‘I can come, and I can go, but you’ll always be a murderer,’ she said, disappearing into her room.

I spun around, went back into the attic and slammed the door behind me. Before me were the paintings. She was right. Of course they were rubbish. Who did I think I was kidding? As if I could be a famous artist. I remembered how Rohan had commissioned me to paint his portrait, not because he thought I was a brilliant artist, but because he fancied me. So, was it true? Was he patronizing me? ‘Enabling’ me to paint as a hobby? As something to keep me busy while he waited for me to get pregnant? And what of Francesca? The exhibition? The buyers, the press? Were they all in on it, too?

I touched my finger to the canvas closest to me, the fourth one, and, as I took in the details of Grace’s smashed face, saliva streamed into my mouth and I retched, bringing up the vodka. I spewed the vomit onto the canvas, my bile literally raining down on her.

‘Useless!’ I shouted, kicking at the canvas, trying to break the frame, but it wasn’t enough. ‘I’m useless!’ I picked up the canvas and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall and bounced, the pine of the frame splintering but, again, it wasn’t enough.

‘Why me?’ I screamed, and I grabbed my craft knife and lunged towards the next canvas, stabbing into Grace’s eyes and slicing up her face, then I rampaged on, stamping on the canvases, snapping the frames, slashing the pictures and smearing vomit over what was left. I tipped vodka on them and, had I found matches, would have set fire to them. I rested only when there was just one of my series left to see: the teenage Grace, serene as the Mona Lisa, rising above the trampled remains of the others, as if a hurricane had blown through the attic and obliterated everything that she was. Then I collapsed to my knees and crumpled forward onto the floor, spent.

Sixty

‘Abs! Abs!’

I opened my eyes to see Rohan’s face sideways, close to mine, his body crouched low and his face puckered with worry. I realized he’d been shaking my arm urgently and his hand remained there, vice-like. I could feel its warmth through whatever it was I had on. Inside my head, someone beat my brain with a hammer. I could picture him, a tiny man with the steel hammer: tink, tink, tink. Somewhere ahead of me, grey and shadowy, there was a memory – Grace? My art? – but it scuttled out of my grasp before I could identify it. The room was dark; through the rainspattered window I could see clouds moving fast; the oak tree’s absence in the sky a glaring blank.

‘Thank God! Jesus, Abi! Thank God you’re all right! The tree!’