Thus began a pleasant ritual. In the afternoons, when Morgan was playing football or on the computer, Rat would bring her book out into the garden. If it was too wet to sit outside, she’d come into Gillem’s studio. She read, while Gillem worked. Once she overheard him talking on the phone to somebody about his mother. It sounded as if she were ill, but although Rat’s English was getting better by the day, she still found it almost impossible to follow English people talking among themselves.

Gillem expressed surprise at how little he minded Rat’s being in his studio. He had always needed solitude to work, he explained: even when he was just starting out, he’d found it difficult to share studio space with other artists. But Rat was so still he almost forgot she was there, except that her presence somehow made him less restless than if he were actually alone.

“You’re a peaceful girl, aren’t you,” he said. “Too bad I don’t do portraits. You’d make a wonderful sitter.”

Rat shrugged.

“I always find it a bit worrying, when someone can manage to keep so still.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you think of our biological origins, why does an animal need to stay utterly immobile?” Gillem was smiling, so that she would know he was not too serious.

“So it doesn’t get eaten?”

“Exactly.”

“Nobody’s going to eat me,” Rat retorted.

Because she was so quiet, Gillem found himself inclined to talk. And she, in turn, discovered that when the man was absorbed in the purely mechanical aspects of his work, he was much freer, more forthcoming than over a dinner table.

There were two Gillems living at Hawkridge Road—the studio Gillem and the home Gillem—and the former was someone you could almost be friends with.

“When did you decide to become an artist?” Rat asks Gillem one day. He is retracing pencil drawings in colored ink.

“Astonishingly late. When I was young, I spent most of my time taking drugs in nightclubs—yes, I know it’s hard to believe now—and it took me a long time to grow out of that and think of actually making something. I’d always loved drawing, but I never thought it was something I might do for a living.”

“What happened?”

“It was a friend of my mother’s, who was a wonderful painter. The one whose picture’s on the wall downstairs. He’s dead now. He offered me a job as his assistant. He said, Here you are at loose ends, wasting your money, worrying your friends. Why don’t you come work for me, at least you’ll be doing something useful. He saved my life, really. Are you ready for a cup of tea?” Gillem goes over to the sink to fill the kettle.