‘Very accomplished,’ I said.

The man snorted. ‘A little middle-class, though, wouldn’t you say?’

He plunged his hands deep into his corduroy pockets and left them there as I arranged the paintings in their crates.

‘I’m more of a landscape man, I suppose. Give me a sea crashing against some rocks, or at least a nice field. I’m partial to fields.’

‘Still,’ I said, ‘they’re excellent examples of the style.’

‘Well. You’re the expert,’ he said.

I closed the crates and drew their bolts.

‘When will we have them back?’ he asked.

‘As soon as the exhibition closes. We’ll take good care of them,’ I said. ‘Will you be joining us for the opening?’

He’d found a morsel of food stored in his teeth and was grinding it up.

‘Thank you, but no,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand museums.’

As I crunched down the gravel drive, the old white not-Vauxhall creaking and bumping, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw him wave, one arm around his wife. I envied him briefly, but then I took pleasure in such brief envious flashes – moments when I crawled into another skin and looked out at a world which was mine, a world I could possess.

I’d stayed too long at the old house. It was early evening and the light was fading. Crepuscular. A teacher had said that about my work once. ‘It’s neither day nor night in these paintings,’ he said, and tapped his fingertip against the desk. ‘But one of them is coming.’

I liked that teacher. Leonard and I had him for a drawing class. He’d told us to look at the models, to really look.

‘I want to see that wart,’ he’d say, as the model remained reclined and impassive. ‘I want those silver snail-trails along her hips.’

One day he asked us to do an experiment. ‘It’s to test your temperaments as artists,’ he said. ‘First, draw a box. And then draw yourself inside it.’

He walked around the room, looking at each of our boxes in turn. To Leonard, he said nothing. When he saw my box he laughed and said, ‘Oh Miss Aitken. I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.’

Later, Leonard reached out to snatch my sketchbook.

‘What did you draw?’ he asked when I pulled it away.

‘Show me yours,’ I said.

It was when I was coming over a rise that I gasped and went for the brakes. All I saw was movement. Here’s the roo, I thought, and then, when I realised the shape was human: It’s a ghost.

But it was neither. It was a hitchhiker, a young man in a ratty leather jacket with a rattier nylon backpack.