Marie sat on a leather-covered bench in front of a large canvas showing the impressionistic figures of two small children in white smocks kneeling among sea grass and pinks, behind them the tousled blues and whites of the sea, above them a sky filled with plump cumulus clouds. She took from her bag the carrot and home-made piccalilli salad she’d made that morning and munched her way through it, eyes fixed on the painting, drinking in the complicated build-up of brushstrokes that came together to create certainty in the mind of the spectator. She’d loved these paintings ever since she’d first encountered them in a small Scottish town where she’d been seconded to a branch of her previous employer. She’d escaped to the art gallery during the lunch hour and she’d been astounded by the effect they had on her. She’d hardly been able to credit that there was a whole collection of them in the very city where she lived. ‘We’re philistines,’ she’d said to Marco, insisting he visit the gallery with her. ‘Imagine not knowing this was right here on our doorstep.’

She knew that Marco didn’t share her enthusiasm for the paintings. But he liked to come with her, to share her excitement. And somehow, it gave her a sense of security to know he was sitting on one of the benches, playing Angry Birds on his phone while she moved among the paintings.

But it wasn’t Marco who was watching her that day. Marie ate her lunch, oblivious to the fact that she was being studied. On a similar bench in the next gallery, a man was apparently enjoying a pair of L. S. Lowry seascapes, a surprising contrast to the artist’s usual subject of working-class life. However, the target of his attention was quite different. He was intent on Marie, fixated on every move she made. She was a neat eater, he thought. You wouldn’t want just anyone eating their lunch in the midst of expensive artworks. But Marie was someone who could be trusted not to splash or drip or even leave a trail of crumbs behind her. He liked that about her. A woman who took care about how she ate in public would probably be fastidious in other ways. Not one of those sluts who couldn’t look after a man properly.