What would Grace think about the fact that I was married? I wondered. I’d met Rohan just after she’d left for Australia, when he’d turned up out of the blue at my exhibition, smiling and smartly dressed. A sometime art investor and a friend of the gallery director, Francesca, he turned out to be a big fan of the violent landscape paintings into which I’d poured my soul. He loved the cruel way in which I’d slashed the canvases with angry reds, yellows, purples and blacks; he loved the birds I’d portrayed as monsters, dribbling red from jaws that hung open as they slid through an oily sky; he admired the devastation I’d imposed onto the classic beauty of the English countryside. It was, however, the gentle tone of his voice as he spoke to Francesca that first made me turn towards him: the man in the expensive navy suit.

‘Hello there. You appear to have lost an earring,’ he said, raising an eyebrow at my statement lone earring. ‘I love your work. You’re very talented.’

I blushed and fiddled with my bare earlobe, wondering whether to explain the solo earring or just let it go. Even then I saw the world through a sheet of glass. I watched life, always one degree removed from the bittiness of existence; always unsure what to say; always living in Grace’s shadow. Yet, somehow, with his words and his gentle tone of voice, Rohan managed to break through.

And, as it was, he hadn’t been entirely honest with me that night. He bought a couple of my paintings and, in the polite chat that followed, commissioned me to paint another: a portrait of him for his parents. It was only later, much later, when my defences had dropped and I’d allowed him to press his lips on mine, the thick hair of the glossy beard of which he was so proud tickling my cheeks, that he’d admitted he’d never been interested in the portrait; he’d only wanted an excuse to see me again.

I wondered if Grace would approve of my new life. And what would her own be like now? Would she have a boyfriend; a partner? Was there someone she’d left in Australia? I reached for my phone and opened Instagram. I hadn’t checked it for years, but her personal account had always been under the name GraceTheAce, a name I’d given her as she powered through her coursework. The account came up and my heart lurched as the screen filled with colourful images. They were surprisingly arty, and there was a likeness to each of them; something indefinable that bound them – a tone, perhaps – that I wouldn’t have expected coming from someone as scientific as her.