Isobel made tea in the kitchen and when she came out carrying two mugs, Grace had dumped the cushions on the floor and was lying on the sofa with her back turned, face to the wall. Putting down the tea, Isobel slipped off her shoes and lay behind her. She knew that her friend had her eyes open, staring at nothing. When she touched her she seemed to feel a blockage in her turned back, between her shoulder blades, like a dam; some force that ought to be flowing through Grace couldn’t escape and was building up inside. Isobel massaged her gently, trying to conjure away the pain.

Before they began to eat that evening, Alex again poured glasses of the Stará myslivecká vodka which had been Zachary’s favourite, and spoke briefly. Christine stared at her plate, the others followed Alex with their eyes, willing him to find words for what had happened. He said that Zachary was a man who knew how to do everything the right way, and now he was gone, so they had to do this clumsily without him, as best they could. Zachary had loved art, art that wasn’t stupid or spurious. He’d been exceptional in his insight, and he’d had a singular vision, with the remarkable Garret’s Lane gallery at its centre, of an art radically open to its community. — But for us, Alex said, — his family and close friends, gathered round this table, the loss is so much more, we can’t even begin to measure it. I would be inclined personally to take his death as yet more evidence of the supreme shitty law of life that takes away the best and lifts up the worst. Yet somehow because it’s Zachary, he won’t let me do that. I keep on feeling his resistance, and his force for good, and his belief in it. And yet I don’t know how I’m feeling it, because he’s gone.

Isobel covered her face with her napkin to cry, Sandy wiped his eyes on his sleeve. Lydia touched Alex’s arm in appreciation, briefly she buried her face against his shirt – though when she looked up again her eyes were still dry, watchful and glittering. Hannah from the gallery was with them that evening too, and Zachary’s younger brother Max, and Nathan Kearney, Zachary and Alex’s old friend from university days. The presence among them of Max and Grace felt uncanny, because they both looked so like Zachary: with his rosy high colouring and wiry black hair, his bright red mouth and big voice, his air of benevolence and force. Max even ate greedily like his brother, pushing his bread in his mouth while he helped himself to salad; and recently he had grown a stiff beard like Zachary’s, a prophet’s strong beard – although in fact Max didn’t have his brother’s determination; he was anxiously touchy, not decisive.