Stuffed between a second sofa and the window was an old-fashioned dark wood desk with a computer on it, and, incongruously, a picnic bench of the sort one normally found in pub gardens, half unpainted wood and half dark green. For good measure, a bulky winged armchair had been crammed into the room as well. One whole wall was covered with wooden shelves that acted as a sort of display cabinet for pottery, carved stone figures, several different Russian doll sets, strange wooden blobs, heads of deer and lions and eagles made out of thin wire, some silver and some gold, an assortment of colourful plastic shapes, all of which were almost recognisable—as square, circle, triangle—but became more abstract at one end, as if they’d lost the will to be proper shapes and preferred not really being anything. There wasn’t a centimetre of space to spare, should Ruth Bussey decide she urgently needed to buy another metal model of a rabbit’s head. It was as if someone who had previously owned an eight-bedroom pile had downsized radically, without culling any of their possessions.

There were at least thirty paintings on the walls. Most of them were small, but one or two were huge, and ought, Charlie thought, to have been hanging over a marble fireplace in a ball-room. The largest picture was striking in its unpleasantness as well as its size. It had a rectangular gold-effect frame with four smaller rectangles protruding from it—one in each corner—and depicted a woman with long, dark hair wearing a white dress and a serene expression on her face. At the centre of the dress, there was a hole from which a distorted, grimacing face stared out, open-mouthed.

Charlie shuddered, turning her attention to a less disturbing picture of a large bull with a square body standing in front of a pink stone bell tower. Ruth came in carrying two cups of tea. Charlie would have preferred a double vodka. ‘That’s a ribbon-and-reed frame,’ said Ruth, seeing Charlie looking at the bull. ‘See the pattern on it? Aidan told me it’s based on the Roman symbol for government: reeds bound together by a ribbon. Individually weak but together strong. He said it was like him and me.’

‘Did Aidan buy you all these pictures?’ Charlie asked.

‘No. I bought them myself. Aidan framed them, though. Re-framed them, in some cases. He thinks most paintings aren’t framed as they should be.’ Ruth perched on the edge of one of the sofas.