Jenny put on a thin smile. She pictured a different universe where she worked on paintings or sculptures, the graft of creating, then sat here afterwards putting the world to rights with Liam, the glow of the fire on winter nights.

‘Why didn’t you, out of interest?’ Liam said.

She drank more gin, swallowed it down like juice.

‘I’m not really an artist,’ she said.

Liam shook his head and sucked his teeth, almost tutted. ‘I know what you mean, but that’s not the attitude. It’s not like you apply to the council to get an artist’s licence. Everyone’s creative in some way, it’s about giving yourself permission, finding a way to express yourself.’

‘That’s not what I mean.’ Jenny pulled at her ear and swallowed.

Liam waved this away. ‘I think you should take the studio. Everyone needs a place where they can get some headspace. That’s what the studio is for me, a place where I can be myself away from the noise of the world. You don’t know what you’re capable of until you really give yourself the chance.’

You don’t know what you’re capable of. Jenny thought about digging up the grave last night. She drank more gin and tonic, her glass almost empty. She raised her hand in case Liam was going to say anything else, she couldn’t stand to hear him speak.

‘I have to tell you something.’

He took a drink and put his pint glass down. Staff glided behind the bar like ghosts, conversations behind Jenny murmured on like incantations of the dead. She imagined everyone stopping talking to stare at her, a spotlight shining on her as she spoke.274

‘I lied,’ she said, scratching her cheek. ‘When I came to the studio, I wasn’t looking to hire a place.’

‘Then what were you doing?’

Jenny looked away then back at him. ‘I needed to speak to you. I was working.’

‘The funeral thing?’

‘No. As well as the funeral business, we run a private investigator’s. I was investigating you.’

‘Me?’ He thought it was a wind-up.

She nodded and drank the last of her gin.

‘Why?’ he said.

She breathed in and out, shifted her weight. ‘Your wife hired me. She thought you were having an affair.’

Liam laughed. ‘This is a joke, someone put you up to this.’

‘She hired me at her sister’s funeral to look into you. I’ve been following you for the last week.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I sat outside your house, followed you to work, then to the studio. I’ve been in here twice before when you were in.’

‘Orla wouldn’t do this.’

‘That’s not all.’

His hand was tight on his pint glass, veins showing across his knuckles. ‘What do you mean?’

‘The other night,’ Jenny said. ‘The woman in the skirt chatting you up.’