‘God, we saw so much: Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart, Canberra. We even made it over to Perth. Can you believe it took five hours to fly there? It’s such a huge country. I don’t think I really appreciated it till I went.’ She exhaled. ‘We went to Uluru, too – saw that at sunrise. Then I quit my job and drove up the east coast, stopping at all the interesting places. Byron Bay.’ She laughed to herself. ‘That was fun. Brisbane. The Sunshine Coast. Fraser Island.’ I noticed the switch from ‘we’ to ‘I’.

‘Then I got bored driving and flew up to Cairns,’ Grace continued. ‘I spent some time in Port Douglas, and saw the rainforest, the Great Barrier Reef. Things that I’d only ever seen on TV. It was amazing. And what about you? What have you been up to?’ She looked around, as if my life had been contained within the walls of the house while she’d been out adventuring. ‘Well, you got married, I guess. To be honest, I never thought you’d actually meet anyone. Or at least let anyone get close. Such a prickly thing you are. Used to be.’

I looked down at the table and smiled. ‘He’s called Rohan. He came to my exhibition – four years ago?’ The one she’d helped me arrange but then… all that stuff had happened, and she left before it opened.

‘So he’s into art?’ she said, and I was grateful to her for glossing over the fight; the cold email she’d sent telling me she was leaving. So that’s how we’d play it: as if nothing had happened. But who was forgiving whom?

‘Yeah. He’s really supportive. In fact, he’s been pushing me because I actually have another exhibition coming up and I haven’t painted anything yet.’

‘You’ve got another exhibition? How come?’

‘You mean, without you?’ I asked, arching my eyebrow and giving a little laugh. ‘Maybe I’m good.’

‘You are good. Of course you are. That’s not what I meant at all.’ She stopped abruptly. ‘But you were saying you haven’t painted anything yet?’

‘Well, not anything. I haven’t painted anything significant for a while now. I do some volunteering, actually.’

I traced the grain of the table with my finger and waited.

‘Oh?’ she said. ‘What sort of volunteering?’

So I told her about the hospice; what I did there. ‘I love having the chance to try and make a person’s last weeks, days or hours, the best they can be,’ I said. ‘Sometimes it just means being there, holding a hand, or listening. Sometimes I sit in silence and that’s all that’s needed but, if the patient has a bit longer, I try to find out if there’s anything worrying them and help to resolve whatever that is.’

‘In what sort of way?’ Grace asked.