‘Are you working for Augustus White?’ When Jessica asked her that, Lisa’s usual impassivity parted for a moment to reveal a look somewhere between exasperation and tenderness. In that moment, I understood that the dynamic I had always ascribed to the two girls had been entirely wrong. When we were younger Jessica had seemed the driving force in their relationship, as I had read into her superior desirability a general dominance. Lisa had always seemed the satellite girl, caught up in the glamour, borrowing her shoes and dresses for big nights out, trusting Jessica’s social identity over her own, at least when she was with us in our world. Here, away from the validating gaze of hundreds of young men and women whom Lisa had hardly noticed, but whom the rest of us had regarded as the final arbiters, the truth of their relationship was revealed. The look said: ‘How little you understand of the world.’

‘Augustus White was a mate of mine from London. He’s a businessman, into mobile phones mostly, with a bit of dodgy stuff on the side, but I knew that’s what you lot would think a gangster looked like. I would never have actually let any of you meet the buyer. I needed to put the shits up you enough to keep you all in check, especially Francis. There never was a big bad guy, not really. The bloke who bought it in the end was some poncy prick from Hampstead who fancied himself as a bit of a Bohemian hero. Doesn’t matter now, anyway. At the end of the day it didn’t work, did it?’

I let this little speech burrow into me in silence. Augustus White had been a fraud. I gazed out at the snow-laden garden. I could not blame Lisa for her deception. My first reaction was not anger, but a deep sense of shame at my foolishness. It told me that she was not culpable. She had been trying to protect her own interests, and trying to shield us all from ourselves in the process. Perhaps we had needed the mechanism of control as much as she had. In choosing the East End wide boy she had done no more than expose my ignorance of the world and my prejudice, like a hacker working into a computer through the programmer’s own back door. Her trick was not really a betrayal, any more than a parent telling their child to behave for Father Christmas is a betrayal, but there was something more that made me afraid. Another thought had occurred to me, and I felt nauseous with the wondering.

‘Did you really get four million for it, or did you get more?’ I asked.

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Now you’re getting the idea, James. No, I didn’t fuck you over. I could have, but I didn’t. I had a good time with you guys. You were my friends.’

‘Then why did you bring us here?’ Jessica asked.

‘Wanted to check you weren’t going to do anything stupid, like freak out and go to the police, or go looking for the old painting. But you won’t. You’ve both got too much to lose. That’s what I like about the Oxbridge crowd. So many vested interests.’