And in between 1982 and 2008? How did the story bridge a gap of twenty-six years? A job interview, at which a woman falls in love with a man she doesn’t know. She writes a book about him. Later, she meets him again when they both have their photographs taken for a feature in The Times. It must seem to her as if fate has reunited them. A little later still, she attends the private view of his first art exhibition. She studies his work carefully, being obsessed with him. She sees a painting called The Murder of Mary Trelease. She thinks nothing of it, not until some time has elapsed, time during which her obsession has intensified. She hires a private detective who tells her the man’s father is in prison for killing a woman called Mary Trelease, and, of course, she remembers the picture. But the picture says something different about who committed the murder. Not in an obvious way—there’s no graphic depiction of violence—but subtly, so that the woman, our heroine, thinks she’s the only one who knows the truth.

Anyone who cared about stories would know that only the most important character gets to be in that position: knowing everything while everyone else knows nothing. That would be good for the ego, thought Charlie, though ultimately not good enough to restore an irretrievably contaminated specimen to health. This was a woman who, after a failed suicide attempt, painted herself dead, with a noose round her neck. As she wished she could be, or as she thought she deserved to look?

Charlie thought about Ruth Bussey and her self-esteem exercise, her failure to put up flattering photographs of herself alongside the pictures of Charlie, in spite of the book’s orders. For the past two years, Charlie had avoided looking at images of herself; she’d avoided being photographed as far as possible. How much more must you have to hate everything you are, were and might ever be to pour all your energy into painting yourself contorted and defeated by death?

Was that the story in her head? Charlie wondered. A woman who loathes herself, in spite of having all the money in the world to buy art, the services of private investigators, whatever she wants? In spite of her immense talent, and everything she could achieve if she looked forward instead of back? She can’t, though, that’s her tragedy. Her only story’s an old one, yet she’s terrified of it ending. That’s why she plays games, withholds the truth in a way that lets you know she’s keeping something from you, forcing you to play hide and seek with her. She has to make it last, because once the game’s over, there’s nothing left for her.

He seems to have got hold of the idea that he killed you.

Not me.