“No one died. Only a dog called Tubby.” She paused. “They used to call me that.” But she was smiling, her hair whipped across her eyes by the wind. Her cup gave off the sickly smell of burnt sugar. “It’s going so fast! Only four days left.”

“Glad we came?”

She would not look at me, nodding instead at the empty decks of a pleasure boat sliding under the bridge. Alison had never been out of the country before, not even to Canada. She had risen to the challenge of this visit as I’d hoped she would. She’d helped me with the interviews at the Whitechapel Gallery and the Serpentine. Her research was thorough and she had a talent for offbeat questions that cut straight to the point. Today, at the Tate Modern, she was going to take the lead.

“Maddy would have loved it here,” I said. After a moment: “I hate that phrase! Would have.” The grammar whispered that Maddy was no more, I’d had all I was ever going to have of Maddy. Now there was only what I chose to do with the idea of her.

“Is there a better way of saying it?”

“How do I know what she would have loved? She might have detested London. Would have has nothing to do with her. It’s all about me.”

Ahead of us, the chimney of the old power station reared up. Art and tourism filled it now, but the building still spoke of harsher things. Antonio was out there somewhere, south of the river. The idea of him was a bruise, a humiliation, after our meeting, and at the same time it was a warm current buoying me up, prompting me to say things about Maddy out loud. Did Antonio ever go to art museums? When I knew him, he’d been very absorbed by his research; his associates had been other doctoral students, serious young scientists intent on deciphering the codes of life. He’d shown little curiosity about museum studies. He’d thought it was a frivolous subject, or that’s the impression I’d had. Maybe in the larger scheme of things it was.

Behind us a man muttered into his cell phone: “. . . it’s ridiculous how much comes in and goes out . . .”

I held up a finger. “Did you hear that?” Of course she hadn’t heard it. Only one person at a time hears these scraps of passing speech. Since Maddy’s death, they had increased in frequency and bizarreness to the point where they seemed like messages.

Turning back to the railing, I said: “I met Antonio yesterday when you were in Norwich.”

Alison accepted the change of subject without comment. I knew she would not help me. She would let me flail and drown in my own words.

“It was strange.”

“Was he shocked to hear about Maddy?”

“He was upset. We talked about, you know, way back when.”

Alison crunched her peanuts.