‘The picture was of a young woman who was . . . well, dead.’ Jan sounded apologetic. ‘I can’t remember her name, though I knew it at the time—it was the painting’s title. Not a neighbour this time—someone Mary had been at school with. Another Villiers girl. A writer. She only wrote one novel, though, before she hanged herself, tragically young. Not that there’s an age when suicide isn’t tragic. I wish I could remember her name.’

‘Maybe Mary was close to her,’ Charlie suggested, remembering what Mary had said about painting people you cared about. Like offering yourself an emotional breakdown.

‘Yes,’ said Jan. ‘She told me they were inseparable, that this woman had meant everything to her and nothing to me. As if that gave her every right, and I ought to shut up if I knew what was good for me.’ Noticing that Charlie looked puzzled, she added, ‘Sorry, I should have explained. Mary painted her dead, with the noose round her neck.’ She shuddered. ‘The full suicide scene, in all its vivid, gory, undignified detail. The picture was utterly grotesque. I can’t imagine I’d be more shocked if I saw a real dead body. I mean, the poor woman . . . oh, her name’s on the tip of my tongue, what is it? It’ll come to me.’ Jan looked angry. ‘I know she’s dead and it can’t hurt her, but still, her family . . . Even if Mary never shows the painting to anyone, even if all she does is stick it in the loft . . .’

Charlie’s thoughts drifted back to the forbidden zone: Ruth Bussey and the wall of newspaper cuttings. Jan would have understood why Charlie wanted it destroyed, even if Dominic Lund didn’t. The thought that it was there, that it existed, was unbearable, no matter who saw or didn’t see it. Charlie felt a deep coldness in the pit of her stomach.

‘. . . forced my true opinion out of me, then savaged me for it,’ Jan was saying. ‘She kept going on about murder, as if I’d accused her of it.’

‘Murder? I thought you said the woman killed herself?’

‘ “Anyone would think I murdered her,” “I’m an artist, not a murderer—I didn’t kill her, I only painted her.” That sort of thing. Yes, she did kill herself—when Mary started talking about murder, I got confused, so I asked again, to check.’

‘What did Mary say?’

‘She said, “She chose to die,” as if that choice gave Mary the right to paint the poor woman disfigured by death.’ Jan shrugged. ‘I disagreed. Choosing to die and choosing to have a portrait painted of your corpse are two very different things. Don’t you think?’