‘I liked it,’ Hobbes said.

Latimer agreed. ‘Yes, it was very good.’

For the first time Joan Travis looked entirely innocent, and desperate to be loved. ‘Really? I’ve done it much better, at other times.’

Hobbes asked, ‘How did Mr Graves take your rendition?’

‘He gave me lots of notes, tips and the like, ways to improve. I suppose that’s all over with now.’

‘You can still pursue it as a career,’ Latimer told her. ‘Go to drama school.’

‘Yeah, I suppose. Leonard said the same. There was one weird thing he did, though. It made me think he was losing his mind a bit, becoming forgetful.’

‘Something he said?’

‘Yeah. Once, after I’d performed the piece for him, he called me Adeline.’

Silence in the room.

Latimer made a note. Hobbes was going to speak, but then he stopped.

Joan looked at them both, one after the other.

Finally, Hobbes asked her, ‘And did he say who this Adeline was?’

‘No, he just called me the name. And then he apologized, and said he’d got me mixed up with someone else, someone—’

‘Who was it?’

The steel had come back to Hobbes’s voice.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Was it his daughter?’

‘His daughter? No, of course not. He hasn’t got a daughter called—’

‘Joan, you have to tell me.’

‘I am telling you, for fuck’s sake! I’m telling you that I don’t know. What’s wrong with you? Jesus.’

Latimer interrupted them. ‘OK, Guv, I think I need to talk to Joan on her own for a bit.’

‘Aye, that’s right. Hobbes. Guv. She does.’

Hobbes raised his hands in surrender. He left the room and stood in the corridor. He felt guilty for his behaviour. He thought of going back in and apologizing but, no, best leave Latimer to it. He headed for the kitchen to make a drink, but then changed his mind. He took the stairs down into the cellar.

There was the shape of the pit on the floor, covered over with clean concrete. And below this, the empty grave. This was the prime site, he knew that now: of all the dresses laid out as ritualized objects, as magic charms, the one buried in the cellar was the most important, perhaps the very first.

He had read the preliminary report: a best estimate put the burial in the 1950s, maybe earlier. Thirty years or so in the ground.

And still no body, no flesh and blood.

A suicide note: Dearest Adeline, I’m so sorry. For everything.

A screwed-up letter in Nicholas’s bedsit: Adeline … I’ve been thinking about you a lot, these last few months … I wish I could see you again.

Father and son, both obsessing over the same woman.

Adeline, Adeline, Adeline …

He remembered David Kepple’s words about the missing final image in the kusozu series: a memorial for the dead. Human emotions working against decay. Perhaps the dresses served such a function: an act of remembrance.