Isobel understood that Grace was opening up this well-worn old story – of her long-time, devouring, unslaked passion for Sandy, Isobel’s half-brother – mostly as a distraction from thinking about her father. When they arrived at the flat Grace went around exclaiming over everything that was new – Isobel had painted the kitchen, bought an Ercol sofa on eBay. The little flat wasn’t really anything special – the ceilings were low and the kitchen an awkward galley shape – but the way Isobel had things arranged was airy and tranquil. The sofa which was her spare bed was heaped with pretty cushions. Grace opened up the fridge – packed with vegetables from the farmers’ market – and then the wardrobe, as if she were searching for something. Isobel loved buying clothes but her taste was cautious, she dressed in skirts and cardigans and flat shoes. Grace wore vintage or scruffy combats or dramatic satin, changing her look often, as if her appearance were a perpetual art show.

— Everything’s so calm here. Flowers for the table. It’s calming me, she said, touching the petals of the blue scabious. — It’s such a change after my grotty student life.

— Too calm, Isobel said. — I could do with a man, messing things up.

— A dirty man.

— A really dirty one. Gracie, are you actually going to make a mask?

— Is it too weird? It’s macabre, isn’t it? I’m going to look up death masks on your laptop.

— Be careful, please be careful. You don’t know what you’ll see.

Isobel hovered anxiously, looking over Grace’s shoulder while she found some actual masks – Oliver Cromwell’s, and Pascal’s – and then some funeral directors’ websites, and then a photograph from the end of the nineteenth century of a death mask being made, in some place that looked almost like a barber’s shop. The living men’s own faces, in the lovely silvery old print, were distinctive and mournful, exalted in their dedication to their work. — You see, Grace said. — It’s quite a beautiful process. It’s solemn.

Isobel hesitated still. — But I don’t think you could do it though, not to your own father. I think it has to be impersonal.

— Strange, isn’t it, to think that these men are long, long dead too: the mask-takers? The photograph is a kind of death mask in itself. I could take a photograph of Dad, I suppose. A photograph of him, dead. That would be easier. It wouldn’t drive my mother so berserk. I could take it on my phone. Then show it to the dirty guys at parties, see if it creeps them out. Hey fellas, think you can live up to this?

— Pretty creepy.