She shrugs. ‘What can I say? I’m sorry. He followed you for a few weeks—weeks during which, by all accounts, you hardly left the house. When he told me that, I felt terrible. It was never my intention to drive you out of your job and turn you into a recluse. There was no way I could have known what had happened to you in Lincoln.’ Mary bites her lip. ‘I’m sure my impassioned self-justification speech is the last thing you want to hear. Anyway . . . I had him keep an eye on you long enough to satisfy me that you had no connection, past or present, to Aidan Seed, and then I called him off.’

‘I saw him on Sunday. And Monday,’ I tell her.

Her expression hardens. ‘When a cop turned up on Friday asking about Aidan, I panicked. I’d thought things were stable; clearly they weren’t. I needed to know what had changed. And then Charlie Zailer came round on Monday morning to tell me you were Aidan’s girlfriend. About fifteen minutes after she left my house, I got a call from First Call telling me the same thing.’

‘I didn’t know Aidan last June,’ I say, aware I’m not the one in need of a defence. ‘I met him later, in August. I needed a job, and Saul told me Aidan needed an assistant.’

‘How perfectly ironic,’ says Mary. ‘It was my fault you met him. One more thing to feel bad about.’

I want to tell her that meeting Aidan’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, but I can’t say it and mean it, not without knowing what he’s done. Not unconditionally.

‘Did you know Aidan used to work for Saul, before he set up on his own?’ Mary asks.

I shake my head.

‘That’s another reason I thought he had to be pulling your strings—the Saul connection. It seemed too much of a coincidence. ’ Anguish flares in her eyes. ‘I thought you wanted the painting so that you could give it to him.’

I look away. I’m not brave enough to tell her that was exactly what happened, only later. Not in June last year, but after Christmas, when I went to Megson Crescent for that very reason: to get Abberton because Aidan wanted it. Needed it.

Mary sucks hard on her cigarette. ‘When I told Saul I’d been thrown by how pushy you were, he said you were always like that about pictures you fell in love with. That’s how you met him, right? He told me the story: you wanted a painting that was in his window and told him you’d pay any price for it, however high. I realised then that you weren’t trying to work me—you really did fall in love with Abberton.’