed to have a life of its own, a life first born in the imagination of its creator, and it was sometimes rather sad to see them leave the shop. She would often feel a great sense of regret if she wasn’t convinced that the person buying it would give it a good home and care for it. People, she believed, should hold a licence before owning a mask because they were rather like pets – they needed love and attention, and needed to be given their own special place in the home, not thrown into a drawer or left to collect dust on the top of a wardrobe somewhere.

Marietta sighed, hoping that her masks never spent their lives in such abject misery.

The harlequin butterfly was almost finished now. It would be done by tomorrow and would soon take its place among the ranks along the walls. She had just the place for it too: in between the moonbeam and the cats. It would find its temporary home before taking flight when the right customer came through the door and would fall in love with it.

Cleaning her brushes and washing her hands, Marietta switched off the shop lights before stepping out into the pearly grey Venetian evening.

It wasn’t until her footsteps had faded along the narrow alleyway that a timid voice was heard.

‘Has she gone yet?’ it said.

‘Shush!’ another answered. ‘Remember that time she forgot her handbag and had to come back?’

There was silence for a moment before a giggle was heard. It was Jolly the Jester. ‘Time to play! Time to play!’ he laughed, tinkling the bells on his hat.

‘Thank goodness for that!’ Brighella, a black comedy dell’Arte mask sighed. ‘It’s hard work keeping still all day.’

‘Especially when you have endless tourists picking you up and poking you in the eye,’ Zanni added. He was another comedy dell’Arte mask but, unlike the neat-faced Brighella, had a nose as long as a baby’s arm.

‘At least you haven’t got a gondola heading up your nose. Look! I ask you, what artist in their right mind would paint half of Venice on the face of a mask?’ one of the more decorative masks said.

‘It’s what the tourists like,’ a golden moon piped from behind the desk.

‘Anything that sparkles. Anything that looks expensive but is actually very cheap!’ Brighella agreed.

‘At least you haven’t got two faces!’ Zanni laughed, nodding across the room.

‘I’m meant to have two faces – I’m a tragi-comedy mask - Duevisi – or haven’t you heard of me before?’ Duevisi was quick to defend himself. ‘We’re not afraid to show the real nature of people. Everyone’s two-faced, but we’re the only ones brave enough to show it! Anyway, it’s better than having three faces like Trevisi.’

All the masks turned to look at the bizarre Trevisi who looked happy, sad and indifferent all at once.

‘It isn’t fair to make fun of each other,’ a lady mask with an emerald leaf-strewn face said. ‘None of us has any choice in the matter.’

‘And what exactly are you? You look like a rotten cabbage!’ Pantalone laughed.

‘You’re one to talk!’ the leaf-faced lady snorted. ‘At least I haven’t got a face full of ugly wrinkles.’

Pantalone frowned deeply, which was the worst possible scenario for his face. ‘Well, how would you like to be a mezza neutra like us? We’ve only got half a face!’

Everybody turned their attention to the row of half-masks on the wall by the door.

‘But you’re all so pretty,’ Pantalone sighed. ‘The tourists love you because you’re a compromise. You’re not as scary-looking as me, nor too ornate.’

‘But we don’t even feel like masks,’ a golden mezza neutra complained. ‘I mean, people put us on and the end of their nose and mouth are still visible. What’s the point of that?’

Jolly the Jester tinkled his bells merrily and then laughed. It didn’t take much to make him laugh.

The arguing went on for the rest of the night. But that was normal. By the time the rosy dawn lit up the shop, the masks had exhausted themselves and most had settled down to sleep so that, when Marietta opened the door and turned the lights on, she barely noticed that there were a couple more frowns on Pantalone’s face, or that Zanni’s nose was pointing at a slightly different angle. Barely noticed. She did, of course. Her father had told her that the masks were her children so she noticed the slightest of changes in them. But she kept it quiet.

Humming a little tune, she smiled to herself as she picked up the harlequin butterfly mask.

‘You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for,’ she said to her newest baby, wondering how it would hold its own with the other masks, and worrying in case it was bullied.

‘You will look after her, won’t you?’ she asked, looking round the shop. Everybody was quiet.

‘I know you can hear me,’ she said, wondering if anyone would be brave enough to reply. At last, she shook her head and, giving a little laugh, turned her attention towards the butterfly again.