‘He never told me. That was almost the worst thing. He bragged about what he’d done to me, but he wouldn’t explain. As always, he avoided talking about his reasons or his feelings, apart from to say he’d been pleased when we went out for dinner and I said what I did about choosing my work over a happy personal life. It sounds so pompous—I’d barely been painting for a year, at that point—but already it was my life’s work. It was all I wanted to do. It still is. When I told Aidan that over dinner, he knew he’d picked the perfect way to damage me beyond repair.’

Seeing my confusion, perhaps mistaking it for disbelief, Mary says, ‘Oh, I can give you reasons if you want them. They were clear enough when he threatened me. Before he walked out of this room and out of my life, he put his hands round my throat and squeezed so tight I thought I was going to die. He said, “You’re never going to paint another picture. Understand? And you’re never going to tell anyone what happened when Martha died. If I find out you’ve done either, it’ll be you swinging from the end of a rope next time.” ’ Mary shudders. ‘No one was going to ruin his career, he said. He was going to be a star, and Martha and I couldn’t do anything to stop that happening.’

‘But . . . Martha committed suicide,’ I say numbly.

‘He could have saved her,’ says Mary. ‘By the time he tried, after he’d phoned the ambulance, it was too late. He couldn’t risk that becoming public knowledge. Think of it. What a thing to be known for—an act of cowardice that caused the death of a promising young writer who had her whole life ahead of her.’

‘But you hadn’t said anything so far, and if he hadn’t destroyed your pictures, you’d have had no reason to . . .’

‘He hated me anyway, long before Martha died. He’d never forgiven me for the letters I sent him when he was at Trinity, messing Martha around. I could see through him, all the way through. I knew he was scared and damaged, too gutless to deal with his problems, preferring to make other people suffer instead. I can prove how much he hated me. Look.’ Mary runs from the room. I follow her up the stairs to her bedroom. It’s covered in discarded clothes, with no visible floor-space, and stinks of cigarettes. Every drawer in the scratched mahogany chest gapes open. Mary pulls something out of the bottom one. ‘This is the sales list from Aidan’s exhibition.’

It’s handwritten but clearly legible.

‘Look at the title of the last painting on the list.’

‘The Murder of Mary Trelease,’ I read. ‘He called one of his pictures that?’