‘I don’t really like art.’

‘That doesn’t make any difference.’

‘Okay.’

‘What was dating the professor like?’

Natasha eyed a pile of perfumes that looked like it might topple over. Glasses of different sizes and shapes, an unwieldy pyramid, with notes in similar handwriting attached to each lid. ‘Brutal, unforgiving,’ Natasha replied. ‘He kept making me watch films of a high cultural standard.’

‘Why did you do it?’ Lucy made a note on her imaginary chart.

‘I do things and I don’t know why I do them.’

‘Were you in love with him?’

‘No.’

‘I was in love before,’ Lucy said sadly. ‘But it was over like that.’ She clicked her fingers.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I called him once when I was drunk from a payphone near my hotel.’

‘Oh no.’

‘And he answered and I said: “Relax, stay on the line. Stay on the line. I’m not going to say anything mean.”’

‘And?’

‘I said something mean.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I couldn’t repeat it.’ Lucy looked away. ‘It’s that shocking. It wouldn’t be right if I told you. No one will ever know what was said on that payphone.’

‘Obscenities?’

‘Things are said when you drink.’ Lucy cleared her throat. ‘Would you admit to having self-destructive impulses?’

Natasha nodded. ‘I would admit that.’

‘Would you say that you’re a typical Irish girl?’

‘I would say I’m not a typical anything.’

‘Where is your home?

‘I could point it out on a map but I don’t know really.’

‘How do you feel about this college?’

‘I feel every day,’ Natasha said, ‘that I’m in the process of losing a long and complicated bet, one that will carry on for several years, where I will end up down a huge amount of money.’

‘Is that a secret you’ve never told anybody before?’

‘Yes.’

Lucy swung her legs over the side of her bed. She had tiny, well-manicured feet. The room seemed to reverberate, the walls shaking, the perfumes emitting all their scents at once. ‘Would you say that you’re a complete liability in almost every respect?’

‘I have a lot of self-control,’ Natasha said, as if it were her final prayer.

‘Would you say that you’re a complete liability in almost every respect?’ Lucy repeated.

Natasha looked at Lucy’s tiny feet. How had she walked across the world on those? She cast her memory over her life. She saw certain scenes. ‘It’s possible I have no self-control. None at all,’ she said, finally.

‘Hold on.’ Lucy jumped off her bed. ‘I will be back.’

When Lucy was gone, Natasha examined the inscriptions on the perfume bottles. It was Professor Carr’s handwriting on every single one. The emotion she felt most overwhelmingly was pity.

Lucy walked back in carrying a thick, brown envelope. ‘This is my life’s work,’ she said. ‘I wrote it in a hot foreign country when I was having a life-changing experience. I believe it’s the result of visions. I want you to read it and then we will perform it together in the college theatre. It is important to me.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I can’t imagine we will be the same after it’s finished.’ She drew the envelope close to her chest, as if saying goodbye to it, and then thrust it at Natasha.