She gritted her teeth at that, this man using her first name, the same name her husband had called her. At the realisation she was never going to hear it from him again, she staggered and almost fell, right there by the graveside – the earth sliced so straight and dark – and Conway caught her arm. She shook him off. ‘It’s good of you to come. Will you come to the house?’

She hadn’t wanted a wake, but people expected it, and she owed it to Patrick. She had thought there’d be more people, of course, and had ordered too much food. Whole hams, plastic bowls of trifle, all of it going to waste. Only the neighbours came, eyes moving over her furniture, and some people from her adult education classes, the flower-arranging and cookery courses she’d done over the years, striving to be a better wife, forcing herself out of the safety of home – kind of them, pressing her heart in a vice – and Conway. Of course, Conway. Drinking Patrick’s good whisky, lingering after she’d dispatched the catering girls, mostly locals with too much make-up, sending them away with the leftover food, unable to face waking up and seeing any of it.

No one came. What a failure you are.

‘Well, thank you for coming, James,’ she tried again. Why wouldn’t he go? He stayed by the mantelpiece, looking at the framed pictures.

‘You were a concert pianist when you met him?’

‘Yes. He came to one of my recitals, got talking to me. We were together ever since.’

Him, coming up after a show in his typical cocky way. A hand on her naked back. ‘Miss Vetriano? I’m sorry, I just had to say – it was utterly beautiful.’ And he looked in her eyes and she saw he was saying she was beautiful. Of course, she found out later, he didn’t come for the music; he was almost tone deaf, couldn’t tell the difference between Rachmaninov and Top of the Pops. He’d seen the poster on his way to work and said, Your eyes seemed to look right at me. That long black hair – I was caught. He didn’t mention the fact they’d photographed her in a low-cut red halterneck. That’s how it worked in classical music. If you were pretty and young you had a chance. She was thirty when he first put his hand on her and she was running for her life – she only had a few years left to make it. And she wasn’t great. Technically she worked and worked, but what the critics said was right – she had ice in her core. She played without emotion. Hardly surprising, for a dead girl.