She gave another long sigh and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘I’ve nowhere else to go. That’s the other thing. I’ve drifted for so long now that I’ve no choice but to go where life’s current takes me.’

‘You must know that’s not true,’ I said. ‘You could start painting again.’

She gave a hard laugh and clapped a hand to her cheek. ‘I’ve not lifted a paint brush in over a decade. My technique must be horrendous by now.’ She glanced at one of the paintings above her bed of a naked woman sitting on a stool, one knee drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped around her calf.

‘Is that one of yours?’ I asked.

She gave a small nod. ‘It’s a self-portrait. That should give you an inkling of how old the painting is.’

The painting was very accomplished. It looked expensive, like something in a museum.

‘Can I ask you something?’ I said, and she nodded. ‘Did you really not see any violence between Tom and Aurelia?’

‘Violence?’

‘I came across something that indicated he had beaten her.’

Maren looked puzzled. ‘That doesn’t sound like Tom.’

‘You’re sure?’ I said. ‘So … you didn’t put the book in my room?’

‘What book?’ Maren said. She’d risen from her chair and drifted to the self-portrait above her bed, lifting a cloth to wipe off an invisible layer of dust.

‘It doesn’t matter. Can you unlock the door now?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ she said, turning. ‘Of course.’

‘Can I have a story from the fairy-tale book tonight?’ Gaia asked.

I was sitting on the edge of her bed with Coco on my lap, who was sucking greedily at a bottle of warm almond milk. ‘Which fairy-tale book?’ I asked, glancing over at her bookshelf. We’d covered all of Julia Donaldson, Michael Rosen, Judith Kerr, Debi Gliori, some Shakespeare for Kids books. Only the C. S. Lewis box sets remained to be discovered. ‘Do you mean the one about Narnia?’

She shook her head and pulled back the bedcovers. ‘It’s on Daddy’s iPad,’ she said. ‘I’ll ask him if we can borrow it.’

I waited as she raced to the living room, then returned with the iPad and flicked expertly to a PDF file.

‘There,’ she said, handing it to me and hopping back into bed. ‘I like the one about the elk. Can you read me that one, please?’

I scrolled through the file and found a story called ‘The Nøkk and the Elk’.