A sob gathered in my throat and I had to blink back tears. Rohan was the first person to see the portraits and it mattered so much what he thought. It mattered that he understood this was art; that this is why I ignored the phone and ignored the door; why I forgot to eat. That this was what I found at the bottom of the vodka bottle. While I was painting things like this, I was hanging onto the edge of human existence by the tips of my fingernails. I was in another dimension; possessed by something otherworldly.

And, yes, I wanted his opinion, but I was also scared of it. I still had three or four portraits to go and my creativity at this point was as fragile as the head of a dandelion at seed; the slightest breeze or negative comment could too easily disperse the tangled wisps of inspiration that created the artwork, and leave me with nothing. It was crucial that he didn’t say anything critical.

Rohan swallowed. ‘They’re… awful… but incredible-awful. Each one is a masterpiece – and then, together, they tell a story. There’s so such an impact when you see them together. It’s that juxtaposition of beauty and horror as she ages that makes them so, God, compelling. I can’t stop looking. It’s like watching the freeze frame of a car crash.’

I wiped a tear with the back of my hand. ‘So, you like them?’

‘Understatement of the year. I can see them in some collector’s home.’ He arced his hands. ‘Arranged along a long corridor – God, the feeling you’d get walking past them. Just wow.’

He stared at the third picture. Here, Grace’s hair was tied back and her eyes were slightly closed as she looked out of the canvas almost knowingly. Rohan tilted his head.

‘What’s that look in her eyes? Resignation? Or something else?’

The background colours in this image were darker, ominous; clouds gathering before a storm; that sense of waiting you get as a heatwave ripens, ready to break.

‘Yes, maybe resignation,’ I said. ‘Do the colours remind you of anything?’

Rohan’s face cracked open with a smile. He pointed at me with his index finger and thumb in the shape of a gun.

‘That night at Mr Ho’s in the summer, when the weather broke and the rain finally came. It reminds me of that. Right?’ I nodded. ‘I could look at this for hours,’ Rohan said. ‘There’s something spellbinding about it, something hypnotic, as if it’s trying to say more than the sum of its parts.’