They go into the large, messy kitchen where Sarah takes over making lunch from Lissa, insisting that she is starving and a sandwich isn’t nearly good enough. When the food is ready, Hannah watches Lissa and Sarah as they eat, alert to the ease with which they attack their food. The salt is not in a shaker but in a mortar bowl, into which the women reach with their fingers. They pour oil liberally over their salads, then dunk with their bread to mop it up. When the salad is finished they suck their fingers dry. They eat like animals, but in doing so, they are more elegant than anything she has ever seen. She thinks of her parents; of her mother in her department store cardigans, the salad cream poured onto pallid lettuce, their politeness, their napkins, their insistence on manners.

Afterwards they smoke. Sarah has a similar leather pouch to Lissa’s, uses the same dark tobacco papers. Sarah and Lissa speak about films they have seen, plays. There is an edge to these conversations, a competition. When Lissa talks about the art in Rome, Sarah grows silent, listening with her head to one side. Before she went to Rome, Sarah says to Hannah, Lissa thought a Bellini was a cocktail.

“It is,” says Lissa, reaching over and putting out her cigarette in the remains of the olive oil. “Art and life aren’t mutually exclusive. You taught me that.”

“Touché,” says Sarah, raising her glass.

Hannah feels herself like a plant, tendrils reaching out, hooking onto this house, these women, this life.

“You should stay a few more days,” says Lissa, when Hannah’s time is almost up. “My mum likes you. She thinks you’re good for me. She’s got an exhibition opening next week. Declan will be back. You can meet him too.”

Hannah calls her mum, who sounds small and tentative on the other end of the phone. “If you’re sure, love? Are you sure they’re happy to have you? You won’t be in the way?”

“The house is huge, Mum.”

“Oh, in that case. Well, you thank her mum for me, please.”

IT IS HOT the night of the opening. Hannah wears a slim vest, some wide slacks. She touches her hand to the newly shorn place at the back of her neck. The gallery is tiny, on a cobbled street in East London. Sarah’s canvases are displayed in a stark white room. There is wine and barrels with beer. The crowd stands on the street outside, mingling with the crowds from the other galleries.

Hannah looks at the people and thinks, Here—here is life. It is as though all along a part of her has been hard at work making a skin for herself in the dark and the silence, and now she is ready to wear it, to step into the light.