‘No you’re not, Linda. You’re trying to get the story from the horse’s mouth, so that you can go back to your little witches’ coven and drop hints and suggestions that you know more than you can tell, and that if someone buys you a drink, you might . . .’ She stopped abruptly, aware that she was being cruel.

‘Is that what you really think, Chris?’ Linda fiddled with a loose button on her jacket; it came off, and she could not find a pocket to put it in.

‘I’m sorry. I just don’t want to hear it.’

‘More fool you, then.’ Linda shouldered her handbag. ‘You would have listened to me once upon a time. Now it’s too late.’

Victoria wound her hair up into a knot on top of her head, secured it with a big tortoiseshell clip and dropped her dressing gown to the bathroom floor. It was Leanne’s dressing gown really, a white towelling number that had obviously been liberated from a hotel room somewhere in the world, somewhere expensive, by the look of it, by the feel of the cotton. Leanne spent a good deal of time travelling, promoting exhibitions of her work all over the world – that was one of the reasons Victoria had accepted Leanne’s offer of a place to live. The house was big and comfortable, and she would be alone for much of the time, able to think about her future. Money was never mentioned. The arrangement suited Victoria – for now. It couldn’t last for long, of course – but for the time being, Leanne offered a refuge.

She spent a lot of time in the bathroom. The tub was huge, the towels soft, the shelves crammed with every sort of top-end gunk with which to pamper herself. A sound system was built into a recessed alcove. Diptyque candles, one in every flavour, thousands of pounds worth of scented wax, covered every surface. Victoria slid into the hot, foamy water and reclined on soft cushions of bubbles.

She lay back and dozed, half-hearing Donald Byrd on the stereo, the fumes of the candles mingling into one thick fug of perfume, mint fighting with gardenia fighting with lavender fighting with freesia fighting with tuberose . . .

She woke with a start, the bubbles gone, the water chilling around her. She could hear Leanne talking on the phone downstairs; another interview, probably.

She climbed out of the bath, shivering slightly, her body covered in goosepimples, her nipples so hard they were almost sore. She picked up the towelling dressing gown from where she’d dropped it on the slate floor, wrapped it tightly around herself.

The mirror was misted over, but she cleared it with a swipe of the hand and looked at the face it reflected. Make-up had run around her eyes, sweat taking it down her cheeks in long grey lines. She wiped it away, a dirty mark on the white sleeve.