After Chloé’s ‘trunk period’ – her collection of cabin trunks with curved lids, having outgrown the house, now filled half the attic – she had moved on to a particular style of bedside table: 1920s and ’30s nightstands with marble tops, a drawer and a door to conceal a chamber pot. She picked these up at flea markets and restored them lovingly. They already owned eight, spread about the house. This would be number nine.

‘I’m sure I can get it for fifteen.’

Marc turned away and lit a cigarette to hide his embarrassment. He could not stand haggling, even when it was Chloé doing it. The piles of assorted objects before him made his head spin, just as it had when he had sat on the footstool and failed to recognise his living room. Things were mutating here too. Watering cans were jumbled together with Voltaire chairs, cattle yokes, china dolls, old wireless sets with lights on and porcelain vases in a scene of such indescribable chaos it was hard to remember what the objects were meant for, now that they had been reduced to abstract forms, morphing together into something truly monstrous.