THEY DECIDED TO bring Zachary’s body to lie in the Garret’s Lane gallery which had been his life work. This was Grace’s idea. — It’s always been a sacred place, she said. The art gallery was a conversion of an eighteenth-century chapel, and had won prizes for the architect: the airy purity of the original interior had been preserved, the maze-like display spaces were composed of a sequence of white folding walls, which could be arranged in different combinations. Zachary had died in the light-filled office with its walls of pink brick, modernist furniture and arched window looking out onto an acacia tree in the courtyard garden. In the week before the funeral, artists associated with the gallery came and went, bringing in pieces on loan for the unique occasion: some of the big names who’d begun with Zachary or been with him from the beginning – Jane Ogden, Hari Rostami, Martin Shield – along with others more modestly successful whose work he’d championed, and those young artists out from art school who’d won the coveted Garret’s Lane Trust apprenticeships, and had studios in the outbuildings. The Trust was Zachary’s characteristic invention. He’d decided that some of his old friends in art were making too much money and needed to be relieved of the burden of it. As well as the apprenticeships, the Trust helped to fund the gallery’s work in taking art into local schools and bringing schoolchildren into the gallery, and the art projects with refugees and victims of torture. Two of the current apprentices had come through from the refugee group.

It was Grace’s idea to bring her father’s body home to the gallery but it was effective, judicious Hannah – compact and heavy-bosomed, dyed red hair swinging in her eyes – who made the arrangements, cajoling and forceful on her phone, always seeing the shortest way through any problem. They closed the gallery to the public though they kept the cafe-bookshop open. The team that had worked with Zachary and Hannah came in at all hours, they hardly seemed to take a break, helping to store away the exhibition which had been in progress, hanging and re-hanging according to what turned up, solving the problem of display for those fragile pieces which might be in danger in a crowd. Zachary had always had one of Christine’s paintings in his office, opposite the desk where he worked – one of the series of self-portraits she’d done when she was pregnant with Isobel. This was carried downstairs for the occasion, to hang among the others.