It was suffocating to look at and had been suffocating to paint, reminding me of that feeling I’d had on the Tube that a balloon was filling my insides, choking me. It was when this feeling became too much and I found myself gasping for air that I went over to the window and looked down at the street; at the bare branches of the oak trees reaching up to the grey sky, an invisible wind whipping the dead bodies of the leaves into eddies at the kerbside and buffeting the house; at the ghoulish decorations that brought horror to the street. On the roof, the extractor outlet banged with the stronger gusts: knock, knock, knock. The attic window wasn’t double-glazed and, up close to the glass, I could feel the sharp coolness of the air as the panes rattled in their frames. I raised both my hands to the glass and pressed against it: the woman in the window. Let me go.

The sixth portrait was coming along frighteningly well. In it, Grace appeared to have escaped from behind the canvas, at least that quality of suffocation that I’d managed to infuse into number five was no longer there, but her beautiful face – because she was, without doubt, beautiful – was smashed, broken and pulled apart, the flesh distorted, deformed, melted, and bleeding out of itself, the skin dripping towards the edge of the canvas, the textures and colours of the paints I was using suggesting pain, horror and destruction. Stepping back to view my progress, I realized that although the image was undeniably horrific, it was going to be perfect. I’d been up all night and the walls of the attic seemed to pulse beyond the periphery of my sight as if the room itself were breathing and I were the heart of it – but I couldn’t stop painting now. I put my brush once more to the canvas.

I don’t know how much later it was when I finally laid down my brushes and came down the stairs – my mind on the coffee I so sorely needed – and suddenly there was Rohan, standing in the hall in his jeans and a sports jacket, and looking as surprised to see me as I was him. I hadn’t realized he’d be home from the airport already; I hadn’t heard the door. My body swayed as I held onto the bannister.

‘Rohan?’

‘Who else were you expecting?’ he said, looking around with a laugh. ‘Your lover?’ He frowned and sniffed. ‘Does he smoke? Or have you been…?’ Both of his eyebrows shot up.

I tutted. ‘No. It’s Grace. I told her not to, but I think she sticks her head out of the window. It’s not enough, is it?’