I can picture her clearly now. How she came home and the children were acting all needy with her – as they always do, when she’s spent more than a couple of hours away from the house. Earnest faces – the list of games played on the green, the new football, how Maeve had thumped Mikey on the back because he wouldn’t pass the ball. How Maeve had hurt her arm doing a handstand. I could see that Jenny wasn’t one bit interested in the children. Her eyes seemed glossy with hope. Simon, it seemed, had provided her with this hope. I felt nervous for her as she told me that Simon had said that her recent work was good enough to include in a group show he was organizing. I asked her about the other artists. She reeled off their names. I hadn’t heard of any of them but Jenny kept using words like young, exciting, innovative and brave. I wanted then very much to tell her how brave she was but I was inclined to believe that she might not take my observation seriously. Either way, she seemed to be floating, and each time the children asked her something, she talked over them, without apology, and continued to quote Simon.

I can hear Jenny moving about downstairs in the kitchen. The sound of her cowboy boots clicking on the wooden floor is unmistakably Jenny’s and her pacing about annoys me. This is what familiarity does to you. I stretch out my legs, flex my toes and stare up through the skylight at the sky. It seems mesmeric. Jenny bids me farewell as she closes the front door. I respond, but not with much vigour, and I doubt very much she has heard me. I close my eyes and the heat of the sun through the skylight feels heavenly on my cheekbones and I allow myself to fully relax and to drift into a half sleep.

I come to with a start and grapple for my phone in the duvet. It’s noon and I have been semi-asleep for almost an hour. I think a bit more about Simon Thompson and I consider his motivation. Is Jenny realistically too old at this stage to make it? Has she not missed her opportunity? Indeed, these very questions are ones that I have posed to her in the past number of weeks. I’m not being unnecessarily cruel, after all I do appreciate her work, but I do wonder if it is too little too late.