‘I don’t do that, actually,’ said Charlie. ‘I don’t rupture my neighbours’ eardrums, either.’

‘I told you: I was celebrating. Finishing a piece of work you’re happy with—it’s such a buzz. Like being able to fly. I wanted to reward myself, so I put on my favourite song and went round the corner to buy some smokes and peppermint tea. I put the volume up high so that I’d hear the song while I was in the shop.’ Mary smiled vaguely, a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was thinking back to something that had happened years ago.

Charlie’s skin prickled with apprehension. She thought of Ruth Bussey saying, ‘I’m frightened something’s going to happen. ’ ‘Could I see the painting?’ she asked. ‘The one you’ve just finished?’

‘No.’ A reflex response. Anger. ‘Why? You’re not interested in my work. The other two weren’t. You just want to check I’m who I say I am.’ Mary dropped her cigarette on the path, didn’t bother to extinguish it. It lay there, burning. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and dig out my passport and driver’s licence again. This time I won’t bother putting them back in the drawer, since one of you’s certain to turn up tomorrow.’

Charlie followed her into a tiny brown kitchen that contained a free-standing electric cooker with a grime-encrusted top, a stained metal sink and a row of cabinets with uncloseable doors that hung askew. Mottled brown linoleum covered the floor, studded with cigarette burns. No one has touched this place for at least thirty years, thought Charlie, and then: it looks even worse than my house, and that’s saying something. ‘I don’t want to see any ID,’ she said. ‘My colleagues are satisfied that you’re who you say you are, and that’s good enough for me.’

Mary undid the buttons of her duffle-coat and let it slide off her arms. When it hit the floor, she kicked it to one side. It lay in a heap by the kitchen door. ‘It doubles as a draught excluder,’ she told Charlie. Her refined voice sounded so out of place in the drab, cramped room that Charlie wondered if she was a Trustafarian—playing at slumming it, rubbing shoulders with bona fide poor people in an attempt to make her art more authentic, knowing she could escape to Daddy’s mansion in Berkshire whenever it suited her.

Mary pulled off her hat, releasing a huge silver-black frizz that tumbled down her back. ‘Aidan Seed’s a picture-framer,’ said Charlie matter-of-factly. ‘Did Chris Gibbs or Simon Waterhouse tell you that?’

‘Yes. I see the connection: I’m a painter, he’s a framer. Doesn’t mean I know him.’

‘You haven’t heard the name? Perhaps from other artists, even if you don’t know him personally? I’d have thought, with Spilling being the size it is . . .’

‘I don’t know any artists,’ said Mary. ‘Don’t think that because I’m a painter I’m in any way part of the art world. I hate all that nonsense. You join some group and next thing you know you’re on a committee, organising quizzes and raffles. That’s what the local art scene would be like in a town like this, and as for the London scene—all that Charles Saatchi garbage has got nothing to do with art. It’s marketing—it markets its own brand of marketing and nothing else. It’s about creating appetites, artificially—there’s no real hunger in it. There’s nothing real about it.’