I arranged them in chronological order, as far as I could remember. The photographs and mementoes were clips from the film of his life, in which he had been both star and director. The artless vanity of the young Richard Sutherland only prompted my affection for him. I was glad that he had died quietly and without pain, in the deep peace of the hepatic coma.

Cleo wiped her eye, taking my arm. “It’s like a shrine. The bones of a saint. Are you going to keep everything?”

“I don’t think we need to. Let’s each of us take just one thing.”

I was looking at the sunlit sky over Shepperton and remembering how Dick had talked about our perception of time. If our sense of time was an archaic mental structure, one we had inherited from our primitive forebears, perhaps Dick had made a first move towards dismantling it?

Cleo leaned across the desk, sunlight on the pale crown of her scalp. She was one with the children of the carousel, motionless but forever moving past me. I had scarcely touched her, aware of the distance she had set between us, but I put my hands on her shoulders, embracing her in the light.

*   *   *

Later, Cleo watched me while I undressed her in the bedroom, her hands on my forehead, as if watching my temperature.

“We don’t want you to explode. I’m glad we came upstairs—those beer mats are a bit unnerving. Like that terrifying film the two of you made.”

“Poor man, he was trying to pull off a miracle. I saw him edit the thing, moving pieces of himself back and forth, trying to solve a jigsaw. He was literally editing his own life.”

“Are you going to edit me?”

I kissed her strong wrists as she tried to pull them away from me. “Absolutely. All arguments and disagreements will be wiped from the tape. Left profile only to be shown—”

“But I like my right profile—it has more intellectual integrity…”

“—flattering glances to be stressed, with deferential pauses…”

“God, I never stop being deferential…!” She helped me with the zip. “Is this part of the editing?”

“Absolutely.” I carried the zip down to the base of her spine and let the dress fall forwards from her shoulders onto the floor. “Think of it this way—I’m really dressing you, but you’re seeing the film run backwards.”

“So it’s all the fault of the projectionist? If only I’d told my mother that…”

She reached out and adjusted the wings of the dressing table, then opened the wardrobe door so that its full-length mirror multiplied our reflections. Satisfied, she glanced at me slyly to see if I approved.

“I feel at home,” I commented. “It’s like The Lady from Shanghai.”

“What have I done? She got shot!”

*   *   *