I step away, to give her some space. I pull my phone out, flick through my news feed and pretend I’m working. She’s reading every word. After a couple of articles, I stick the phone back in my pocket and take a look at her CD collection. It’s mostly a chance to crouch and bend my knee, and to mime interest in anything while she reads, so I don’t seem to be hovering. She has Mozart and Salieri next to each other, and I don’t remember them getting on at all in the movie.

‘Do you have anything by anyone called Novotny?’ It’s a long shot.

‘Novotny?’ She lowers the agreement and gives the question some thought. ‘There’s a violinist from Prague by that name. But he’d be ninety now, if he’s still alive. Prague String Quartet. I think we have them doing some Dvořák. They also played a lot of Mozart.’ She holds the document up. ‘I’m happy with this.’

She finds a pen in a nearby drawer and signs. She takes both copies, taps them on the countertop to align them, then sets them down again.

‘Now,’ she says, in a tone that tells me a new subject is to be broached, ‘I realise there will need to be some photographs.’

‘Sure. I’ll try to make that as painless as possible.’

‘Really?’ She laughs. ‘Am I so easy to read?’

‘No-one’s house is ready for it, but getting ready for it is less of a big deal than you might think.’ This is almost certainly truthiness rather than truth itself, but the news is not all bad. ‘The agency has an arrangement with a professional photographer who will do a good job for two hundred dollars. It might even be less if we can link with them being in the area for something else.’

I take a fresh look around the room, imagining what a professional stager might do with it. You could spend three grand on staging in this house and not move the price needle at all. It’s the wrong place for that. It is what it is.

‘For everyone, the photoshoot means decluttering,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve seen the real-estate websites. There are signs of life, but it’s kind of edited. Lots of visible bench space.’ She has a microwave, a toaster, a juicer – a chorus line of appliances along the benchtop. ‘Some decluttering shows off the house’s best features. Makes it seem bigger, too. I can bring a few things from the agency as well. Cushions . . .’

She nods, though it’s the nod of someone hearing news that’s unwelcome but not unexpected. Nodding, frowning, lips reduced to a flat line.

‘And the workshop?’ she says. ‘If you think I have clutter in here, and I sense you do, you have no idea about the workshop.’

On the wall next to the fridge, there’s a wooden key rack with keys on pegs, and she hooks a keyring with her finger and holds it up, signalling that I’m to follow.