She settles herself in the armchair and flicks through her notes. She is building a picture of these people from the past: Victor, Kenneth, Eileen, Dorothy. She has met the men and Dorothy, but Eileen is an enigma. Marina knows she is beautiful because she has seen her photograph. She knows that she threw parties with her boyfriend, Leonard Crisp, in the place where Marina is sitting now. Closing her eyes, she pictures a smoky room crowded with people, narrow trousers and short dresses, white boots and floppy hair, dancing in that jerky sixties fashion to the Beatles. Then darkness comes. A punch is thrown. Eileen staggers. Blood drips from her nose.

Marina’s eyes snap open. She is prone to daydreams, but this is something different: sharper – more real; the violence almost visceral. She shudders and jumps up and, to take her mind off ghosts, sets to decorating after all. Not bothering with the preparation, she drags the furniture away from one wall and slaps on paint with fierce, haphazard strokes.

All the time she works, she is thinking. Her mind takes her to the attic, and she visualises the brushes, the jam jars, the pictures hidden behind the chest of drawers. The copies of sunflowers and sunsets and starry nights. Had Dorothy’s son painted them as she suspected? He had disappeared to Paris. Had he made it as an artist? His paintings – if they are his – are haunting. Marina recalls the girl in the unfinished sketch, so delicately drawn. A memorable image. She has seen it before. Where?

Marina keeps going until the lower section is complete, then climbs on a chair and starts again at a higher level. She doesn’t stop until the whole wall is covered with an uneven coat of dark blue paint. Just as she finishes, it clicks. The bookshop. There was a postcard in the display on the wall. The Virgin in Prayer.

It is dark when Marina steps into the hall. The piano has been playing all afternoon, stopping and starting with varying levels of skill as pupils come and go. Now Eva is playing. The music swells and draws Marina up the stairs.

When she knocks, the piano stops and the door opens quickly. Eva Kolinski must be around thirty, but she seems younger. Dark-haired and olive-skinned with dark circles beneath her eyes, she is dressed in a simple green tunic. She has an entrancing beauty. No surprise Ron is captivated – although she is thin, too thin, with tiny, fragile wrists. Marina is unnerved. Perhaps it’s because of the intense way Eva is looking at her. Or perhaps it’s because Marina has built up this meeting in her mind.

They greet each other and Eva motions to Marina to sit on the sofa. It’s soft and sagging and tired like the rest of the room with its rich combination of muted colours.