‘It’s none of my business. If you call a painting after a person and then depict them only as an outline, what does that mean?’ Charlie had the impression Ruth had asked herself this question many times. ‘Surely it has to mean there’s something painful or problematic associated with them in your mind, something you’d rather not remember.’

‘I didn’t see any outlines of people when I was looking at her pictures this morning,’ Charlie told her. ‘I saw people with faces and features.’

‘You mean up on the wall? The ones of the family?’

‘Mary’s family?’

‘No,’ said Ruth. ‘A family who used to live on her estate, I think.’

Charlie wondered why Mary had chosen to paint them so many times. She’d mentioned a compulsion to paint people she cared about. Like offering yourself an emotional breakdown.

‘They’re brilliant, aren’t they?’ said Ruth. ‘Did you see the one of the boy writing in pen on the wall?’

‘No. Where was that one?’

Ruth frowned as if she was trying to remember. ‘In one of the downstairs rooms.’

Charlie had only seen the kitchen and the hall before going upstairs. ‘What was he writing? On the wall?’

‘ “Joy Division”. I don’t know what it means.’

‘ “Love Will Tear Us Apart”,’ said Charlie automatically.

‘What?’ Ruth sounded startled. ‘Why did you say that?’

‘It’s the title of Joy Division’s most famous song. Don’t ask me to sing it to you.’

Ruth said nothing. There was a trapped look on her face.

‘Joy Division are a band,’ Charlie told her, trying not to sound scornful. ‘You haven’t heard of them?’

‘I didn’t listen to pop music as a teenager. My school friends all watched Top of the Pops, but it was banned in our house, effectively.’

‘What do you mean “effectively”?’

Ruth sighed. ‘My parents never actually told me I couldn’t do anything. Their particular brand of mind-control was far too subtle for that. Somehow I just knew I had to pretend not to want to do the things they’d disapprove of.’ She looked up at Charlie. ‘Were your parents strict?’

‘I thought so at the time. They tried to stop me from pursuing my hobbies: smoking fags, getting hammered, taking boys I hardly knew up to my bedroom.’

Charlie didn’t want to talk about her teenage years, but there was an avid look in Ruth’s eyes. ‘Fights aplenty. My sister was the good one—didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, didn’t screw around. Never challenged the regime, thereby making it look fair, and shafting me in the process. Her greatest triumph was to defy medical science and single-handedly defeat ovarian cancer. I can’t even give up smoking.’